30

oregon: but did i ever fit into this? i certainly don’t now
you’re all lame
and you all hate me.

oh, Faeries
Naraya
hot springs
right

Heartwood
the dry summer
the tree
the liver
the garlic
the Theo
clean asshole

kwai: billies

spirit,b,z, ganesh, fish girl

heartwood
open hearted

constant healing
up and down the hill
first time i had to be gay
not having sex
— it’s not robert anyway

learning astrology: really

naked in the lawn

Billies, Faeries
Wolf creek
breitenbush
trevis.

william.

thomas: dad
kitchen

energy healing
bodywork.

dave and randy
and Leo for haloween…

kwai
natalie
cards
usnea
water tanks
richard (trailer guy)

getting my own place in doors
and all that

Billies!
jim: crabs
damon: crabs

always on call

overload
hiding
raw
explosions

performances
(Skylar…?)

chinese medicine
lost on the hill on pancakes with kwai:
the horses
the lizard: you are not garbage (the duck in the Marsh! . . .)

something something

trevis coming down
betrayal and completion

breitenbush again
ending that friendship
and planning the summer
“should be your boy friend”
“he is”
driving through the snow

leo sea side

kwai again: mongolian horseback rider on acid?

change of plans

enough!

moving on
to live with glacier and paul
roses
and games i’m not willing to play

first massage clients again
$35

seattle
trying to have sex with my own age
but it’s the daddies
and the anti-depressed aren’t doing it for me

BC
the face in the forest
the different country

what about BC before?

kwai again
how did it go?
Naraya!
YES!

i’ve written a few hours tonight
but am still desperately behind
but must sleep!

just jotting down outlines
as “today” will be the solstice and mermaid parade: i’m sure i won’t be writing today.

20:

summer solstice in the desert
acid trip
flying
lost in the desert
hot springs

sun burning
amanda ultimatum
living with the bears
intuit-2
andy
larry
Scoobie-steve
james grrr

leaving for new york
salem
terrorists
portland
whoredom
sleeping in the truck
living with poppy
living in the bath house
India!
Tapestry
Jerry, the aquarius trick
thinking about my brother
{brother, brother confusion with trevis, eli… brother as human, obvious need to learn what it means to be a human. the passions, fears, respects. . .}

Graduation was depressing,
graduating with the year younger than mine..
and i was so happy to be done with it all

oh, i can’t write about this now, i must sleep

but :

lived in new york

jp
lesley
x
eli
first solstice in new york
heroin
aaron and emotions
walking

the month i was stuck in indiana
–

when i went to pick her up
it was from her dealer’s house
turns out he was the biggest dealer in Indy
and when, after waiting 45 minutes in the car
i went downstairs
there was a MOUNTAIN of coke on the table

i’d never really been interested in the stuff
i’d tried it once and it didn’t have any affect on me
the guy cut off a huge line and told me to shove it up my nose and tell him it didn’t do anything

… oh, it did
but i still didn’t like it
–

heroin
car crash

a month!
(oh, this is when the coke thing happened)

then Tucson
eli/ca/la(earthquake)
drinking/coke/riddlin
arrested
warts
don/la
intuit
Denver
grandpa dying
tucson, amanda
jp in new york
greyhound
aaron
alaska
sheridan
tucson
amanda
heroin
sunburn
solstice!
oh, getting ahead of myself.

(damn time, it takes so much time to write so much, and i’m so undisciplined!)

As soon as the plane took off
i felt doomed
but landing in JFK was very exciting
i had to switch from the International to the Domestic there
— while walking around the airport, riding the bus between terminals
i knew: i have to come back here.

(when i was 15, i wrote a letter to Allen Ginsberg asking him if i could come and live with him.. and did he know Philip Glass? could they teach me to write and make music? — Peter Orlovsky wrote back and told me Allen had recently had a stroke and was not able to reply to mail… oh no, he didn’t write it to me: it was a form letter.)

but i was shocked by the people in the JFK airport… they were So Much Bigger than the people in england

when i landed in the Indianapolis airport
i was terrified
these people were all like jelly-cattle
huge fat beasts
they looked so vacant in their eyes
so fluffy, empty
i was terrified

back at the house
i felt like my heart had been torn out

all that DEAD feeling i had before i left
it was right there
waiting for me
i felt like a corpse again

and started stealing my father’s liquor immediately to get as drunk as possible as often as i could

within a week
there was a welcome back party
and i was depressed by everyone
i remember drinking tons of Newcastle Brown Ale (someone brought it as a gift)
and crying
and falling over backwards into the pond
catching myself only just with my foot
and pulling myself back up
top half all wet…

i fell into terrible depression
and everything was blank

my mother begged me to go to a therapist
and got a number of someone she was told was good

so i went to him
sat down
and told him everything in my mind
pretty complete for a one-hour session

he sat there in silence
jotting down notes
and when i finished i just looked at him and waited for his response
it was
“it sounds to me like you are severely Manic-Depressive and i would recommend massive doses of lithium”
i stood up and screamed at him
“you’re not even fucking HEARING ME– i don’t need drugs, i need to understand life.. if that’s all you can say to me, go fuck yourself”

of course my father had lied to me about everything
he bought me a little boom-box
and gave me the new-er house computer they’d bought while i was away to keep in my room
.. and he bought me a used car
a ford EXP that leaked exhaust into the cab if i drove around with the windows open

stickshift, though

i took to driving around that summer
anywhere.

