project the boy who bruises easily We are at a roadside Burger King on the way to Omaha. I am with my family and they are taking me to the airport. It’s the night before I fly out for Houston. My parents are divorced, so every summer I visit my dad for five weeks and come home with a suntan and a brand new attitude. My mom is always worried about me when I’m gone. We have some friends in Omaha that we are staying with, so that’s why we have left the night before. I have just finished my value meal and am walking a tray to the garbage. Two overweight, husky white guys in their twenties are sitting in the booth next the trash. They are wearing Abercrombie and Fitch and look like they’ve been at the Lakes. One of them is a blonde; the other is a brunette. They couldn’t be anymore Midwestern. “You look like a fag,” one of them says to me. “Yeah, you know you’re a faggot look at the way you walk.” I can feel my cheeks go flush, and my body starts to tingle. Are they really saying this to me? I can’t believe they are saying this to me in public. My heart begins pounding and I slowly start to get that dizzy feeling right before you pass out. I feel as if all eyes in the Burger King are staring at me. They’re all looking at me and thinking that these guys are right. “Hey faggot, quit walking that way.” I walk like a model on the runway, strong, quick, and cocky. I feel like saying fuck off. But nothing comes out. I want to say something sharp and jabbing that will make them shut up, but my wit escapes me. I’m dumbfounded. “Faggot, can you give me a blowjob?” What is this? It’s the summer before ninth grade. I’m too young to get called faggot, especially in public. Slowly I shrink. I can’t think straight. Turn and walk. Turn and walk. Turn and walk. This is what I keep repeating in my head over and over as I get done emptying my tray. Don’t look at them. Don’t breathe. Just turn and walk. “We’re gonna kick your ass faggot.” I feel like a performer who has just been booed off the stage with a host rotten tomatoes being flung at him. My tail is tucked between my legs. I feel limp and ashamed. I want to find the nearest rock to climb under. But I can’t. My parents have been in the Play Palace the whole time with my two younger brothers and sister. They’ve been oblivious to what has just happened. I take a seat beside them and pretend that my palms are sweating and my eyes aren’t twitching this way and that, scanning to make sure those boys don’t come and get me. I am nervous and shaky. My mouth is dry and I am trying to make conversation with them to cover up what just happened, afraid they might have suspicions. But they don’t. Slowly I begin to feel myself calm down. My heart slows back to its normal pace, I don’t feel jittery or shook up. But this changes. The boys are walking out the doors. They see me in the Play Palace and point and laugh yelling, “FAGGOT.” My mom asks if I know them. I tell her it’s nothing. She insists on knowing if they are friends of mine. I tell her it’s nothing. She demands I tell her what that was about. I barf the story up like vomit. Relaying the details feels like vomit on my tongue. I feel humiliated, as if I’ve just been molested. She says, “You’re not are you?” I can’t talk, all I can think about is the one with the brown hair and the earring asking if I could give him a blowjob. “Of your course you’re not,” she says, satisfied with answering her own question. My stepdad says he’s gonna kick their ass and that they look like fags with their ears pierced. He’s from the old school so he thinks only faggots pierce their ears. But my mom calms him down. She tries her best at consoling me, but for the rest of the night all I can think about is how awful I feel. 040217 ... the boy who bruises easily Lance is a boy that I grew up with. He’s about five years older than I am. He is very tall, and everyone thinks he could be a star basketball player. His skin is youthfully pale, the kind that bruises easy. His lips are thin and his jaw chiseled. His eyes set back deep so that his brow casts shadows around his sockets. He looks like he’s wearing a Zorro mask even when he’s not. We spend time together on the weekends, playing basketball or football or messing around out in the country, trying to burn down barns or wandering through some abandoned houses. He plays big brother to me, because my mom feels I need a positive older male influence that is not a father figure. I go to his house a lot; stay the night almost every weekend. We race around his yard in go-carts since he lives out in the country. His sister Morgana has thick red hair and is about my age. She’s a spitfire, so sometimes we get our jollies by making her mad. Lance gets more joy out of this than I do. Mostly I’m just happy to watch. But Lance likes to plan his attacks methodically. He knows where every button is on her, and he doesn’t hesitate to push them. Sometimes we jump on the trampoline that is in their backyard. Summer nights are filled with sweat at dusk jumping as hard as we can on the big black spring. We shoot into the air like corks popping off the tops of wine bottles. Sweat is pasting our bangs to our foreheads, and our breath barely can be distinguished between inhales and exhales. It’s just a big noise that comes from our gasping open mouths. He jumps close to me so that I bounce up higher and higher. Then when we are exhausted we collapse on the black spring and it becomes a mattress. By this time all the bugs have crawled out of every hole imaginable. The mosquitoes attack us. But we think nothing of it, because we are tired and too busy watching giant dragonflies