4

Adam pulled up in a Honda and we talked shop as he raced to his house.
_We drive very aggressively up North, don’t worry,_ he told me.
He had facial hair now, that thin strip from sideburn to goatee that’s not really a beard just facial hair that’s been edged. He wore low basketball shorts and a t-shirt. At some point he mentioned K__. He talked about a drug over there called Pink, and how Muc_ was doing it. How he implied that K__ was part of that scene. I remembered Muc__ and K__’s friendship, and how it was about that time that K__ started coming across to me as fake somehow. No wonder, he was high.
I wondered why he chose to keep me separate from that. Why he chose for us not be friends anymore, except in a fake way he always denied and I could never let go of.
Upon arrival at the apartment I met his wife, mother in law, and kid.
Next we went to his friend’s house, which was a long drive toward the New Jersey shoreline and we talked some more about the deployment, especially the post deployment period, and how we couldn’t talk to civilians anymore, the space between us had been widened too much.
Both the civilians and the non-civilians spoke English, but they defined each word totally differently, making communication impossible. He’d had a difficult time with his wife, a young, crass woman with a thick New Jersey accent.
He said that she was used to being in charge, and he wasn’t having it when he got home from deployment. It was a constant tug of war. She had lived a tough life, being in charge was all she knew.
I told him that me and K__ had been two alpha males living with each other, and that we naturally went out of our way to be considerate of each other, like we were making a point we were friends, despite the obvious conflict implied since we were both alpha males.
Adam’s dynamic with his wife was the opposite. Neither of them were very considerate of the other. They’re household was a full and constant onslaught of the battle of the sexes.
His friend Mick’s house was an unassuming place, pretty tore up looking, where a single guy our age sat on the couch watching TV through a veil of smoke.
Turns out the two of them were old stoner buddies so I didn’t have to say much as they caught up.
Mick rolled a blunt and we passed it around. It took about an hour for me to feel the strong heartbeat implying fear, then the bravery required to learn a couple of new things, then the switch, and the whole world became Ugly, as ugly as it was when I was in the House.
And so began this high’s course of teaching. The world became so new it was like being in a hologram. I wished I had something to write with but told myself I’d remember, no matter what, just keep going, I’ll remember.
I can actually hear the boys’ voices in my head, not just what they’re saying. Sometimes the adolescent says something funny and sometimes the little boy makes a joke. It’s hard to get used to the fact that I’m all of them, all those days lived.
When you’re telling the truth you remain calm -- Brave. If there’s anxiety somewhere, there’s a lie. That’s how it works.
When I allow the words already written to become True, I don’t feel anxious, I just continue on being braver and braver as required, brave enough to believe myself, brave enough to insist to the point of demanding that the truth you have IS the Truth.
That the Baby Boy was holy, and the Boy, and the adolescent, and the young man I only know as Him .. Me. That the Baby Boy’s truth is the truth, and the Boy’s truth IS the truth, and the adolescent’s truth IS the truth, and so on and so on.
The secret is that you fight. You go to the soul place where the horrific is and you Soul Fight and you Win.
Before, I was afraid to fight, because the world couldn’t be a place where bullies decided the truth. As I got older I proved to myself that the truth remains true whether its fought for or not.
It’s about confidence. The word itself. That’s the Soul Fight I understood from the first time I got high on weed. Whomever is the most confident is the one telling the truth.
The braver one, the least anxious one is the one telling the truth. In that way confidence decides it. Not bullying, superficial confidence. That’s the part confusing to an abused child.
It’s whomever is the most Truly powerful .. I remember that from the first time I got high, when I remembered the first Soul Fight, the one between me and R__. I won that one, I turned out to be the Him, even though he was raping me.
Soulfights happen constantly. It’s never won all the way, but won over and over in each moment.
If you ever lose, it’s like all the ones before are also lost. And if you win then it’s like all the ones before are all won.
Maybe most work there way up to horrific soul fights, not down from horrific, but I’m still natural.
So confidence decides the truth. Seems backwards, but I know it’s not. You decide what is true, then you MAKE it true.
It has to do with how much fight you have. Do you have what it takes to win? Obviously .. Then you decide the truth of who you are.
They became ugly, Adam and Mick, ugly like the House was, physically ugly. Despite Adam being so classic New Jersey he suddenly became red-neck ugly.
It was like the whole world physically changed, even though it hadn’t, just my perception. A perception that was familiar, as if I’d had it before. A long time before, when I was little kid and lived in Horrific.
It’s at this point that the words Horrific and Ugly become synonymous. That’s why you carry it with you, the high said. That’s why it takes horrific-ness to surve the Horrific, and that’s why you feel Ugly afterward.
Then the high had me notice how Good I was, despite the ugliness around me. It started by comparing me to the people around me, and pointing out that I was better than them. No, I thought, that’s not right. It is, no but Adam’s my friend. And at that point Adam’s continence changed from Ugly to good looking, and I had to force myself not to stare at him, reminding myself that his features hadn’t changed physically, just my perception. So the Physical isn’t Real? I silently asked. Exactly, the Soul is Real, the physical just a manifestation.
I realized I was The Man. Believed it, went along with the high because that’s where the calmness was and the more I fought the more anxious I felt.
Looks, intelligence, horrific, my body got really tight, like all my muscles suddenly became aware to me, especially the buttocks, it started there, then spread to the abs, the shoulders, my posture changed, my body was totally tensed and yet the tension relaxed it.
This is presence, B. I had to choose, Was this correct? Then I remembered all I’d learned in my life, especially about Chi, and continued with the high.