kentucky
illinois
(looked up Satyr’s parent’s house… and drove by)
Michigan, Chicago, Ohio

nowhere
next to nowhere
across from nowhere

just to see it, you know?

that stupid fag hag bitch who turned me goth years ago
was now a coke-head
and her mother had transformed from hippy to modern-house-wife
coz she married some rich guy who gave her tons of plastic surgery
Heather (my “friend”) was moving to New Orleans and had to have dinner with her mother one last time to get money
and didn’t want to do it alone

so we went to dinner together
and her mother had two old hippy friends with her

one of them was named Marsha
and Marsha was telling me all about her Yoga school up in Michigan City
i said “i’ve always been interested in yoga, i’d love to try it”
which had no bearing in reality, but it came out of my mouth
so she invited me up, told me i could work for her and her husband in trade

i took Heather to the train station
and left the next day

i stayed there two weeks
doing yoga twice a day:
once with Marsha: a svelt middle age woman
and once with Don: a fat furry jewish bear of a man
( my tastes were not yet so developed )
while “paying” for the experience by helping with projects around the house
and taking care of their two kids
boy and girl
“Kiva” and “Dakota”

these people were amazing to me
the place was beautiful
and the experience was… Life Changing

the first few days i was very sore
but compelled
i was amazed i had never breathed so deep
and this breathing Prana thing…
it was amazing!
i’d never felt so alive
the more i did yoga
the more the pain in my body just turned to feelings
and then to joy!
to bliss!
all of these secrets hidden in the sore spots of my body
blossoming to life!

oddly, one day Don decided to teach us about the Mula Bandha
he said “i don’t usually teach this unless i’ve been working with a student for years… but i feel compelled to teach this today”
and it was the very same excercise i’d read about in that secretery’s office when i was 13!
the clenching of the muscle
the lock of the energy of the root chakra
Don taught us how to integrate that energy with the body
and nourish it

i was amazed

i would like to say that this brought me back from the dead
but when i returned home to my parents
being that open killed me even more

the first day back
breathing in all that life
in my parents house
was filled with death
deceit
stagnant sickness

before night fell
i was violently ill for a few days
and when i recovered
i did not continue my yoga practice

fortunately
my mother took us to some guy she’d saved a lot of money for
so we could all get TM mantras…

i started practicing this daily

i also got a job at my favourite independant music store: Luna
there was this gay guy who worked there, Bill
and since i’d been gone, another named Allen
Allen was 25
and was always trying to fuck me

another thing i forgot to mention:
i’d got on the Internet when i returned to america
my depression fueled my relationship to the computer
… or vice/versa
i was spending about 16 hours a day chatting on IRC for about three weeks
and then throughout the year…

the name i used on there was “Galabanti”
because i’d read that Ginsberg and Wilde used Green as a secret gay love color
from this whole caste in imperial Rome
of men wearing green robes
who’s sole purpose was to please the male ruling classes…

it… somehow… resonated with me.

someone i’d met on there from Michigan
in the #gay/dads/sons/sex room
told me he was coming down to Lafayette
we’d been talking for a while
and i was eager to meet him

one of my trips to chicago
i’d met a guy who wanted to fuck me
— he’d put on latex gloves and fingered my ass
i remember his handle was “railfan”
and all that lube. . .
i felt so violated and horrible
my butt hurt for days
and to this day, i am still very turned off my finger up my ass, standard “lube” and latex
it was so traumatizing

but this guy
this guy coming down from Michigan
he seemed very different

he was in his mid 50’s
married
a Lawyer
a bit stocky, hairy chest

( i was really into hairy chests… and this is how i discovered “bears”: some standard gay guy chatted me up and after we exchanged pics i said he wasn’t really my type… he asked what i liked and i said “Big Hairy Men” he said “bears?” i was confused and said — well, i’d have sex with a bear, yeah, but it’d probably kill me…. — he explained the scene and i replied “well, i’m not into fat guys… more muscular, you know” but went into the #bearcave right after that. one of the first things i posted in there was a story from the Onion about a guy getting fucked by a bear and dying from his colon being destroyed… they banned me.)

we met in some cheesy hotel room
but i felt very comfortable with him

— i don’t remember if we had an agenda
but i remember he didn’t use a condom or lube
– he licked my ass for about a hour (i’d never had that done)
and fucked me for about three.

i don’t remember if he came
or i came
i just remember that i felt like a puddle on the bed
thinking “Oh! so THAT is what sex is! all these years i thought i was having sex… WOW!”

