14 is when i became a real person
(sometimes i tell the story at 13.. but in this chronology, we’ll say 14)

when i was a little kid i was called “Nicky”
everything with the letter “N” starting it out was MINE
that’s why i loved Nintendo over Sega (for those of you who remember that rivalry)
one kid i was kinda friends with (i don’t remember now where we met, but he wasn’t at our school… he was adopted.. and a bit of a social reject… i think he was home-schooled… live on a huge property with horses and all sorts of toys an only child could want) Kevin…
i knew him a few years. . .
when i was with him, once, when i was 13, playing video games
an older friend of his asked my name, Kevin told him
and he grunted
“Nicky… maybe when you’re older your balls will drop and you’ll get a real Man’s name”

i was shocked!
so i changed my name to Nick as i went into High School, though i’d always kinda hated that name
and it only lasted one year
when i turned 15 i was even more fully myself and adopted my true birth name: Dominic
still, it took until i was 28 before my father switched from calling me “Nicky”, only occasionally “Nick” to “Dominic”

that summer…

Daniel gave me a Morrissey CD for my birthday:
Bona Drag
— it really helped change my life

that was right around the time “Tomorrow” was released on Single
and i saw it on MTV 120 Minutes and thought it was so fucking great
so Dan gave me what he thought was the best Moz album
then TJ, Sheri and Ryan gave me copies of the tapes. . .
which i very quickly stole CD copies of from Best Buy…

as i mentioned
i had learned to shoplift when i was 12
but was always very meager around it…
but when i got the sanction from Morrissey
i started wandering away from my parents when we’d drive out to the malls
and walk around Best Buy tucking as many CDs into my pockets as i could
— i think i started this in the Winter
and i was always into Long Coats (getting into Joy Division later that year certainly helped)

i’m pretty sure this was fairly soon after Best Buy first opened up…
so they had ordered pretty much EVERY CD available at the time
… so i would just grab things i’d heard about in conversations with Sheri and Ryan’s older siblings
or Dan… who was always reading British music magazines…

i got good enough at taking off the security tags and slipping them in my pockets unseen
that i was pulling in 8 to 12 a trip
easy
(but that came later…)

plus
my brother and i had signed up for Columbia house the year before, i think…

did i mention?
My first ever Record (that is, 12″ 33rp Vinyl) was “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
but my first ever CD was “Violator” by Depeche Mode
my brother was really into Boys II Men and INXS
:this is where we started to really derivate

That Summer, i remember going up to Uncle Denny’s cabin in Michigan
… one of the last times i hung out with Brett (a cousin, i don’t think i’ve seen him since)
playing Dungeons and Dragons…
worshiping the CD walkman my dad lent me
hanging on Moz’s every word. . .

That was the summer i REALLY got stoned for the first time

second time i smoked pot
was with Kris and David
K’s parents were out of town
we were in the terrible sub-division he lived in
i tried to smoke from the pipe
but kept coughing it out
so david held my arms behind my back and Kris pinched my nose and mouth
i blew out all my air and was gasping for breath
and the stuck the pipe in my mouth and made me inhale deep
then covered my mouth again

i was fucking dying
but they held it in me for quite a while

i coughed it out
and we sat down to watch “Menace II Society” i think- i don’t remember anything about it but the crackhead “i’ll suck your dick” part

then time broke
and we were going through his mother’s old hippy clothes
and putting on skirts and tie-dyed pants
then we were walking through the suburbs
and the houses were flashing from reality
to Apple IIG graphics:
Black back ground with white outlines and no details

seconds turned into hours

all that shit
but it was pretty amazing

i remember they called it “skunk creeper weed— sneaks up on you slow and wipes you out”

it was soon after when Kris and Bozzy, i think, drove me out to the mall
or was it Doug?
it was some older kid who was kinda fat and a total stoner
slightly (just slightly)
i think i wanted to have sex with him
but i wasn’t clear that that type of desire was the “want to have sex with him” type of desire
it just felt like the “i want to be with him, just the two of us… i have no idea how to relate to him… or why… , i have no idea what we’d talk about, but i know i’d like to be alone with him”
because even then i lived in my mind and was really into judging people by how “smart” they were as opposed to what they could do or do for me

anyway
i’d told them i’d been stealing CDs when i took trips out with my parents
they were amazed
so wanted me to teach them

HOWEVER
they got me really really stoned first

i explained to them the basics
but the whole situation was far too surreal
and all that fucking classic paranoia stuff
i was a mess

so i was not being “cool” and i was very “obvious”

12 Cds or something
and the alarm gates went off

what?

when they took me into the back room
it was, oddly, a New Order interview disk called “NewSpeak” (referencing Orwell’s “1984”)
they took all sorts of info
called my parents
Kris and whoever drove home without me
i was put on a list of people not allowed to come back into Best Buy stores
and was sent off to some Juvenile holding cell to wait for my mother to come pick me up

Yeah, she was crying.

fortunately
i could work it off my record if i did so many hours of Community service

The beginning of that summer i’d got a job at Taco Bell
it was illegal, i think i got the job a few weeks before i turned 14
something like that
i think i only worked there two or three months
but i have fond memories of working the drive through window and saying things like
“welcome to Taco Bell, may i kill your dog?”
because everything was so mumbled and rote that no one paid attention
… but the little kids would start crying in the back seat

i would give free burritos to the stoner kids . . .

but when i had to start doing community service
i let the job go

i worked at the Boy’s and Girls club in ZIonsville

… it was really close to Sheri’s house
so that helped us become better friends

i’d walk over to her place when i got off shift
and we’d talk about her boy friend… who was three years older than her
and was causing all sorts of drama

i thought he as really cool…

i thought anyone older was really cool

(i’ve had that mis-perception for a very long time)

when i completed my work service
i took a steady job there

going from the summer shifts
to the after-school shifts
watching these kids with worse family lives than mine:
being the daddy

it was fun

i’d bring in my Super NES and play BomberMan with them…

all of this to set the scene for the person i was being now…

i let my hair grow out
and turned into an angry boy
a SMART angry boy

all of my years up til now
i’d desperately wanted everyone to like me
and no one did
when i met TJ and Sheri
i started to find real friendship with them

