The next morning, I wasn’t high. I awoke and stepped out of the bedroom, treating House, asleep on the couch, apologetically.
Even though I wasn’t high, I still had the same memories. They were just as strong as when I had been high and they had first been unlocked. So I wasn’t the same person. The person I was before I remembered was gone forever, and I understood this.
__________
House wanted to visit his sister, who lived in the apartment buildings across the parking lot. She was a blonde girl with glasses who talked in that way that stoners talk: they drag their words out, like when they say ‘That’s so cool,’ they sound like they’re saying, ‘Thaat’s soo cooool.’
Their manner seems relaxed and fluid and she was no exception, walking around her apartment as if in slow motion, she was hospitable and conversational with us, but because of her very relaxed manner it was like she was ignoring our actual presence.
House introduced me but I couldn’t say much. I was barely hanging on, because I was still reacting to the new memories, this time without being high.
I handled it the same way I did when I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. I couldn’t hardly speak to people back then, I was in such shock back then, the individual instances of the Abuse were so so horrific.
People said I had a quiet, introverted personality, that’s why I rarely spoke, but really I was in shock, the way a person is in shock after they’ve witnessed or experienced the horrific.
His sister passed a bong around and we watched a movie. I don’t remember the movie because the whole time I went over the memories, I noticed how I was in shock same as when I was thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. I tried to move forward.
I’ve already done this part, I thought to myself.
When I was a young teenager.
__________
House drove again. _Really?_ He asked, _You can’t drive?_ He didn’t understand that I wasn’t high like he was thinking.
The marijuana was simply keeping me calm enough to unlock the memories. I wasn’t reacting to the high, I was reacting to the memories.
It seemed dangerous to drive when I was having one flashback after another, some so powerful it was like I was back there in the moment, not remembering but actually there.
As we neared my house, I warned him that this was rural country. That the water would have to be turned on, the gas lit, the water heater handled, etc., etc.
On the way I allowed my perception to go down the path of I’m A Loser. I allowed it to look at me as a failure, raped to the point of ruin. I allowed it, because I thought it was fun, the bravery required, allowed it all the way to the end where I was vindicated. I started laughing. House, driving, looked at me. I stopped laughing and continued to stare out the window at the fields rolling by.
It was like virtual reality. All I had to do was change my perception and the whole world seemed to change around me. It was like on that old show R__ would watch: Star Trek the Next Generation.
In the show there were these rooms called hologram rooms -- virtual reality taken to the extreme. When my perception would change, it would be like I was in the hologram room, the theme and holograms changing around me, melting into another form of itself seen through a new perception. It was a blast. It was like I was living in my dreams. Shifting shifting shifting.
Upon arrival House said he loved the Log Cabin, what he called my house. He then pulled out the paraphernalia, set it on the coffee table and suggested we continue to get high. I obliged.
I watched him, still on the same I’m A Loser trip, and I thought about how I had gotten what I deserved. I hadn’t been strong enough, and now I live in a log cabin with no water, no heat, out in the rural country. I had no family, no lover, few real friends. I simply hadn’t been good enough, and have now received what I deserved.
I saw how he was the same. He was unemployed with few plans. He was good looking but was starting to look strung out from the marijuana. He was getting older, he didn’t look like some teenager anymore. We’re losers, and this is what we deserve.
I allowed the high to pull me into another perception it seemed to be insisting on. I allowed it even though it was terrifying.
Because of the new Bravery I allowed myself to believe it, so I could feel it out. My chest was pounding but House wasn’t noticing. In this trip I felt like I was R__. That I was a story he had made up in his head. I said, Okay, I’m R__ then, and continued to shift.
I became R__. The high allowed me to try out the perception that I was R__ and I had made up this trip in my head, the trip that I was Ben. Then I realized I was me, I was just so identified with his lie, it was actually easier for me to believe myself to be a figment of his imagination then for me to have been me, Real .. That I had been a kid that had had sex with other little kids.
My perception changed again and I was in a kind of trance as it went down a new road. Everyone’s playing roles, it said, so no human interaction was Real. In the end it’s all pretend.
