2

(Tuesday)
　
Woke up still high, but it’s not noticeable in my eyes, so I go on to work. It’s weird-ing me out how Real the world is, how real my co-workers are, how real the wood conference table is, my fingertips on it, as we have the weekly morning meeting.
It’s like that Simpson’s episode, called ‘Homer 3D‘. It’s a Halloween episode that’s psychodelic and at the end Homer finds himself to be 3D, instead of a cartoon figure, and just walks down the street, with eerie twilight zone music playing as the credits roll. I became 3D and remember vividly the last time I was 3D -- back in the days I was being raped.
It feels important. It feels like the world isn’t right and that’s why the word rape is on my mind so insistently I’m not paying attention to the meeting.
You’ve got to press charges, b.
Okay.

__________

　
During the day the high just took over, insisting this new perception I found foreign but horrifically familiar. All I had to do was set up my office, so no one was paying much attention to me, but I sure was paying attention to them.
It was right that you did this, I think to myself.
I wonder about the other guys around me whose manhood was stolen from them even though they hadn’t been raped -- they were simply weaker -- so it took less than rape to make them Forget.
Now I feel proud of myself, now I feel good. I jot down notes while I work.
I can’t believe they don’t know I’m high. It’s not that noticeable, a little crystallizing of the eyes’ color, but not much else.
I don’t let the fact that I can’t see real good worry me. The way the colors melt and blur together, it just makes the world more a playground and I just trust in my strong footing and balance. With my mind so clear, I can feel my feet and their instinctual balance, even though I can’t actually see it.
The drugs cause a separation between the soul and reality, making each vivid, heightening awareness and the sense of self. If I can articulate it, maybe I can still know it even when I’m not high. Same as the memories are still vivid when I’m not high or drunk.
Now I see them. The rapees and the rapists. At the church, Paster Joy__ was raping his son, that’s why his son, C___, grew up to be a child molester; and that’s why he let R__ do that to me. He knew; it was understood.
Sly__ raped Ant__, his son, who tried to sneak into my pants when we were thirteen. He was sexualized. Sly said someone had turned him while he was staying at his mom’s in Texas. But Sly turned him. That’s why he was always helping my parents with me, because he was just like them and understood them.
That’s why my parents trusted him enough to drop me off at his house for weeks at a time with some insane story of my misbehavior -- because they understood he’d call me a liar when I told him the truth, which he did, when I did.

I went to lunch with Sergeant Mc__ and Sergeant F___ who had deployed together. They're better at pretending to be lambs but really are wolves. Mc___ is the best at it because she's a woman, so she doesn't know to hide her own wolf, but because it's assumed, she's okay.
F___ is real good at it, but I see through him. I notice that they use the other side of their brains, the intellectual; the way they do their work, the way they perceive the world. To deal with them I have to constantly be switching sides. When I perceive the world I must be the wolf. When I deal with people I must be the lamb. Mc __ and F___ are going to be the first people to pick up on me being a wolf. The others respect the fact that I'm a wolf.
I notice that the more people take their jobs seriously, the worse their perception. The Lebowski's of the world (from the film The Big Lebowski), they've got the correct view of life. The ones who take their roles as their identities - are having the worst sex lives, the worst lives.

The most extreme wolf pretending to be a lamb is a butt-kisser, and that's exactly what F__ is, but SGT H__ jokes about it with him all the time, and F___ doesn't mind.

There's not a lot of true wolves around. Seems like the Army would be the place where a wolf could be at home. But I think with this new army, most are castrated early on. You got to pretend to be a lamb sometimes. That's how I got R___ to stop raping me. Then I had to remember, so I could remember my soul again, the wolf, the boy, the brave one. Him.

