

Disclaimers and Spin:
This is a parody of the style (not the content, obviously) of Catcher on the Rye, which I have just finished working through with an adult learning class. It is also sending up the recent novel Vernon God Little (which was, in a sense, a send up of Catcher on the Rye). I do not own Roswell, alas, and that remains the properity of Katims, WB et. al. as the novels remain the property of their respective writers. Nor am I presuming anyone's sexual orientation.
SINCE I started writing this, and in discussions with people and above all BDT, Haulden in Roswell has morphed in some complex way into the PREQUAL to the Roswellian Codex - I am not sure how it happened - but it did!! I apologise to people who now find themselves having to read parts of the Codex to make sense of the later parts here = pm me if you want some guides or a synopsis!! I hjave taken the liberty of posting a link but there is no need really to read it!
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My name is Jamie Ralphs and I am a poor fucked up geek boy whose parents are liberals. I’ll spare you all the David Copperfield `I was born in a barn’ crap and just cut to what is the current outstanding issue in my sad, privileged little life: I am a gay geek boy, a hybrid, which means I am totally fucked up. I am not pretty enough for the gay boys nor ugly enough to qualify for qeekdome. I am toodemanding and smart for airhead conversations about pant bands and boy bands but too shallow to worry about quantum mechanics. Too gay for the geeks, who say things like `hey its in the genes’ and `have you had counselling’. I am too gay to beat the shit out of them as well, although I am working on this – gym three times a week – massive ulterior motives, plus massive hard ons – but revenge is one of my main motives. I am building a monster in the basement of my soul.
To add to the kaleidoscopic madness of my angst ridden sexual hunger, my father is in the military and while he struggles with the `hey Jamie, I love you whatever you are’ crap, he clearly wishes he’d traded me in a birth. Mother is like `its ok, he’s just different’ which is kind of sweet but irritates the fuck out of me. She wishes I were a bit more girlie so she could at least have a surrogate daughter or something – I bet she would even help me cross dress! Instead she puts up with protein powders, weird pills coming through the mail and bits of useless work-out equipment scattered about the garage. Goddamn parents. I am the only child.
In August 1999 we end up in some astounding dump called Roswell. In fact it is off the Ralphs scale of dumpiness – over 15. Dad is excited because of some stories of alien cover-ups and secret military installations (sad bastard, as a child he used to have toy planes stuck to the ceiling of his bedroom) and mother has a new mission of turning another featureless moonscape of a house into a home. (She’s good at that). I get a bigger room and bigger and better places to hide my porn.
West Roswell High school is my third school in two years. I am 17 and my career has been fucked over by daddy’s promotional snail trail to the top of whatever ever outfit he is in. I set off this morning with the usual churning sickness that comes with a new school, plus the tense excitement over the potential boy talent I have waiting for me before my geekness outs me. Fuck am I doomed. A moth into the candle, again.
The local jocks are out on parade, a generic fucking breed, the hottie is the captain Kyle Valenti, cute but a bit short, bit mafia like. Nothing much in the toilets, no interesting graffiti (love that stuff, sitting on the pan imagining some hot dude pencilling in a nice fat cock on the partition wall, thinking his thighs have been on this very seat!) not even any clever witticisms. (like `monkey is the route of all people’ hey go figure!) This could be dull. Meet the geeks, another generic species, thick glasses and stripy jumpers (have they ever fucking heard of contact lenses?) - a lone landscape of societies and `events’ stretch out before me including (god help me) a college counsellor who looks like a god damn Bond villain (Mrs Topolkolsky or something). She’s new as well, so she thinks we have loads in common. She has already marked me out as her next major project. When I tell her I’m gay she’ll probably make that weird mewing noise women make at babies. Perhaps she’ll try and turn me by showing me her ass. I end up lunching with some spotty little bastard destined to be my best friend and a nice guy, weird but nicely weird, the resident computer king, Alex Whitman.
