…In which our teenage hero discovers that the parts that make up a brain aren’t necessarily on speaking terms with each other.

Click on the image above to go directly to the new episode…or Here to go to the series main page.  I did a little review of the panels I put up over the weekend and yesterday, made a few minor corrections, and started sending out the email notices.  If you didn’t get one and
want to be put on the mail list let me know.

If you checked in to the series yesterday or Sunday when I just started putting the pages up you should know that I shuffled the upcoming episodes around a tad and there is a different one now listed as coming next.  I’ll do the one on how I got my camera bug later…it doesn’t really fit at this stage of the story. 

The series divides into three parts really.  The first part is the one I’m still on right now, which is about how all these sexual feelings just suddenly seemed to start happening to me out of the blue and I started getting all twitterpated over one of my male classmates and all of a sudden I was just flailing around with all these really strong new feelings I was absolutely not prepared for, didn’t understand, and didn’t really want.  The second is how I stumbled around trying to avoid having to deal with the realization that I was really sexually attracted to guys, and that I was actually falling in love with this one particular guy.  And lastly, how I finally came to terms with both of those things and how I moved from confusion and denial into self awareness and pride.

I have about 70 percent of all this scripted, but obviously I’m still working on it as I go along.  For one thing, I added a bunch of material to this episode after I started working on the pencils and wasn’t really satisfied with it.  But I really need to kick up the output here a tad…or I’ll still be working on this when I’m 90.

I rarely sketch out my cartoon ideas before I begin work on them.  Nearly always, I picture it in my mind.  I have a good imagination.  Maybe too good.  I can disappear into it for hours at a time.   My political cartoons begin as imagery that just comes to mind as I read about, or think about current events.  Occasionally I'll grab one as it passes by, and work on it, entirely inside my brain.  When I actually start to draw something, I almost always approach the paper seeing what I want to draw clearly and exactly in my mind.  This is pretty much how I draw and paint everything, the only difference being when I paint I will do a quick color study first. 

As the fight over California Proposition 8 approached voting day, I had two cartoons already done inside my head, one of which I hoped I wouldn't have to draw.  Had the vote gone the other way, I might have just waited until the weekend to do the other, more light-hearted one.  It might even have stayed on the drawing board, like so many other half-finished cartoons have this past year.  But this pretty much expresses how I feel right now, and I just had to get it out now.  I have nearly two months of vacation time stored up at work, and I took the day off (mostly…I still had things I had to do from home) so I could get this out of my system…

Copyright © November 5, 2008 by Bruce Garrett
All Rights Reserved.

Link

It's horrible to say it…but I have a new-found interest in doing these now.  And…more spare time to do them since I'm not visiting people I know down in Washington every Friday-Saturday now.  But that's another spill-my-guts-out story for another time…

Yesterday, as I was driving home, I was listening to the Michelangelo Signorile show on Sirius OutQ.  He was playing a radio clip that was particularly chilling.  It was James Dobson of Focus On Homosexuality The Family choking up for his listeners as he told them how God wanted him to drop everything and lead a "prayer" vigil in California to ban same-sex marriage.  Right Wing Watch has more…

Dobson Chokes Up Explaining God Wants Him in California to Save Marriage

James Dobson dedicated his radio program today to explaining his sudden decision, which we mentioned earlier, to go to California this weekend to join Lou Engel, Tony Perkins and others for a massive "The Call" rally of prayer and fasting in the name of saving "traditional marriage."

In the clip below, Dobson has just explained that he received a letter from Rev. Jim Garlow, one of the leading organizers of the "yes ..ment pleading with Dobson to attend and, after reading it, felt God's hand on his back telling him to attend "The Call."  Dobson chokes up explaining that despite having been on the go for weeks and being exhausted, he knew God wanted him there.  Dobson had to call his son to tell him he couldn't babysit for his grandson this weekend as planned and his son Ryan then confirmed that God wanted him in California instead.  Dobson could barely keep it together when he explained that "the Lord must be involved in this" and then hands over the program to Garlow, who also gets choked up and speaks of their level of spiritual desperation and their constant "crying out to God" to save California because they are "watching the destruction of Western civilization."