swarm above our heads. The sky is burnt pink. There is a gray shadow in the east. I wake up one morning. It’s three a.m. I’m covered in sweat. I feel shaken up inside. All night I’ve been tossing around. The scene from Independence Day where the White House gets exploded is playing back in my head. This is what I’ve been dreaming. Aliens are here to destroy us. Lance and I are tangled on the floor. We share the same blanket. His sweat is my sweat. His shirt is off. For a minute I am disoriented. Where am I? Are the aliens here? Did we survive? Then I realize where I’m at. I realize that I’m really hard. My crotch throbs. Lance’s legs are tangled in mine. I’m not sure what we’ve been doing. We fell asleep to Independence Day. The T.V. screen is black. Everything is black. I fumble around the living room floor. I feel with my hands because no matter how wide I open my eyes, no light shines in them. My dick aches. I feel hot and scared. I can’t remember anything but falling asleep to Independence Day. All Lance is wearing is boxers. I’m wearing shorts. I find my shirt in a wad and slip it on. Slowly I inch along the walls down the hall to the bathroom. Through the bathroom window I can see the moon shining like glass. It’s full and clear, reflecting enough light to fill the bathroom after I shut the door. I try and piss, but I’m too hard. Aliens have gathered around the White House. They’re gonna blow it up. All day long Lance and I have been together, driving around, comparing penis sizes. We talk about girls and drinking. Sometimes we hold hands and act like it was nothing to bat an eye about. We’ve known each other for most of our lives. We are good friends. There is respect and admiration in the space between us. He drives Kevin’s truck. Kevin is out of town. Lance’s Buick is in the shop getting fixed. We talk about Def Leopard and the Smashing Pumpkins. We talk about Dennis, Kevin’s dad, and how goofy looking he is. We talk about getting out of this town to some place better. I can’t get rid of the wood no matter how hard I try. I jack off a little, but I’m too tired to put any effort into it. So I go back to the living room floor where Lance is huddled. I try and tell myself nothing is wrong. Nothing has happened. You were abducted by aliens. This is normal procedure. Get some rest and you’ll be fine. But I can’t help but wonder if Lance is hard. I’m too scared to just reach over and find out. I can’t help but wonder if he’s been dreaming the same things, or if I’m crazy. Is he shaken up too? I try and sleep, but I can’t stop thinking or worrying or wondering. And for the last few hours of darkness I tell myself that everything is normal. Everything is fine. 040217 ... the boy who bruises easily It’s the middle of July in Houston. The air is thick with sweat, there is no fragrance, no pleasant sweetness to its density. It’s just sweat. There are live oaks that unfold their branches in a giant tangle like octopus tentacles. The cackler sends off its cry like an alarm as the hiss of cicadas breaks the silence. This is the south. And the air is so heavy and hot, that you sweat standing still. By now I have sopped around this place for about a week and have found nothing interesting but the Internet. I am 15 and I hate the world. I have daddy issues and criticize happy people for being too happy. The air is thick with sweat. I am frustrated and sweaty. I stand still and pour sweat like a geyser erupting from the earth. My dad teaches karate classes every Wednesday night at the University of Houston. He is an alumni and been teaching his class since the late seventies. New influxes of students come and go every summer I visit him. Some faces stay constant, Kenny for example has been with my father since the beginning of his karate club. But on whole they change every time I visit. So we are down in the Cougar Den one Wednesday night. This is in the student center on the lowest level of the complex. There is an indoor fountain that I sit next to while I watch my dad teach class. I hate my father and love him very much. I have too much attitude. But he deals with me. And I pretend like I don’t care about him. He is doing warm ups with his class, drilling them to get their cardio stimulated. More sweat drips. Faces slowly grow pink and shine oily. It is cool in the den, but my dad has been known for drilling people to help them learn “endurance”. Karate is this: Honesty, Integrity, Manners, Self-control, Self-respect. He yells commands in Japanese and then performs the desired action to the command. This is how one learns Japanese, by taking a class with my father. Itch, ni, son, si, go, roko, sichi, huchi, cu, ju. Itch, ni, son, si, go roko, sichi, huchi, cu, ju. And then again and again. My gari. Suki. All these things that somehow get stuck in my head. I know exactly what they mean. Someday I imagine that I will be held and gunpoint and my life will not depend on my performing these series of blocks and attacks, but will be a case of whether or not I can count to ten in Japanese or know the word for “punch” and “kick”. Oooooii-yaaat! Then the class goes into proper neutral stance, arms gracefully stiffened directly in front of one’s belt, feet shoulders width apart, eyes transfixed forward. My dad lectures about proper positioning of feet and hips. I lose interest. It is the same class every year, by now I should be a first-degree black belt. But I have hurt my father saying that I don’t believe in violence and will not fight. I am a pansy and a bitch. My mother hates violence. She believes karate is violent. I really just find in boring. So I go along with