Focus

K___ and I haven’t spoken in awhile, ever since that night of ping pong. He tried, I bolted. I couldn’t seem to talk to K___.
_Scared kids become scared adults,_ the article said, _Always waiting for the next beating or betrayal._
I shut him out, and that’s what he hates the most.
K__ and I had watched an episode of _The Simpsons_ as we waiting for the ping pong table. It was where the school principal accidentally slips it in front of the whole town that boys are much better in math and science than girls.
Lisa disguises herself as the new boy in school, studies hard in order to become the top student at math and science, but is failing, and eventually gets beaten up.
Bart figures out what’s going on and teaches Lisa how to think like a boy. She finds it repulsive but accepts the lessons. She steals a kid’s lunch money, she hits another student. In the end she is awarded top honor for math and science.
She takes off her disguise to the shock of an auditorium of kids and teachers. She thinks she’s proved her point, but Bart jumps up on stage and says, _The only reason this girl got good at math and science is because I taught her how to think like a boy!_
K__ thinks like a boy. He doesn’t know of any other way to think. I feel shame that my experience was thicker, fuller.
I think like a boy, always have. Because I am Him. I’m competitive and assertive, evolution and sexual selection always in the back of my mind, even before I knew the words evolution and sexual selection.
But the house confused things and everything got mixed up. Real life confused things. What was advantageous became disadvantageous, and what was disadvantageous became advantageous. Being obviously Him became disadvantageous, being numb became advantageous.
I wish I could explain to K___ how pressing Life can be. The book, Back Roads, covers a period of a few months. If Harley does not figure out the mystery of what happened in his family, his honorable actions will make it worse, to the detriment of his baby sister, Jody.
But his past is violent, and his memory unforthcoming. Meanwhile he doesn’t see what’s important about the past, he only cares about his future and the woman he’s in love with. In the end he figures it out in just the nick of time to save Jody, but not his lover.
In real life, things are just as pressing. Instead of a few months, the story lasts 25 years, the pressure really mounting once I was nineteen. How can I explain that I’m not stuck in my past? How can I explain that the nightmares, the memories, the flashbacks have an urgency to them, just as urgent and Real as Harley’s.

_________

　
I’m proud of my body, maybe even at peace with it. I understand how it felt, how it feels. I know it didn’t betray me by not acting _right,_ feeling _right._ It’s just stronger than I thought strong could be.
I keep thinking I’m not Him. Or my body isn’t, or my brain, or something. But I feel like I’m changing my mind.
I understand why I balked at its supposed betrayals, its feelings, its stubbornness. I understand why I couldn’t wrap my brain around what it was doing.
How does a twenty five year old feel about this? Angry at her. What a b-tch.
But I guess I erroneously figured people were like me, when they’re just as susceptible to their feelings as I am. They choose to be run by them. I chose to repress them.
As a twenty five year old I think of the hard choices in life. So young in life. The brutality of it.
I notice the question, how do you feel? Has two answers. One is the way the boy felt, the other is the way the twenty five year old feels.
The boy shuts K__ out, the twenty five year old would find another way.
The boy stays away from certain situations, afraid of what the truth might be. The twenty five year old manages ahead.
It’s like the two of us do battle. Maybe understanding will resolve it.
I feel that same accusation when I look at women now, and that same distrust of them when they look at me.
It feels inevitable that I fall in love with a woman. That I will find her attractive to the point of weakness. That she will see me as Him only, and I won’t argue, accepting the weight of it. That I’ll be that natural. That vulnerable.
Sex, and the way I feel about sex, seem clearer now.
I want to be twenty five. I want to be the age I am now. I want the present moment back. I want a clear head.
I want the old Focus back.
I want my original heartbeat.