5

I spent the night in the same town as the cookout. This town was much closer to the county seat I had to go to for the appointment with the sheriff’s. I didn’t really get to enjoy the hotel experience because I had gotten there so late, but I did gulp down the breakfast they served out in the foyer.

At the sheriff’s there was no one at the window, but instead two women at desks inside the room the window looked in upon. The one on the right, a black woman with an educated way about her asked me what I needed.
Talking lowly like I always did wasn’t an option so I had to use a somewhat loud voice to say that I was there because I had an appointment with the county sexual crimes investigator. She told me to have a seat.

The waiting room was empty but for me. The sheriff’s department was deep inside a government building that connected the courthouse with the other departments: a maze of mostly-glass hallways and large mostly-glass foyers where the hallways would all converge sometimes.
A lot of people who worked outside the county had been moving in the last ten years, due to the rapid growth of the nearest big city, which was about an hour’s drive away. I figured the county had come into quite a bit of money lately.

I sat and watched the people walking past outside in the glass-lined hallway that led back to the courthouse. Some were in striped shirts - inmates - and others wore the usual tie-and-slacks look (and Caucasian skin) of most Southern lawyers or civilian-clothed law-enforcement professionals.
I noticed that I had never felt more present in my life, and wondered what Tolle would think about that, so many years after I had studied his books.

Don’t have a flashback, I kept telling myself, feeling one coming on. It did anyway, except this time instead of it being like I was being pulled away from the present world, into a different one, it was like I was melting into the one I was already in, merging with it even more, a world where I’m
sitting in the empty waiting room of a sheriff’s department, about to report ten years of sexual assault. I could see my parents bedroom, and not only could I see myself as a child on my parents’ bed, but also A__ as a child there, too.
I had forgotten what she had looked like as a child. Elegant now, but scrappy with freckles back then.
He was inserting himself into her, same as he did me. I hadn’t known that before. It had always been a mystery of whether I was the only one. I had been in that room so many times, under those circumstances of him raping me, I could even remember the way the sunlight looked, and the mirror beside the bed, so that I could watch
what he was doing to me. He preferred A__. What he did to me was rape, because he was pissed at me. But what he did with A__ was fueled by his own pleasure, because she had the correct parts.

A man stepped into the waiting room and stepped up to the window. He had the loud, thick-but-clipped way of talking that most Yankees seemed to have down here. He didn’t seem to be acting quite right, real hyper acting, but not smoothly. I had watched a series of lawyer types come in to pick up paperwork from the window, and one bail bondsman. Though this guy was dressed
the same way - button down collar shirt and khakis - he didn’t act like he was there for business. The same woman told him to have a seat.

Though the waiting room was empty but for me, the man sat somewhat near me, and after glancing at me once, started talking. _Yeah, I’m here to pick up some paper work so I can get custody of my kids,_ he said. _There’s no jobs here is there, man?_

_Not really, not nowadays,_ I said.
I figured he was in his thirties, with a wide matured face and a desperate look in his eye. He wasn’t his own Him, so I all I could do was humor him.

_I came down South for the work, but now it’s all dried up, I gotta get back up to New York, but I don’t want to leave my kids. Their mother is
abusing them. I got a call from my boy when I was in New York where he said his mamma was beating his sister with a clothes hanger. One of the kids there isn’t mine, and his father lives up there so I go to his house and I’m like, she’s abusing your kid, we gotta do something, I told him about the clothes hanger, told him about some other stuff, tried to get my son or daughter on the phone but it stayed off the hook, the guy’s like whatever
man, he’s like what can you do, man. I couldn’t believe he acted that way, so I come down here myself, looking for work too, and try to talk to my kids but they won’t talk, then I finally get my daughter up here to give a statement, which she does, now I’m waiting for my copy of the report so I can use it to get custody, but the cops are acting like she didn’t really say a whole lot for me to use, I don’t know what I’m going to do._
Are the kids out of the home now? I asked casually, as if of course they would be.
_What do you mean?_
Did child protective services pick them up, place them with someone safe instead of leaving them in danger.

_Why would child protective services give them to anyone but me? They’re safe with me,_ he said, suddenly offended.

Well yeah, of course they are, but child protective services doesn’t know you. Isn’t it more important that they be safe than with you, you know,
maybe .. I said suddenly feeling like the conversation had taken a dangerous turn.
_Yeah, yeah, I get what you’re saying, but you know I’m just trying to handle it through the police.”

I couldn’t make him out, couldn’t trust what he was saying because he wasn’t a Him, wondered what might really be going on.
Maybe the reason he’s not a Him is because he’s so upset, I thought to myself. That’s what happens to men, things get to them and they’re not men anymore, they’re so upset and desperate feeling.
The man got up to grab his paperwork, then headed toward the door, _Pray for us,_ he told me as he as he was going out, as if I were a neighbor of his or a fellow church member.

