brian lackey (fictional character) is someone i’ve sort of fallen in love with ever since watching the movie (and yet to finish the book) mysterious skin. very simply put, it’s about two boys who were sexually abused by their baseball coach at elementary age, and since then, have grown into two completely different people who have led lives oppositely due to the same shared incidents. the other boy, neil mccormick, is now a sexually promiscuous, openly gay prostitute, who has had sex with dozens of men for money and his own pleasure. he vividly remembers the abuse, and even believes his coach really loved and cared for him, even though he was an eight-year-old being abused and groomed by a grown man. brian is an innocent, rather sexually repressed individual who has no memory of the events in his past, but rather believes he and another boy were abducted by aliens one night. this causes him to search for the boy lost in his memories, which eventually leads to brian and neil meeting each other for the first time in a decade. in the end, the truth comes out, and brian recoils in disgust and disbelief in neil’s lap as they sit on a couch, both in each other’s comfort even though they might’ve well have been strangers again, while the camera fades into the dark.
i first caught wind of this fictional story via tiktok, something i inherently feel embarrassed to admit due to the app’s infamy. but i was captivated immediately and ordered the book two weeks later, as well as buying the movie on youtube. i have a propensity for disturbing and depressing books. nothing like those murder mysteries your aunt might read, but authors who explore real life horrors induced by humans themselves and their pure will to do so. i was also taken with this book particularly because of the sensitive topics involving child sexual abuse, child-on-child sexual abuse, and repressed/false memories. in some ways one could relate to brian or neil, or even both to some extent. the idea of my brain harboring repressed memories of the past is something that has sort of haunted me for a time now, and brian’s final realization in the end is one i can relate to.
realizing what had been, and what you thought was normal when it really wasn’t, feels like a massive invasion of self-identity. it’s a sort of epiphany, and you’re never quite the same again. you live your life believing a truth and a story that reveals itself to be false. brian himself is a lovable character whom you quickly develop a compassion toward, and once again, i could see the tiniest outlines of him and his search that resonated with me. you’re so desperate to find an answer, and when you do, you almost wish you had never found it in the first place, you had never even had an inkling that something was off or needed to be solved.
brian lackey, i love you