2

I’ve gotten used to his face. I see him and don’t immediately think: good looking. Now I just think: House.
I tell him the story but stop at nineteen years of age. I tell him I can’t remember much before age 12, but by the evidence around me I know what must’ve happened. It leaves me numb, since I can’t remember. He nicknames me _Dex,_ for Dexter.
_You’re like a forty year old in a twenty five year old’s body,_ he says, reiterating his need to stay with me when we get home, his need to grow up.
My choices have their own pain I want to explain to him. Just because I handled my story the opposite way he did, doesn’t mean that my choices were any less painful.
House tells me his abuse story. I think to myself: After a story like that, House’s either extraordinary or he’s not okay.
He told me his sexual history. None of those girlfriends were normal, but for one, and she cheated on him. He always cheated on his girlfriends.
I told him as a chore that had to be done. The whole horrible story -- what I could remember. I would later clarify that all that stuff isn’t on my mind all the time, but I thought he should know how Dark it was, before he went and moved into my life.
_Actually, in four days I’ll be twenty three._ As he was saying the sentence I prayed he’d end it with the words twenty-four. I hate feeling old all the time. I’m twenty six.
He says he feels incredibly behind. He considers me accomplished.
He talks a lot to everyone, sometimes supplementing our conversations later with a conversation with someone else. I wonder about it, how much he talks, how impressionable he is.
I don’t understand why he’d want to live with me instead of stake out on his own. It seems like I’d be a crutch. I don’t see or understand the part of him that’s not strong, and I don’t see or understand what part of me he sees as strong.
Boyd__: _Nu uh, you were gone all day yesterday and all night!_ He said this as I entered my new tent.
With K___ gone, and the deployment nearing its end, the soldiers left here have consolidated tents. I’m now staying with first platoon, a platoon I used to take care of at the beginning of the deployment.
Sometimes they act relieved to be around me again. They invite me to chow regularly. Between W__ and House, I haven’t been around much, and try to play off their complaints.
They wanted me to play dominoes with them. How do I go from being a total mess to being popular to being a total mess while also being impressive to House?
_I’ll have to pass you off as my little brother,_ I said to House, as we sat in the chow hall for lunch.
This made him suddenly grin, I thought I saw him try to reign the grin in, like for a second there he felt vulnerable. I wasn’t sure, either way it made me wonder.
I feel like I told House too much. As long as I’m Him, all these mistakes will be forgivable.
I notice that things will move too fast. I have to keep up with the writing or I lose my self, I can’t feel the boy I am or the Value in my fingertips.
I explained to him the dreams, how strong they are, what they’re like for me, how I have to shift, whenever I find an untruth. And how I keep shifting and shifting, each dream getting closer and closer to memories I can’t remember.
I told him how I’m not numb in dreams, but numb in waking life and how I shift between the two all time, barely keeping up with which world is the real one.
I explained all the sexuality, the whole-ness, how it’s just as real as if I’m in the wake world. The only difference is that I can’t feel sex in the wake world, but I feel it in the not-wake one.
I tell him how in the wake world my mind keeps coming up with all this mental noise: stories and stories and story story story, as it’s trying to dream while I’m still awake.
I know House will bring sex into my life, into my home. He gets around. A face like that, I guess it’s inevitable. It feels like once that begins -- once I’m sexual in the waking world -- there’s no turning back. Like I’ll lose something important, something of myself I can’t quite name or place, but seems valuable, something that goes against Him but also goes against the incest.
I feel like once I accept sex now it’s like I’m also accepting the incest of back then.
I’ll see myself the way they did.
Somewhere my wiring is crossed, the way it processed the incest, it changes everything too much, including myself, it warps everything.
He asked me to go with him to ____, a few states over from our home state, when he visits his family. I was surprised.
He told me about the heroin addictions he’s had in the past.
_I’ve told you stuff I’ve never even mentioned to them,_ he said, referring to his friends and family.
Why? I keep asking myself.
I’ll lose the part of me that makes me abnormal. The part of me that separates me from Them. The Them that were all around during the House’s heyday, not to mention the them that were inside that house.
House told me that he was simply a very sexual person. He said this as if it was in comparison to me. I didn’t like the comparison, it seemed unfair. I told him more about the dreams.
Sometimes people don’t like how I have strong dreams, how I live in a constant shifting, as if I never sleep. I guess it’s because it makes it sound like I have something they don’t. But he implied that he was more sexual than me. So I felt either way were even.
When I think of a woman a swarm of thoughts hit -- them locking children in cabinets, beating them, burning them, abandoning them, the insecure ones beating their men down, her cheating on W___ -- then a nice looking one smiles at me and it seems genuine, and it all melts away.
House has this idea that I have some personality thing that keeps me disinterested in sex, but it feels not real, like it’s just a game I play.
He yawns when I lean back and think I might be getting sleepy. He looks at his watch just at the moment that I wonder to myself what time it is.
_Maybe we’re long lost brothers,_ House said to me once.
For such a popular, confident guy, House doesn’t like it when we get separated. He was concerned that we might end up on different chalks for the first movement home.
When I wake from the strong sex dreams, the space between me and God’s Country feels like it’s lessened considerably.
House uses words like Dank. Like that’s so Dank, or that food was so Dank.
My not having violence is a game I play, too. It feels like I do have violence, like I’ve been violent, like I’m very familiar with it, with my own fists, I just pretend I don’t. It’s like I pretend to not remember, but I really don’t remember.
House talked about his uncle, who was a pathological liar. I didn’t really know what one was. He said it was someone who believed their own lies. I wondered about my not remembering but how I must remember if my dreams are so strong. The memories must be in me somewhere.
House said it was normal for a little boy to be sexual. The jarring it caused me when he said that lasted days.
It feels like I play these games so I will remain Tough -- functional -- so I could live, instead of Brave and Raw -- so I could remain Real. I feel like I’d rather be my Soul than be alive. I’d rather be Him.
Now that I allow the boy’s sexuality more, I remember other things too, like the zip-up pajama suit I used to wear as a little kid. I remember what a thief I was, stealing books from school so I could read them at home.
I always felt like there was a secret place I could live in, like a secret plane of life where I could function and no one could ever see me. I was a little criminal, with lots of secrets I can’t remember now.

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