A woman in civilian clothes came out, saying my name in the form of a question. She was a small woman, maybe seven or eight years older than me, attractive.
I had forgotten what this county’s Southern accent sounded like. I used to own one just like it, but had learned to drop it so I could get work in other, less-impovershed counties. She led me back to her office and asked, _Do you need to register?_

I told her I had an appointment with the country sexual crimes investigator. It was for nine o’clock. I had his cell number but I couldn’t ever understand him when he gave me his name. I had made the appointment last Monday for this Monday and I was about ten minutes late when I got to the front window.

_Yes, but do you need to register?_
_I don’t know what that means._
She spoke lowly, as if embarrassed, _Do you need to register as a sex offender?_
_No,_ I said with a surprised chuckle.
_Um, I’m figuring you were talking to Chris, who’s not here right now, he had to work last night I think, he’s probably still sleeping. Let me try something._
She acted nervous, I guess because she didn’t know what I was there for and I still wasn’t telling her. She called a few numbers on the office phone,
then pulled out her cell phone and called a number off of that. Finally a man answered, sounding sleepy; she put him on speaker, which I thought was a nice gesture, and relaxed a bit.
_Um, Chris. Do you remember talking to an
officer at the _____ police department last week? He gave you the cell number of a young man I’ve got here in front of me, who says you had made an
appointment with him at nine this morning?_

_Um. Can you take his cell number, and let me get ready and get there maybe it’ll take about an hour, and I’ll call him to come back hopefully within the next hour and a half, will that work?_

She looked at me, hopefully, but with a smile that I was thankful for - it didn’t seem fake. The woman acted like she actually enjoyed her job, so I was obliging.

I drove out to the same Outlet Center I had driven to last time I was waiting for the investigator to call me. I couldn’t get the man in the waiting room off my mind, and how his manhood seemed shot, he reminded me of Jess, who’s manhood always seemed to be hanging by a thread. Maybe I had the more natural life, the hardest part was childhood. Isn’t that how it is for animals? Is that more natural? Funny, the one with my life being the more natural man.

The stores had just opened and I worked my way through them, not really seeing much until I got to the Levi’s store, where I stayed about an hour,
working my way between sales racks and the dressing room.
It was interesting to be the only customer there, right after they’d opened, because the store
owner and his clerk were talking freely, not yet ready to start acting like a store owner and a sales clerk.

One was an older, matronly blonde, in her later thirties, early forties. She had a hip way about her and an easy laugh. The owner was a
younger guy with a mustache, talking about how he was playing with his two boys in the street when he got a call from the store. It was one of the
teenage clerks.
_I get the feeling he doesn’t get any attention at home_, the owner said. _He was talking and talking and talking, finally I had to tell him I was in the street with my sons and had to get off the phone._
_I know,_ the woman said with a laugh, _those two guys are funny, each one of them will talk your ear off. And always ready for a hug._
_It’s weird, the guys who work in the store hug more than the girls do - makes you wonder,_ he
said with innuendo.
Him and the woman laughed.

Shortly afterward, two men about my age entered the store. They both seemed normal to me, but I was surprised that they were looking for a very specific pair of Levi’s jeans. The bigger guy, who looked like he could’ve been a scruffy football player in high school, knew the names of the styles and was making fun of his friend, who was still wearing jeans from the nineties.
The woman laughed with them and they all seemed to be thoroughly enjoying each
other. That’s the thing about the outlet center, it brought out with it all the gays. In years past when I’d shop the outlets, the gays would be so strange acting they would freak me out; their movements would see so unnatural you couldn’t predict them, like the way you never know how or when a wild animal was going to move.
But these guys were normal, and the woman nice, and I wished I could’ve been part of their world. It seemed so civilian and friendly.

The Banana Republic was full of women, and I was the only man, and they all seemed to tense their shoulders when I walked in.
I was finding a lot of deals and had had to stop by the Jeep just to drop off the Levi’s purchases.
I wondered why I was buying so much. This is a hard day, I told myself.

The phone rang and someone from the sheriff’s department asked me bluntly what I wanted. _I had an appointment at nine with the county sexual crimes investigator.._
_Yes, I understand that -sir - but what do you want? What is the appointment about._
_Sexual child abuse._
_You want to fill out a report, you gotta go to child protective services. You’re at the wrong
place, -- sir -_
_Child protective services is the ones who sent me to you._
_Well when you come in, asked for Lieutenant G___._
_Okay, fine._
And with that he hung up. It was at that point I realized I didn’t belong here either.

__________