2

(Saturday)

All this is for you, I think to myself. These dishes you re washing are yours. The suitcase you haven t unpacked and put away is yours full of your clothes to go in your dressers. It doesn t make sense, when you don t see it that way it s like you re mad at Life itself.
That doesn t make sense. All this is for you. This house, the counters are at your waist level, for your convenience, everything is for you.

__________


I feel like Sampson and David and Jonathan were real people, just like I did when I was kid, I feel like we could be brothers. I feel connected to the past, to death, to history, to the other side of the veil.

__________


So Him honors the Boy, and the Boy honors Him. And that’s how it works, never letting go of that.
I honor the boy. That’s my job.
I was supposed to be doing that all along, and was, maybe, but there was that period in the beginning where I was the boy.
Everything was so confusing, horrifically so, and then I wasn’t a boy anymore, and everything started to make sense, horrifically beautifully so.

__________

　
The high yesterday was unstable. Kept insisting on more than just the small changes of rewiring but instead a big change in my perception. Like a shift I couldn’t quite take yet, because I didn’t yet know the story behind it. The shift just happened and I had to concentrate to figure out how I got here.
I couldn’t figure it out. Why didn’t the high just show me? I felt bad, guilty, indignant even, and couldn’t solve the mystery it insisted on me solving.
Tuesday night the boy insisted I remember that night with Mom waiting for Smokey. The whole world changed, became the day -- physically -- as if it were the exact same day and I just happened to be twenty seven also.
I didn’t get what was profound there. I tried to write the memory out but it seemed pointless. It’s strange that me and the boy can be the same and yet split apart my some wordless language barrier.
A strong feeling of peace and groundedness confirmed the truth of it for me. This is the true world, the one in which that night happened. These are the true colors of my perception.

__________

　
My old unit in artillery has been on my mind. I can still go back to it. I left in order to take a job. It’s the same job technically as before deployment, but totally different and unnecessary to me now. I was still a little high off the pills when I got home from work. I wrapped a sock around my eyes and took sixteen more pills. I watched the hallucinations on the back of my eyelids. It’s like being in one of those hologram chambers on Star Trek, like a virtual reality, except it’s steeped in memory as the mind does its rewiring, walking me through different scenarios, different memories, different perceptions, trying to teach me something important.
SFC T__ had emailed me earlier, that‘s why the unit was on my mind. I know when I go back to the old unit, with W__ and my other friends, he’ll have questions. I went straight from horrific to his unit, under his supervision. He sensed I was from somewhere horrific like social services.
_Boy, you ain’t right,_ he told me.
_And you’re civilian; I’m not; and I’m half your age,_ was my answer.
He cares about me, maybe, wants to know answers even I don’t know. As the rewiring and hallucinations on the back of my eyelids did their work, I understood the answer to the inevitable pretense I will face: a pretense I used to agree with, that I was damaged goods and since I had no memory it meant I had no excuse for being Wild. But I honor the boy.
When I woke up and took the sock off from over my eyes, I felt free of the artillery unit, those years within my wild days, I feel free of all those past embarrassments, the trouble I stayed in. I honor the Boy.
I still dislike the volatility of it, the anger-frustration, etc, of all this trying. Success is sweet, but the price humbling.
I feel okay now, back to my original self. I want to say _Good job,_ to myself.
I didn’t want to take the pills at first, but understood the work had to be done quickly, harshly even, and the risk implied to my psyche I felt I could handle.
I know others might think the pills a bad idea, and I did too, but I did it anyway, because I had a strong feeling.

__________

　
It’s like the boy is my own son. I didn’t know it could feel this way. So separate but so the same.
So the soul’s job is to honor the human. Like some guardian angel or god. I can rest this body in the ground in peace. I guess that was the point all along. So you grow up not into an adult but grow up to be your soul instead.
Just like when I was seven, and first understood the honorableness of suicide, first contemplated how it was to be done, I chose when enough was enough.
I made the call how much healing he had to do to live a normal, happy life. Just like with Scruff, I decided if it was worth keeping him in this kind of pain another day, or if I should be put down.

__________

　
I’m at work. There is a shakiness to the high. Technically I’m high on thirty-two pills, not sixteen, but it simply took that many.
All I’ve got to keep a close eye on is the shakiness, since I’m at work. My heart is palpitating again. Doing thu thu thu thu instead of thump, thump, thump thump.
I’m so high I’m trembling.

__________

　
(half awake in the early morning, going back to sleep, waking up again for a few seconds.)
I didn’t know I could remember what skin felt like, and the muscles and bone underneath; the way that lips taste, the intimacy of tongue against the inside of the lips. I had forgotten what another heartbeat felt like. It had been so long.
I had forgotten that’s how sex worked. That you weren’t separate from your member. Who you were was the kind of member you were.
Strong and powerful, then that’s the member the person I was having sex with experienced.
Skillful, quick, athletic, then that’s what he or she experienced inside of them.
My eyes are closed again. K__ lay there asleep, with that lost to the world expression he has when he’s sleeping. He is on his side, facing me, his arm thrown over me. His forearm on my chest. I don’t feel gay, just young and male.
There was an intimacy as we thrashed under the sheets. It wasn’t two bodies indifferently getting what it wanted, but --
For some reason he turned into Nicole Kidman. She’s nude in a lot of movies. Her body is recognizable to me.
I know it was because I was asleep and still high -- that’s why the dream was so vivid that I could smell her skin. Feel the little blonde hairs on his forearm.

__________