You can listen to the clip there.  I heard it on the Signorile show, and listening to it I just knew it was going to drive the kook pews to open their wallets up in droves.  All the little old ladies who believe Dobson when he tells them that gay people are the tools of Satan and that same sex marriage will allow homosexuals to molest children in public schools will open their fixed income pocketbooks and give, and give and give.  And thus the smear campaign being waged now in California will get a new infusion of cash, allowing them to wash one final media tidal wave of lies over every television in the state, scaring people into believing every filthy lie they can get away with about their gay neighbors.

Behold the destruction of Western Civilization…

The Face of Proposition 8

I was on my way home from the Lakeshore district when I encountered this group of supporters of Prop 8. After turning my vidphone on, I was screamed at, physically intimidated and eventually attacked by one of the more aggressive sign-wavers.

…

I asked the most aggressive woman (who was not underage) "are you afraid to be online?" She answered, "oh, no, they already videotaped me, but these kids don't want to be online, cause they're [unintelligible] loaded on a sexual perv profile and [unclear] look at my little cousins." Fair enough. I'm all for protecting the innocent. (Not that there's anything particularly innocent about shouting hate speech in public.)

"Go away, Nasty Nasty. Nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty."

The woman continued to poke at my face with her sign and call me "nasty." Genuinely disturbed by the complete lack of rational behavior I'd seen up to this point, wanting to look into her face and possibly connect on some level with her as a fellow human being, I pulled a corner of the sign down away from my eyes and asked "why are you calling me nasty?"

That's when she attacked, clawing, grabbing and then shoving. I didn't fight back; she was much bigger than me. Calling me a "nasty fucker" and threatening to kick my ass, she pried my phone out of my hand and tried to break it in half while her friends egged her on.

Please note that I never touched or threatened her in any way (unless you want to consider my pulling the edge of her sign out of eye-poking territory a threatening gesture).

As she grabbed at my phone, I stood there stunned, not really sure what to do. One of the counter-protesters (the woman who you see saying "No on Prop 8" towards the beginning of this clip) quickly intervened and calmed the attacking woman down enough that I felt safe enough to try to take my phone back. After a second or two of grappling, she let go and went back to screaming at cars from a lawn chair near the side of the road.

(Big love and gratitude to the kindly counter-protester who pleaded for calm. I don't think my phone would have survived without you!)

I stood there for another minute or two, checking the phone's applications for damage. One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered "fuck you, dyke."

Even though I wasn't hurt besides a small scratch on my hand, and my phone was okay, being attacked definitely shook me up. I was a bit tearful. Call me naive, but I never thought I'd actually be in physical danger just for shooting footage of their activity and pulling the edge of a person's sign out of my eyes. Verbal insults, sure. But attacked by an anti-gay activist? In one of the most queer-friendly neighborhoods in the bay area? Yikes.

The man holding the "Vote No" sign noticed that I was in tears and approached me. We hugged to a chorus of jeers, exchanged some reassuring words, and I turned to leave. Someone called after me: "keep crying, and keep walking."…

(Emphasis mine…) You can see the video of the incident at the link above.  When Dobson says god wants him to go to California, this is the flock to whom he will preach, that they are the salt of the earth, defending it from unspeakable evil…  One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered "fuck you, dyke"… "…keep crying, and keep walking."

This is what Dobson and his congregation are doing to California.  This is what they have been doing to America for decades now. Dividing us against one another, so they can carve their own personal kingdoms out of the shattered pieces.

Behold their righteousness…

Ken Mettler, a politically conservative activist and member of the Kern High School District Board of Trustees, was caught on video kicking and punching a protester at a Friday night demonstration against Proposition 8.

Mettler said the following day that he was only defending himself.

"I was assaulted," Mettler said. "A fellow threw a punch at me. He missed, and I did hit him."

The incident was recorded by another protester. The video shows Mettler taking signs which originally read "Yes on 8" but had been altered to read "No on 8."