The reason why Mc__ can be a lamb without 'acting' like one is because she's -- female. The reason F__ can't not pretend to be a lamb is because he's -- black. But I can. The more I'm around Mc__ the more I fall into using the left side of my brain; I feel comfortable there, safe from further rape; the effeminate side of my brain keeps me hidden. Because I feel safer, I can feel more natural. But on that side of the brain I lack memory, I lack my soul, and I have to get high just to feel hopeful.
I can't get away with it. White men like to laugh at F__, enjoy his subtle reasons and his subtle butt-kissing, and men enjoy Mc__ for the gender reason. Men see I have no reason and enjoy it even more. No one cares if I was raped violently year after year after year. Because life's a war. Same as Nature.
All I have to do is pretend to be a lamb, while really I’m Him, with all the power in the world to be the most terrifying wolf. That’s what I’ve been doing this whole time, I just couldn’t remember.
Only the Brave, Good men have the power to rape and don't. Have the power to ravage a woman but they don't really because they've proven themselves to the lover - the lover trusts them. Sex is not done with a penis, it's done with the soul.

Each side of the brain has its own pros and cons. Mc__ is extremely well organized, H___ is chaotic but works just as well. They both have pretty extreme personalities. Maybe most people are in the middle. I'm not, I'm the whole thing - if I survive the reckoning.

I know I used to be all the way on the other side with the rest of the boys I knew when I was little. I used to watch basketball games and love it, and wondered about my sisters who didn't really get sports. I remember being a boy all the way.

Mc__ hangs out with the guys like F__. Her husband hangs out with guys like F__, because he's a jealous fool. I get it now. Her husband didn't like me and I never knew why. Mc__ still does.

Sergeant J__ will gave me a couple of nudges, she does that when she doesn't have me totally Lamb. She wonders if I can see through her. It freaks her out; I lose trust. She's a woman, she doesn't have a wolf's perception. She plays Lamb, and I'm supposed to, too, softened by the charm of her crass manner and vulgar cracks.

I notice I don't need to write notes when I'm on the right side, everything is effortless clear, even during the chaos of work. I notice I got to write notes constantly when I'm on the left side. The world doesn't make sense to me.
I see beauty everywhere, instead of just in what's esthetically beautiful, meanwhile on the right side I see the beauty in it no matter how esthetically ugly it is, because I know the physical doesn't matter.
I guess that's why the femininity is attracted to masculinity, and vice versa, no matter what gender it shows up in.
It's just two sharply different perspectives of the world. I suppose most of us land in the middle somewhere. I didn't have that choice. I’m either all or nothing.

It's like emotions aren't my soul either, they're just what my soul's experiencing. Emotions are so much decided by sex, by the way it feels, everything it implies, the way it felt to be raped, the way it felt to be best friends with Trevor.

Maybe it's why I distrusted the world so much - I couldn't perceive it well, because I couldn't remember. I only knew that there was this great lie being told and everyone was in on it, and that it was extremely detrimental to me.
My life isn’t right, it’s all backwards because he raped me, right now it’s like a crash course but to the point where my psyche is struggling for it’s life, but then time, too, is in the red instead of the black. Then do this in one day, I think to myself. I just have to be stronger, braver.
Men have decided the world for Mc__ and J___, one gets to play the game without pretending because she’s good looking, so men assume they could turn her into a lamb in bed. Most men wouldn’t want to touch J__ so she has to play the game another way, a way that degrades her, but it’s not her choice, she has to survive in the man’s world. They made the rules.
Men pretend to be Him, though they weren’t brave or strong enough. Some are brave and strong enough but then are exhausted by it, because it’s the hardest thing in the world to be a man -- to be brave and strong enough for everybody. So they get high, or drunk, in order to ease the knowledge of the Difficulty.
People don’t treat me as if I’m Him. It’s not because I’m ugly. Only ignorant women think that men can be so good looking they’re automatically Him. It’s because I didn’t know I was Him. I wouldn’t show my bravery, I hid it, I wrote it down in notebooks like some secret -- some mystery. I couldn’t Remember. I couldn’t remember anything. And what I could remember wasn’t perceived properly, it always felt like a great big lie.
Wouldn’t I rather know, even if it was horrifically? Wouldn’t I prefer the Difficult life to the not-Difficult? Isn’t that what the Brave one wanted when he leaped out of the Who Knows and was born when others may have stayed there forever.
It’s Bravery that is required and nothing else, not success, or good memories, or a good childhood, it’s Bravery that my soul finds most enjoyable, that sets me apart from the dead ones still in the Who Knows.
R__ tried to take it from me, same as Mom, and A__, and H__. It takes the most bravery to live this. This is horrificness.

__________