Alpha Male, 1

__________

　
(19MAR2010 Friday)
　
I started out my life as my self, as a kind of adult/soul.
Then, at some point, I realized I was a little kid, and experienced my life through those jaded eyes.
It wasn’t until I became a physically matured adult that I came back to Reality.
If only I had never been a little kid .. or if only I hadn’t lived such a horrific story .. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost so many years to jade.
I was standing in the playground on my seventh birthday. In my head I told myself that I didn’t want to be like my parents or my sisters: all abusing each other because the other had abused them.
In that moment, the voice had told me a story. It looked around and that was the best it could come up with.
It couldn’t say that the reason I was handling things so differently than them was because I had been sexually abused and A__ and H__ hadn’t and the four of them were all on the same team because they had to keep the crime covered.
It was at moments like that that the voice in my head gained power: The society I was living in and the realities of my American experience didn’t match up, they contradicted each other, made experiencing life impossible unless I told myself stories in my head -- unless I stayed tripped.
I’d rather have the life experience than the story. Eternally I’d rather live a life without words. A life without a list of physical properties.
Still, I wish I could talk to somebody who understands. Just for a little while, then I remind myself, that if I had to choose between a rock and a hard place, I’d rather live a life without words. I’d rather really live.
It’s becoming more and more clear that human interaction requires one to make a fool of one’s self. I figure comedians know this best, that’s why the kid who has to put the most effort into making friends tends to come out like a comedian.
You have to accept the role you’re playing on the stage of life. It’s mutually understood that everyone’s playing roles, so it’s not dishonest, but it does go against being Real.
Just for a person to have the gall to attempt to put their life into words, it’s sacrilegious. The life would have to be infinitely watered down. It’s like how the film Schindler’s list is total trash compared to the real first-hand experience of the Holocaust. A film that great while compared to Real life it’s as tossable as a used Kleenex.
Sometimes I wish my name on broken spirits.com was Anonymous. Because it’s the only way anyone could tell the truth regardless of the present times and culture and not seem crazy.
I don’t acknowledge to myself the terror of telling the truth. I try to act fearless about it and feel unreal. I get replied to and the reply is just right, and the fear subsides, and I feel Real again.
I’ve been getting my life together post-deployment and the hours I’ve kept have been my waking around eleven a.m., and going to sleep around five-thirty a.m. The late night is like a secret place I’ve been living my life. I went a few days and nights without sleep and now I’m starting to be up during the day. I’m having a hard time being out in public.
The culture is so goddy, tacky, fake, civilian. I know that anyone who acts civilian is a liar. There’s no such thing as a civilian. They’re all live beings so I know they have the capability of being just as horrific as me.
Wait til one of their kids is trapped in a burning car, then see what they’ll do, how far they’ll go, then they’ll find themselves out to have never been civilian, they’ve just been pretending the whole time.
They grate my nerves when I‘m around them. They’re the worst in shopping centers. I had to find a particular kind of cooking pot, and had to go to a kind of mall. I realized how much I hate shopping. They act as if it were some privilege to act that way, simply because they’ve never seen nothing bad, or done anything difficult.
Sometimes I find their civilian-ness so overwhelming I forget the requirement to be brave, I’ll feel confused and unsteady, and later will feel ridiculous.
In the back of my mind I know there’s been a culture shock. I did just came back from deployment, and am now immersed in a culture I find unfamiliar.
I don’t yet trust that in new situations I’ll always Remember instead of falling back on old bad habits. When I remember, I’m Brave, when I don’t, I just say or do whatever I have to in order to get through it.

__________



(Sunday)

I stepped out to find an empty upside-down turtle shell placed in front of my front door. There’s something living underneath the front porch, something small but quick. I know that cats will leave the left over carcasses of their kill for their master to see. I have a wild animal doing that for me now.
I live in the rural country. I step outside and the deer in the yard don’t mind me, sometimes they stare at me, but eventually go back to grazing. The birds who live in the bush across the walk from the front porch don’t even fly away anymore when I step out, they just scurry across the ground around my feet.
I think it might be the squirrel. He’s acts very familiar with me. I saw him recently with a tiny little animal in its mouth, like a dark-brown baby mouse.
He’ll watch me work outside, the same way a dog would; he‘ll follow me through the yard except he‘s in the tree tops. He’s around a lot. I notice he uses his senses -- especially the tip of his nose -- to experience and perceive the world. No words in his head.
Lately I’ve been writing the words down instead of thinking them. That way I don’t lose my senses.

__________

　
I can remember the baseball games on weekends now. I remember understanding perfectly what was going on between the adults, the couples, the virgin-but-dating teenagers.
I had this seamless understanding because I had already had the best sex possible (with Tre).
I knew wholly. I suppose it’s a wonder my physically-little-boy-brain didn’t just explode or shut down completely.

__________

　
I get it now, the cost-of-pain masculinity requires.
Outside at the bird feeders the red cardinal never stays but for a few seconds, while the other birds hang out. He knows he is masculine beauty. He knows that masculine beauty -- his bright red color -- stands out and puts him in more danger always.
Same for the black coyote out here that people talk about as if in awe. He’s rarely seen. He’s not dirt colored like the others. He’s masculine beauty, and that beauty -- his sheer blemish-less black sheen -- keeps him in great danger, especially when it comes to humans.
Noticing these things helps me process the realities of my Abuse.

__________

　
Sometimes I think about how it ended with House. Everyone has all qualities. So when someone explains their identity with a slew of specific stories they’re lying, or they’re not okay. Either way, don’t perceive them at face value.
I was lying, too. I did it with K__ even, and W__. I allowed the other person to think they were the alpha male. They seemed to appreciate me for allowing them that, even though I think they understood the opposite was true.
Worst part is, all three of them, W__, K__, and House, seemed to like me best when the alpha-part of me would show. Sometimes they’d say it out loud.

Seems like in the end the problem was that I couldn’t figure myself out. I was a silent alpha male. An Alpha Male who couldn’t remember why he was a rooster pretending to be a hen. Couldn’t remember the night when the rapes in the bathroom ended. Couldn’t even remember the rapes. No wonder I remained so confused. Just the idea of a silent alpha male seems impossible. Intriguing to W__ and K___, but impossible to me.

I try to remember, try to make sense of things by feeling it inside me, where there are no words.
Why would I not just be the alpha directly? Why did I go so out of my way to repress myself?
Because then I’d want to have sex with them, and maybe I actually would .. (When I was a boy I was so sexual .. ) That’s what happened with Tre .. A story I’ve always known as my worst crime.

I got numb as I got older. It hit full swing when I was twelve. Wasn’t long before I couldn’t remember anything before the age of twelve.
Angelica wrote something that mentioned how hormones are raging at that age. I remember how clumsy I was, too strong. I would naturally fling something onto my bed from a few feet away and instead it would hit the wall and break into pieces.
I would be at someone’s house. They’d ask me to get the ice cubes out of the trays. I’d twist the tray like I’ve always known how, but this time the tray would break clean in half.
My voice was changing. I would thrash in my sleep. The memories are in the sex and the sexuality, the memories I couldn’t handle. I suppose it all makes sense in the end.
I guess I did have a childhood, in a twisted way: a period of time where I didn’t know sex, a period of time where all I could do was seek new experiences and educate myself best I could. For that period of time to exist I suffered a case of amnesia of everything before twelve years old .. Life has a funny way of always balancing out.

__________