Storymania - The Story Of Dan by Skyler Drevan

The Story Of Dan
Skyler Drevan

On the night of March, 13th, 2003 Dan Rosen, a 17 year old high school junior, was online searching for someone to talk to and connect with physically. He wanted to meet an older man he could learn from and be intimate with. He was in a state of unparallel depression and in desperate need for the affection of another. This was a particularly bad time for Dan. His father had just been on a drunken binge of Scotch and Whiskey and his mother had been out of town for weeks on what she called a “spiritual cleansing.”

Let’s go back in time for a moment. Dan grew up in a lower class family in Brooklyn, NY and later relocated to Hoboken, NJ. His mother moved from job to job trying to support her habit of spiritual awakenings and repression and his father worked in a modern day sweat shop for just under twenty-two thousand dollars a year. To fast forward a bit, Dan underwent a traumatic childhood of physical and mental abuse by his mom and dad while his little sister was pampered and cherished like a fine piece of imported art.

Dan recalled to me a story of one particular night when he and his sister were playing a little game of hide and seek and his father decided that Dan had to be punished for making his sister play with him when—as he says—she clearly didn’t want to. While playing the game, Dan recalled with explicit memory his father barging into the room like a bull after a red cape and attacked Dan after a night of tying one on with his friends at the local pub.

Mr. Rosen screamed at his daughter to leave the room because it was time for Dan to have his punishment for what he deemed as child endangerment. Yes, that was his excuse. Anyway, Mr. Rosen pulled off his genuine leather belt and began to whip Dan while simultaneously reciting religious scriptures to him about why he was being beaten and explaining that God made him do this to “whip the Satan out of him.” After the belt whipping, Dan was physically lifted into the air about eight to ten feet and thrown onto the bed where his school books, pens, pencils and a pair of sewing scissors were.

As a result of Dan’s fall onto the bed, he sustained multiple bruises (not counting the ones already present from the savage beating) and the sewing scissors that were on the bed had been planted in his left buttock about a quarter of an inch in leaving a thick gash that bled for hours. Dan was never taken to the hospital; he was just left to suffer the pains of an uncontrollable father. His mom had been—once again—out of town finding herself and Jesus.

That is just the abridged history of Dan and his very unstable family and childhood. As anyone with a brain could see, he hadn’t had the best of childhoods and his father was never a father to him at all. So it stood to reason that on that night in March, Dan was in search of an older man for that father figure he had never really had.
While searching the AOL chat rooms for several hours, Dan met a man named Darryl. Darryl claimed to be just twenty-four and he said that he worked in Manhattan at a café and book store. Dan and Darryl chatted for about three hours over the net and then Darryl suggested that they talk over the phone. At first Dan was not too keen on the idea as the only two phones lines in the house were located in his parents’ bedroom and in the kitchen. Darryl coaxed him into calling him and within minutes, Dan was sitting in the dark kitchen floor talking about his entire life to this total stranger.

When Dan began to reveal a little too much about himself to Darryl, Darryl realized that he may know Dan. Before moving to Hoboken, Dan lived in the Brooklyn Heights section of Brooklyn. Darryl lived there for about a year and a half in the mid 90’s as well. The thought of Darryl knowing him made Dan really nervous and wanting to hang up and head back online in search of another but Darryl once again talked Dan into doing what he wanted him to do and he eventually earned the trust of Dan.

Around four in the morning, after talking for two hours and fifteen minutes, Darryl arranged a meeting with Dan on the following Saturday afternoon and suggested to him that he needed to get out more and asked him to attend a party back in Brooklyn. That Saturday, Dan met Darryl at his job. They talked for a few minutes before his shift was over then headed to Brooklyn in Darryl’s rented truck. Dan was at first taken aback when he saw the license plate on the truck. His immediate thought was that Darryl had wrecked his car or perhaps didn’t have one but then living in NYC, why would he need an automobile at all? His doubts weren’t strong enough to stop him from traveling to Brooklyn with Darryl. Within an hour, Darryl and Dan were at the party where there must have been several hundred people and endless amounts of drinks and drugs available for anyone to take. There was a punch bowl spiked with dissolved Extasy pills and a candy dish filled to the rim with acid, poppers and special K; to mention a few.