After school I try the gym – stinks of men like a stable stinks of horses – can’t beat that smell. The back slapping `oh we are not queer’ greek wrestlers have pissed off for the afternoon and the place is empty, warm in the September sunshine. Motes of light swirl about (fuck you see, I can’t even hide my geekiness when writing this). I am lying on an inclined bench contemplating a fly and thinking about my tits ands their complete FALURE to develop in any direction whatsoever when the door slams open at the far end and some dude walks in. He is looking for something. He is tall, about 6 2, and dark. I think he is Hispanic or Native American. I watch him out the corner of my eyes trying to perfect the tree hugging fly movement of the dumbbells without snapping up every bone in my upper arms. (I must look a total idiot, like a fucking butterfly pinned out on a board).
He comes over. He is wearing a tight vest, black, ribbed up over his stomach with sweat. He has a fucking awesome pair of shoulders, and the vest is cut low enough to show great slabs of pecs. My evil, ill mannered cock shows some interest, which at this angle and in these shorts is NOT good. He comes right up to me. `Hey’ he says. How the fuck do you look cool struggling with girlie weights and a semi-hardon? He comes right up to me and stands over the bench. When he looks at me something between my naval and my sternum snaps. At 17 I am surely too young to have a heart event. I can’t breath. I have never seen such a beautiful pair of hazel eyes in my life – never such a face, dark, framed by a wedge of black thick hair. He has a neck to die for. Fuck he is going to speak to me? (I am the only one here but even so, something has gone with a fundamental law of the Universe, no jock speaks to me, not in English)
`Hey you’re on my shirt’ he says softly. Where is the universal grunt languange of the gym – like `hey get the fuck of my kit, bitch’ – or is that what I want him to say – anyways, I am sweating on the boy Gods shirt. It is on the corner of the bench with my head on it. I am mortified.
`Shit man, I am sorry – I didn’t see it’ I am flustered, all girlie like, with my non geek id saying `get a fucking grip Jamie’ but my eyes are watering and I am holding out the dumbbells, spread eagled like a fucking Renaissance painting of Christ .
`Just lift you head up a minute’ he is saying. He has a deep, husky voice, hard to make out through the churning noise in my ears. I comply. He leans over. I see his arm pits, a boss of hair, a solid triangle of intercalated trapezium muscle, draping into a small tight waist. As I lift my head up I get his scent full in my face. I lift my legs up to disguise a tent like pole in my pants. I have gone redder than the fucking red planet. If I were outside on the street I would stop traffic. I am not sure he notices. He pulls the shirt away and smiles at me `Cheers man’ and turns.
Fuck who is this!!!!!!!
Part Two:
I have clearly died. Light years wheel over head and all of geekdom flashes before my contact colour-tinted eyeballs. My priceless stamp collection, my model of the Hubble telescope, my Jeff Stryker video with the fucked up 80’s hairstyles and all that gratuitous moaning. No, wait. I am alive, and about three minutes have passed with me clinging onto the fucking dumbbells, my blood in my groin. (No wonder I must have blanked out). Ego switches on and I am up like a bitch on heat: he must have gone to the showers, he stank like a horse, he’d just finished, he is CLEARLY too civilised to not wash. I try to stay calm, fuck I CAN be organised in moments like this: it’s my nascent computer skills. `Don’t fuck this up Jamie boy’ Too much is riding on this – god if only it was my ass or mouth or both - I ruffle my hair, (my best feature), ignore my subliminal physical presence and bound off to the locker room like a whippet out of a trap door.
As I get close, looking all cool and sort of fake tired, I hear water slamming onto tiles from the open stalls. Boy God is in heaven. My balls tighten and my stomach starts the San Andreas Fault routine. Being gay is fucking awesome, so much opportunity for a harmless stare. Straight men have no idea - `that’s because straight men don’t get to walk into the girl’s changing room’ – thanks super ego, the deep seat of all my evil rational geekness, speaks. I need help. My id wants this guys pants in my face and some loud techno mix on the ipod, super brained ego is thinking about string theory and Bach. The locker room – the inner sanctum of my tribe – rows of blue cabinets, a row of benches down the middle of each isle, the showers to the left at the end, the toilets to the right. Thank god for standardised design.