my mother and say that I don’t believe in violence either and karate teaches violence. My father thinks we’re crazy. I tell him to fuck off. This is why I am sitting here next to the fountain watching. I come only to watch the people and see if anyone worth dreaming about has joined the class. I come so that I can feel like I am independent and embracing my maturity, because this is a University, filled with young, beautiful, independent things. Everyone looks as if they know exactly where they should be or where they are going. This is how I want to look. Like I am important and have some class to attend or join the next rally for Green Peace. But I’m an imposter. I sell the look but don’t get to act it. I come mostly to watch the people and see if I can get invited to any parties. Walking down the incline into the Den comes a man in his early twenties. He wears a navy blue floppy fishing cap and navy blue cargo pants. I can’t make out what his t-shirt says. He carries a duffel in his right hand and wears sandals. His brown hair flips on the sides. This man looks like God in human form. He is raw and beautiful. The kind of man who drives trucks and makes love tenderly. The kind of man that drinks beer and gets drunk, but has no problem talking about politics or poetry. This man is nameless. He has just made the air in my lungs still. He gives me one of those half nod smiles that means hello. I can’t move. He goes to the bathroom. A minute later I pinch myself. I know drool must be running down my chin, my jaw must be on my shirt. But I can’t help it. This is what it feels like: love at first site. When you are fifteen and pathetic, you think anything is love at first site. So now my night has been worth enduring Japanese lessons and spending “quality time” with my father. Five minutes later God comes out of the bathroom wearing a gi and a purple belt. My dad does not have purple belts in his class. He has white, yellow, green, blue, brown, and black. He walks past me and joins at the back of the class because he is late, doing a quick stretch routine. He is wearing black briefs, obviously forgetting how noticeable black underwear is through white cotton gi pants. But I’m fine, because God is gorgeous and likes black briefs. Sweat is in the air. It hovers like a cloud above the class, which I know is just waiting to break open and empty everyone’s sweat on them like a downpour. God is sweaty by now. His brow gleans oily and tan. The class now has to spar. Then after sparring, katas must be performed. After the katas are performed they finish with the “finishing ceremony” this is when they repeat the shpeel. A Sampai, or wearer of the brown belt at highest rank in seniority yells and the class repeats in unison. Honesty! Honesty. Integrity! Integrity. Manners! Manners. Self-control! Self-control. Self-respect! Self-respect. Then he blubbers something in Japanese and translates it into English. Make your mind as clear as water. I always had trouble with this. What does this mean? Am I supposed to envision ripples in water? Should I not think? What about water that isn’t clear? Somehow I always end up thinking about the swimming pool with its bright blue clear water, the reflections of the sun dancing on the floor of the pool. Then I realize I’ve defeated the whole purpose of the exercise because I’ve thought up all these amazing questions. After about two minutes, my dad breaks the silence by going into a lecture about this and that, money, and support of the club, and upcoming events. I always remember this part to be the most torturous. My dad likes the way his voice sounds I think, because he ends up talking for what always felt like an hour and by the end of that hour I can’t remember what he talked about. I always was thinking about the chicken lo mein I was going to order after class at the Chinese Star restaurant across the street from the campus. Tonight, however, I have the delight of just watching all this ritual and tradition and solemnity of the karate class with some anti-life punk anthem tapping rapidly in my ears. I stoop at the back after they have all bowed at my father and are dismissed. The students are hogs to the feeding trough, each one to their own bag. I am eyeing God, trying my best to not look conspicuous, hoping he will come and talk to me and maybe invite me to Galveston this weekend where we will play Frisbee on the beach and drink cherry slurppies and end the night in his bed. But none of this happens, God is the only one existing in this room and I am not, so he gathers his duffle and leaves and I stand by the fountain feeling the most disappointed and lousy I have ever felt in my life, because the love of my life just left and said neither ‘hi’ nor ‘goodbye’ to me. How lousy of him. And cursed be him. I’m going to be a Satan worshiper if God ignores me. This will teach him. Later in the car on the way home I ask about the purple belt. My dad explains to me God used to belong to another dojo but now he comes to my dad. I ask him God’s name. He says his name is Michael. I ask him what God does. He says Michael is a teacher. I ask what God teaches. He says Michael teaches biology at a high school in the Heights. I ask if he ever invites God out to eat like he does the rest of his students. He says Michael is very busy. I cross my arms and slouch, pouting the whole way home from the Chinese Star because God has a name and it is Michael, and Michael didn’t even talk to me, and that’s not fair, because when the world has fifteen year old boys who are confused and yet know everything, men who look like God should talk to these boys and invite them to spend the weekend in Galveston. 