2

The next morning, I felt anger toward my workplace.
I had promised to go in and finalize our discussion. I told myself to handle it like K__ would, cause he’s closest to me personality wise.
He acts like he needs the person’s help, he manipulates them. Trust that you’re likable, I told myself, Be respectful, but tough.
The idea of the bike trip was what got me through the end of the deployment, true, but my deployment is none of their business. I don’t have to explain why my deployment was tough.
In the end, I don’t buy it. I know my workplace’s atmosphere. I know how the complainers can rule, and how the ones who complain the most tend to do the least. I don’t buy their story of the reasons why it’s necessary I come back early. I think it’s another workplace fantasy.
It’s a lot to ask for me to be eager to come back to a workplace that never emailed me while I was deployed. That handed a position I unofficially filled for a year without even emailing me that the position now existed and was open for resumes.
It’s a bit much for them to casually expect me to teach my new supervisor how to do a job I used to by myself, and did well, to the point where I had to look for things to do and could pass inspections effortlessly -- especially when this new supervisor is notoriously immature.
If I come back too early and H___ doesn’t have a better handle on things, I’m really just setting myself up for a situation that may last for years, one where I’m simply doing someone else’s job for them. His position has to be hands on, most tasks can’t be delegated, because of the nature of his responsibilities.
I’m not going to bank on the open position, outside of logistics. It will go to whoever’s most qualified, that’s how it works. I’m not going to trick myself happy by believing in some vague future.
As I was walking into the workplace, I ran into the number two there, Sergeant J___. She’s enlisted instead of an officer. She’s a hard a-ss, but charming. I could speak more bluntly and she could answer more bluntly because we were both enlisted and therefore in the same boat: she had been my rank before and I would probably have her rank one day. Meanwhile, talking to officers can be like talking to aliens.
After I made the majority of my points, Sergeant Jo___ softened, and began to admit a few things, in a quieter voice, even though we were in her office with the door closed. She seemed to accept that I understood this situation was bizarre and their explanations were not making sense.
She explained that Sergeant A__ -- my workplace rival before I deployed -- had badmouthed me consistently while I was deployed, which is why no one went out of their way to contact me about the position.
(His bad mouthing was okay when I wasn’t deployed, because I had such a wealth of credibility and he had none.)
Since then they‘ve found out how corrupt he is, and a compulsive liar, and they‘re relieved that for admin reasons he‘s losing his job, and they‘ll be rid of him.
While I was deployed, she was asked to take on H___ as the workplace‘s logistician even though it would likely be a disaster. She finally agreed, because there were no other remotely qualified candidates. It was her who chose to carry H___.
There was no plan to have me carry him indefinitely. She’s the one who’s been carrying him, she said, and showed me her secret logistics workload. That’s why she needs my help. It will never become my responsibility. She needs me to help her with her work load. I was relieved, and agreed to start the Tuesday after Easter.
.. It’s seems contradictory: that the story is true, yet nothing happened. This stuff happened and yet nothing happened. When I got back from my workplace, I went running, I worked out, I cooked for a long time. I did exactly what I wanted, remaining in a structure-less existence, despite having to go to work in a few weeks, despite having certain errands that had to be done before then, despite the responsibilities inherent in making it in this structured society -- it’s because I know that nothing happened today, nothing of significance.
The one moment I live in is always the same. Like the fly who lives only one day, makes love, dies, and has missed out on nothing.
I ended up getting high: memories memories memories, but in an easy, fluid way, where they all run together and I don’t feel the need to make sense of them. I could remember and exist without words.
I’m the same with my eyes closed: I’m a baby, a kid, a man, The voice isn’t me. It’s hard to know it without a voice to give substance to it. The soul wants to live. It can go back to lifelessness when the body’s dead -- so for now, no voice in my head.

__________

　
Woke from a nightmare where I kept turning out to be R__. ‘You’re not him, I promise,’ I wrote quickly, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

So that was the world R__ excepted. One in which children could be f-cked and he was still a good person. That was Reality for him, the end all. No wonder he ended up so steeped in religion and its stories of another Reality, one in which he was good just by being a Christian.
I’m the punishment for their crimes -- R__’s and Mom’s Father -- I paid the price. I’m the only boy and the generations between my legs will not own any of their qualities, cause I paid the price for them.
It is true that if I had been braver and stronger I would be at this place of peace while younger, and with less self-inflicted scarring. If I could teach another person anything, it would be that.

__________

　
I see Trevor as the young man from the dreams now.
I’m glad, because it sometimes freaked me out, remembering a little-boy lover, remembering us playing in the church balcony, us grinning and wrestling under a blanket at a babysitter‘s.
When he touches me now, I remember what he looked like walking me through the after life in the dream where he said: _We’re just right here, we’re just right here,_ even though at the time I didn’t know who he was and couldn’t remember much.

__________

　
Mc__ has crossed my mind a few times. Since early on I’ve had a crush on her. I caught her noticing me and then I noticed her. Before that it hadn’t seemed like a possibility, because she’s the same rank as Sergeant J__, though decades younger, so I purposely didn’t look at her that way.
I’m the only one she really talks to at work. She’ll get to the point where she doesn’t stop and hours go by. She invited me to a hockey game with her and her husband. I figure I’ll take M___, because he lives in the same city.
Her husband isn’t a real man, and once I met him I understood why she notices me. She noticed my muscles first. I caught her watching my arms move during my first week there.
She has this sad, repressed, self-controlled look about her, which I think has something to do with the tragic death of her cousin when she was a teenager. I think she had a crush on him, the way young girls will have an innocent crush on their fathers.
Her husband, D__, is much older than her, and a notorious liar, but Mc__ is the only one who doesn’t catch on to it. He was her supervisor at another job, and was able to weasel his way into her life because she was young and still living at her parents’ and didn‘t know enough to not take him at face value.
I mentioned that K__ had been my battle buddy while we were deployed. _Oh, that’s D__’s friend,_ she said. I allowed it, and didn’t correct her, even though I knew K__ couldn’t stand D__.
She acts differently about me, acts hopeful, even relieved. Sometimes I’ll catch myself wondering what might happen between us; or if it’s my duty to make something happen between us.
(Dreamed of sleeping with Mc___) You’re causing her disillusionment, you’re telling her a secret that she can’t know on her own. You’re telling her how good a real man feels, how good sex really is, what sex is all about. And it hurts to be disillusioned, it’s scary, but you’re him, and you got her in the safety of your arms.
You have to want the person enough to commit the crime, yet you have to stop short of rape, and you have to get it right, you can’t be rejected or the pain might affect your sense of Him. That’s what’s scary about sex.
I already know that without the scary part life is lessened greatly, so I get that sex works the same. I’m an initiator at heart. Even though I’ve been penetrated and acknowledge the pleasurable feeling it technically had -- my soul‘s an initiator, a penetrator.
These things weren’t as clear to me until I woke from the dream. I was like that with Trevor, I initiated sex and he died later because he loved me.
It was my fault.

__________