(though i’d had other friends in the past… it wasn’t like a whole new world that made me a new type of Elite: that’s what happened with these new kids)

i went from wanting to please everyone
to wanting to piss everyone off

all of a sudden i fucking hated everyone
and all of a sudden
they all loved me

it was fine
they could go fuck themselves

i was doing acting and wrestling
and i remember that first semester:
i’d signed up for Typing class
never got to take the second semester in it (so i still have some trouble, though i’m a fast typer, i usually have to look at my fingers to find the numbers)

i wasn’t a great wrestler
but i loved it
because of how it made me use my body

and though i’m a faggot
i have to admit
these guys didn’t make me hard
… that’s not why i was doing it
but being SO close to these people was really amazing
so intense
so powerful

it was the perfect antidote for the life i lived in my head

i’d been Asthmatic
when i turned 14
i decided that was stupid and i wasn’t going to be it any more
so i’d just force myself through my collapsing bronchioles
and huff huff huff

i never was the top of my weight class
i didn’t compete in the real matches
but still loved practice…

and that year
the school had got a new Choir teacher
— he’d come upstairs where we practiced wrestling
and work out in the gym up there
after practice
some of the bigger guys would challenge him to a match
and he started wrestling regularly after practice . . .

he was about 160lbs…

i was about 120 at the time

i thought he was huge
but he was about 5’8″
i may have been the same height, or a bit smaller…

i was entranced by him:
his big arms
and so hairy:
his chest was bristling from all edges of his shirt
which he’d always take off to wrestle…

ungh….

i asked David if he’d ever wrestled him
coz David was 140/145
he said he had, but lost

i suggested we tag team him

so one day
we did.

This Teacher… i’ll call him Satyr…
well, we started wrestling pretty regular, he and i
and i dropped Typing class so i could join Chorus

i was still in Band, playing Tuba
which took lots of my time after school: Marching band, football games and concerts (—> band fag )

Being in Chorus made my time even more full
plus being in plays… and wrestling.

but Sheri, Dan, Dustin and Ryan were in Chorus, so it put me more in the posse too…

Satyr, though
ughnnn…
he would body slam me
punch my chest
laugh at how weak i was
and basically pin me pretty quick
and let me squirm and struggle under him for 10 minutes… sometimes a half hour
before he’d…
Finish.

yeah, i felt he was hard through our shorts
yeah, i was drowning in sweat from his furry chest he was forcing my face in
yeah, sometimes i saw the huge wet splotch on his groin when he let me up

but we never talked about it

i injured myself in practice with one of the loser kids
he was a fish
just collapsed when i was trying to flip him
he fell around my leg
and pulled me down on top of him
: my foot stayed in one place
my body twisted
and my knee tore

so… no more wrestling for the team….

but i’d work out in the gym upstairs
and did some rehab
so i was back on the mats with Satyr in no time

i thought it was odd
but would do anything by that point
when he asked me to bite his nipples…
the smell of his sweat and Old Spice…
i’d wear it on me as often as i could…
but we’d always shower together after our matches…

you know
alone in the locker room after the entire school had emptied out
cept for the cleaning crews…

i’d struggle to think of anything not sexual
while i watched the soap caress his body
those lucky bubbles licking all the places i wanted to go

his pale pale skin visible behind
his dark dark dark fur

one day, near the end of the year
i walked into his office and asked him if he’d hit the mats with me
.. he regretted he didn’t bring his work-out clothes with him
“and i’ve got a Parent/Teacher meeting in and hour and a half, so i’ve got to look nice: i can’t wrestle you in the clothes i’m wearing”
-‘ so take them off ‘
“what, and wrestle you like the greeks?”
… it took me a second to understand what he meant, i was just going to suggest he wrestle in his underwear
‘yeah, like the greeks’

there was a pause

“no, not today Nick”
‘ wimp! ‘
“yeah, I’ll make you eat your words tomorrow”

i walked on
chewing it over in my mind..
The Greeks?

The next day
we were up in the gym
and when we were finished
i was running for the mats
but he said
“no, let’s just go to the showers. . .”
‘awwww, two days in a row you’re skipping out on me!’

in the showers
same story
i’m hard
and trying not to look at him
i turn around
with my back to him
i put my hands up in my hair to wash it. . .
and he comes up behind me and puts me in a full nelson
(which is an illegal move in high school wrestling, i might add)
his tumescent cock was pressing into my butt crack
and my heart stopped
“did you mean what you said about wrestling me like the greeks?”
‘ ahhh, yeah….’
“is this alright with you? are you ok with this? is this what you want”
‘ yes ‘
i answered
and bucked against him: the wrestling began
with the hot water streaming down on us
naked
within seconds we were down on the cement floor

how many times had i dreamed about this?
written long descriptions in my journal about this?
and now he would lift my legs and fuck me (i’d never been fucked)
and we’d be in love
and i could stop living with my parents
and…

he stopped
and got up
the water pouring against his chest
down his furry belly
over his hard cock
thick legs

i jumped up and put his dick in my mouth
— he has a birth-mark right there…
and he stepped back
“Nick… that is not what we’re doing. . . I think you have the wrong idea… we’re wrestling, we’re not having sex”
‘ ahhhmmmm. ok. but can we start having sex? i’d really like you to fuck me. i love you ‘
” I love you too Nick, but like Jonathan loved David… not in a carnal way ”

Huh?

Let me explain: this guy was a Born Again Baptist.
Yeah.

it was (is?) very trendy in Indiana (probably the whole midwest)
get Born Again
hmmmm

i was raised catholic
but i had no idea who Jonathan and David were…
I also had NO idea what love was, i may have mentioned that before
and when i started this whole thing with him
it was very calculated:
i wanted to be a writer when i got older
and i figured: all good writers need good stories, right?

