Drinking Vibrations, 1

I remember R__ strangling me at some point. I remember the feel of his hands around my neck squeezing hard.
I haven’t been inebriated for a couple of days now, yet I’m still remembering new things. This fact helps appease the side of me that looks for credibility, that makes sure these memories are true despite their difficult implications.
The fact that I can remember the feel of it, too, means that the non-numbness is still strong, despite my not being particularly focused on the concept of not being numb.
I hid in the living room a lot. It was a parlor really, with softly-colored yellow walls and it was where all the nice furniture and things were, including the piano. I was the only one allowed in there, because I played the piano.
It was an old player, with many of the keys broken or worse. It was the room that caught all the sunlight, especially at dusk. I didn’t realize until I got the baby grand, how much of this house reminds me of that living room.
I remember being a little boy, standing at the end of the bed, facing it’s headboard, Mom lying on her back, her thighs around me. Me thrusting inside her. I couldn’t have been more than two or three. I remember the primal sounds she would make, and the feel of her thighs, and the slight varicose veins she had in her inner thighs.
It still feels like my fault, and I weirdly accept that. I was born with something that caused bad people -- but still ordinary in a way -- into sexual abusers. I put them in a position where they couldn’t help but see me as a sex toy since my member was so sensitive.
I’d still rather have my body and member the way it is, even if that was the price I had to pay.
Sometimes I feel sad about the reality of my life, but then I remember the flies that live one day and die as soon as they have sex, and I know they’ve missed out on nothing.
I try to remember that and it helps me to not dwell on the Difficulty I have known.

__________

　
It’s great weather.
I asked the boy I am, what do you want to do now?
Go bicycling was the answer.
It wasn’t an intellectual answer, it didn’t come from my mind, it was a true want. So I went to the bike in the corner, one that hasn’t been used since I left for deployment, and I cleaned it up for the boy I am, inspected the bicycle, cleaned it up, and pumped the tires.
I recognized the feeling of what I was doing: all the things I used to do for K__, and House, and W___. All these extra considerations, like I was taking care of them, like I would a younger brother.
It hadn’t occurred to me to do these things for myself. When I do these things for the boy I am, I become Him again, and my mind clears, and I feel physical, relaxed, and alive.

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The show Parenthood came on tonight, it was about the teenage girl having a boyfriend but not telling her parents. Drama ensued.
As teenagers, others were searching for love and sex. I already knew sex. My discovery of it, the natural experience of it, had been stolen. It would’ve been nice, to not have known sex, and to have discovered it with someone I had chosen, someone I was attracted to, someone I loved.
In a way they didn’t take anything from me, because I had Trevor, as a little boy, and then for the years when he would hold my hand at night after he died, and then the adult years when he would be in dreams walking me through the afterlife. And now when I feel his touch at the base of my neck and across my shoulders ..

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(Sunday)
Woke from a dream that I can only describe as anxious, and the feeling has lingered.
I was coming back from deployment but in a tv-show kind of way that wasn’t like reality at all.
K___ was with us -- which wasn’t how it happened in real life -- but kept disappearing.
The whole unit had grabbed their bags and moved on to the outside world, but I couldn’t find some of mine.
Then I kept shifting to being inside old television shows and films, as if I were a part of the film, except it wasn’t a ‘film’ it was as if it were real life.
I was in an episode of Will and Grace, except it wasn’t a television show, it was real. Then the VCR tape I was trapped inside of kept breaking, its ribbon clumping up and filling up the inside of the VCR. I kept trying to fix it while I was in the episode of Will and Grace. I was very anxious because I understood that my life was in there.

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(30MAR2010)
　
When I play the piano I like to learn the music to the point where I don’t have to think about it anymore, and I can think about my story instead, own it without any words in my head.
It worked for a little while this time: I played Over the Rainbow with a swing and a flair that made the piece only recognizable enough as Over the Rainbow, but the rest was mine.
I made shrimp bisque from scratch, including the stock, and I tried to concentrate on not being numb.
The world is alive. The vegetables, the meat, the fish, the wine, the cast iron skillet with its years of spices engrained into it, the wood of the table, marks and scratches and all; the dirt the food comes from flavors it according to what minerals are most prevalent in the area. The jeep with its moving metal parts that if abused will suffer. My body changes everyday. The lines in my hands, the feel of them a week after I’ve been using lotion on them.
I get it when I’m not numb: those ancient words I’ve known about how every relationship with everything is sex. The relationship between my fingers and the shells of the shrimp, my fingertips and the wood of the cutting board, the ivory of piano keys.
Intimate connections.

