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W__ and I message each other through face book somewhat regularly. I told him a bit of it, not the sexual stuff, but the memory of me standing there with a dead body at my feet and not knowing how I got there, and then telling him that I did remember and it turned out not to be murder,
even if I was the only one not yelling and screaming.
It was a small part of a larger email, one mostly about normal day to day stuff.
When W__ replied back the next day he hadn’t seemed to hear what I was saying. He didn’t seem to get what a big deal it was, and how it was near the beginning of my life going down a road of no return.
No matter what, it always feels ridiculous -- even sacrilegious -- to say any of my story out loud to another person. Stories like that don’t fit into the present world. They come across as inappropriate. I guess that’s just the way it is.
When I remember something I get less numb, true, but then days later I’ll remember something else -- which gets me even less numb -- but which changes the context of the first memory. In that way the story constantly changes. I don’t change. I become more and more real, but my story always remains unknown, and therefore it doesn’t feel right when I tell it out loud.
I put the memories in choronicological order. I first did it and posted it as _Real, Culmination_, and since then have added to it.
Not only do I have to get used to living wordlessly, but also to connect with other human beings while remaining story-less. This society isn’t set up that way. Not only do you have to have a story, but it must be a pre-approved one.
I just remember the dream about the woods, and remember that living wordlessly and storylessly is very close to the woods.

__________

　
(Friday 02APR2010)
　
I got my taxes done. It was one of the last things on my post deployment list. I think I might be making it in this new Western culture, despite the excruciating torture of shopping centers.
Ironically the man who did my taxes was an aging Arab from Morocco. I noticed him watching my scars, especially the couple on my face. One is about a half inch long and is a diagonal line in the center of my forehead.
He asked me about my deployment; asked me if I knew any Arabic; I told him no. I tried not to say it as if I truly did find those American-murdering Arabs to be equal to all other human beings but I saw his face twitch slightly at the way I said it, so I knew I had failed.
This is why I take pills before I go out in public.
For the most part I was Him even though I wasn’t high. The Arab said it was an unusually pleasant experience, doing my taxes. He seemed genuine, even surprised, so I believed him.
(At laundry mat.) I haven‘t done laundry since I came home so I have several trash bags and laundry baskets full of dirty laundry. I feel a little embarrassed at first. It takes a long time to fold them all .. Too many memories to ever write down. They are seamless.. And I’m not high or drunk or even feeling all that comfortable, just brave, and they’re still here, all the memories.
I can see it now, what the film the Hours and the book Ms Dalloway were alluding to: all the world can be seen in a moment, in a piece of wood, in the feel of wind against your cheek, looking into a person’s face -- the whole world can be seen there.
I can see that now.
When I began to think -- which is something that comes along well after your born -- that was when I began to leave the Real world behind. I was only aware of what my little boy thoughts could deduce. No wonder I couldn’t remember anything before the age of twelve.
LNSLation wrote about being made effeminate, and it triggered me. I still have the triggers concerning Ian ___. The triggers lead to memories of my being very masculine, even to the point of macho. Did I used to be macho? Before he raped it out of me for awhile? When the answer is yes, I remember more, and am less numb.
The thing I most wanted those first days when I was high and remembering -- I wanted to talk about it. I just wanted to talk away. But it wasn’t allowed. I remember what it was like to never be believed. The way the adults back then would say things to discourage me ever saying anything they claimed unbelievable -- even though it was true.
W__ told me once that no matter what he would have found a way. No matter what abuse, he would’ve fought back and fought back and fought back for years and years and years. He would never have gone numb or disremembered.
W___ who isn’t from abuse. W___ doesn’t know about the soul place. Doesn’t know that the soul can be up for grabs, a small child fighting against a grown man, a grown woman, and two sisters. He doesn’t know what the place looks like, the timelessness of it, the eternal consequences of the events that take place there.
I had the same feeling in the House -- a feeling that this is temporary. I thought it meant that the House and how my experience there was temporary. I didn’t know it was that I was sexualized and had a strong sense that life Itself was temporary. Sex makes it okay to die, it feels that good.
HIM. It’s getting easier to not be numb. The numbness used to be my barometer of whether I was Him or not, or some lesser, weaker version. Now I have to take special consideration to remember to be Him.
It was like I was in training. Like when the Brave one leapt forward for the most horrific life he could find, it’s like my soul’s in training.
All those lists and books and films and notes, I was training myself to be able to handle the memories.
I used to think I could write the truth of my life down so it could be put safely away, and I wouldn’t have to live my whole life with the accurate (unnumb) perception. Now I see that that was a mistake.
This world would be unbearable if I didn’t know I was Him, if I didn’t stay focused on being Him. It’s amazing how easy it is to lose your self.
I notice people look at me, especially my arms when they move, like when I was folding sheets at the laundry mat, they were up and then in toward my chest and the girl and her older brother, stealing glances at my arms. I don’t feel attractive or unattractive, I don’t feel anything but not-numb, I just feel like Him.