so as soon as i got back to Zionsville
i let that 25 year old from work fuck me

well, it went like this

“yeah, i’m not really into guys like you… but i’ve found i’ll sex with anyone if i’m drunk”
he said “yeah? what do you like to drink”

so i ended up at his house that night
drinking malibu rum
and then on his bed
covered in that terrible sticky lube
as he put a condom on
and forced himself into me
then in the shower
doing the same

i was miserable
again
traumatized
and swore never to have sex with a younger guy like that again

and i hated latex and lube.

i was attending night classes to finish high school credits
and was attending community college at IUPUI during the day
between those times
i was working at the Music store
and a Laser Disc store my mother had got me a job at…

the guy who owned it shopped at her health food store a lot
his name was “Woody”
and when went into the shop the first time to meet him
his jaw dropped
(oh, when i returned from England i kept my hair short, just side burns mostly…)
and he took me out to lunch right away at this very gay restaurant where my friend Bill’s boyfriend was the chef
all the waiters eyed me like trade
and i was so embarrassed my mother got me a job with a gay guy

… but grateful.

yeah
Yeah.
Trevis’ old girl friend screamed at him that she gave him Herpes
so he told us: after having sex together in england we might have it

i was terrified
and went to the doctor
sure i was infected

he told me those were just hair follicles
and i’d be fine

when i came home
i was visibly excited
and my mother asked: why are you so happy!?

i just blurted out: ” I don’t have Herpes! ”

she paused, then asked why i thought i had it

i told her about Trevis’ girl friend and how the three of us had had sex in england

she paused and said
” you mean you had sex with Sheridan after she’d had sex with Trevis? ”

and i clarified : all three of us together

there was more silence

then she asked “are you saying you’re Bi-Sexual?”

“oh, i wouldn’t say that. i’m primarily interested in men. i’ve experimented with women to know for sure, but i’m pretty much a homosexual”

“ah”
she said
and walked away

i did some other stuff around the house
and heard her crying from upstairs…

four hours later
i asked her what was the matter?
was she upset that i was gay?
no
” I just don’t want you to die of AIDS ”

ah,
“i’ll do my best not to, mom”
was all i could say.

i was raised in the era and mindset of Sex=AIDS=Death
especially GaySex=AIDS=Death
but, somehow, i didn’t believe it
and was always more terrified of Syphilis
since i likened myself more to famous philosophers and composers than drunk nellie queens

i figured, as long as i avoided Gay Culture, i didn’t need to worry about AIDS

but day to day life in Indiana was still killing me

i was meditating with TM regularly
a big bright white scallop was scraping out my brain
and would sometimes make me go blind

i sometimes did yoga
but then would get sick
and stop

Satyr came to visit the house a few times
we’d wrestle downstairs in the basement
or in my room

but i felt there was something seriously wrong
— my heart was all tied up in him
and he didn’t deserve it

i, not really understanding how i did this, did a ritual
to take my heart back from him

and all of a sudden he lost his allure
and seemed like a very sad man.

He invited me to his wedding
and i begged him not to marry her
— by this point
i’d had sex with many married men in Indianapolis
and they were all so sad
but worse
their wives were a mess
knowing about the lies
knowing about the cheating
but not being able to speak it’s name
going crazy!
but they KNEW

lies lies lies
i hated lies
and vowed to always tell the truth
the whole truth
always
abolish all secrets!
(hence this style of writing… but there are still shadows, eh?)

i told him that eventually he’d own up to being gay
and leave his wife after his kids were grown
(how many times had i seen this happen already?)
and then she’d be middle aged and her dreams shattered and feel totally gutted…

he told me he wasn’t gay
and really loved her
(did i mention he was a virgin?)

i told him that he needed to get fucked in the ass
then he’d know

he said he’d never that happen
i said
“ok, next time we wrestle, i’m going to pin you, and when i pin you, i’m going to fuck you”

there was silence
then he said
“ok, what do i get if i pin you?”

i said i’d made my calling, he had to make his

“ok, first: i want to video tape it… then, after i pin you
i want to tie you to a chair and torture you til you can’t take it anymore”

i thought “oh shit, he’s already gone completely crazy”

i was silent
and, again, he asked me to come to the wedding
i said
“you know that part where they say ‘ Does anyone have any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined? Speak now or forever hold your peace ‘?”
— Yes…
” I would stand up and say that you’re gay ”

that was pretty much the end of that conversation
and when i hung up the phone
i was pretty sure i’d never see him again

but was able to let go.

ah, then there was this girl
i called her “Cera”

this girl
who was younger than i by a year
and who’s brother was in my grade
— i really didn’t like her brother
he’s the kinda loser kid that the jocks siked on me when i started standing up for myself

anyway
her younger sister was friends with my younger sister

so she was often at my house

one day
we started talking
and she told me about all this terrible shit in her life she felt powerless about

she told me she wanted to burn all the stupid tabloids at the supermarket she worked at
she told me she wanted to key and spray paint the cars of the foot-ball jocks
the fucking highschool!

she was so angry

i said… well, why not? let’s do it.

