boys silentbob bad karma 041013 ... kerry you took me to north carolina, to the mountains to visit nick. when we pulled up to his house he wasn’t home yet so we sat on your car and took some pictures of each other with a disposable camera. In the pictures you’re playing your guitar and i’m sticking my tongue out. i’d never met him but he looked at me like he’d known me forever and said welcome, welcome! we went to a metal bar that night and i got too drunk and made an ass of myself, but this was a long time ago and i can laugh about it now. we didn’t know he had a cat so after one sleepless night, after hours of us both wheezing and coughing, we got a motel room down the road. nick came over to hang out and we were having a good time watching tv and drinking eagle rare bourbon and smoking weed. nick tends to throw his body around so at some point the room phone started ringing and you answered. “ok sorry, yeah we’ll keep it down.” (snort) he suddenly decided he wanted to take a shower, he was very stoned and said the motel bathroom was much nicer than his at home, and he was in there for what felt like forever. at one point you and i decided to go to find snacks, and we made out between the vending machine and the ice box. he was still in the shower when we came back, flushed and sheepish. at a taco place we were waiting for nick’s new girlfriend, we were asking about her like high schoolers gossiping, and he said she was really tall and he “had a thing for big tall women.” (it was true; she was very tall, nearly six feet.) i liked seeing you with someone who’d known you when you were just boys, someone who could tell stories about you and loosen you up. i listened as you reminisced, talking about how you met–you hated each other, apparently–and who’s where now, doing what… “it’s always the same, man, like i saw you yesterday.” and your laugh is a little different–still yours but a different shade. 211213 ... Bizzar i often wonder how i can miss them. the boys who forced me to grow up far sooner than i should have, at the tender age of 13. i thought i was so worldly, then, but don't we all at that age? it's such a shame that the brain seems to lose the happiest memories. they become stained and weathered like old bedsheets over the years. stretched thin and used up. but yet, trauma sits there - clear and bright - illuminating so many corners of the mind that should be left in darkness. so how is it that i miss those boys? the ones who stained the sheets? they're so thin now, that i can see what they did. and now that i am much older, i can see that those things were not normal or ok, or things that friends just did. when i was 19, a friend told me i was "an old soul". and now i wonder if that was true because i grew up so young. survived things no one should have to experience. maybe i am who i am today because of it. but even still. how do i miss the boys who stained the sheets? 220303 ... neoncrackle sometimes i think i must sound like a liar, like no one would ever believe all the livin i've done in my years. it's amazing how much life people put us through, sometimes. 220303 ... ovenbird Have always defied understanding. They seemed feral to me, as a child, creatures running on impulses so different from my own. They wanted to tear the world apart to see how it worked not realizing that their indiscriminate flailing was muddying the water, making it impossible to see the bottom. In the theatre props room, when I was fourteen, it was my body that a boy wanted to tear apart. He offered violence like it was a gift, a rite of passage that he could orchestrate, so confident in his forceful desire. I escaped, proving myself to be the rabbit he insisted I was. I failed to find the boys more interested in witness than destruction, because they were hiding from their imposing peers, equally afraid of being torn apart. Now I have a boy of my own to raise and he’s wild and strange but mostly kind. I’m trying to teach him that strength is found in gentle attentiveness, not in force, but it’s hard to know if he’s hearing me. He’s so busy mixing condiments and spices into milk and daring his friends to drink it, so busy prowling the neighbourhood after dark with the others dressed in a uniform of sweatpants and dark hoodies, so busy formulating one word answers to every question I pose. And yet, when he comes home late and I ask him what he was up to, he says, “we ran into an old couple out for a walk and we sang them Christmas carols.” I’m surprised by the remnants of his innocence. It turns out that you don’t have to understand boys to love them. 260126 what's it to you? who go blather from