You have to be just like Dexter, you now have to be just a really good liar. You have to be a Devil to live in the world Truly. I argued with myself about being this Devil forever. Sex was a crime -- penetration -- killing the other person in a way -- but it was okay if you were Him, I argued back. If you’re Him, you’re Real -- not pretending like everyone else.
House suggested we watch a movie. The couch was a love seat recliner, which I pushed right in front of the TV, then went upstairs and grabbed five or six blankets, and dumped them down from the loft. I came down stairs and laid them out. _We’re a bit too high to handle things right now,_ I said to House, which wasn’t true, it was that I was still remembering and didn’t want to stop. I had to know what the truth was.
_Yeah, I’m f-cking lit,_ he replied and I felt relieved.
_It’s okay there’s no heat because it’s not that cold and we can just use these blankets for awhile.”
He chose two films, one an old Japanese martial arts flick, the other a psychodelic comedy called Trainspotting. When we got under the covers, I felt the pull at the base of my neck, and could feel sex in my fingertips, and my perception went nuts, trying to figure it out.
The world seemed to be spinning and I was breathing hard again. It’ll just be a slew of sexual abuse memories, b, I thought to myself. But it didn’t work that way.
The sex this time was extremely insistent, saying Right Now, Right Now, Right Now over and over. It was telling me that the only true perception was where sex was possible Right Now this moment. It took me awhile to adapt. It took me til the end of the first movie, the martial arts film.
This is what I felt as a kid. I had no right, no right to make the first move on other kids. I had no right to initiate sex, but I did anyway, because all I knew was sex.
It took all the self control in the world not to extend my lips to House’s skin, even though my head was on his shoulder, and my face in his neck.
The shifting was getting so volatile it was like I wasn’t shifting anymore, the past and future was now overlapping instead of just reckoning.
House’s isn’t Trevor. It didn’t matter at the time, and didn’t seem to matter to House. I looked down at his crotch, and could see his hard on, inside his blue jeans, and wondered about it.
House sleeps with more women than anyone else I know, yet there’s he is with a hard on just because I’m half asleep, my face in his neck. The movie Trainspotting has a lot of gay scenes in it, which is confusing me.
I keep thinking in my head, House isn’t Trevor, House is Now, Trevor is Past, don’t start mistaking the two, or you’re gonna f-ck this all up, you’re gonna f-ck this all up.
The Right Now was saying the truth is only what fits within the context of your having sex right now. It said to me that House wouldn’t be here, shoulder against my cheek, if this wasn’t about sex.
I was getting nervous, the two perceptions doing battle, the one I had before I Remembered and the one I have now.
Something’s wrong something’s wrong. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. And I didn’t, but I began to understand that this was the confusion I felt when I was little, feeling the urgency and sometimes initiating sex with my peers anyway.
Another trip suddenly began; it was trying to make sense of my present sexuality instead of the one I had before I went numb.
It began with me believing I was in a woman’s body, then I was a lesbian, then a transsexual, finally a gay -- the world is dying, no need for food, water, shelter, just sex, that’s all I want forever, and I don’t need anything more, I’ll just die in sex, no need to have children because the world is dying. Sex is the crime. The crime of dying, of killing, of penetrating, of killing the other into a penetratee.
The sex continued insisting Right Now Right Now. That’s how you know what the truth is. That’s how you know who you are. As far as actually having sex right now, it depends on how much of a crime you’re willing to commit. You can practically rape, if you feel you’re so good she or he will succumb, like in the book sperm wars.
That’s what I did to Trevor, and that’s what I did to El__. They didn’t know anything about sex until I showed them, the only reason they allowed me was because they saw me as Him.
The reason why guys don’t talk or let on about a homoerotic past is because they want to pass for a guy who’s so good at sex because he’s slept with a lot of women. But really he’s slept with another guy, and therefore knows sex wholly, he doesn’t have to learn it from a slew of women.
When I was in the numb place, the unmemory the place, I would get high off music, and also off TV, movies, then later off intellectual stimulation and epiphanies. It’s how I kept the trip going. The trip I stayed on so I wouldn’t remember anything, even stuff that just happened.
House’s friend called and invited us to their house for a party where we would spend the night.
__________
No comments:
Post a Comment