so off we went
drove to where she worked
and Stole spray paint and the tabloids she hated

we went to the spot under the bridge that trevis had painted
and burned them

we went to the highschool parking lot
— it was an away game
and key’d the foot-ball player’s cars
and spray painted the hood and windshields…
don’t remember what
likewise
we painted very large letters on the wall of the school

i wasn’t attending that school, i was going to one in Indianapolis
so i didn’t hear the full fall-out

but it made her feel more powerful and less opressed
still, she was being destroyed by the town in her way
just as i had been
and was aching to leave

she played piano hours a day
and we had such a lovely friendship of talking, music and adventures
… until i introduced her to Trevis
and we all got drunk
and had a terrible three way

then i never saw her again
coz she was always fucking him
… that is
until he went back to school
and she was terrified she was pregnant

i hated boyfriends and girlfriends

she always wrote the word: “friEND”

after i left Indiana
she and i only kept in contact about Trevis
it broke my heart
but what could i do?

as for school
i was suffering
the night classes were beyond simple: i just needed to show up
and i’m a night owl: that was no problem
but the day classes at the community college were a mess.

i’d taken a photography class
music for computers
film criticism
english comp
philosophy
some higher math class
and psychology as a biological science

i gave up on the philosophy class when i was the only one raising my hand: like in grade school
i gave up on the english comp class when my teacher told me my writing was too complex and i needed to make it simpler for the assignments
i gave up on the psychology class when everyone in the class failed a test that i got every single question (and the bonus) correct on
and the teacher said she was going to re-teach that chapter over the next week: i never went back

the film class was alright
the music class was dumb
and i stuck through the Photography class
as a desperate form of OutLet
it was the only thing i’d do
spend hours in the dark room
staining my fingers
and, again, going overboard

“i come from a town that offers me many things… but never what i want or need.. and whenever i can identify what that is… it is always lacking from the world i’ve been raised in.”
while handing out doughnut holes and playing the tori amos song about them

i would often sleep all day
even when i would wake up and drive down to campus
i’d end up not even going into the building
i’d just get in the back of my car and sleep

again, i was wasting all my time on the computer

but my friend Lesley, from the UK
told me she was flying into JFK and wanted to spend the summer with me

how was she going to get to Indiana?

well, she said, she would spend a week in New York
then hitch hike

did she have any idea how long it would take to get to me from there?

Oh… three hours?

No.
did she know anyone in New York?

No.

Ok… i told her i’d drive out and meet her in NYC
and we’d drive back together…

but my father offered me a frequent flyer ticket
i set the dates for two weeks in NYC
leaving right after my high school graduation

planning to quit my job at the laser disc store (which was going out of business anyway)
and Luna said i could have to two weeks off

Great

i spent hours and hours on IRC
in my two favourite rooms
#gaydad/son/sex
and
#gaydads4sons
as well as the
#gaynewyorkcity

and got a list of 20 people who said i could stay with them at least one night
and they’d show me around the city at least one day

i was set to leave a week after my birthday. . .

{more to be added in about the acid trip with T&S at the begining of the “year”
and coming to “Love” cera.. thus being able to admit that i loved T&S and satyr and all of them… first heart opening, probably through yoga}

{unfinished: wrote for another hour on the night of the 20th, but not yet finished}

Shortly after the end of the school year, just as i turned 17

i was invited to some party
in one of those myriad sub divisions somewhere

some girls, friends of Sheridan’s, i think

some how
i had been given some good acid as well
and was eager to see what would happen taking it a second time.

the party was nice
light
fun

i remember playing with my cigarette
again, enjoying it while tripping
the light
the way i could punctuate my speech with it
… the visual effect more than the actual smoking
but something about controlling fire like that was really great. . .

still
i kept getting these internal signals calling me into myself

the night wore on
and i got further away from the people around me
til i snuck out the back door
walked through the yard to its edge
and into the “forest” there
…
there was a deep gully
where a stream maybe once was
a large wall of clay
i was blocked entirely from the house by it
it made me feel very far away

i think i was barefoot
letting the small stream run between my toes
i sat down on a rock

thinking…
and out of the roots and tree stumps came dryads
and out of the water came undines
and out of the dirt and stones came gnomes
and out of the air, the sylphs

we had a conversation
where they explained to me what i had been doing
how all of my anger, judgment and rejection was pushing life away from me
and starving me of life force
making me ill, tired and displaced

they said “you don’t need to do this anymore”

and i understood i Had achieved some sort of benefit from it
but was long past that point

somehow
my mind didn’t fight it
i understood
and felt a great strain release.