Right.

but in the last few months
i’d started obsessing about him
and could only think about when i’d see him next

in fact
i told Ted about him
and referred to him as “32” because that’s what age he was when i first met him
by the time this scene in the showers was happening
he’d turned 33 (april something) and i’d stopped being friends with Ted:

we’d smoked pot together somewhere
and he really didn’t like it
and frowned on me doing it
though he thought Cigarettes were cool

i thought cigarettes were gross: my grandmother smoked them
and i thought sex with Ted was boring

i told him that
i said “i liked our friendship better before we were always having sex.. could we be friends again and stop with the sex?”
— he stopped being my friend

and though i missed him
Whatever
i had TJ and Sheri and those… and now Satyr
Move On.

but with Ted gone
Satyr was my only sexual outlet
and i lost my cool calculated head about it
and dreamed that he was my real father

OH!
one of my favourite stories!

starting when i was 11
i would sit in church every sunday
looking at all the Fathers (daddies) around me in the pews
and imaging they were my real father
and when the songs were over
they would take my hand
with love in their eyes
and they would take me home

and i’d imagine my new brothers and sisters
and our nice new house. . .

by the time i was 12
i became terrified of church
because it occurred to me that all of these people actually believed in this insanity
– i’d thought it was some sort of theater before
but when i realized it was a REALITY View
i was shocked and appalled
however
my mother demanded i attend until i got confirmed, which was shortly after i turned 15
so at 14,
i would enjoy singing
but mostly sit in the pews
looking at all the daddies
and wonder what their bodies were like under all those clothes….

it think it was when i was 12
maybe 11
when my dad offered me a job

even when i was 7, i think
dad had me cutting the lawn and helping him on work projects
when we moved into the new house
it was more like
Building rooms in the barn
boxes for the chickens (now there were many)
and the rabbit
and building the decks on the house!
my dad was really into weird work projects that always seemed unnecessary
and he had his dad come down to work with us

it was a nightmare — they were both so cruel
sure, i learned how to hold a hammer, square and level
and measure properly
but only with tons of harsh criticism and degradation
everything felt like trudging
suffering
the long purgatory of youth
there was no joy in it.

every weekend i had to carry a fucking gass powered weed wacker around the 9 acres of land to edge around the trunks of 277 trees
over the years a few died off

it was fucking insane

i got a $2 a week for allowance
until, like i said
11 or 12
-my dad offered me a job at his Lab
– i haven’t mentioned.

maybe by the time i turned 7 (see?)
my dad bought his own lab and was working for himself!
he and his friend Keith
they bought it together
Lab: i mean the place they made Teeth
dentures and implants

Zo… i worked at night after [mostly] everyone had gone home
backing up the company’s data onto tape drives

the big servers all ran Unix
so i learned to play strange text based games on them

i’d hang out in the front office
and i remember, after being so neurotic about Ted taking so long to cum
rather, me cuming so quickly
i felt the voices of angels when i saw a book one of the secretaries left lying around about natural healing
— i looked in the index and it had enteries for “PreMature Ejaculation”

it was some excersize about clenching the muscle one uses when stopping the flow of urine. . .
clench clench clench
i started doing it obsessively
it made my dick much harder
but i still came much quicker than he did

Oh
i leave out all the details, don’t i?

when i was 7
no, when i was 10
i started giving my mother massages (how could i have forgotten that? maybe i didn’t)

she was always very stressed out, i think i mentioned that before
and definately by the time we’d moved into the new house
she’d had a hysterectomy
so was thrown into early Menopause

started having hot flashes and taking her clothes off at random times
crazy mood swings
that sort of thing, you know

one day she asked me if i could massage her neck

another
her hands

another
her feet

another
her back. . .

i would do it until my hands cramped up
i would touch her and feel the pain in her body
my neck would tense
my feet would ache
my back would be so tight
and i’d work on her until i felt better in my body

but my hands always hurt so much afterwards…

then i started offering it to her when i saw her stressed out
so
would regularly give her twenty minutes of massage

also, oddly, when i was 11 i bought my mother some chinese medicine balls through the Sharper Image catalogue (i think it was $25 for enamel dragon balls)
she was complaining about arthritis in her hands
and i read that it would help her

she never used them
but i started using them:
it said they wer also good for people who used computers
played piano or violin
and though i didn’t have piano or violin
i’d always wanted one. . .

by age 13
i was giving massages to anyone i was around who was stressed out

my friends (oh, i had some now, i’ll tell you about it in a minute)

but back to work. . .

there was this maintenance man who was usually in the building when i was
we’d sit around and talk

i pretended to be a grown up with him
i thought he was in his 40’s…
he told me he was 26
— i’ve always been a terrible guess of age… and naive.

i started offering him massage
i thought it was so cool to touch a full grown man
he was the maintenance man
so he had some muscles
tight shoulders, from changing light bulbs and stuff…

he had one deformed finger, his pinky…

One day. . .
he asked me if i smoked pot
“of course, all the time”
i said
but i never had

“i thought you probably did: do you smoke with your dad? i found a bunch of roaches in his office, so i figured…”

i thought “ew… gross… there are cockroaches in dad’s office? i’ve never even seen a cockroach in real life…”

so we went out to one of the back decks
and he told me to blow out all my air
– he took a hit off a little metal pipe
then he put the mouthpiece in my mouth
and blew into the bowl, motioning for me to start inhaling…

“shotgunning” he told me

i held deeply for a while
then blew it out

what was i supposed to feel?

i didn’t get it.

