Only

I only want to love
For you to love me back
I only want to know for sure
There's life beyond the black

I only want to hold
And also to be held
I want to let my mind be free
As hands and spirits meld

I only want to know
Exactly what it's like
To want to have you be my world
For more than just one night

I only want to be a man
I likely cannot be
The kind of man who gives himself
The kind who is not me

I only want to hear that love
Is more than just a word
No part of me believes that's true
And I cannot unlearn

I only want to part the fog
In which my soul is tossed
And for a day not be alone
For one day not be lost

A Realization

I stared in the mirror at my gentle features and long blonde hair.

BB, I reflected. You're fucked up for drinking so much.

I thought about the situation and laughed.

You're more fucked up for not eating today.

And that made me feel better. Like, in comparison, the drinking really wasn't that bad. Even though it totally is.

I guess some things don't change, do they? A career doesn't change them. Friends don't change them. Life doesn't change them. Therapy, which goodness knows I need, doesn't change them. Where does that leave good old me? Does it ever go away? Do I ever get better? What does "better" mean?

And is all of this just genetic, or was it done? Was I always going to be crazy, or was I made crazy?

I told on my father once.

I went to a teacher and I let her know.

"He dragged me out of bed and slammed me onto the floor. He hit me and I couldn't breathe."

When he found out that I'd reported him, he told me the authorities were going to take me away to foster care, where I'd be gang raped. Once they were done with me, he said, they'd come for my younger brothers.

I was nine.

And you know, it worked, because I never told again. I don't know. I just don't fucking know.

Selected Entries: November 2004

In November 2004 I was sixteen years old and, though too young to vote, had avidly followed the progress of the 2004 presidential election. John Kerry's loss on November 2 was deeply felt in our Democratic family and widely discussed among the high school students in the nation's biggest swing state. That same month our family hosted Grand Ma Normal Family and Aunt Crazy, down from Native State; and I addressed feelings about God and our move.

November 2, 2004

It is late on election night, after eleven o’clock, and I’m still awake, anxious to see who the winner is in this presidential race. As of right now, John Kerry has 188 electoral votes and George W. Bush has 197. I am very frightened lest Bush should win. I will write more tomorrow, but now I'm going to go pray A LOT.

November 3, 2004

Today exhausted me in so many ways. Today my faith in the judgement of the American people was deeply shaken. Today my sense of possible security and hope was skewered by an electoral lance. Today I watched the words “Kerry Concedes” blaze across the television screen like some crimson death sentence.

 My heart fell through my chest and sank somewhere in my stomach. The kids at school are all celebrating Bush’s victory, which leads me to believe that they don’t understand its implications. I think a military draft could be in the wings because of our growing crisis in Iraq, the bottomless pit that the administration tries to fill with borrowed cash. There just simply aren’t enough troops to continue as we’ve been doing, especially with the National Guard already under a "backdoor draft" by which guardsmen’s terms are consecutively extended beyond the time that they’re initially meant to serve. 

I only hope that President Bush gets to the draft quickly if it happens. I’ll turn eighteen next April and would like to still be underage if they start calling people up. I’m going to college anyway, but you still don't want to tempt fate. America is in for a rough four years. 

November 5, 2004

I am so tired that I can barely keep my head up, and, as I’ll be rising early tomorrow, I’m going to bed. I plan to spend the entire Saturday at the university doing research for my AP European History class. I’m going to read my Bible and then sleep. 

November 10, 2004

When I walked in from school today Grand Ma Normal Family was standing in our foyer, a smile on her face and her arms outstretched. Powell and I were so excited to see her again. We discussed everything about living here, all of our experiences, good and bad. Tonight we went to Red Lobster for dinner, and I was so full I thought I’d sprout a red tail. You know, I really don’t like lobster that much. Next time I think I’ll stick to king crab legs. I’m sleeping in Powell’s bed tonight and every night until Grand Ma and Aunt Crazy leave. Really, it’s not that bad, as Powell’s bed is very big and we often talk about things before falling asleep.