Sheridan found me down there
and we sat quietly for a while
as the sun rose

For my Birthday
and for the Trip to England
Melanie cut, colored and styled my hair
into a dark cherry-red pompadour
which was a very different persona from my “trent reznor” look
again, i felt much lighter

i knew my time was ending in Zionsville and felt so relieved
none of it touched me anymore

the job of working at the Pie Safe became a lot more fun:
as soon as i knew i was moving to england
i started practicing my accent
(most of the music i listened to was british and i watched quite a few british movies and tv shoes with daniel…)
while at work
i would often answer the phone with a “british accent”
and one day
my boss said “uh, dominic, some women just came in and asked me if the British Waiter were working today: do you know if he’s here?”
i probably blushed
but took it in stride
and made far more tips that summer being some kid from Cornwall
or Birmingham
— i had no idea how different the accents were from the butchered cockney i was affecting
and i don’t know if the old ladies having pie and quiche knew either
but if they did, they homoured me and enjoyed my bullshit stories about growing up there and being on foreign exchange here
because i always got paid well

for three days before leaving for the UK
i didn’t sleep
trying to clean my room (it always looked like a whirl wind hit it)
see everyone before i left
and try and select the things i’d need in my new life…

i don’t remember the flight over
but i don’t think i slept

when i arrived
it was raining
apparently they’d had a drought that summer
and i brought the rain:
it rained every day until the last week of my stay.

my Host family were called the Fean’s
the mother wore the pants in the family
she had short cropped hair, forced the whole family to be vegitarian
and spoke with a deep gruff voice:
she was scottish
my first impression of her was cemented when, at the airport, i tried to enter through the driver’s door
(you know, they’re reversed there from here…)
and she said “oh, are you going to drive us home”
in a tone like i was the biggest idiot on the planet…

she introduced me to everyone in the family:
i had a surrogate brother named Paul who certainly seemed queer to me
his sister, Rosie, was leaving later that day to fly to america and live somewhere in Maryland
the father (i don’t remember his name) was a stutterer and was completely pushed around by his wife
and Rosie’s best friend: Julia
she would be my guide to the town.

after all this
before the sun even set
i was so exhausted i sent myself to bed
— i had my own room with a window looking out the back
i closed the blinds and slept 14 hours

when i woke up
i was a completely new person
all of the neurotic thoughts in my head were completely gone
i didn’t know who i was
and was eager to discover. . .
and the world i now lived in

— looking back, i always thought of this as “my first death”
a “born again” dominic. . .
“i’m set free. . .”

cut to respect friend’s pages: these are getting very long – more written

in my desperation for Satyr
i drove to his house one last time before he moved

– he’d got some perfect traveling singing job with some private benefactor
(i must say i was pretty happy when i found out later that the whole thing was some manic pipe dream by that guy and Satyr and the other people hired for the gig were left high and dry and wondering what the fuck to do with their lives now that they’d all given up their jobs)

that last night we Wrestled
totally naked
on his Now Empty floors
(as he’d packed everything up already)

he came grinding me into the floor as usual
but this time
i then flipped him over
and held him down
and rubbed until i came on him
— against all of his protest:

this is the only time i ever came with him.

before i knew he was moving away
i had tried out for Show Choir
at our school, called “The Royalaires!”
i sang Depeche Mode’s “One Caress” to him on the black stage

i got accepted into Show Choir
but, of course, he was gone
and we had some blonde bitch teaching us
who just wanted to be Madonna

the big deal over that summer was The Academy:
it was some boarding high school that was a part of Ball State
an hour north of us

Trevis and Ryan applied
and told me i should too

Dustin had moved away the year before
(i remember, i bought a copy of Radiohead’s “Pablo Honey” for myself, but gave it to him before even listening to it, it wasn’t until was 16 that i stole a copy from BB and heart it the first time… and became completely enthralled in it)
and Sheridan had such a good GPA she had worked out a deal that she was graduating in one more year instead of two

i asked my parents if i could apply to the Academy

but my father said
“No, don’t even apply because we cannot afford it”

i was so crushed

because at this point
i had transferred all of my obsession onto Trevis

not that i wanted to have sex with him
i just wanted to be with him all the time

i wanted to love him
but at the time
i couldn’t have said that.

so
start of the school year
they left
and Sheridan and i were there with Daniel

i felt like i was dead

i constantly talked about how i was living dead

i prayed for death

if anyone asked me what i wanted from life
my only wish was to die

i slept less and less
ate less and less

i’d grown to 5’10”
and still weighed about 125#

my skin was nearly translucent
my long hair
i died purple
and i was stoned all the time

but i had to stop hanging out with Ted again
because he took to listening to the Greatful Dead
and watching old reruns of terrible shows like “Saved by the Bell” and “Full House” constantly

i felt like i was lost in the middle of nowhere…

i became devoted to Nine Inch Nails
— i’d been listening to them for a few years
but “The Downward Spiral” had just come out
and it had been on constant heavy rotation
(backed up with Throbbing gristle, coil, pigface, etc.)

