4

I unknowingly responded to everyone sexually. The people I liked, I had a crush on, the people I didn’t like, I didn’t have a crush on -- because I lived in this context where everything I did felt unfairly sexualized by others. Meanwhile, on the inside, I felt A-sexual.

The first was the owner of the sandwich shop/gas station where I got my first legitimate job when I was sixteen. His name was C___. He was twenty-six, into working out, and charming.
He was impressed with me because my work was so quiet and methodical. He thought these were signs of a great maturity, and I guess they were, only they lacked a childhood to go with, so there was a time bomb inside of me, waiting for the freedom to explode. He never once looked at my teeth, except out of a kind curiosity, or my face with the scarring .. he just seemed to genuinely like me.

Also there was a co-worker named B__. A confident girl, charming in a crass, bawdy way, who easily voiced her way into my silent world and could make me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe. She always compared me to the other co-workers, explaining to me how I didn't have this bad quality or that, and how I had this good quality and that, in a playful, angry way.
_Me and you, we run this store,_ she said one night as we were closing up, _C___, he'll figure it out sooner or later -- you know, like when we get a day off._

C___ and B____ were old friends and the three of us made a nice trio, and since B__ and I worked the most hours we became like a little family.

They were addicting. I always wanted to be around them. When the bell on the door would ring, and I would peek my head out from the back and see one of the them walk in for a shift, I'd get butterflies in my stomach.

I preferred to be there instead of at the House. The problem was, both C___ and B____ had lives of their own, families of their own, and friends. I was never in the friends list. I understand it now, by my looks, lack of education, lack of family, and lack of money, to them I was a kind of freak, someone they understood had little going for him, not even enough to live a normal life, or normal enough to be part of their world. This social separate-ness was dangerous in the South and especially dangerous in God‘s Country.
During the nineties, just being suspected of being A-sexual or homosexual would get you killed outright all over the Nation and my not dating was evidence enough for most. I spent an uncomfortable night in the closed-store, sitting against a glass display case, reading a book by its light, as a group of local townspeople banged on the store windows, shouting and trying to force in the door. My heart pounded, faced with the cold reality of my own lynching.

I started growing bigger around this time, taller, bigger, and taller and bigger again. And with that a freedom started to develop. Toward the end of the year I worked there, neither C___ or B___ liked me much any more.
Knowledge was learned .. I read during all my breaks, I had gotten braces, by working at the counter I had learned to talk. I had naturally changed, evolved, grown, whatever you want to call it, and their rejection was painful to me.

Once, B____ and another co-worker had made plans. When I came in, B___ told me what was going to happen. I would buy M___'s (a co worker‘s) car, a beat up old Camaro. Then M__'s money problems would be over, and she could move on with her promising life.

_But I don't want her car,_ I said.

B went nuts. So did M__.

As I listened to them, my now-more-free mind thought to itself, and I allowed the thoughts, waiting for their conclusion: These coworkers had assumed that M__'s life was of more value, and that mine didn't matter, so morally I was obliged to cater to M__, because she was the one with the future, while who did I think I was, I mean come on, look at you ..
Once the truth was clear, I listened to that instead of B___ and C____, and their rejection, though costly to me, was chosen by me.

I put in my notice, to everyone's amazement. The truth revealed itself more and more and I had to take it: turned out all the other workers had that same understanding that I had little or no options outside that job.
In my conscious mind, I understood and accepted that I wasn’t good enough. Underneath its numbness their was an anger directed toward myself, for not being good enough.