I start my remote sensoring routine. I position myself where I have complete `STRATEGIC VISION’ and start the god damn, perfected slowness of fucking around in my kit bag pretending to find things while gathering data like a Nasa satellite. Object is sited in about 0.00003 seconds. Boy God is absolutely bollock naked, sideways on, leaning his head to the tiles so the water runs over his back. His back is – where to begin – padded and quilted with more fucking muscles than can reasonably exist, wet and slippy like a dolphin, and before I get to the tight inner back and the bubble butt with the matching hard dimples I have to redirect all available energy back to life support. `What the fuck are you doing?’
Proximity alert goes off (too fucking late). Some blonde, punk kid is standing next to me, sweated up and about to strip. He has a beautiful bad boy face with great eyes. West Roswell has goes from –15 to +15 on dumpiness scale in less time than it takes to say `fuck me please’.
`Trying to find my stuff’ I say – tone perfect – neutral, no fucking wobbles, don’t provoke, don’t stare. He frowns at me as if he is considering whether I should live or not. `Well go and find your stuff somewhere else’ He is big, no where near as defined as boy God, but clearly alpha male. I say `sure’ like when my mom say’s sure which means `go fucking die’ and then boy God shouts over above the water
`Michael?’ Punk boy Michael, distracted from my imminent annihilation, looks up and over, and then he looks at me as if to say `yeah right, gotcha you, you little queer’ and says
`Hey Max’
MAX. Max I want you children, millions of them, I want my ass with your name branded on each cheek. I shall stalk you forever. I move my bag to the far end and start fucking mincing out of my kit like its shrank three sizes and I’ll have to be cut of it.
`What’s up’ Max sounds like he has turned around – bastard punk boy - Michael peels off his top. I am playing lucky dip in my bag still (what’s this, a shoe, three socks, jesus, last years chemistry assignment from another school). I am almost dressed.
`Nothing much’ Michael is naked as well, a bit lardy, just a bit, but hot. He saunters off to join Max. `You eating at the Crash Down later?’ Max asks
`Sure, don’t need to ask if you are do I!’
`Don’t start Michael. Liz isn’t working tonight’ There is a lot of splashing. Yeah don’t start punk boy. I think of Max just wedging his cock simply and effortlessly into Michael’s ass, his hand on his neck pushing him at right angles, just for the hell of it, a casual assertion of primacy. I am calculating the risks of another low orbital flyby when I discover I have left my gayboy hair product over at the other end of the bench. I go fetch it. As I lean down to pick it up I look up, all casual like. The two of them are facing outwards, hands behind their backs, like guys waiting for a fucking bus or something. Max’s abdominals are so separated they appear to be made up of metal sheets, his cock is thick and long, dark, cut. He trims his pubes (good sign). Shit I am good. I have fucking awesome peripheral vision. I should work for the FBI. Punk boy says `Hey fuck off out of here!’ I show him my gayboy hair fudge like you show a club pass to a bouncer. Then I am out of here – as I fire full retros I hear Max say `Michael for fuck sake, do you have to be so rude!’
Part Three:
Somehow I get back to moon house. My automated homing device must have switched on because I can’t fucking remember getting here at all. Parents are out tonight at some weird military bonding party, so I sit at the dinner table being read a list of emergency numbers and fuck knows what else to call if the Martians land or the Afghans turn up. No parties (yeah, right, with who?) no drink, no `noising about’ (sub-text leave my straight porn alone). Dad’s all energised like he has some high energy battery up his ass, Mum’s got that `I don’t want to go’ look that somehow Army Dude never sees (`hello! She’s doesn’t want to fucking go!!). I can’t really deal with any of this stuff because something is wrong with my goddamn eyes and there is a loud ringing in my ears. I can’t even fucking eat properly. Every time I fork something towards my mouth I see Max’s heavy smooth cock - `Jamie stop playing with your food’ - and when I look at The Parents they are far off and small like I am looking through the wrong end of a telescope. All I can see is boy god Max’s bubbled ass looming in front of me, wet and shining with sweat, hard, peachy, furred with a soft down………fuck I need help.
