14

Shortly after telling SFC T___ he was wrong, and placing myself in a new world of sudden triggering and flashbacks instead of just simply Roaring, I discovered a café down the street from my apartment.
It always played music that spilled out into the street, and attracted a local kind of avante guard. Back then I never told anyone that I was a reserve soldier, and continued to work silently in the Bakery.
I read two poems my first night there and didn’t expect to ever go back, but they seemed to like me, and I liked being liked. I thought they knew me by my poetry; I had always felt old, so it didn’t occur to me that all they actually knew me by was how ripe I was.
The poetry flowed from deep in my bones shortly after June 1^st; the day the Roaring and the Truth met one another. What the Roaring dished out about my life, the Truth of who I was withstood it. It was like there was two of me now, myself, and the story that self had lived.
I could now remember physically. I remembered my natural movements, my natural self, my natural ways. Every bad became good, because I was there, and I was good. I now remembered what it was like to be a boy. I remembered what it was like to be nameless. I remembered what it was like to feel my own heart beat.
The Roaring continued to be crippling. The out-of-the-blue realization of the Truth of my existence protected me from the physical realities of trauma: the heart pounding as the Roaring forced reaction, the ears ringing, the eyes burning, at the memories -- but it didn’t actually stop the heart from pounding, the ears from ringing, or the eyes from burning, it just killed the fear with a new awareness of my own Bravery.
The Roaring, now faced straight-on, was cripplingly loud. As I walked down the street, to get groceries, my palms would sweat, my own movements and the movements of the world seemed to fuel the Roaring, reminded it of memories I wasn’t braced for.
Funny that silence and stillness were what I had most avoided. They were the enemy, they were what threatened me the most. Now silence and stillness were all I could handle, because that was where the truth was the clearest. The truth that I was Good, regardless of what new memory was on its way.
Now, I could be not-numb in silence and stillness. Now that I knew what it was to be not-numb, there was no going back; silence and stillness were where my sanity lay now. It was like after June 1^st, everything I had been good at I was now bad at, because now I had to do it without the numbness to facilitate.
At the time I really liked the poem Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou, and would keep it in my head, reciting it with out moving my lips as I grocery shopped, as I stepped through the mansion-of-a-local library, through the hallways at work, through the great noise of traffic, and through the waves and waves of onslaught by the Roaring.
The intricacies of cooking for hours a day in the bakery, alone, concentrating on the processes before me, the substances reacting to the heat, their chemicals mixing as yeast is handled just-so-much, and doughnuts fried with just-such-timing, creating the elusive carmalization, or perfectly golden brown crusts, and just-that-firm cookies -- while the Roaring’s memories play their game, telling this much here, and that much there, intricately traveling over those eighteen years, back and forth, here and then there, until the elusive truth stops me mid-knead, and its dose of heavy emotions finally soak me through.
These were the days after June 1^st. My ‘grow-up-date.’ Set when I returned upon graduating from six months of the Army’s sheer test and found I was still not okay. So I decided I would be okay by this date, no excuses. I lived my life with the utmost effort at focus and concentration, focus and concentration, until mistakenly I found myself in the moment and the numbness is gone before I can change my mind, the Roaring rears to take me out, while just in time the truth is Remembered.
I used that poem because I had no words of my own, little education, a weight problem only controlled with abusive tactics, and little going for me in general. Now that the body was loved, it would be treated properly, now that the mind was loved, it would be educated out of love, now that the tongue and lips and vocal cords were loved, they would voice the words, later written down and quickly labeled by others as: Poetry.
The café down the street from my apartment had a poetry night. And that Fall, they marveled at what they kept calling: my Poetry.
This one guy B___, ran the poetry readings. He was a college student and DJ. Turned out he was in love with me, and despite all the drama, I was the last to know.
There was M___, the guy who ran the café, who for almost a year would secretly nurse a hard-on for me, and again I was the last to know. I would also be the last to know when it came to E___.
She was M___’s best friend, who owned the café, and whom later I would have a tumultuous affair, all because of her baby grand piano.
　
　
　
The baby grand was why I took the risk. Its keys keeping me always coming back for more, just to be in the same room as it.
It was why I stuck around. Stuck around so that relationships and friendships would incidentally grow. Always at the center of my mind the beautiful, shiny-black, baby grand, in the side room of her beautiful, ghost-harboring house, by the cemetery. A fitting place for her, because she had just as many ghosts as I had in my Roaring.
I felt a strong need to practice it every day. I remained ever-respectful, calling her Ms E__, him Mr. M__, insisting access to the piano room.
Her house was old fashioned, with high ceilings and built-in shelving. Antique, restored furniture, and black and white pictures from wars, and from certain movies.
The back had been converted into a florist shop at one time so the House was built as if it had two fronts, and two foyers. The upstairs, though large and made up of three rooms, was treated as an attic, due to the ghosts.
She and M___ cared for thrown-away or abused animals and due to their travels needed babysitters for the animals while they were gone. Very few ever babysat twice. The one that stayed on refused to be in the House alone, always taking with her an uninformed boyfriend.
I loved the café. Being right near the apartment, it was a place to go where the Roaring could successfully be ignored. Shortly after Thanksgiving, I helped decorate it with M___. He made me laugh with how flaming he was, always saying things like:
_Oh, Ben, you’re so creative,_
Or, as I was putting up the Christmas trees, _Oh, Ben, you’re so strong -- look at those muscles .. _
Or, later on, when E___ came by to see how it went and M___ brought out the coffee:
_Ben, do you know how much me and E___ just love you?_
I went to their New Years party at the café. For some reason a guy offered to give me a ride. When I answered the door he looked at me and said, _Is that what you’re wearing?_
Throughout the night he kept trying to pick me up, but I was busy learning the original name of __________ County from an old lesbian and her partner.
That was another reason why E___ and I talked to each other so much: because a lot of times we were the only people there who weren’t in or out of a closet.
I met a younger lesbian there who wanted to not-be-lesbian with me.
I found her advances weird but hitched a ride with her to New York anyway and explored the city alone.
Her name was D____, and reminded me of A____, so I was easy on her. That was another thing E___ and I had in common: problem siblings. Hers was her brother.
All the members of her family, except her, were alcoholics.
He looked odd, because he was ‘slow:‘ He had a small teenage-like body, a manner like that of a kid’s, but eyes of psychopath and a violence to match. He blamed E____ for everything in his life, and seemed determined to take it out on her, despite her being the only one who checked on him at his little, lost-in-overgrowth house.
It was the same way with her mother. E___ was the only one who checked on her in her soaked-in-cat-piss trailer, but still her mother hated her with a vengeance and defended the brother.
A____ was similar toward me. I had broken off contact shortly after June 1^st. Regularly, in the middle of the night, after making sure I was home, she would drive up and start trying to get into my apartment.
I was so used to it I knew the sound of her car, and knew the sound of her trying to fit her doesn’t-fit-anymore keys, and after awhile stopped getting up when I first heard the sounds.
Instead I just rolled over and went back to sleep, as she walked around the apartment and fiddled with each window, hoping to find one loose.
To this day I wonder what she would’ve done if she ever had managed her way in to find me asleep.
Gun or knife or pillow in hand, I wonder if she really was that Lost, or if the seriousness of the act of killing would’ve somehow jolted her back to reality.