040217 ... the boy who bruises easily When I start ninth grade there is a boy named Zack. He is a senior, has that bleach blond hair with dark roots and crooked teeth. There is something that I find catching about him, but I’m not quite sure what it is. He is familiar but vague. Like a dream that you can’t quite remember. In any case, he is the first boy in high school that I have laid my eyes on and want more than anything I’ve ever wanted. Here I am in a giant boypool. There are all kinds of boys, jock boys, guitar boys, prep boys, hot boys, and plain old ordinary boys. But Zack is a boy that’s hard to place. He’s a boy that gets falling down drunk on the weekends and yet reads Dharma Bums. He thinks that this is all overrated, but has sex with all the freshman preps. He is a friend with jocks and preps and druggies and freaks. He has way too much sex appeal but he doesn’t even know it. I don’t know where to start or what to say, but I know that I must sleep with this boy before he graduates. This is my mission for my freshman year. This is what I am: I am artsy and shit. I spend half my day in the art room everyday. Everybody thinks I’m queer, I tell them they’re all narrow-minded fucks. I’m an artist goddammit, you guys are just shit. You’re all small town. You come from shit, and that’s what you’ll grow up to be is shit. When you leave this place everyone will think you are shit, because you’ve never been outside your goddamn state. And you don’t even know what the hell is cool because you’re narrow-minded fucks who live in this whole out in the middle of nowhere. And I’m cool and you’re not. And I’m artsy and shit. And this is the kind of reasoning I have. This is the kind of attitude I have. This is what makes me feel good about how terrible I feel. When I walk into a room and everyone goes silent as the sparrows in Mr. Kinnetz’s Evergreen tree when I deliver his newspaper. Silent. They just wait for me to leave and when they do, they are chirping louder then ever. This is how the students are. I leave, they talk. Every time I walk anywhere in school, all eyes are on me. I feel it like two bullet holes shot through the back of my skull, two wounds burning into my head. I walk on pins. This is how I get callous. This is how I get artsy and shit. My art teacher Mr. Yi is amazed with me. He is from Korea and studied art at ISU. I’ve seen some of his work. It’s mostly abstract expressionist oil pastel paintings of wrestlers and women. I try to act unimpressed with him. We have lame conversations, and I think that he really sucks because he is a wrestling coach. But he tells my mother at parent teacher conferences that he has nothing to teach me because I’m so far ahead of him in talent and skill. This makes me feel good. It also inflates my head like helium into a balloon. I am now arrogant and artsy and shit. I paint like no one has seen. And did you do that new piece in the display case? What are you putting out this week? We can’t wait to see what you will do next. Everyone talks about me for one reason or another, either its because how queer I am or how talented I am or how polite I am or how arrogant I am. The popular seniors talk about how queer I am, the girls like it. The people who are basically just good people talk about how talented I am. The teachers think I’m polite. And Mr. Yi’s wrestling athletes think I’m the most arrogant piece of shit that walked the halls. I hate all those bastards. One day in the art room I say something snide to Yi. I have been an independent study for the last semester. Two periods a day. I have done pastel, acrylic, charcoal, graphite, and film. There is nothing I haven’t tried. I have mixed all of them together and I have done them on their own. I have done abstract and representational. I am an experimenting freak. I am a genius. I am my own protégé. Yi follows me up the stairs to the work balcony that overlooks the classroom. I don’t realize he’s followed me until I turn around. His eyes bulge and a vein pops out of his forehead. Anger flashes across his face. He rips a lecture into me about arrogance and how I may be the best he’s seen but that I’m not “the best”. After he’s done, he goes downstairs, leaving me behind to sulk and lick my wounds. I say he’s fucked and I’m not. But underneath all of it, what stings the most is the truth. Now I know that I must redeem myself. I know that I have to do something that will make everyone stop and say wow. I need to do something that is going to cause everyone to realize just how good I am and how strong I am and how great I am going to be. I believe that if I do, I will gain a) the respect of the assholes who hate me, b) the respect of Yi, c) respect for myself, d) respect from Zack. First I get Erin, and independent study who is a senior (whom I also debunked from her title as art queen) to ask Zack to pose as a model. The first time we meet we make idle conversation. I am the sorriest, most pathetic boy ever. My crush on him is the most apparent thing. My eyes are googly and I drool. I talk about poetry and writing and music and anything that is artsy and shit. I blabber profusely about nothing. This is how girls act. I make those girls look like men. I get the preliminary sketches and a canvas that is six feet tall. I get black and white photos of Zack and a painting his grandmother did of him when he was five. Then I get to work. At first things seem like a big blob. I mix paint until the palette becomes an artwork itself. Whenever someone goes into the art room, in the balcony, they can see my mess expanding farther