i felt a little dry
and everything looked clearer than usual. . .
slightly more real
crisper somehow

but, anyway…

then he said
Hey, let me give you a massage
let’s go into your dad’s office

my dad had a very messy desk
but also a couch. . .
a table and TV and his own bathroom

he sat on the couch and told me to sit in front of him, also on the couch

he only made the vaguest motions of massaging my back for about a minute
before he started pulling me back against him and sliding his hand under my shirt over my belly
i was feeling very dreamy
i spoke up
“you don’t have to act like you’re not doing what you’re doing, my friend Ted and i do this all the time. . .”
“yeah?” he said, ” i’m not gay or anything, but guys like to be with guys, there are just some things that guys do better than wives”
“yeah?”
he unbuttoned my fly and pulled my very hard prick out

then he did something that totally surprised me:
he bent over and put it in his mouth

i came instantly in body-wracking spasms

WOAH!
Ted’s never done that!

he gave me a little time to recuperate
then asked if i’d do him

somehow
we ended up going downstairs into the stacks…
this far off room of file-cabinets on rollers
we pushed open the middle and went to the end
he took out his dick
which seemed as big as my arm
no
Bigger
and curved to the side
the smell…

i remember a musky smell i’d never encountered before
a bit like the forest floor
kinda like a dog
and the taste
somehow salty
somehow sweet… meaty…

but my mouth wasn’t big enough
i kept choking
my eyes were watering
i was trying so hard
but i think i was biting him
we stopped without him cuming

maybe he sobered up

i don’t remember the rest of the night
and we never did anything again
no matter how many times i tried
( he never let me massage him again and barely spoke to me )
but the next time i saw Ted i had something great to show him…

But let me get back to my Birthday

somehow
i met
a boy named Daniel
and, as i remember it, tricked him to coming over to my house
he was also an outcast kid
but different:
he wasn’t a loser
he was very intelligent
and acted like he was better than everyone else
i knew he was the next step on the path i was taking

that summer between 7th and 8th grade, right after i turned 13
Daniel introduced me to his friend TJ
who was a kid i’d seen around school
who’d just moved into our system from a further country school system
he was very weird
but i wanted to be friends with him

with him came a whole posse:
Sheri, Dustin, Ryan, PJ and a few minor characters

when 8th grade started i was a new person
i was taking advanced classes
i eventually stopped Tae Kwon Do
because i wanted to do Acting
and Wrestling

my father had given up on me as a athelete
because i’d failed so miserably at every sport
but i’d never tried Wrestling
and i liked how it wasn’t so much a Team Sport
more One on One

our coach was amazing
looking back
he was the biggest fucking queen
with a fae voice
hysterically telling us to “mount and ride” our opponents

my neck got bigger
i started doing a lot of pushups, crunches, backbends and arches

Sensei had taught us to do pushups on our knuckles
because we were young
and our wrists weren’t fully developed

now i was doing all sorts of strange muscle building activities
but was still terribly bad at winning
it was more fascinating to use my body like this than competition anyway

Acting was also great
i think that year i was in Our Town… TJ was too: it really helped cement our friendship
and it let me experiment with different people i could be

also, i forgot to mention
when i was 7, or something, i started playing Tuba
i’m pretty sure i’d tried to stop playing it in 8th grade
because i wanted to take Art classes
and there was a conflict
but i was the only tuba player
(Ted used to be one, but he dropped to baritone, then dropped out)
so every day in art class
the vice principle would come in and ask if i was missing Band
and wouldn’t i like to come back to Band?
until i evetually did
coz i got so fucking sick of him. . .

somewhere in that year, before wrestling
and before i quit Tae Kwon Do
i was in the locker room
and Neil, always the Janus
started picking on me in front of all the other foot-ball players (he was becoming a star quarter back… for middle school)
i’d just learned this really cool ai-keido move
so, adopting a stronger character, i said
“fuck you, fucker, i’m sick of this. i’m going to make you kiss the fucking floor”
he was shocked i stood up for myself and told me i’d be the one kissing the floor
i tapped my chest and said
“Try Me. just give me a good push right here and we’re on”

he did
i caught his hand
twisted it behind his back
and jacked it up

he doubled over and screamed
and said “let go of me you little shit, i’m going to kick your ass!”
i lifted his arm higher and said “no… you’re not: you’re going to kiss this cement floor”

the jocks and the losers gathered round
“fuck you”
he said
“no,” i said ” Fuck you. kiss the floor or i’m going to break your arm”

he tried resisting again and i pushed him a little more to show him i could do it

he did
he kneeled and kissed the floor

and i let him go and stood up

“thank you”

i looked around and made eye contact with everyone while he was down there

didn’t say anything more

just turned around and started putting the rest of my clothes on

and never got picked on again.

later that year
some of the kids turned one of the other loser kids on me, Joe (i would later become friends with his sister… but he was another stutter and i had no respect for him… i didn’t hate him though and i was not about to become a bully)
so he was in my face yelling at me about something i supposedly said and he was crying and his face was all red and he was spitting and stuttering and told me i had to fight him
i told him No
i was terrified being faced with the insecurities i had so recently passed. . .
and desperately didn’t want to become the oppressor i had feared and hated so long..
i tried to explain what these idiots were doing
they wanted to see me kick his ass
but he threw a very weak punch at me that broke against my chest
i slapped his face
and grabbed his shoulders and said
NO, Joe, stop.
and just looked at him
he cried

but that was it.

The year before
we got a computer in the house
i remember it was an 8088
with a turbo button
CGA monitor
and a 500MB hard drive

… and a MoDem.