About three hours after they arrived at the party, Dan and Darryl began to use drugs and dance with the seduction of wild animals during mating season. At Darryl’s consistent requests, Dan began to consume vast amounts of alcohol and drugs, all in a saddened attempt to gain his acceptance. Dizziness and fatigue fell over Dan just twenty minutes after his binge of drugs and alcohol. Darryl noticed that Dan was not in the best of shape and suggested that he take a few sips of his Pepsi and go up into the bedroom for a little rest. He promised Dan that if he didn’t feel better after he awoke, he would take him back home to Hoboken.

The last thing Dan remembered before he went to sleep was looking at the clock on the wall just above the television of the guest room. The time was 11:09pm and Dan was well on his way to dreamland. When Dan awoke just a short forty minutes after his sleep, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. His vision was blurred and his hearing was jumbled but he could recognize the face of one of the three men that was in the room with him. It was Darryl and two of his football buddies. They were naked from the waist down and looking holding tying Darryl to the bedpost while trying to keep him calm explaining to him that he was going to enjoy what was about to happen to him. Dan was tied face down to the bed and his mouth was gagged with a pair of socks and some masking tape.
While Dan was trying to fight the restraints and his severe state of delusion due to the vast amounts of drugs in his system, he felt intense pressure in his anus. One of the guys began raping him. Dan tried to scream but couldn’t. All he could do was lay there until it was over and that would not be easy. While the first guy was rapping Dan, Darryl and the second guy began to confer with each other on who would go next, what position they wanted him in and what they wanted to do with him.

After the first guy raped Dan to completion, there was a quick two out of three game of rock, paper, scissor; Darryl won the right to go at Dan next. When it was his turn, Darryl untied Dan and said to him that trying to fight would be useless because they were stronger and the door had been barricaded with a dresser and locked. When Dan was untied, he was ordered to wrap his arms around Darryl as he started to have sex with him. Darryl was not of average size and although because of the drugs, Dan had been comfortably numb, he did feel the pain of Darryl’s massive size as it was forced inside him and repeatedly pounded. While rapping Dan, Darryl also began to show his sadistic side as he began to whip and punch Dan on his thighs, chest and stomach. The abuse was enough to get Darryl off and he climaxed inside of Dan as did the first guy.

The third guy wasn’t as vicious as Darryl and the other but he was just as sick as Darryl. During the sex, the third guy—a Latino from Harlem ripped off the mouth gag and wanted Dan to call him racist names and berate him as he was being rapped. Dan had no other choice but to adhere to his commands and began to throw racist jargon to the boy. The words seemed to get the final rapist off very quickly because within three to four minutes, he was finished. While Dan laid in bed bleeding and beat red from the rape, the three boys warned him that if he breathed a word to anyone about what happened; they would go after him and his family. When the boys were dressed, all except Darryl decided to add just one more hint of humiliation to the emotionally distressed Dan. The two boys threw him to the floor so hard that his head thumped and bounced off of the floor twice then they pulled out their penises and urinated on Dan stating that he was a bitch and nothing more than that.

While Dan dressed himself and tried to find his way back to Hoboken, the thought of sexually transmitted diseases ran through his mind. He was sure that he had contracted something since these boys were not protective and were barebacking. Three days after the rape, Dan saw a gay counselor and was tested for all possible illnesses. Frightened of the outcome, Dan decided not to go back for the results and also decided against further mandatory testing and he also refuses to turn these guys in out of severe fear of repercussion.

Currently, Dan is a virtual prisoner in his own home. He is scared to leave his room or the very small town of Hoboken out of fear that something would happen to him. He cannot hold down a job and is failing his senior year of school. His parents are not any help to him. In fact, his parents said that if he was to flunk out of school because of what they perceive to be “attention grabbing stunts,” they would take him to a remote town in the suburbs and drop him off citing that since he is now eighteen, they were not responsible for him or his welfare. His now sixteen year old sister looked on and smiled as her brother sulked at the thought of being abandoned in his weakened state. A Therapist and queer counselor from Parsippany, NJ said that a person in his extreme state of emotional distress is not unlikely to consider suicide. When confronted about these thoughts, Dan simply said: “That’s not a bad idea.”

My last conversation with Dan was on December, 1st, just three days before he committed suicide. He had stole money from his mother and father’s draw and took a bus to Maine where he had briefly stayed with his aunt Dolly. In a letter sent to my home address, Dan asked that I not reveal the way he killed himself and suggested that if I wanted proof that he was dead, I call a number and give the information he sent to me. My fears were confirmed and Dan was deceased. My only wish was for him to help himself, now that he is gone, my only wish is that his spirit lives on to bring his abusers to justice.