and farther away from my canvas and easel. One day I come in to work on my painting, and this is what it reads at the bottom on the white: I like dick. It says it in purple. Jen says whoever wrote it is a fuck face. I brush it off. Things like this are normal. I am beginning to accept them. I like dick. This is what it feels like, blood rushing to your cheeks. Each time I read it I feel lightheaded. I paint over it as fast as I can. After weeks of working and reworking, painting over mistakes and honing it down, I can finally say that this piece is mine. I take it to the NCC art show and steal Best 2-D piece. I win the approval of all those desired. Zack’s approval is none more than that: approval. Look it up. This does not mean that if someone likes your work that they will sleep with you. You will not have wild sex in the backseat of his car. You will not get to go to his senior party and get drunk. Everybody he is friends with will not be your friends. Pathetic is this: disillusionment. In the end I am alone, a tire swing spinning around in circles in the wind. Summer break comes shortly and I spend it miserably reading “On the Road” by the side of the public pool getting a tan. I am so cool. I’m artsy and shit. 040223 ... the boy who bruises easily “What kind of woman do you want?” This is what she asks me. We are in Mrs. Bormann’s room waiting for first period to begin. I can’t believe she’s asking me this question. What kind of question is this? I don’t know what to say. The right answer is this: big tits and a nice ass. But I don’t say the right answer. I say something to the effect that she is a girl who lays the shit down when it’s needed and she likes walking around her apartment in jeans, nothing else, just jeans. But this is not the correct answer. This answer means you know what. That three letter word belongs to you and you are the loser. No cigar or grand prize. “Can’t you get that from a friend?” Duh. Of course you can have a friend like that. “What kind of woman do you really want?” I don’t know. I don’t think about women. I say nothing. I’m just dumbly looking back at her blank as could be. “You think about that.” The bell rings and we gather up our stuff and make way for the hall. But I can sense that today is not going to be a normal day and that Jen is up to something. It’s one of those grand designs she builds in her head and you will have no idea of what it will be until its done. This is how she works: sly. She knows how to ask the right kind of questions to get you to say the right kind of answers. Or at least the answers that constitute as truth. These are the answers that formulate in the back of your head but you never ever ever want anyone to know, because they are truth. So until you answer with truth, the questions she asks will leave themselves burning in your mind like a cigarette being put out in a car seat, dark, disgusting little holes begging for your attention. They fester and decay and bother you until you have no choice but to rip the seat out and start over. Two days later my friend Joey from Webster City comes out. He’s off in Iowa City for college when he does it. I last saw Joey two months ago. This is the latest news I hear of him. My mom’s friend, Terry, tells me this. She says everyone in Joey’s family has sexual problem’s. They’re all a bunch of “sickos”. Terry comes from “sickos”. She herself was once a “sicko”. But since taking the right kind of drugs and after years of therapy “and prayer, that’s the biggest thing”, Terry has become half-way normal. I love Terry. I don’t ever want Terry to think I’m a “sicko” so I do anything and everything to make sure she never finds out that I’m a “sicko” too. For Terry “sicko” has a broad sense of meaning. She uses it quite frequently, mostly for people with issues which manifest themselves in people’s behavior, sexual, social, or otherwise. Terry could be a psychologist. Her mom was one. Her mom used her as her lab rat. Terry was never allowed to play instruments or sing, but the rest of her family was marvelously talented. Terry’s mom molested her sister. Her sister is a lesbian. Terry knows all about “sickos”. When she tells me I can’t talk. In fact I laugh. But I’m not laughing because its funny, I’m laughing because it’s my first reaction. Then I go blank and dumb, the way I did when Jen asked me about women. I can’t talk. My throat goes dry. We pass notes back and forth during church. I looked “intense” my mother later told me. We were having an “intense” time passing notes back and forth discussing Joey being gay and all about how homosexuality is wrong. And all that night after church I am confused and worried and anxious. The next day at school I am in the library waiting for the 8:30 bell to ring. Jen and I go to the library every morning before school actually starts to get on the laptops and surf the Internet. Usually she reads her horoscope while I check my mail. Today she comes in like any other and sits next to me like any other. For the librarian this must look normal, the scene of the two of us cowering behind our laptops talking softly. But I feel different inside and I feel strange, and Jen picks up on this right away, but she doesn’t say anything. So last night I found out that my friend Joey is gay. “Really?” she sounds surprised. I feel really weird about it. “How so?” she is studying my face, I am looking straight forward. Like it’s so different when you actually know someone who comes out. I don’t know, it’s weird. Nothing. Nothing. Finally I break the silence, Well you know it’s like this, you knew it all this time, I like guys. You know this, I