And…surprise, surprise…the video tells a somewhat different tale…

Here is the America of their dreams…a place where high school trustees beat the crap out of dissenters and then lie through their teeth about it afterward.  Tell me that the kids in this man's schools won't take a cue from this, that it's okay to beat the crap out of their gay and lesbian peers.  Tell me he wouldn't want them to take that cue.  Tell me Dobson wouldn't want them to take that cue.  Homosexuals are destroying Western civilization.  That means it's okay to shove that terrified gay kid's face into his locker, like they've been wanting to do for weeks now…

So…what are you going to do about it?  I know…I know…you're going to vote for Obama.  You're going to work like hell to keep McCain and especially Palin out of the White House.  You are going to help get better democrats elected, so this country doesn't have to endure another year, let alone four, let alone eight, of rule by the kook wing of the republican party.  Fine.  Good.  Wonderful.  Really.  But…can you spare a few dollars in the fight for the right to love?   Because that's what this fight is about, in its starkest terms.  This is about hate that cannot bear the sight of decent, wholehearted human love, and urgently wants to snuff it out.

This nation has a lot of work ahead of it, healing the wounds from decades of republican hate mongering for votes.  Making gay and lesbian people second class citizens, cutting the ring fingers off of devoted, loving couples, only prolongs the bitterness.  It could last for decades.  Do you want to see hundreds of loving couples forcibly divorced?  Do you want to see thousands more denied the right to marry.  Do you think another two or three decades of this…

Is going to help America heal its wounds?  What kind of America do you want.  This one…

Or this one…

I'm in for another $500 dollars.  That makes $1,500 I've given to this fight and it will take me months to pay it off, win or loose.  But I can live with that, so long as I know I gave it everything I had, cut to the bone, so that love could have a chance in this poor angry world.

I'm not asking you to cut to the bone.  I'm not asking you for hundreds, let alone thousands.  Can you spare 20?  10?  5?  It's easy.  Just go to the No On 8 site and give.  Anything.  Anything at all.  The polls all say it is close.  We can win this.  We can.  But we have to give the people fighting on the front lines of this something to keep their ads going.  The other side is going to spend millions in the next few days to  dump an tidalwave of hate mongering over California.  The polls all say that when our side gets its message out in equal force, we win. 

They have the Mormon church, which has given anywhere from 40 to 70 (!) percent of the money for the Proposition 8 campaign.  They have Pope Ratzinger's Catholic church.  The have James Dobson, and the protestant religious right.  They have their own array of right wing billionaires.  They have Fox news.  What do we have?  We have a dream.  An ages old dream of freedom and justice.   For all.  Where Americans can live together in peace.  Where love is not spat upon, but nurtured and cherished.   Where hate does not rule.

I know this fight is an uphill struggle.  I know how much it can soul-weary a person, how deeply it can wound.  Hate takes its toll on all of us.  I still vividly remember sitting in my eighth grade sex ed class, hearing our gym teachers tell me and everyone I knew in that school, that homosexuals mutilate the bodies of people they have sex with, and then, usually, kill them.   I have no idea how many of my classmates from back then still believe that.  But I suspect even now some of them still do.  And some of those who still believe it, are themselves gay, and they have loathed themselves all their lives. 

And that is why, win or loose on the night on November 4th, I know where my name will be written… 

BARBARA GARRETT $100  CERRITOS       CA  90703  ST FRANCIS HOSP               Support
BRAD GARRETT    $500  SAN JOSE       CA  95133  APPLIED SIGNAL TECHNOLOGY     Support
BRETT GARRETT   $250  REDWOOD CITY   CA  94061  SAME NAME                     Oppose
BRETT GARRETT   $100  REDWOOD CITY   CA  94061  YOHOSTCOM                     Oppose
BRUCE GARRETT   $500  BALTIMORE      MD  21211  SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INST  Oppose
BRUCE GARRETT   $500  BALTIMORE      MD  21211  SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INST  Oppose
DAVID GARRETT   $100  WALNUT CREEK   CA  94597  SELF-EMPLOYED                 Oppose
DAVID GARRETT DDS  $1,000  LA CANADA CA  91011  DAVID P GARRETT DDS	      Support

So I be written in the Book of Love,
I Do not care about that Book above.
Erase my name, or write it, as you please..
So I be written in the Book of Love. 

Will you write yours there with mine?  You have the power to tell the heart-wounded, young and old, that they do not have to hate themselves…that they never had to hate themselves…that love is possible to them. Please donate to No On 8.  Write your name in the book of love.

You could say these are hard times to be gay, let alone have a conscience, and be a Catholic Priest.  But then…you could say these are hard times to be gay and be sitting (or standing) in a lot of churches…

Fresno priest's stance against anti-gay-marriage proposition roils church

A week ago, Father Geoffrey Farrow stood before his Roman Catholic parishioners in Fresno and delivered a sermon that placed him squarely at odds with his church over gay marriage.