Ted and i would call eachother and type-chat for hours
it was so cool

when i was 13
i discovered BBS servers
and would, late at night, dial up and chat with Adults

i even tricked my mom into leaving me for a few hours at the Half-Priced Books store where there was a meeting of these BBS people
i was by far the youngest
but it was so cool to meet these random strangers that were happy to meet SnipLipTer (my first on-line handle)

Ted and i saw less and less of eachother
as i started doing more with TJ, Dan and Sheri
by proxi, Ryan and Dustin
and their older siblings

but Ted and i would give eachother blow jobs now and again
— i didn’t like the taste of Ted’s dick: pissy and sweaty
and the head he gave wasn’t so good as that guy at the office

i asked Ted if he’d ever had butt sex
he said “once” but refused to tell me who…
his brother? his dad? i wondered…

he and i got jobs washing dishes at various restaurants
so we could go to the mall and walk the halls for hours
our mothers would drop us off and we’d hang out there all day
watching movies
looking through all the crap we couldn’t buy. . .

but that held less and less appeal for me as the school year came to an end
and with it
the approach of High School

as i moved away from Ted
and spent more time with TJ
i went do the mall less
and started spending my money on Role Playing Games that i was getting into with TJ and Daniel (and my brother, again)
the dice…

what about the korean kid?
and Brock?
and Souleman?
hmmm, ethnicity.

Ted was a part of Boy Scouts
it was 12 or 13 when i joined it with him
so we could go on a two week summer trip through Tennessee and north carolina
right?
there was so much sexual tension in all those kids
i remember Shaving together…
and bad food

but i remember
just once
at one of the meetings
was the first American Black Boy i’d ever met
Brock
my father had always taught me to fear and hate niggers
but here was this black boy with a funny name and amazing tall spongy hair
and he was just the nicest kid
i was magnatized to him
and we spent the entire three hours talking

but i never saw him again

the only black boy i’d talked with other than him was this boy Souleman
who some Zionsville family had supported through some famine program
and sent him to come live with them for a few months
he was from a small African village
and was stricken with polio when he was quite young
so his legs didn’t work

in Africa
he drug himself around the village with his arms
(i remember as a child picturing him dragging himself through the dusty dirt … or mud?)

he had Very Strong Arms

in America
they’d given him special crutches so he could stand up. . .
he always looked amazed and exstatic
and spoke very little english
but his eyes were always ablaze with love and wonder

and in 5th grade
for just one year
there was a Korean kid named Jay McClelland (yeah, right?)
who was in our school system (where’d he go?, korean family have trouble in White Zionsville?)

i talked with him as much as i could
i remember us discussing “A Swiftly Tilting Planet”
i’d not read it yet
but had seen the book reports the 6th graders had done
the big brain was like Metroid
and i wanted to read it so badly…
he said it was a great book
and we were silent together. . .

i remember telling my father that he’d made a terrible mistake raising me out in rural indiana:
i was born to him so i could grow up in Detroit
where there was plenty of diversity and racial strife
in order to prepare me for who i needed to be in this life

he told me i didn’t know shit.

let me address a few other missed points:

in school
i was pretty miserable
not just because i had no friends
and was being beaten up all the time
but i couldn’t manage to do the “education” thing
getting good grades, silver stars for even trying, all that shit

early on, sometime, i’d been put in remedial classes for a year
with all the retards, dyslexics, autist and dorks

i remember some kid named Jessee who could hardly form words
i’d be friends with anyone who would show me the lease bit of attention, of course
so Jessee and i hung out a lot in the playground (this must have been 3rd or 4th grade)
one day
he freaked out at me and started clawing my face and ripped open my lip

shortly after that
he was sent to some other school..

i was sometimes friends with the trailer trash kids
with dirty looking skin (i guess, looking back, they were just mexican or middle eastern somehow… though they would never say that… not in Zionsville)
they had odd names like Leban and Bozzy
anyway
Like my friend Jason i used to play video games with
these kids never really became my friends
— we had too much cultural difference
theirs revolving parents devoted to beer
where as mine were more about Whiskey and Vodka
(my mom never drank: her father drank himself to death [irish!] but my dad, oh, he loved his vodka [Polish!])
plus
my family was all about rising through the great non-existant American class system
which was mostly about wasting money on bullshit that looked Rich (Ivan Illyich)
and always being in debt
PLUS
being incredibly bigoted
so i was raised… you know, hating niggers and faggots and spics and kikes and all sorts of other words i had no understanding of
just that we were better!
and they should be feared coz they would destroy our lives.. kinda like the terrorists today… or the communists..
my dad taught me to hate communists too.. and women! and myself!
anyway
it was hard to have friends

i had this whole problem with Chris’s
i made friends with this british family
a slight boy with a funny accent
very pale and weak
no one would be friends with him
Christopher

his mother made me bread pudding

and there was Chris Orr
who was terribly ugly
had no social skills
and even at a very early age
was always seen reading computer programming manuals
then Christopher Lancashire
who had a terrible stutter
and so desperately wanted to please anyone who showed him any attention

i was so lonely
and such a loser
that i was just lumped in with them

but even then
i could only tolerate them for a few months at most
then i would stop returning their calls
and start avoiding them in the halls

Some of the dorks i liked
like Wendel and Andy, the Jahova’s Witness
but still
they were so dumb and boring
that i just didn’t want to spend time with them

i was coming to understand that i had to spend time with people better than me to keep rising up through the social ladder
though i didn’t understand what trip my father was on
i was already aware i had no interest in it
i really wanted to be elegant and intelligent
i wanted 7 forks and to know when to use them
fine wines and foods

i think it was this age that i became tired with just saying “oh, it’s good! i like it!”
and wanted to be able to talk with nuance about all of my experiences
the food and music and all such things

of course
this was probably also near the time when i had decided the world of emotions was an idiotic waste of time
because it made people act crazy and impeded logic
so i started learning how to ignore my feelings…

i had had a few capable friends
Charlie, and Mike
but at this point in my life
they had moved on to be football player
or to other towns

my brother and Neil had also come to this same relationship with me:
they were embarrassed of me in public
so often made fun of me when other people were around
but were nice enough when we were alone together…

i was hovering in the netherworld of not wanting to commit to friends
less i be dragged down into the mires of their white trash
but not wanting to be alone all the time

so i had Ted
our rich fantasy world
our adventures
passing notes to eachother to see if we’d adequately read eachother’s minds
developing talismans to ward off evil and control people
magic rings and wands and capes

we’d play video games for hours
and hours
and hours
but some thing shifted that winter

it being too cold to go outside
we’d have sleepovers and spend most of our time indoors
playing video games and watching movies

