4

The routine since I got here went something like this:
Adam s wife went to work and his young son woke up maybe an hour after.
His sister in law, Jamie, and I, get up and have breakfast, or lunch if Adam, Jamie and I have stayed up ridiculously late the night before.
Regularly, throughout the day, we walk over to the pool Adam s apartment complex has, which stays pretty calm and uncrowded.
Then in the evenings Adam starts up the grill and we hang out in their back yard along with his mother-in-law, Diane.
All the siblings were supposed to be there that weekend -- two brothers and maybe another sister -- because a birthday was involved, too, but the only one who could make it was Jamie, who came without her boyfriend, which Adam seemed relieved about.

Jamie is a sharp, wise-cracking athletic girl, with a thick New Jersey accent and manner. At first I thought her an ordinary girl, nothing exotic about her looks.
I noticed her looking at me or being extra considerate of me at times, not like she was mesmerized by me but as if I were any other Him.
At one point in the night I sat silently looking out the open window in the passenger seat of the SUV as she drove, her crying silently after she d gotten off the phone with her boyfriend of a few odd-years, a guy who seemed to have a problem with drinking, and had skipped out on her this weekend so he could drink with his friends.
Whenever she called him he promised he hadn t been drinking, but she could tell he had.
I noticed how clear her face was, symmetrical maybe.
At another point she bent over to get something out of her bag and I had to force my member to stay down as I walked by.
By that point I had figured out that I was worthy of her, and that if I had wanted to -- at some point, or in another time and place -- I could sleep with her.
Once that understanding becomes the norm that s when my self between my legs wants to get jumpy.

All of them have these strong personalities seemingly easily matched by a consideration of others. It s not like that down South, where the culture itself is the consideration of others.
Up North it s as if the consideration they re showing isn t culture-enforced, it s even more legitimate, and therefore they re allowed these more abrasive personalities. Who knows.

Once night after everyone went to sleep I watched King of the Hill, an animation series that Adam has in his DVD collection. (I m a night owl by heart.)
When I m not in the South I love this show, it makes me feel at home; I get all the jokes, spoken ones and the unspoken, I understand where the creators are coming from. When I am down South, I rarely watch this show.

When I m here, away from the South, all the things that weed does to me happens on its own, without the weed in my system.
Like watching King of the Hill: I can see the roles being expressed. First of all, there s the classic setting of the small southern town, then there s the football player jock trying to be responsible and patriotic and a good American (Hank), then there s the pot head lover-boy (Boomhouser), then there s the loser who tries so hard (Bill), then there s the guy so stuck in his own anger and rage he stays nuts (Dale). It s a guy s show, and guys know the roles.

Why is it so easy when I leave the South? And so hard when I m in the South. The way my GI Bill works I need to stay down South, everything s cheaper, I can navigate better, but I know I m going to be traveling regular or smoking a lot of pot, one or the other.
I remember that when I deployed it was like this, but inevitably I got used to my surroundings, and all the old baggage came back, still unresolved.

The first day, I wore an A-shirt at the pool, claiming that I burned badly. Adam s wife was off that day so she was at the pool with us, and yelled: We can see what s under there, there s no point in wearing a shirt.　
I remember those days as a kid, arguing with L__, never going without a shirt, not being allowed to go swimming if I didn t. It was one thing to honor the memory, and its horrific reasons, another to repeat it over and over, so the next day I didn t wear the A-shirt.

When I go to the swimming pool, I feel the glances at my body. I feel like it s either overly muscular or weirdly muscular. The younger boys always want to join in the game of catch Adam, Jamie, and I play with each other across the pool.
Inevitably it becomes a game of keep away, then a game of wresting the ball away from each other. Adam is totally comfortable with it while I stay more on the sidelines, not feeling comfortable just throwing boys around when they don t really have clothes on.

At one point Adam was flipping kids and one said: now try to flip him, ha, ha, ha .. the joke being that I was so Hulk-like. At another point Jamie suggested we all try to compete as far as who would make the most splash with a cannon ball. At first all agreed, but then decided due to my size I was already the obvious winner.
It s strange feeling universal but being inside one body type. Later in a bathroom mirror I kept sucking in my stomach and letting it out again, wondering if my abs were just my imagination, like how when skinny girls look in the mirror and think they re fat.
I know my waist size doesn t lie, and that ended the argument. I always feel like my body isn t natural, my muscles undeserved, as if there was something physical about me that exposed me as That, and not Him. My bow legs bother me.

Suddenly, one afternoon after we d gotten back from the pool, out of nowhere, the world shifts and it s like I m at the church, playing with my peers on the church lawn, except this time Adam, Jamie and I are playing a golf game on Wii.
I felt the strong connection, the seamlessness between the past and the future and who I was then and who I am now. It was the same day, the same world, the same person experiencing it.

It s like everything s a do over, every day a do over, as you and the day become more and more true. It s like the day is repeating, the season s repeating, everything s absolutely the same, these are my peers, and I m me, the same person as that kid.

Coming all the way into the physical .. I think about the writing, and how at the point the character (me) starts describing what it s like not to be numb and living in a 3D world, the reader will realize exactly how lost and crazy maybe he was when the reader first met him.

When I feel anxious or uncertain, being this far into the physical, this un-numb, all I do is think Sex, remember it s truth in me, the god in me, the Him in me, and I relax, no matter what age I am, no matter what story I m in, I m always Him, eternally, and it works, and I relax.

I m not high and yet when I m up here, so close to New York, so far from the South, I don t need to be for this to happen, my mind just unlocks. I think about moving sometimes, and ask a few questions here and there, about how much things cost, what the jobs are like.

Adam and I had gotten comfortable talking about pot and its affect on us, and also with talking about our families and the detrimental messes they had been.
Since Jamie and Adam were now in the same family, they shared a lot of that literally, so Jamie would join in. At one point I told Adam and Jamie about the Shifting, but not the Melting -- how when I would sleep I would have to learn how to melt into dreams closer and closer to the true memory, even though while I was awake I could remember little, and it was only when I was high that I began Shifting in the Wake world. I only tell a little at a time because I don t want to become a novelty, I have to stay relatable.

It wasn t like I was telling them something so important and serious about myself, it was more like I was rolling my eyes at my own story, and laughing about it, and because Shifting was such a unique thing they got a kick out of it, too, and it was fun, even though the Shifting was very serious, and an important part of my experience.
I like them knowing I come from horrific, or at least them having that general impression, because it feels honest of me. I know I ll never tell them about the House, because there aren t enough words, plus talking about it yanks me from the 3D world into the 2D, instead I ll say I m from horrific, and leave it at that.

I explained to Adam that you could get high by stunning your mind: like by reading Vonnecut or Ellison. That the high felt exactly the same, not the side effects or the individual charactersitics of each high, but the over all being high part.

It feels strange to hang out with someone for days at a time, especially when he has a wife and kid. But he insists, expects me to at some point get comfortable with it.
For some reason Adam acts like he understands me. Like he understands why I need to acquire such a large amount of weed, why it has to be of such high quality, why it s so important for someone from horrific to take this medicinal path -- all without us ever articulating it, the understanding seems easy, assumed.

His wife invited me for thanksgiving. I couldn t accept right away because I had to take into account J__ and Ms J__ and the five sisters. But maybe ..

__________