know this. But when I hear of my friend actually coming out, it scares me. I’m scared. I’ve been trying to figure all of this out on my own, and I’m scared of it. I don’t want to be gay. I don’t want to come out. “I’m glad you finally just said that.” What? Why? “Because I think you’ll be a lot happier now that you have that off of your chest.” The bell rings. I am beginning to hate the bell. I think she controls that bell because it always rings when she’s done making a point. Sometimes it’s really frustrating. Other times it’s a relief. But this time I’m not sure what it is. I spend all day think about what I’ve just done. I have just come out. I have just admitted what the hell is wrong with me. I’m a sicko and that’s all there is to it. 040223 ... the boy who bruises easily In the fall of my sophomore year Jen and I decide we will make a movie. We want to be filmmakers and get attention. We like being different and thinking we are better then everyone else. All the foreign exchange students think we are the coolest. They think our school sucks and we agree with them. Jen drinks with them on the weekend. And even gets some Romanian guy who is a senior to want her so bad that he would marry her. But she’s just a flirt and toys with boys until their hearts are involved. Then when she loses interests she lets them off as easy as she can. This usually is like dropping them out of plane with no parachute. That’s as easy as you’re going to get off with Jen. But we have decided that because Jen has a video camera and we have both seen “American Beauty” that we will be filmmakers. I am to be the producer. I say if the cuts need to be reshot or if they can stay. She is the director. She gets to organize our cast and walk them through this. The plot is simple. Gay kid, Jock kid, Prep Girl, Slut Girl, Bully Guy, and two other prep girls who get us from A to B. Gay kid gets picked on by Bully Guy. Slut Girl is with Jock kid, except she’s really a virgin. Prep Girl is Slut’s best friend. Bully guy is really gay. There’s a football game. It takes place on homecoming week. There is no script. After brainstorming and meeting with each individual with think is perfect for the part I have decided to release my most methodical plan ever. This is the plan: ask a schoolteacher what he thinks of students and student life. This schoolteacher works at Jefferson Davis in the Heights. He looks akin to God in human form. He wears black briefs under white cotton gi pants. His name is Michael. My dad forks over the email address after I explain to him my ambitious project. This is our project. Uh huh. It’s gonna be great. Do you know any teachers I can email in your class. Oh really? What’s his name. Okay. His email address? Oh sure, let me get some paper. Alright thanks, Dad. What I write I’m not certain of. All I can think about is his face and his eyes, and the stubble on his chin and the way his hair flipped out on the sides underneath his fisherman hat, and uuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, just how much I’m in love with someone I’ve never even talked to. I am quite professional. I am like the Down with Love girl, perfectly cunning. I have created a window of opportunity for myself all by myself, and by doing that, who needs God to do anything? All God has to do is come to me. Yes I am doing a project on this…blah….blah…some more blah…and then I click send. I am charming and ambitious and talented. This is irresistible no matter what one’s sexuality is. I talk myself through this in feigned confidence. Two days later Michael emails me back. He is an amateur film producer. Very good he tells me, gives me some advice and signs it with peace, Michael. If you have ever been a believer in love at first site, you will understand why it is that someone like myself does something so obsessively crazy as planning out how to make someone fall in love with you. This is what I learn: Michael is engaged to Laura. Michael is 24. Michael likes Jack Kerouac and writing. He wants to be a doctor. Michael likes talking to me. He is ambitious and a Capricorn. He is focused and driven. He also is very logical. Michael can see himself being materialistic in the future. Michael breaks it off with Laura. I think all is going my way. Michael meets an old friend from William and Mary named Jasan. She is Puerto Rican. I go to Houston over Christmas vacation to find out he’s gone to Puerto Rico. The rest is more nothing that means a lot of something. Its talking about weather and life experiences and writing in a style so sappy, trees are shamed and your tongue sticks to the page when you read it. The school year is like this though: Hell. I can’t paint. I can’t write. I can’t even make a crappy film. I can do this: write a newsletter full of mouthy, controversial, attitude crap that sucks so much people love it. I release three issues and that’s enough. I give up on that too. I have come out to Jen. But no one else. I fight with my parents. I once thought about suicide. I was standing in the shower. This would be such a good time I tell myself. Come on, if you do it then you’ll be happy. You’ll get to see if there really is life after death. Yes, but you’ll be naked and they’ll discover your dead body all wet and naked. Oh but that won’t matter because you’ll be dead. What about your bowels? Doesn’t your body push abort when you die? Yeah that’s true. Okay just drown yourself. Note: it is not possible to drown yourself in the shower. You will end up with a nose full of water and eyes watering. You will cough profusely. Next time, fill up the tub and take a deep breath. This is the