(mmmm, Manequin…)

one night, i remember, another kid named PJ was there with us
we were laying in the dark
and ted grabbed my dick
which was hard
and then he grabbed PJs too
but in a slight touching kinda way
and we stabbed at eachother through the blankets
kinda like tickling eachother

it was odd…

the next time i stayed over with Ted
it was just the two of us
and i was tossing and turning
hard…
he said “are you having trouble sleeping?”
yes… at home i usually sleep naked
“oh… well, you can sleep naked here”
so i took off my underware
then he started pulling the covers off me to see me naked
so we played this game
of me trying not to be uncovered
and him grabbing at the blanket
til his hand grabbed my dick Through the blanket

silence
pause
then he started working me til i came

and that was the end of our fantasy worlds and all of our game
because for the next year
all we ever did together
was see how many times we could cum

we’d spend all night awake
video games or music playing
and constantly wanking ourselves or each other

his dick was bigger than mine
and he took longer to cum
i was so insecure

we’d steal his brother’s other porn videos
and jack off watching them
we’d lay on the bed
feverously wiping the cum off our bellies
and say “oh, that was great… but you know… i’m not gay…”
“yeah, i’m not gay either”
but we wouldn’t really talk about girls or anything

…
meanwhile
i was exceeding in Tae Kwon Do
breaking boards and bricks with my hands and feet and head
learning some Hop Kedo
how to kill someone with my bare hands in an instant

my teacher said ” i don’t want you to ever have to use any of this… when you know you can kill someone very easily in a second… you’ll never get in a fight… you just hold yourself in such a way that you know you can kill them and they will leave them alone.. don’t say it, that’s a challenge… just be it… and if they attack you, just defend yourself, never attack back.”
i understood him
but i hadn’t come to that point yet

but my mother and i were moving up the ranks
going to meets and stuff
and there was this girl named Sheridan who started coming to classes
i’d seen here around my whole school career
but hadn’t ever really talked with her
she was kinda weird looking: red hair and freckles
she was really smart

we’d talk occasionally….

ummm
this was also the year this kid David taught me how to shoplift
i was amazed

as a little kid i occasionally put stuff i wanted in my pockets in the store
not understanding it was to be paid for
and when i first got caught at that
i stopped doing it

but he showed me that if you went with a friend who served as a decoy
you could get all the candy you wanted

which was pretty great

oh yeah
back to the remedial classes:
that didn’t work
i went from being in remedial classes back to normal
always being sent to doctors to look at pictures and figure out puzzles and talk about my feelings
— i don’t remember any of this
i just remember getting the results this year
and they said that my IQ was 137: three points from being in the “Genius” range
and i had a congnitive understanding of a senior in highschool

i begged to be allowed to move forward
but… of course not
next year, however: they were putting me in the advanced classes.

and maybe it was 5 years old when my brother and i would stick our pinkies up eachother’s asses
and maybe it was 7 when i first found my dad’s stack of Playboy magazines hidden under his hunting gear catalogues
and maybe it was 8 when i first felt the joys of my own naked body
and around then i wore my sister’s make-up

but i was at least 10 before i was naked with someone else
and it was playing video games with Jason
in the trailer-park-type “sub-division” thing called “Horse-shoe Drive” (coz it was just a U-shaped road)

we’d nuzzle under a comforter in the closet
where he had his Nintendo set up on a lower shelf
under the cover
we took our pants off
and played the game
and let our butts and thighs touch
jumping into focus on only on the game when his mother or step day (or just mom’s new boy friend?) would “check in” on us

was it also that year i did a similar thing in down town Zionsville with Geoff and his brother?

was it that summer or the next (it must have been 11)
when we had to drain the pond and i had a birthday party where we all ended up naked and covered in mud
and i saw a foreskin for the first time on a friend of mine born with a Naturopathic Doctor for a father
i remember saying “what happened? your dick looks like it got mutilated…”
“no”, he said, “your dick got mutilated”

Yeah. 11. it was 11 when i finally came for the first time (alone)

at this point in my life
my best friend was this kid named “Ted”
i’d already know him a few years
but this was the pinnacle of our friendship

we’d have sleep-overs all the time
his place or mine
but i don’t think he ever came over before we moved into the New House

two more memories from the old house:
one long summer vacation in Michigan
we came back to the house
— did i mention my mother always had cats?
and the neighbors had been feeding and watering them, the cats
but not aware of the flea problem

the fleas were out of control
we walked into the house
all of us started wailing in pain
running around to grab a few things
and i THINK we spent that night and the next in a hotel
while we flea-dipped the cats
and bug-bombed the house:

i remember leaving the house that first night: blood running down our legs
covered with fleas.

&

one winter
we got lots of snow
a huge 12 foot drift against the shed
we dug out a cave
and had adventures in there

later
freezing rains swept through
so fierce it coated the beautiful white birch in front of the house
so heavy
it bent over in a “U” shape and blocked our front door
it stayed that way for two weeks
glistening with a coating of ice
like candy. . .

when it thawed
it was fine: stood right back up

— i got “my own” stray cat
we called him “gold kitty”
and he showed affection by biting you

biting me, sorry
yes
biting me

thank you Gold Kitty
i love you too.