A whole inter-glacial period goes by before Mum is ready for the party and then when she leaves its like she’s going off to face a firing squad. She looks at me as if I will set the fucking house on fire as soon as they turn a corner. I give them the twenty minute statutory time limit (to allow for last minute costume panics, arguments, flat batteries) and then I hit the showers. Max is on me with in minutes, he just lifts me up like a lightweight and puts me on my back, my legs in the air, and as I look up he forces a few fingers in my ass, smiling. I try and assert my geeky brain power but its no use, he gobs elegantly into his other hand and starts to lube his cock up with his powerful hand. `I can’t take that, man’ I say in classic porn Orwell Speak (which means: fuck my brains out PLEASE) and he says `sorry man'; in that deep soft voice he has. Next minute his horse cock is somewhere behind my navel. Afterwards he gets me passed around his mates, including Punk Boy Michael, but in the end he takes me over his shoulders, his hand whacking my butt and says `you’re my little bitch Jamie, I’ll protect you’. Next minute I have fucking sprayed everywhere and everything with sad geek boy juice, including all those weird places you find hard to clean and are terrified that The Parents will find by error. I cream myself several times but the weird thing is that Max is always there, always in my mind. Shit. I am addicted.
School is the entire meaning of my life now. I am up each morning, showered, pampered, the only days I miss are `Severe Spot Days’ when I gauge that a spot outburst is F-5 on my zit scale. (The Parents are no fucking use here. If I grew a second head and asked my mother if she could see it she’s say `no dear’ it that totally insincere phoney voice she uses. Army boy doesn’t even look and says Jamie its fine.) Apart from being cornered by the Bond Agent/ Laura Croft look-alike with the ludicrous name Topolsky, to have `a session’ (?!) with her soon, I spend my entire fucking day on search and rescue missions looking for Max. He is fucking elusive. I keep a secret diary now in which I list all INFORMATION about him. I have interrogated my new geek friends, (carefully of course) but he is so high up in the food chain that they rarely see him. His surname is Evans (`please don’t hurt me Max Evans, this is my first time’/’Sorry Jamie, its what I do’) he has a sister – some Amazonian Goddess that the entire straight male population and a few gay sisters are after – and one of her admirers is Alex Whitman, head of the computer clan. Alex is proving really useful, he is only half a geek, he has links with other higher life forms in the school.
Constructing Max’s timetable is difficult. I chair endless committees trying to get this done. He never appears to be in class and I only have one goddam class with him. I have worked out his routes across the school and waste fucking hours in various place, like a fucking bird watcher. I should make a safari movie. Even when I see him he is usually in the vicinity of Punk boy Michael, or Isobel. Punk boy has the sensory acuity of a fucking shark. He spots me well before I get anywhere near a full visual of the suspect or can even fake a collision. moves into intercept as soon as I appear to get a visual. I need some sort of fucking cloaking device. I need to see Max at least three times a day minimum. If I don’t see him I shrivel and get all fucking girlie and can’t even jack off properly without thinking my life is meaningless. Some days are sheer fucking heaven though, like today.
At lunchtime today I discover the oasis where the boy god feeds. He is sitting quietly eating some fries, encased in a tight sweatshirt with red edging. His hair is thick and black and slightly Velcro at the front. If he fucked me hard it would keep falling in his face and probably stick to his eyebrows. I am about three feet from him, fucked up, over-excited, almost hyperventilating. I am pretending to read the contents of my mineral water VERY CAREFULLY as if I have just discovered it contains arsenic. He looks up and smiles. (Ohhhhhhhhh Myyyyyyyyyyyy Goooooooood) I resist the temptation to turn around and see what he is smiling at then the shocking, unbearable revelation dawns on geek boy here that he is smiling at me. `What’s up?’ he says `You think someone is poisoning you?’ Total synaptic failure. My emergency sub-routine of `witticisms for every emergency’ crashes and I go red again (fuck I hate this) deer in headlights. I manage to say, mumble, mouth? `yeah I do actually’ at which he frowns as if thinking `weirdo' (but in a nice way) and my heart stops and then he is distracted. I abort the mission to go and beat myself up and then hang myself from a solitary cactus. As I turn I see boy God is looking at the Queen of the science geeks, Liz Parker. Weird. One thing I have noticed in my lonely stakeouts about the school, with my fucking rhino hat on and a pair of binoculars (yeah right) is that Prim Parker is also there, usually ahead of me, and much better hidden. Shit I have competition, a fellow stalker.