proper way to kill yourself. I write this down in my list of “important information for the future”. At least I’ll get to see God in the summer. This is the only thing I look forward to. 040301 ... the boy who bruises easily It’s a muggy afternoon in July when we are leaving the Museum District. Julian and I have been with our aunt the past week doing fun things during the day. She is spoiling us and buying lots of books from museums. So far we’ve been to the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Natural Science and History. The afternoons are slow and orange. The humidity is a damp cloud sitting heavily in the air. But we are in our Grandmother’s Honda, which Robyn has borrowed and we are leaving behind the heat and the museums and Herman Park. Slowly we head north on Montrose, back to my dad’s house for the evening. Robyn is really not my aunt, she is my step aunt, but I consider her family because she is interesting and mild-tempered and pleasant to be around. I like her well enough to leave off the adjective of ‘step’ when I refer to her in conversation. Robyn is from California. She’s a yuppie, not quite grown out of her hippie youth. She has two daughters Shauna and Anna, but they are both in their 20’s so I don’t get to see them much. This is Robyn, kind and thinking, she is liberal and interested in many things. Her hair is a shoulder-length mix of walnut and ash. Her teeth are crooked in the most desirable way and she wears earrings that dangle. Sometimes they are turquoise and look like little treasures that she found off the ground and fixed into jewelry. She wears round glasses like John Lennon and a pair of fuchsia Birkenstocks whenever I am with her. Sometimes she wears a batik sarong or a drab linen skirt. Her bag is something she picked up in Mexico. She knows enough Spanish to get by. Her senior year of high school, she lived out of her car and with friends. This is because she did not want to move to Houston with the rest of her family. Her life was in California. So she stayed, and squatted and probably mooched. But she was never happier. In college, her school’s mascot was a slug. Whenever she visits we talk about how life used to be and we share stories about being young and what it’s like. Sometimes have discussions about Freud and his theories, as well as Picasso and Matisse. One time when we were in the Rothko Chapel, she said she felt very close to God. I had to agree with her, because somehow, art makes me feel close to God. In California she has a big house with a front porch and rooms, which she rents out to people who are transitioning. Her latest tenant is a Native American. By the way she describes him I picture a stout man in his thirties wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt with long straight hair. He probably rides a bicycle everywhere he goes. I have never been to her house, but I imagine it to be a dusty collection of the last thirty years of her life, filled with artifacts of her travels and all the interesting things that friends and lovers have left behind or given to her. She says she has buckets of sea glass this would be the most interesting to me. But if anything, I think her front porch would have a ceiling fan and a hammock. Robyn used to date a man named Paul. He had red hair and freckles and was probably Polish. I met him once. They had been together for two years. That is a long time for anyone, but especially my aunt Robyn, because she still believes in freedom and not limiting your sex life so that it becomes “unhealthy”. She is healthy. Of anyone, I have a feeling she would know how to describe love the best, because she’s had so many lovers, and I think that maybe somewhere in there, she probably felt something that was real love. So we are driving this afternoon in the Honda, the windows rolled down even though it is unbearably muggy and I drop the question to her. Julian is asleep in the back seat drooling on his shirt. What does love feel like? A pause. She searches with her eyes, scanning the puddle-ridden street for the answer. I think of Michael, she thinks of Paul. “It’s the feeling that you would give your life for someone else…you know that if anything ever happens, you would put that person before yourself. And that person’s happiness is more important than your own. It’s a need to be with them, and a need for them to be happy.” Did you love Paul? She pauses again. “Yeah I loved Paul. I really loved him. We had a lot of good times together. But you know sometimes, things aren’t always mean to be, and sometimes even when you do put the other person before you, it’s not always good for you. What if that person takes advantage of your graciousness? Who hurts then?” I look over at her and she brushes away a tear with her left palm. I can tell she is thinking about something important like a car ride or one of those pivotal conversations that you get right before you break up or say good-bye. “You have to weigh things out, make sure that what your doing is going to be the best for both of you. And so Paul had some things he needed to work out. And he said I had some things I needed to work out. And that was that.” Do you miss him? “Yeah… you know…I really do…Paul and I were good together…I have a lot of memories with him…and there’s always the chance we could love again…but now we just need our space…and we need to see what is best for ourselves in that space.” How do I know if I’m in love? “You’ll know when it happens. Life is the ultimate experience. You wouldn’t miss a thing like love. It hits you too hard.” This is how things are, I am sixteen and I have a summer sitting