I notice that in order to remain Real while I’m in public I have to feel the Sadness. Real sadness is different than I thought it would be. It’s not like a depressed, numbed out kind. It’s the kind Mozart is describing with Fantasy in D Minor.
It’s sad that K__ is just as brave as me, and W__, too. It’s sad that by having my story I’m not ahead in anyway. All’s still equal. I’m not behind. I just Am.
To be so in the moment you stop time forever. That’s the soul place. They found my soul place, the one Trevor knew. R__ forced his way into it, years and years of rapes in the night in the bathroom. Years and years it took and he knew he had me. My movements slowly became more feminized. Mom standing outside the door, A__ and H__ listening to my wailing, _help me, help me_ in rhythm to his thrusts.
I am back from doing laundry, listening to The Scientist by Cold Play, which was the music to a video of scenes from The Hours on YouTube. I put it on repeat. Slowly dancing with a bottle in my right hand, my head hanging drunkenly so that I’m always looking at the floor. Ahhh woooh .. ooooh oooh oooh, he sings.
I do wish I had someone. I wish Trevor were here all the way. It’s funny, it’s just as comforting that I turned out to be Him. He’s my Eternal Role, and I’m not acting.
When I drink now I don’t taste the hope of the drunkenness but instead I taste the blackberries, the grapes, the malt and the barley. I’m not a viewer of the film the Hours. I’m on the other side now. I’m in it now. There’s no escaping this new life. The original life finally realized. I’m Really here. I get it now, that part of the Color Purple: _I may be black,_ Celie says, _And I may be a woman, but I’m here, I’m here._ She could see it now, the whole world in a detail, a stick of wood, the crust of biscuits, a voice singing, despite her having been violently raped all her days.
I watched Oprah earlier. She interviewed Janet Jackson. They talked a lot about Michael. Janet cried some tears, and basically claimed innocence. What they did to that little boy named Michael Jackson. No one ever talks about that. Both parents free to walk the streets. The siblings all playing the role of strong victim. What they did to that little boy. How much money they made off that little boy, the abuse committed on that little boy.
R__ and Mom and A__ and H___ hoped I’d come out like Michael, they hoped that the rapes would be effective enough, so they could grow up to be Janet Jackson on Oprah, almost convincingly playing innocent. Her saying the family did countless interventions on Michael, interventions that included the same people who abused him so horrifically. How can there be so little Truth acknowledged in this world.
It’s one in the morning now and I’m still dancing the same way to the same song.
I played the piano, drunkenly, for an hour or so. Slurred notes have their own appeal, unlike a slurring drunk. I played the theme from Love Story, in my own way. And Over the Rainbow again, still appealing, but as unrecognizable as possible.
The worst part is that with all this talk about pressing charges against your abusers I know I still couldn’t put my parent behind bars. If they were in jail -- each personally going through what it was like to be in jail for the sexual abuse they committed on me -- all I would be able to think about each day was them in jail, how bad it must be for them. I guess because I love them. I swear that’s the worst part.
I love my punching bag. When I first got it I broke all my knuckles on it, I kept hitting it so hard. It took three months for them to heal. I guess I have an odd living room. A grand piano, a recliner, a punching bag, and one of those tall metal tool chests; a fire place, an old fashioned sound system on the mantle with the big cherry wood speakers and a flat screen TV. I love it though.
The first wine bottle is empty, so I opened another, this one from France. All the way from France. If I was still numb I wouldn’t be able to appreciate that. I would just drink it like medicine.
The worst thing is that I got to go to J__ and his wife’s house tomorrow for an Easter weekend cookout. I know I’ll take eight pills before starting the drive out and I know I’ll hide a flask of vodka in my cargo pocket. Same as I do whenever I have a family function.
(J__ and his wife were put down as my foster parents on Army paperwork as a kind of convenient accident and now it seems official, though I’m in my twenties.)
I seem to be an addict, and am on my way to being a serious one. I start work in a couple of days, and I know I’ll take eight pills on that morning and keep a flask in the cargo pocket of my Army uniform.
What if Trevor came back from the dead and looked me in the eye. Could I look him back? Even with these memories where I wrestle?
Drunkenness is amazing in the end -- when you’re not numb -- you can feel the vibrations. I wish I could stay in this place forever. Dancing and drinking and escaping through a song. I did that when I was little. Always keeping a song stuck in my head and making sure it was louder than the Horrific I was living.
I have taken a shower and now tell myself please stop please stop but then I remember I’m twenty seven years old and won’t agree to lose anymore time. So I remember, and remember, and remember, and I keep the song on repeat and I curl up on the bed with no sheets or pillows since I’ve done laundry but not made the beds and I remember and I remember and I remember.
_No one said it would be easy,_ he sings, _No one said it would be this hard. I’m going back to the stars._
　
__________