With Proposition 8 on the November ballot, and his own bishop urging Central Valley priests to support its definition of traditional marriage, Farrow told congregants he felt obligated to break "a numbing silence" about church prejudice against homosexuals.

"How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives?" he asked parishioners of the St. Paul Newman Center. "I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8."

Then Farrow — who had revealed that he was gay during a television interview immediately before Mass — added a coda to his sermon.

"I know these words of truth will cost me dearly," he said. "But to withhold them . . . I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well."

…after which the parish Bishop had him burned at the stake.  Well…not Literally…

Parish leaders concluded two morning Masses on Sunday with an apology to parishioners.

Farrow's statements, they said, were not in accord with church teachings. Also, the priest did not inform church elders about his plans before delivering his sermon, said Deacon John Supino, who read a letter from Steinbock reaffirming the Catholic Church's support for Proposition 8.

Quoting Steinbock, Supino said the church teaches that sex is a gift from God to be acted on only by a man and a woman within marriage. But Proposition 8, he insisted, does not represent a condemnation of gays or lesbians.

"The teachings of the church on these matters did not arise with Proposition 8 but have been in place for over 2,000 years," Supino said.

There's something else that's been in place for over 2,000 years.  They call it antisematism.  Or as James Carrol put it at the beginning of his history of antisematism, Constantine's Sword:

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such.  These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.

Ten years ago yesterday, a five-foot, two, 105 pound gay college kid died after being tortured and beaten by two thugs almost twice his size.  He was beaten so badly the hospital staff who received him after the police cut him from the fence he'd been tied to, compared his condition to that of automobile accident victims.  But it was no accident.  His killer's knew that while God might hold them accountable for stealing his wallet, He would look the other way while they tied that kid to a fence, beat him to a pulp, put their cigarettes out on his body and left him to die slowly in the cold plains night.  In most American churches, today still, the sermon is that Christ's call to love your neighbor ends at the doorstep of your homosexual neighbor's house.

Farrow became a priest 23 years ago, working in parishes in Visalia, Merced, Bakersfield and the nearby town of Arvin. A graduate of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, he also served as a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve at Edwards Air Force Base near Palmdale in the early 1990s.

Farrow, who said he realized that he was gay in boyhood, revealed his sexual orientation only to close friends and family. He told his parents just four years ago.

"This was the secret I was going to take to my grave," he said.

That changed when he received a June 30 "pastoral letter" from Steinbock's office in which the bishop condemned the California Supreme Court's ruling in May that legalized same-sex marriage, and supported the passage of Proposition 8, calling marriage between a man and woman the "foundation blocks for society." He compared the court's action to efforts by Nazi Germany and the Communist regimes in Russia and China to alter family arrangements.

Only Nazis or communists would want a society that treats homosexuals as the equals of heterosexuals…right?  That's what these righteous men of god are saying there isn't it.  And never mind that this is what the Nazis actually did to homosexuals…

…er…along with something like Nine Million Jews.  Which is pretty much what you'd expect after…what…two-thousand years of calling Jews Christ killers and waving Leviticus at homosexuals.  And the communists weren't, and aren't what's left of them, any better. 

Russia is not the only post-Communist country with a gay problem. In Poland, authorities have recently undertaken an initiative to outlaw all discussion of homosexuality in schools, and a high-level official in charge of children's rights, Ewa Sowinska, followed in the footsteps of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell by expressing concern about the sexuality of purse-carrying purple Teletubby Tinky Winky and its possible effects on young viewers.

A few days before his personal experience with homophobia in Moscow, Tatchell wrote about the problem of anti-gay bigotry in Eastern Europe on the blog of the British newspaper, The Guardian. "With the demise of communism," Tatchell noted, "religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism are filling the void. Homophobia is the hallmark of these reactionary movements."

But this argument is not entirely accurate. Far from being a new phenomenon in the former Soviet bloc, homophobia was also a hallmark of communist regimes. In the Soviet Union, male homosexuality was punishable by up to eight years of imprisonment; while sodomy laws in American states required proof of specific sexual act, a gay man in Soviet Russia could be jailed if his neighbors testified that he had no female company and frequent male visitors who stayed overnight. Castro's Cuba has been notorious for its persecution of gays.