in my lap, and whenever summer comes around I am horny and hormonal. Love is not the object of my attention, sex is. Love is an adult game with adult rules and consequences. Sex is a child’s game. Sex is easy and simple. You take off your clothes. You get into bed. And then you put your clothes back on. There are no strings, usually. I am boy crazy. There are boys all over in Houston. Well-dressed and handsome, they are at the Galleria, on Westhiemer, in the Montrose, at the clubs, in the movie theaters, in their cars racing on the freeway. There are Latin boys, and Abercrombie jock boys, there are metro boys that are dressed cosmo all the time, there are good old white boys with cowboy hats, and there are punk boys with tattoos and Chuck Taylors. But of all the boys around me, there is one that is on my mind. He is not boy or man, but a breed in between. And that one strikes me as something more desired than sex and lust and beauty. He is something more substantial than all material or physical things, and I am confused about sex and love. And more than anything, I do not want to be one of those lame ass teenagers with my heart in someone’s teeth saying that this is real love, this is the real fucking thing, don’t ya know! 040301 ... the boy who bruises easily When I get the balls to finally do it, I take out a wadded sheet of paper that has some numbers scribbled on it and call Michael. I have been in Houston for two weeks already and not heard one word from him. This is what I do: walk past the phone fifty times a day hoping it will ring and it will be him. But it doesn’t, and he doesn’t show up at my dad’s classes either. So I force myself to take make things happen. This is how Natalie is. When things don’t happen, she makes them happen, always to her advantage. She says I should call him. So I walk past the phone another fifty times, this time just trying to actually get past the first three digits of the number. When I do finally get on the phone I get a girl with a high-pitched voice that speaks at an alarming rate of fastness. The voice sounds like Minnie mouse on speed. She says Michael is in the shower and can he call me back. Sure I say and I leave my number. I don’t remember just how long it for him to call, but when you are waiting for something so important to you, something you have desperately been waiting for for a year, then half an hour can feel like a century. The minutes drip as slowly as the last drops of coffee from the filter. Dark, and gummy, and above all things, highly annoying. Drip…drip…drip. This is how you feel when you get what you’ve been waiting for: fireworks on the fourth of July. A woman finally reaching her orgasm after a dozen or so bad lovers. Sparklers. A hotdog fresh off the grill. Ice cream on a hot day. A merry go round at top speed. I am light headed and fresh. The voice I hear is perfect. This is what one-year of waiting does to you, you emerge into the experience romanticizing every moment as perfect. The man who got shot last night during a drug bust: perfect. The two-hour traffic jam on I-610: perfect. The four kids that died in the house fire today…sigh: perfect. What more could one ask for than a life full of beautiful accidents that are in every way imaginable perfect? The answer is nothing. Because God has a name and it is Michael. So anything that is of or related to Michael is perfect. When he farts I am sure that flowers bloom. Perfect. “So this is what it’s like after all the cyber space.” Yep. “This is so weird.” Tell me about it. “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten a hold of you yet, I’ve been really busy working on this project for…” And the rest after that is like mixing Ex-lax and emotion, smooth. It’s butter in the pan. Michael is moving to the Museum District from the Heights. I offer to help him move. He accepts. We finish the conversation and hanging up is a blur because my eyes are googly and big. I feel like I’m high and I can’t stop smiling. I don’t respond when people ask my questions. I’m just some lame sicko who has a crush on God and that’s just perfect. 040301 ... silentbob I like to do funny things like only point out words that haven't been blathed under yet, the words that are not links and make poetry out of them. 041201 ... silentbob roadside Burger King Omaha parents divorced five weeks suntan brand attitude Omaha staying finished value meal overweight, husky their twenties trash wearing Abercrombie Fitch Lakes blonde brunette. couldn't midwestern fag. saying saying public begins pounding start pass Burger King staring these model runway cocky saying sharp jabbing wit escapes dumbounded blowjob ninth grade public emptying tray don't don't gonna kick performer booed host tomatoes being tail tucked ashamed nearest under parents palace brothers oblivious has seat beside palms sweating aren't twitching scanning those don't trying happened suspiscions don't slows don't jittery shook changes palace yelling asks insists knowing demands barf relaying details feels tongue humilated molested says earring asking blowjob course says answering stepdad says gonna kick their fags their ears thinks their ears calms calms tries consoling rest awful 041201 ... bijou bobby, that's beautiful. soon someone will come along and make links to all those words but it will still be beautiful. gave me a big smile. 041203 ... silentbob thank you erin. YOU make ME smile! 041207 ... . the boy who bruises easily is amazing amazing amazing 041207 ... Toxic_Kisses and back to it I go as of tomorrow so as usual this means I wont be around much. 141013 what's it to you? who go blather from