November 11, 2004

My hair tie snapped in school today and I had to wear my hair down all day. Everybody kept saying they couldn't believe how long it is. It is pretty long! Powell stayed home from school today to just spend time with Aunt Crazy and Grand Ma, but I couldn't join him. I have so much to do for AP European History! I can’t wait for December 6, when this will all be over and I can enjoy the Christmas holidays.

November 14, 2004

Last night was awesome! Aunt Crazy, Grand Ma, Powell, Thomas, and I went around six o’clock, headed for the movie theater. This was a special treat for me because, having been busy with AP European History research at the university, I didn’t even expect to get home in time to go with them! I finished my tasks for the day around three o’clock, much earlier than planned (to give you an idea, I stayed at the college until eight o’clock last Saturday evening) and happily headed home to prepare for the coming night.

Then tonight was great, too. We had an early Thanksgiving (the real thing isn't until November 25). With Grand Ma at the stove the meal was a practical feast of chicken, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and more. As always is the case when Grand Ma cooks, it was delicious.

On Saturday night I had an odd dream. I was visiting Beautiful Town to see all of our friends but I had nowhere to say. I had wanted to lodge in our old house but someone was living there so that was impossible. I was standing in the street, looking down the hill into the valley. I was suddenly hit with a great pang of pain and my dream self started to cry. I woke up and I was sad. I haven't thought much about back home, but that dream bothered me. 

November 19, 2004

Grand Ma and Aunt Crazy are back home now. On the evening of Monday, November 15, my father announced that we were moving back to Beautiful Town and that the house would be up for sale as of this weekend. The next day, Mom told us that Dad was just going off into one of his periodic bursts of enthusiasm and grand schemes that are always sobered within days by stark reality. 

November 24, 2004

I love school on the day before a holiday. In addition to there being no real work to speak of, roughly half the student population was absent, which made the hallways and classrooms quite roomy. 

Third-period English was by far the most meaningful. Mrs. English Teacher and I had a class-long discussion about God and Jesus. Mrs. English Teacher says that everyone feels inadequate in the face of God, and that it would be a sin to think you could be good enough. She said that we can’t control our sins, but rather we use God’s and Jesus’s strength to control them. I asked her if she thought that Jesus and God would give Jews and Muslims a second chance after they die, and she said that she didn’t know.

November 25, 2004

Thanksgiving 2004

Despite the bright, sunny sky and springtime temperatures, we’ve been somewhat able to create a Thanksgiving atmosphere in the house. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade trumpets forth on our television screen and the smell of turkey, still in the oven, floats throughout the entire house. 

We traditionally begin preparations for Christmas within a week of Thanksgiving, and Mom put up the Christmas tree this morning. Tonight, we’ll put in a Christmas CD and adorn the tree with ornaments, as we’ve done together for as long as I can remember. I imagine that today will be hard for Mom, since her mother died last month. 

Forward

I sent an e-mail out this afternoon, bound for inboxes and office desks in the City of Fate:

Nothing prepares you for the loss of a child. Nothing.

And when John Williams’ gay seventeen-year-old son Joshua is savagely beaten to death by an unknown assailant, the murder is just the beginning of a long and painful odyssey. As John’s wife Samantha drifts further from reality, John must face difficult truths about his marriage, his shortcomings as a father, and who his son really was—and could have been.

My Client's Amazing Novel is a heartrending story about a marriage shattered by grief, a town haunted by hate, and how one unlived life can touch countless others.

The 103,000-word manuscript is the first offering from Mr. Ass-Kicker, a professional shaman. 

Seven editors received this message today, and by the close of business two had written back to request the whole manuscript. This could be the beginning. 