NIN was playing in KY
and i drove down there to see the show
I remember it as being such an amazing experience:
Unified with hundreds of people in such desperate anger
— i remember seeing these two huge muscular marine guys
punching people and stomping them in the mosh pit
laughing
and biting eachother’s forearms til they bled

it met this great punk girl there named “Melanie”
we became instant friends
she lived in Indy
and i started hanging out with her all the time
— she said i looked like Trent
and i’d sleep over at her place
but we never fucked…

however
i did get crabs
and had just read Burrough’s “Wild Boys”
which had a whole section on it

ugggggh.

for christmas
Trevis came home
his roommate at the Acadamy was a drug dealer
and had given him some good acid
he asked me if i’d be the guide

yeah, sure
yeah

i walked him through his world-opening experience
and envied him

but the trip made very clear to me:
he didn’t love me: he longed for Sheridan
and i was just his Buddy in this trip

uhhh

i wanted to die

somewhere in that visit
he told me that The Acadamy was paid for by the state
it didn’t cost any money, except for books
which we were paying for in high school anyway

i was livid

my father and i only interracted while screaming at this point anyway
and i told him he had three options:

to send me to a boarding high school OUTSIDE of Indiana
(our good friend Mike had just tried to commit suicide and had been sent to a mental hospital, his parents moved him into a private high school in michigan: cranbrook in royal oak )

or
to send me on foreign exchange:
i wanted to live in Germany

whatever was cheeper

OR
he could do nothing
in which i’d either die or kill myself
or run away: and he’d never hear from me again

my mother and father knew i was quite serious
and we looked into the options…

Daniel, introducing us to so many amazing new british bands
made the blunder of recommending Oasis to us
and though we didn’t love them so much, they had some good tracks
(it was their first album)
they came to Indy at the end of that winter
so we went to see them
Again
we got Acid
but this time
we were assured it was good stuff

i think we took it on the drive down there
(zionsville was about 45 minutes from down town indianapolis…)
and i remember the opening band… Velvet crush?
something
i remember laying on the floor in the back
sinking into the floor
becoming the floor
watching the orange and yellow lights stream into me
feeling everyone

it was beautiful

Then Oasis came on
we all stood up and got near them
and in the beginning of the 3rd song
somebody threw something at Liam
and he exploded and told us to all go fuck off
and they left.

so we went home

i remember smoking a cigarette
my foot dangling out the passenger window:
it was the first time i’d ever enjoyed a cig
i could feel it moving through all of my blood vessels
and loved the red light it made

we went back to Ted’s house
and i thought about Mike
and why would anyone try to kill themselves?

T&S and Ted sat around and talked
we all lay in a pile on Ted’s bed

and then i got it:
i understood suicide
and then i was terrified:
i couldn’t think of any reason why to stay alive
and i started asking my friends
— they had no good suggestions
but they had to go home
and Ted needed to go to sleep
i was panicking
so Ted took me down stairs and fed me a Gravity Bong
— i’d never had one before
and it spun me out

we went back up to Ted’s room and he turned out the lights and told me to be quiet
i turned myself inside out
and examined the smallest details of existance
any question i posed
i could get an answer for
… the question i asked…

and i kept looking
and eventually i gave up: i couldn’t find it in myself
i switched on a little reading lamp
put on the head phones
played “Strageways, here we come” (which i’d never got into before)
and read “On the Road” (which i’d never read before)

somewhere in those tombs
i found respite
and could go to sleep…

Life Persists… it drags us along sometimes…
and… you know… i was a Sophomore…
and there was a lot of pressure for us all to go to the Prom, right?
well…
yeah
we did it like this:
Ted went as Sheridan’s date
both of them dressed all in brown
Sheridan in a tight evening gown, brown makeup
Ted in a 70’s pimp outfit

I took Melanie as my Date
Rather… She took Me:
she was wearing a full body leather dominatrix outfit with a see-through skirt (that was one of the ways she made her money)
and had me on a studded leather collar
i was wearing the typical: A Tux with Tails
had my long hair brushed, combed, parted down the middle
white face powder
black blush
mascara, eyeshadow, eye liner, black lip stick, black fingernail polish
.. and trevis was dressed and made up Exactly the same:
we were holding hands
and i was on her leash.

my mother cried
my father called from Hawaii the next day
asking if i was TRYING to destroy the family’s name.

lots of kids i’d “known” my whole life didn’t recognize me

there was line dancing
we went out back and got stoned

came back in and ate
and ate

and laughed
and left

went back to my parent’s house
and got drunk out in the barn…

at this point
i’d gone through all sorts of alternative healers
and my mother had sent me back to a western medicine doctor

when he got my blood work back he said
“you know what AIDS is, right?
well… you don’t have HIV
but we would say you have AIDS
your T-cells are at about 70 and your body is completely out of balance…
but we have no idea why…
the best then i can offer you is to give you medication to kill everything in your body so that your immune system has a chance to rebuild itself”

i sighed and declined his offer

Daniel’s mother was a nurse
and he told me i didn’t have AIDS
i just hated my life and as too lazy to slit my wrists:
this was my passive suicide

I got accepted for a Foreign Exchange program
but our school’s organization wouldn’t send me to Germany because i spoke no German
so only England or Australia were my options

my dad chose England because it seemed cheaper and closer.

as the school year ended

i’d completely lost hope in any sort of redemption

and i remember one of the last days of school we had a day where we had all of our classes outside
which means no real classes
just lots of playing and partying outside
it was a beautiful sunny warm day

and i had on my long dark oilskin coat
huge combat boots
french motorcycle goggles
and i was hiding in the bathroom
with my brother’s bloody knuckles/knife combo
pressing the blade against my wrist

but i paused a moment to grab my journal:
i wanted people to understand the gravity of WHY i was doing this
and not just think it was some stupid teenage-isolation bullshit

of course
the first words i wrote on the page were
“because i’m bothering to write this down
it probably means i’m not going to do it
but today i’ve decided to kill myself”

when i finished writing
i walked out into the sun

my friend Kris was playing bongos in a huge drum circle
he smiled at me and beckoned me over with his eyes
moved over to let me play the drum
and i started beating
pouding
melting into the rhythm

and i started breathing
and i started singing
or screaming
and i started sweating
and i took off my glasses
and i took off my coat
and i took off my shirt
and i pounded til my hands were blistered
and my heart cracked open
and i was alive

somehow
i’d managed to stay alive.

