His eyes blaze, but not with light. With dark.

I am afraid, afraid, afraid. I am so often afraid.

“You gays think you’re so special don’t you?” he commands.

I shake my head.

“Yes, you do. You walk around in that girly walk, acting like women. Acting like whores. Like dirt. Like animals.”

I don’t answer. Anything I say, anything I do, will be met with violence. These kind of men don’t reason. They just hurt. All they know how to do is hurt.

“I…” I begin, but he clutches my jaw in his hand and squeezes so I can’t finish the sentence.

“God created man for woman,” he lectures, almost like a priest.

He’s mad with rage, but something else. He believes in what he is saying so much.

“What you … filth do …”, and there is spit forming at his lips as he says this, “is against nature. It is against God. In other countries they hang perverts like you.”

I start to answer, but my words are a bit strangled, because his grip on my cheeks impedes my speech.

“We’re … not … in… ‘other countries’…”

He klaps me on the side of the head and I fall, my head ringing.

“I’m so sick of you moffies acting like you’re normal,” Mdu says. “You’re scum. I will never accept you as men.”

I just listen to them talk about me like I am worthless. I’m so stunned from the smack to my head I’m just in shock. I don’t react.

I’ll just let them lecture me about what a godless, sick, perverted guy I am and how I should be stoned in public or whatever, and then they’ll run out of energy or whatever, I reason.

They’re joking about whether they should hang me from the roof, or drown me in the toilet.

They’re laughing. It’s hard to know if people like this are joking. They talk like this all the time about people they hate. That’s why they’re so dangerous. They live on hate, like you and me live on food and air.

They’re the freaks, not me.

Then I do something I never thought I had the courage to do.

“You’re not men,” I say in a whisper. There is a dark, dangerous silence.

“What did you say?” asks Songezo, his voice light, lethal, like poison.

My blood runs cold as ice. But I say it. I can’t stop myself. I must speak my truth. I must.

“You say you’re men,” I say, “but you’re not. You’re scared, stupid, helpless little boys.”

***

Tell us: From what you know, is this an accurate example of bullying that happens regularly to gay boys and men? What do you think about what Levi just said?