I Hope

I hope the tremor that breaks your rancid heart
Rips through you like an earthquake
Like an avalanche
A convulsion cleaving the blubber and bile

I hope the diseased flesh bursts inside your chest
And fills your lungs with your own putridness
As black as fury; as black as fear
As black as your conscience, if you had one

I hope your whole soul seizes with woe
As the air burns away and your bloodshot eyes go sightless
I hope you feel every ounce of life leaking away
From the arms you will never raise against me again

I hope God is harsh
I hope He is wicked
I hope He is cruel
And I hope your glutton's death is the easiest part

I hope you wake in a room of fire
Drenched in liquor that only burns
I hope eternity is hands around your throat
Staring into a pair of scarlet eyes

And knowing what it's like to be helpless

The Yellow House

There are days when the sun itself seems to sit in judgement over me. It's awful when those times come, because in here all is empty and cheap, but out there the light exposes everything. I can't allow it to expose me.

Not when I'm so like the yellow house. On the outer walls a pretense is made at dignity, even stateliness, but inside is corruption, cowardice, duplicity, hatred. If the rays' cruel fingers were allowed to rest upon my shoulder, they'd tear me open and the whole reeking carcass would collapse in on itself.

I want to leave this yellow house. And I never want to be a yellow house again.

The Country We Live In

It's sort of amazing the things people will say in front of you. I'm not sure if they think being on the other side of an open doorway means you can't hear them or if they just imagine you won't care, but every once in a while I'll encounter a bit of indiscretion that completely floors me.

"Obama's tryin' to take the assault rifles," one of the greasy men drawled to the other. They were repairing my car as they talked, and it occurred to me that both the manner and substance of their conversation did not necessarily need to materialize in an auto shop in Mountain Town. Their dialect, a vaguely drawn-out twang shared by workingmen from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains, might have popped up anywhere across the American continent, as might the faux-libertarian sentiment that accompanied it.    

"He's tryin' to override the Constitution," one of them informed the other with all the solemnity of the completely uneducated. "And I heard some Republican senators were saying, 'It ain't gonna happen.' You know, he already raised all the taxes with that fiscal cliff."

I exhaled through my nose but kept my mouth shut. This wasn't my fight and there was nothing I could say that would change these men's minds.

When they came into the room where I was waiting, though, they continued.

"What we need," said one to the other. "Is another Lee Harvey Oswald."

He grinned the way a grandfather might grin at a small child awaiting a present. It all just seemed so damn pleasant, this talk of our president being violently murdered, and I was reminded once more how deceptive the South can be. It is a land of natural beauty prone to economic privation. It is a land whose residents imagine themselves courteous but whose knowledge of actual courtesy stops at the words "sir"and "ma'am" (never, incidentally, "madam"). It is a land whose political culture extols democracy but whose politicians exploit a deep undercurrent of petty fascism. And it is a land where extremism can appear less virulent than it really is because it is shared by so many.

"Lee Harvey Oswald?" I asked, finally unable to hold my tongue. "Are you talking about the new book on him? Is that what it is?"

One looked at the other and smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "I heard there was a new book."

I wonder what they must think of me? I'm tall and thin in a region of walking sows, with long hair and a delicate face and an accent that to them must sound somewhat foreign. I can't imagine they see me as one of their own. So what had they been thinking?

"You know," the first one said, looking at me with contrition. "Obama wants to roll over the Constitution and that's not right. You can't do that."

In an instant he was remorseful, then genial and talkative again. But his true feelings were still there, just beneath the surface. Just waiting to come out.

These people and the overlords who profit from them will never simply allow us to enact finance reform, or gun safety, or marriage equality, or anything else that this country needs to move forward. They are the same men who fomented Jim Crow. They are the same men who invented the term "right to work." They are the same men who propagated massive resistance when the Supreme Court had the audacity to state that black children and white children were equal.

We sometimes forget, in this comparatively tranquil era, that the civil rights movement was not won with words. The North did not transform the South through compromise and agreement; it transformed it through force. And when the public high schools of Little Rock, Arkansas were at last integrated, it was at the bayonet tips of the 101st Airborne. The duplicitous forces of conservatism have never willingly given us anything. Each time, in all matters, we've taken it.

That's something to remember now.