{somewhere in here is when i decided that “coupling” was always to be a poisonous endevour… what i’d seen of boyfriends and girlfriends in the midwest… every relationship i’d ever witnessed of the parents and the love songs on all the CDs, radio and in books and poem… : Coupling was a curse: surely i had far too many important things to do… destroying, remaking, fixing, healing the world to get caught in that trap… fuck and “love” was a lie anyway… some sort of “dirty trick”, a myth… like santa clause… oh, . . . }

my hair was growing long

my patience was growing shorter…

TJ was born in 1977, august 1st
so that summer, before the school year started
he got a car
and drove us around:
more freedom

not wanting to be kept down
i taught T and S the secrets of good shoplifting
an we started going in and out of Best Buy a few times a weekend
using our expensive scientific calculators to store a tally: to see who’d got the most CDs… we shared them all, of course
… we even started going into Boarders Books
laying down our largest back pack
and just filling it up over a few hours
zipping it up
and carrying it out

a few months later
they installed cameras:
but we never got caught

when i met TJ in middle school
he was a pudgy kid
really smart
but obviously doing things to piss people off
i kinda copied this and went over board
but not in the same way he would

he’d walk around mumbling/screaming
“meat! Milk!… raw Meat.. in a bowl of Milk…. feed it to your kids”
shit like that

the first year of high school
i switched from reading fantasy novels and myths
to french existentialism and beat poetry

TJ was heavily into Burroughs even then…

That summer, when we started driving around
i dropped the “Nick” and became “Dominic”
Sheri became “Sheridan”
and TJ became “Trevis”

we were struggling for our freedom
and because there was absolutely none in sight
we were searching in our imaginations
with our desperation…
looking for a way out
and a way to survive…

that summer…
we started hanging out in Broad Ripple
the “cool” part of Indianapolis

i met some girl named Heather
(and have met a million more of her around the world since)
you know, loves gay boys, chubby girl with black (natural?) hair
always wearing black clothes. . .

the first night we met she said
“oh my god! you have such beautiful eyes, can i put makeup on you?”

i remember coming home and my parents bitching me out
but it started a change

Before trevis got the car
i was meeting up with Satyr a few times a week to work out in the school gym and “Wrestle”

the school just wasn’t cool enough for me, though

i was still working the “computer back up” job at my dad’s office

through all these years
i’d alternated with my brother

different nights
then different weeks

at this point: it was all mine

at this point
i was meeting guys on those BBS servers
and i’d ride my bike the 4 miles into Zionsville to have pathetic terrible sex with them

through the school year i started stealing my dad’s delivery vehicles (well, i knew where they kept the keys.. and i had a master key to the building)
they were manual transmission
so i’d drive around the parking lot grinding the gears
until i figured out how to switch from first
to second
to third…

i’d sometimes drive over and see ted
and we’d go to Denny’s late at night
or Steak N Shake. . .

we were producing a Zine on my father’s copiers in the office
sometimes Ted and his friend PJ would hang out with me there. . .
and sometimes my old friend Bryan

in those first two years of high school
The Lab became a place of freedom
in the off hours…

but sometime during the year
they updated the computer systems
and i wasn’t really needed as much
just a few times a week

but by that point
i had learned how to drive the stick shift
and was driving out to Satyr’s house
about a half hour away

(he was so shocked the first time i showed up)

we’d take off our clothes and tear into eachother

he body slammed me so hard he fractured one of my ribs
right over my heart (yeah yeah yeah)

he’d punch me
and grin at me
totally under his control

i wanted him to smash me
i wanted him to break me open

i wanted to feel something
— anything

Trevis had even taken to cutting himself

things sure were swell in Zionsville…

sometime in the middle of the school year
the principle had a word with Satyr
said “you’ve seem to have been spending an awful lot of time around that boy, do me a favor and stop that”

and he cut me off cold turkey
stopped talking with me
stopped wrestling with me
stopped spending any time with me at all

i had a total break down

still not knowing what love was
i became far more familiar with its inverse

THEN i started smoking pot a lot
and
Surprise
found the biggest stoner hang out was in
Ted’s Garage

we called it “Slick Willy’s”
and Trevis and Sheridan and i would go over there and get really fucking blasted every day after school
and play through our copious new CD collections

near the end of the year
i’d dropped the boys club job
(maybe long before, i couldn’t have worked there when i was stoned all the time: i don’t remember)
and ended up getting a job at a restaurant that Sheri and Ryan worked at called The Pie Safe
it was right on Main Street Zionsville