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It was the Tough one who taught me the piano though I couldn’t hear the music. It was the Tough one who taught me to cook though I couldn’t feel the relationship. It was the Tough one who ensured the generations between my legs, who made the unspoken deal with R__ to not tell.
The Brave one might be my soul, but it was the Tough one who physically fought the war. All those people along the way, taking advantage of my supposed destruction, because life’s a war, same as nature. It was the Tough one who learned words, it was the Tough one who learned the secret plane of life. It was the Tough one who wasn’t afraid of numbness. It was the Brave one who made the choices, it was the boy who wanted what he wanted, but it was the Tough one who carried it all out.

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I had a close friend when I worked the restaurant job. We both wore the same size condom and would talk about it sometimes, the awkwardness of it sometimes, the extra expense.
He explained to me they all shrink up like that when they’re not erect -- _You’re not a freak,_ he told me.
Now I get the reason why they do that. It’s the same reason why women’s period’s are unpredictable (so they won’t be assaulted.) Or lynched. Or Abused.

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Woke from dream set in the house, but with very dark clouds outside, so that little sunlight was entering through the windows.
I had a series of guests, who came and went. One, by bicycle, was Boyd__, another was the neighbor I had when I got my first apartment: Ji__, who was attractive and interested in me but whom I felt not ready for at the time.
And the third was Neil Patrick Harris, probably because I had watched the show How I Met Your Mother before I went to sleep.
Each guest kept coming back because -- as Harris was telling his therapist in little aside scenes -- I made the person feel so vulnerable.
Vulnerable to the point where they forgot the names of their own lovers, even their own name, as they let me do whatever I wanted to them. The dream felt dark and scary to me as I experienced it. Each guests acted vulnerable but hopeful while I felt terrified of this power I had. In the dream I kept feeling like: this is how I killed Trevor.

__________

　
Woke from another dream_ involving wrestling.
It involved Ian ____, an actor slash model who I see around sometimes, and who has a look about him I find extremely familiar. I googled him once and all his images have that same fiery look in his eyes. Not a mean look, just a serious, almost violent one.
The character he plays on TV has an angry, powerful storyline, in which he comes across more as a devil with a heart as opposed to an angel with strength and violence. The character’s storyline seems familiar, too, because basically he’s a hardened person because of the horrors he has known and how little time he was allowed in his life to deal with those horrors.
Funny, how something as arbitrary as a bad television show can be so important when it comes to unlocking my memories. This wrestling dream between me and Ian was a lot like the give and take of the Celebrity dream I’d had weeks ago.
At first it was a mystery what the dream meant, or why it seemed so familiar. Maybe I used to have that look once. Maybe Trevor, or some other boy. Maybe we both did.
The dream seemed to be telling me the truth about wrestling, and its sexual beginnings. Like it was trying to tell me that I already knew this, had already done this. I could almost remember how I would wrestle when I was little, and was good at it, and because I would dominate, I would penetrate.
It was in the soul place, which is why I only remember us as adults, even though we were little kids.
My memories of Trevor lack the smoldering angry look Ian ___ will have. The memories and the dream both imply that the other boy was older than me. It seems like it must be Trevor who I did that to. We played all the time and some of our play pushed the envelope. The memory is strong to me, even though the actual act isn’t, because of all the locations I remember vividly when I allow my mind to go where the dream was insisting: the school I went to in kindergarten, the playground around it, the church we went to, the neighborhood of the small town we were nearest -- suddenly that part of my childhood is vivid, while before it was frustratingly vague and mysterious.
I have a hard time because the idea of me dominating another boy in wrestling -- a boy who is competing and trying to dominate me instead -- seems so much like rape.
The memory and dream didn’t make it seem like play, but very serious, very sexual. I remember that Trevor held my hand each night after he died, and I remember the dreams where he took me around the after life, so I remember he approves of me, but it’s difficult to wrap my brain around, hard to accept.
When the memories are this strong, I’m easily not numb. The not-numbness is extraordinary, it‘s incredible really.
The dreams linger into the day, and I don’t fight it. There’s a price paid -- the darkness of the one, the brutality of the other -- but the Realness makes it worth it.

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