When Ted started coming over to the new house
the first cool thing we did
was decide we were Pagans
— he wasn’t really brought up religious
and his parents JUST got divorced the first year we were friends
we had a rich imaginary life
— we were wizards

but now we were pagans
we knew we needed to find our own god
(really!)
one night
we went out into the field behind the house
and found one of those big sink holes
we put a long board over it
and walked out to the shaky middle of it
bouncing up and down calling “Death!”

our new god was named Death
and he was teaching us telekenisis and mental telepathy

we would go out into the barn and burn candles and make offerings of the mice from the traps

… and we’d play a lot of video games
and dance to Right Said Fred
and Paula Abul (that was my first concert: i went to with him)

but then…
then he showed me Miami Spice (2)
which he stole from his older brother

it was fascinating
we’d just sit there and stare at it

while the muscled hairy guy with the mustache was laying naked on the sun chair (in LA)
some big haired blond cop would jump the wall and put his semi-erect cock in handcuffs

he said “you can’t keep me here, as soon as i get soft i can just slip out and i’ll be free”
she responded “who said i was going to let you get soft?”
and hilarity ensued!

uhhh

near the end of that year
i convinced him to let me take it home with me
and in the privacy of my own TV
which was in the “rec room” or “play room” as i mostly called it
where i had so often worshiped at the Nintendo
i started mimicking that movement of pulling the dick
watching
watching
pulling

until i felt the most awful horrible cramping pulling at me
painful
some strange smell and taste ripping through my senses
and being covered with such thick sticky whiteness

uh…
i ran to the toilet to get gobs and gobs of paper to wipe it up and flush it

a new fascination was born.

what was certainly the most important about my tenth year was
moving into the New House
my dad owned the land for two years before we could move into the house
i’m not sure why. . .
but the year we moved in, as it was getting finished
we’d drive there a lot:
it was about a mile away from the house we’d been living in…

one day
my mother was driving that big brown van
and we left the new property
heading into town the opposite way from which we usually went
driving through the first intersection
a car coming from the other direction ran through his stop sign at about 70 mph
— we didn’t have one

he was in an Imapa
we were in a Full Size Van
i was sitting in the way way back, on the couch
trying to get my shoes on
my brother was in the “captain chair” one row up

neither of us had seat belts on
but somehow
he landed on me…
i flew through the air and crumpled below my mother’s chair
my sister was in the front passenger chair and she and my mother had their belts on

the experience was like waking up from a dream
it was so traumatizing that we all passed out
and i had vague memories of trying to put my shoes on
and driving through a corn field

obviously that doesn’t happen

i woke up first
pushed my brother off me
and opened the door
i looked at my mother up front
and the window was splattered with blood

everyone was silent
so i guessed they must be dead

i guessed i was dead too

so i walked up the muddy tire gashes in the field, past the tall brown stalks of corn
back to the intersection

the old man was bloody and his head was hanging out the window

i crossed the street, not bothering to look
and climbed up the little embankment:
fortunately there was a cemetery there
so i jumped up on a wide grave stone and lay back on it

here i am: Dead.

well… not really
i woke up, again, to the paramedics asking me if i was OK
i said “no”
they asked me about every part of my body and if it hurt
i said “yes”
so i got to go to the emergency room with my mother
but i was fine: nothing wrong with me

my mother had smashed the driver’s window with her head
and had glass under her scalp
but was pretty OK
my brother had sprained his neck or something
my sister cut her throat on her seat belt

it was strange to be in the hospital
i’d only ever been in once before to get a hernia operation when i was 7 (right… or 3 or 4 or 6, i dunno)
and that had left me unable to move for nearly two weeks
this time was easy: once the shock shook off me
i was alive and kicking the very same day. . .
but it certainly changed the way i felt about cars.

we took lots of trips when i was a kid
and i always had a strong sense of “coming home”
— i could sleep better there… and knew my “Place”
but when we moved into the new house
i never again felt “at home”
everything felt odd and wrong to me
…it was nice, i suppose, having my own room now
but it seemed so bland
— i’ve always had the feeling of “new” things being too clean and lifeless
i like Lived In things…

there were many set backs on building the house
i took to referring to as the “Barbie Dream House”
because it had so many nonsensical architecture styles together
and seemed so badly built as if it were made of plastic
but the house was HUGE
and on 9 acres of old hay fields
that we then set about landscaping into a more “suburban” look
(as my dad grew up in the suburbs of Detroit)
… 9 acres is a lot to landscape.

on the land was an old barn (how old? i’ll never know)
but it was mostly filled with hay
(we’d push them around and create tunnels, secret rooms)
and had a thick rope hanging from the top cross-beams
we would climb a mountain of hay bales
then jump off, swinging out through the barn

i even loved enjoying my body climbing up. . .

i was miserable at sports
hated competition
but loved doing things with my body

through my whole life
my father pushed both my brother and i into sports
i was awkward, shy and insecure
and i shyed away from competition
because i didn’t like being the loser… nor did i like making others the loser
— it never seemed like Good Clean Fun to me
by the time i was ten
i had so badly failed at Football, Soccer, Basketball and Baseball (all the good American Sports)
that my father started to give up on me

it took me years and years to be able to see this
but it was in this period where both my father and i developed a relationship of
Trying to Please one another
— we were both really bad at doing what made the other happy
so we’d fail miserably
and then resent the other for not being pleased
and resent ourselves for being so bad and what we thought we should be able to do well
Namely: being a Father and being a Son

at age 10 i had really given up on my father
and it made me more free…

i dropped competitive sports for a bit and started Tae Kwon Do
— this was a huge change in my life
because it stopped me from feeling like a victim
placed my power back in myself
-it’s where i started stretching and simply daily self-health
like pushups and meditation (yes, even then)
Also, my teach told us we should always call any man we respect “Sir”
so we and he knows that we respect Him and are putting ourselves below Him
in order to receive his teachings

i really liked this idea
not because i wanted to be submissive, not at all
but because i wanted to learn from someone who was genuinely competent and excellent.
(years later, the older gay men i would start friendships with would always freak out when i called them “Sir” — i’d try to explain, but…)

Also, this year
my brother and i stayed with my Godfather and his wife for two weeks
(these were my favourite Aunt and Uncle)
it was the longest we’d been away from our parents
shortly before i turned 10
i noticed i was getting fat
(everyone in my family was fat, so it wasn’t a big deal)
i looked down one day in the shower and realized my belly was getting so fat i could no longer see my penis
and i realized i had to do something

instead of stopping eating so much and doing nothing but playing Nintendo all the time
i just became more aware of when enough food was enough
and taking breaks to walk and stretch and do pushups
the Tae Kwon Do came right in time. . .