-Reason Magazine - Anti-Gay Russia

This isn't rocket science.  The totalitarian state cannot allow you to own your heart.  Your heart must belong to the state.  Orwell understood the puritanical nature of totalitarian states.  In this passage of 1984 he captures it perfectly:

Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:

"When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

But this is the essential nature of sexual puritanism as well.  The theocrats claim to be merely serving God's will…but what king didn't also claim exactly the same thing?  What dictator?  When the leaders of the Catholic church complain that Nazis and communists were trying to bend the shape of the family to their liking, they are the pot calling the kettle black.  Totalitarian states have always sought to dictate the nature of family life.  And they have always needed their scapegoats.

Let it be said, the Catholic church isn't now, and wasn't then, the only righteous house of god busy campaigning to purge society of its deviants.  A lot of fine, upstanding protestants were and are doing exactly the same thing.  Proposition 8 isn't about protecting marriage.  It is about protecting the stigma theocrats have placed on gay and lesbian people.  That's it.  That's all that it is about.  Because when the day comes that Americans take for granted that the homosexual is a fellow American and neighbor too, then America's tinpot dictators won't have any scapegoats left to rouse the passions of the mob toward.  We have always been at war with homosexuality…

What kind of America do you want to live in?  The one where the dream of liberty and justice for all still lives, or the one where only the dream of theocrats are allowed?  Would you rather live in an America where neighbors can look each other in the face as equals, or the America of James Dobson and Karl Rove and Pope Ratzinger, where some are more equal then others? 

Do you dream the dream of freedom…of a world where totalitarianism is just a distant, ugly memory?  Where everyone is free to follow their hopes and dreams wherever they lead? Do you believe in liberty and justice for all?  Do you believe in love?  Please help fight the good fight.  Donate Here, to No on 8.  Or Here, to Arizona Together.  Or Here, to Say No On Two. 

Donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email and I will draw an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice.

Or…if my cartoons don't do it for you…I'll gladly mail you a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.

…or photograph.  To repeat from the previous post…here's the deal:

Donate Here to the fight against Proposition 8…the California referendum that would take away the right of same sex couples to marry.   You must be a U.S. citizen to contribute.  If you donate between now and election day to No On 8 online (for any amount), send me your confirmation email, and I will draw an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice.

Or…if my cartoons don't do it for you…I'll gladly mail you a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.

In a world that can't seem to hate enough, please do what you can to help same sex couples keep their marriages secure.  This poor angry world needs a lot more of this…

And a lot less of this…

The wind never seems to stop here on the plains.  It is October in Wyoming, and the wind carries with it a chill now.  The first tentative breath of winter dances restlessly over rolling hills of sage.  The days have grown short, the nights cold.  And long.  Very long.  And quiet, save only for the sound of the wind. 

Take a walk tonight across the rolling hills of Wyoming sage.  Leave the town lights twinkling in the distance behind you.  Walk toward the mountains in the darkness ahead.  There is only you here tonight.  You, and the wind, and the stars in the sky, so far away.  So very far away.  Around you are only rolling hills of grass and sage, fading into the night.  There are remnants of what looks like a small wooden fence here, that was torn down some time ago. 

Listen to the wind.  Listen carefully.  There are ghosts here on the plains.  Hear them talk tonight among themselves…

No one knows why Matthew was determined to go to the Fireside that night, or why he left with Aaron and Russell. It was karaoke night, which would not ordinarily have interested him. There was some speculation that he was buying drugs from Aaron and Russell, but his friends find that implausible. A close friend thinks that depression may have weakened his judgment, and wonders if he had taken a heavy dose of Klonopin before he went to the bar. "When he was depressed," she says, "he would just grab a handful." Romaine Patterson remembers how in the coffee shop where she worked Matthew "would just talk to anyone-people no one else would talk to, like this weird old man…. He had no discrimination in his person."
-Vanity Fair

Shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998, 20-year-old Shepard met McKinney and Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. Subsequently, Shepard was robbed, pistol whipped, tortured, tied to a fence in a remote, rural area, and left to die. McKinney and Henderson also found out his address and intended to rob his home. Still tied to the fence, Shepard was discovered eighteen hours later by a cyclist, who at first thought that Shepard was a scarecrow. At the time of discovery, Shepard was still alive, but in a coma.
-Wikipedia

Aaron Kreifels first met Matthew Shepard in a dream last Thursday night, the night after he discovered his fellow University of Wyoming student badly beaten, barely alive and tied up to a fence outside of Laramie.