hmmm

i
uh…

i remember being around those kids always made me feel so stupid
and i was in all these Smart Classes now
and excelling at everything

i got this feeling in my mind that sleeping was a terrible waste of time
and i would figure out how not to sleep at all

i would steal caffiene pills
and mini thins

drink coffee
and dr pepper

i pretty much only ate Twizlers and Doritos

but that year was also the year my mother got a job working at a Health Food store
and she started taking us all chiropractors
and magnetic emotional reprograming specialists

and i started getting sick all the time
Started…
it got much worse…

i often missed school

one day, i was home all day
and a guy knocked on the front door

i went out to see what he wanted
“uh, excuse me: your barn is on fire… i let your dog out…”

my dad had an alarm system installed:
i hit the “fire” button and ran outside

smoke billowing out the side of the door…
the dog running around barking its head off
(at this point i hated dogs
and my dad had got a hunting dog that he and my sister were supposed to train and show
they had it out in the old hay barn: with a heating lamp that it had, apparently, knocked over)

i ran to the huge front door of the barn and pulled it open

… i didn’t know any better
and the draft almost sucked me in

i stepped back
and watched the metal ceiling begin to melt

the tractor exploded

the rabbits were on fire
screaming
running around in the grass

the fire department came and did their best
but it was all burnt up by that point
.
.
.

what was i saying?

near the end of the year
Trevis got us some acid
and i skipped school and went with him and Sheridan to drive around down town Indianapolis
… on acid.

but it wasn’t real acid
it was rat poison, i think

i got terrible cramps all through my body
and became increasingly violent
strangling trevis: leaving bruises on his neck

being dropped off at home
staring at the carpet
as it undulated below me
i put on the Reservoir Dogs sound track
and suffered in how much i hated the world
and everyone in it.

This is the year i assumed everything happened to me

i mean
i used to always say “blah blah blah, when i was 7 years old”

only a few years ago did i realize that many of the things i said
happened to me when i was 7
couldn’t have

all of this time-line is blurry

but here are some things:

my teacher, Mrs. Jarboe, read us the entire Chronicles of Narnia (i
think she did, at least the first four books)
— i’m sure my mother must have read us some children’s books
but we were not a reading family
— my father said “books are for sissies, boys play sports”
i remember the books being the most amazing thing ever…

laying on top of the big brown full sized van in the cement drive way
only about 16 feet from the telephone cables
playing with the walkie-talking and listening in on phone
conversations in noisy cross-patches

playing in the ditch when it rained and filled up
the frogs! the mud!

i got asthma
my mother had asthma
i was her friend, so went there with her
we had panic attacks together

by that ditch at the end of the driveway
were my mother’s peony bushes (she got them from her mother)
i would watch them bud: all sticky
the ants would chew away their calx so they could open

my mother was concerned about our education and her affect on us
(she’d not gone to collage and was constantly berating herself about
it.. if only! she could get a good job! have money of her own!)
what was our address?
my brother was 15 months older than me
and he recited it back to her diligently
however
i just couldn’t get it right
and after my mother getting frustrated with my not learning
or her not being able to teach me
she said “well if you don’t know your own address then you obviously
don’t live here! you best pack your bags and leave!”
and stormed off

i went to my bedroom and put on the little brown suit i’d been given
for first communion (which was also that year)
and packed my little suitcase that i’d always take up to grandma’s house
and left through the front door
down the driveway
left
down
down
down that country road (it was paved, though)
past where the houses ended
corn fields on both sides
wondering just where i should go…

nearly a mile away
my mother came running up behind me crying and wondering why i’d done that
it seemed clear to me
i tried to explain

but just as she couldn’t understand why i couldn’t understand
neither could i:

we spoke different languages

but my brother and Neil and i would often play games in the driveway
in that big brown van
(or any car left open)
we were space explorers
with our walkie talkies
and star wars guns
we’d travel through space
push all the buttons
and flip all the switches

and talk about our parents

Neil overheard his parents talking about divorce
about how my mother had been talking to his mother about wanting to
get divorced from my father
i didn’t understand the concept
so he explained
and i was excited by the prospects

even though my father was away often
i didn’t really enjoy it when he was home, actually
i never really liked him anymore after he shaved off his beard and
just had a mustache…

he’d always find some reason to yell at us
or at something

he’d drink beer and watch basketball or foot ball
and scream at the players for hours

we’d lay there on the floor
and i was sad and terrified that my father thought they could hear him

it hurt my ears

so i told my mom i was happy they were getting divorced
and she cried

but it was only a few weeks later when
on a trip home
my father
called a somber and tense family meeting where he sat alone in the
lazy-boy recliner
with us three kids on the couch with my mother, tight lipped and infuriated
he started crying and said “kids… come and sit by daddy, your mother
doesn’t love him anymore and wants to leave me all alone.. you still
love me, don’t you?”
i was aware that i hated him
and my brother and sister got up to crawl up on his lap
i stayed on the couch
glowering

my mother pushed me
only slightly murmuring “go”