but up at my Aunt’s
we learned how to pour beer without a head
she had a keg in her fridge downstairs
(year’s later she would join AA and i mourned the loss of her jovial personality… of course, being her nephew and not her husband or kids i never saw her extremes of drunken rage and hang overs… good for her she got it under control)

anyway
she was appalled at how all we ever did was play Nintendo
and we never read books
but our father told us Books were for Sissies!
(later understood he’s severely dyslexic and probably came up with that one for protection)
so she locked us in separate rooms of her house for hours a day
with stacks of books
“you don’t have to read: but that’s all you CAN do”

so i did
Hardy boys, i think it was
not so great stories
but i loved escaping into another reality

when i went back to school that year
i started skipping lunch to read Greek Myths in the library
then go into fantasy novels
(and my father gave up all hope in me)

but before we leave behind entirely that little house in the cornfields
what about the other little things i’ve forgotten to mention?

like playing in the cornfields for hours every summer
bored and disgruntled at times
picking hard ears
and throwing them at the passing cars

going to explore the empty farm houses around there
through the broken glass
and rotten boards. . .
everything in decay

why did this happen to the building?
where is the family that used to live here?
Neil stepped on a nail that went clear through his foot…

and playing with one of the boys who lived further down the road
past the edge of the corn field
with some horses in pasture…
one year they got a Colt
who was very feisty and would chase us around
(we’d keep near the fence)

but there are sink-holes in the ground
for some reason. . .
and there were a few in that horse field
— we’d run for them and jump down in them
the colt would snort
and try to reach down to bite our hair
— the older boy, Peter, would talk about girls
we’d listen, entranced..
somewhere secret
somewhere dangerous
with stories from the future
glimpses of a life we might later know…

What, specifically happened when i was 9?

( i just got off the phone and a conversation with her reminded me of other facets i wanted to expose that aren’t necessarily on the 9th year)

Maybe that was the year my sister got a Make-Up kit for her birthday in September
and i started playing with it
and did up my eyes and lips and finger nails
and got on my bike and rode down to Neil’s house where he and my brother were playing basketball

Louis said to me:
You better go home and take that off your face before we beat you up and take it off ourselves.

…
i was just telling my mother that i was very confused about being a human
what would make so many people call me “an old soul” in my teen-age years
made my childhood a living hell

i didn’t understand people at all
i didn’t trust anyone

those people i called my “friends”
would sometimes just turn on my and do violent and shaming things to me in front of other people
they loved beating me up and berating me in public

for many years
people i didn’t even know would spit on me and punch me and kick me
because they say “my friends” doing it
my brother
my neighbors

i didn’t even trust my parents
because i was born with this idea that they were completely honest and in integrity
yet i would ask them when i would develope the capacity for hearing people’s thoughts and feelings like they could
and they (mother, father, other adults) would say “Honey, no one can hear your thoughts and feelings… that doesn’t happen”
but i could clearly see people responding to my un-expressed internal experiences
… so why were they lying to me?
what were they hiding?

when people blew up and threw huge fits
dramas
deceits
i was utterly confused

i took to watching people’s facial expressions
and intricately copying them
following their speech patterns and intonations
so i, too, could respond to situations with shock, horror, surprise, humor, pity, love
all of these things i had no concept of truly understand
and i certainly didn’t “feel” them, as they referred to it

i think this is why i perceived so many people as “hating me”
because i was faking everything

i so desperately wanted to belong
to be like other people
and they could tell i was just a bad actor

but i don’t think i was aware of this yet, at 9
i was too much in the midst of it

i was still at the point of being confused when people expected me to say “Please” and “Thank You”
or “I’m Sorry”
because, without even fully understanding this, I believed that we were all in it together. we were all one. all in the same family… or compunity… or some relation. what would be called loving and supportive
why would i ever have to appologize or beg for pity and forgiveness? why would i ever need to make a verbal show of gratitude? weren’t they doing what they were doing because they loved me and knew that i loved them and the joy of experiencing these things together were enough?

No
i was in a fucking desert
and watching the garden of eden wither in front of me
beasts in all the shadows
and a million scared monsters echoing the supposed voice of the angels who told us we were all wrong and bad and born of sin

whatever
i just wanted to leave
that’s all i knew

still
i didn’t understand the ramifications of that until the year before when my Aunt Mary Ellen died
— as far as i know
i only really spent time with her once
she was my Mother’s Mother’s Sister (in law? i don’t even know)
i spent a very pleasant afternoon at her house, running up and down her hill
swinging from her big beautiful tree
drinking tea and eating cookies

a few days
or weeks
or months later
she died
and we went to her funeral
— first death of my life
and i was amazed with the whole concept of no longer being able to spend time with someone
never being able to share tea and cookies with them again
hear their voice. . .

one of my mother’s favourite songs (or at least i heard it a lot)
was Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand singing “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore”
— i listened to it on my walkman over and over and over on the 5 hour car trip home (we sometimes went up and back from Michigan more than once a month)
it was the perfect example Love being Finite
i cried for a week
and listened to that song

people kept saying
‘she’s not in pain anymore, she’s in a better place, oh don’t be sad honey”

and eventually
i understood what they meant
and then for years later
i was, again, confused why everyone was crying at funerals
— i got over that when i was 8

(it was, yet again, one of those things where people say something but it’s not real…they don’t really feel it or believe it… or yet, have to create a drama besides the truth of the peaceful reality of the situation: normal human stuff)

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However long it took…
we’re here with the other tourists on this island of Wolf Swamp.
We walked this Way for all of our fellow….
ah,
…

Thank you for those who walked with us
his hip
my thighs
are taking a break now

onto St John’s place in Brooklyn to drink some beer…

Now: where do we catch the Brooklyn Ferry?