It’s hard not to see what others see about this place. Whenever anyone comes up to the house I’ve moved into, they just stand there in the driveway gaping at it.
I overheard McC____’s husband say, He couldn’t possibly live here.
But I do.
Whenever someone sees pictures of the place they say things like, I didn’t even know houses like that even existed, or, if I had land like that..
This place does keep me awestruck. Even just looking out a window will do it for me.
__________
(Monday, 18FEB2008, President’s Day)
Really, this began last night.
When I’m Him, it’s obvious how angry I am – at A___, H___ and Mom. So angry that it’s spread to an anger toward all women. I keep forgetting the context, and how set in stone it is.
The context that no one believed me, those women lied concerning R___, they lied to protect him.
Even F___, even W___, definitely SFC T____, not to mention each almost-friend in my past, they all choose the lie over the truth because it’s easier for them, their watered-down definition of Life remains intact.
This story, this so-ordinary story of Abuse is running my life.
I know A__’s life is a kind of living hell, and H__’s is utterly ridiculous, and therefore sad, but it’s not enough.
They came so close to winning altogether. I lost so much of the House to colors it wasn’t until June 1st that I even began to remember.
It’s why I live alone in this beautiful place with all this land. Because I understand that I will probably never be believed. At least not believed enough to be chosen over them. What’s the point of having people like that in your life.
The reasons the other adults, the social workers, the youth pastors, chose them -- their confidence, their charm, their intelligence -- were the same reasons I did. In the beginning I was so easily manipulated; I was a little boy, mistaking attention for kindness. I liked them, too. They were my sisters and my Mom. Of course I liked them.
Sexual humiliation. In two words that was the bent of the Abuse of the House. Notice how they have to keep reiterating it. How if I walked up to any of them today they would be desperate for another example to create and show me. The truth is true always, all on its own. Only a lie has to be reiterated in order to stay alive.
How obvious it is now. Like when they kept implying that if you were gay that would be sexually humiliating. Except that being gay isn’t sexually humiliating. It was like they needed for me to grow up gay, were egging me on.
I had a bad weekend. At work I got angry except it wasn’t an effective kind, but a mean one.
The heart of why I don’t ‘go out’ is that I understand that the civilian American will find my story ‘weird.’ And will be rude. This is true despite the fact that underneath everything in these ordinary American lives, the American experience, is the same story of Abuse, and aggression, and crimes-so-unspoken that people believe they don’t exist anymore.
I remember my co-workers, back in the Wild adolescent days, sixty and eighty hour work weeks, my different skin-color stark against the other working men. The white-boy-slave, they’d joke amongst themselves, but not in front of me, respectfully.
Maybe the reason is that I don’t want people in my life who can’t relate to me, or understand me. Meanwhile the most fun I’ve ever had is with my friends, like W__, and F__.
If it was wrong for A__ and H__ to beat up on me over what R___ was doing, then it’s wrong for me to beat up on women over what A__ and H__ were doing.
I thought E__ had already cured me of this, that morning in her kitchen, when she seemed to be realizing I’d never sleep with her again, despite her obvious, matured beauty.
That bitterness toward men, slowly seeping out of her, making itself known to me. Like a secret of hers only now being realized by me.
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