Although Shepard was in Fort Collins by then, kept alive by an array of life-support machines in Poudre Valley Hospital's intensive-care unit, Kreifels said the gay student, who was beaten beyond recognition, allegedly by two young Laramie roofers, perhaps because he was gay, came to visit his rescuer in a dream that night. Kreifels doesn't remember much of the dream, but he said Wednesday that he awoke the next morning comforted by the vague sensation of having met the person he found in such bad shape two days before.

Although early reports indicated that two mountain bikers had discovered Shepard on the crude fence on an old, double-rutted road, Kreifels was alone that evening, struggling on his mountain bike through deep sand and for some reason ignoring a desire to turn back and find another, easier way back to town. Before he knew it, he had fallen. He was on the ground, his front wheel broken beyond repair. He was unhurt, but what he saw as he got up struck him cold.

""I got up and noticed something out of the corner of my eye," he said from his room in a freshman dorm at the University of Wyoming on Wednesday. "At first I thought it was a scarecrow, so I didn't think much of it. Then I went around and noticed it was a real person. I checked to see if he was conscious or not, and when I found out he wasn't, I ran and got help as fast as I could."

As the former high school crosscountry runner traversed the quarter- to half-mile of scrub prairie between him and the nearest house in the nearby Sherman Hills subdivision, his thoughts froze before quickly accelerating.

"It was distressing. I was panicked for a couple minutes, because I wanted to make sure I could do all I could do to help save him," he said.
-The Denver Post

Officer Reggie Fluty: When I got there, the first - at first the only thing I could see was partially somebody's feet and I got out of my vehicle and raced over - I seen what appeared to be a young man, thirteen, fourteen years old, because he was so tiny, laying on his back and he was tied to the bottome of the end of a pole.

I did the best I could.  The gentleman that was laying on the ground, Matthew Shepard, he was covered in dry blood all over his head.  There was dry blood underneath him and he was barely breathing…he was doing the best he could.

I was going to breath for him and I couldn't get his mouth open - his mouth wouldn't open for me.

He was covered in, like I said, partially dry blood and blood all over his head - the only place that he did not have any blood on him, on his face, was what appeared to be where he had been crying down his face.
-The Laramie Project

 

Shepard suffered a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital signs. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.
-Wikipedia

At the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, Matthew lay in bed down the hall from Aaron McKinney. Matthew was comatose; his brain stem which controls heartbeat, breathing, temperature, and other involuntary functions–was severely damaged. He also was suffering from hypothermia and had a red welt on his back, a red mark on his left arm, bruised knees, cuts on his head, neck, and face, and bruising in his groin. 
-Vanity Fair

Dr. Cantway:  I was working the emergency room the night Matthew Shepard was brought in.  I don't think, that any of us, ah, can remember seeing a patient in that condition for a long time - those of us who've worked in big city hospitals have seen this.  Ah, but it's not something you expect here.

Ah, you expect it, you expect this kind of injuries to come from a car going down a hill at eighty miles an hour.  You expect to see gross injuries from something like that - this horrendous, terrible thing.  Ah, but you don't expect to see that from someone doing this to another person.

The ambulance report said it was a beating so we knew.
-The Laramie Project

Exactly a week after his tragic discovery, Kreifels, 18, an architectural engineering major from Grand Island, Neb., said he tries not to think about the condition in which he found the classmate he had never seen before. Authorities say Shepard's assailants repeatedly beat him with the butt of a .357 Magnum, fracturing his skull. Kreifels doesn't talk about it.

"I don't really want to go into details about that," he said.
-The Denver Post

Aaron Kreifels:  I keep seeing that picture in my head when I found him…and it's not pleasant whatsoever. I don't want it to be there. I wanna like get it out. That's the biggest part for me is seeing that picture in my head. And it's kind of unbelievable to me, you know, that - I happened to be the person who found him - because the big question with me, like with my religion, is like, Why did God want ME to find him?
-The Laramie Project