...was the firstborn son, they were poor, he was different, he knew it deep inside, but he dared not tell anyone. His father was a tyrant, at least that's how he saw him, spent his days in the oil fields, brought home a lot of anger but not much money. His mother was sweet, powerful, funny, but she deferred to her husband because that's what it said in the bible and they never went against what it said in the bible. There were a lot of things in the bible that he couldn't make heads nor tails of but he dared not speak of his confusion, not to his father because he was a tyrant and not to his mother because she deferred, first to the lord and second to her husband and there was no room for him in that equation.A few years later his mother had another baby, a girl, and he poured all of himself into her, imagined she was a tiny pink vessel like in a bible story and he filled her up to overflowing, and she grew up in his shadow, and she saw the same harsh world that he saw but it wasn't as harsh because of him, because he was there, because he said he would stand up for her, that he would take care of her, and he did, as best as he could. He swallowed hard and pushed aside that in him which didn't fit, didn't seem to belong, and he helped to make the world a happier place, a place where tyrants and matriarchs ruled, but where smiles could be exchanged and laughter could be heard.
And then more children were born and brought into a new old house, a small house which because smaller every time another child was brought into it, and the tyrant seemed to become bigger and the matriarch became more powerful, and the little children huddled together and did the best they could, and when they could not they took the punishments they knew were to come, the lashings, the thrashings, the spankings, the screaming to bring up holy hell, and the fear was more painful than anything, the fear of the elders, and the fear of the stories they had been told, about their souls, about where they were bound to go if they continued to act in this way.
Then a great tragedy struck. The youngest child was killed in an accident. It was nobody's fault, and that was the greatest tragedy. It was nobody's fault so there was nobody to blame, nowhere to put the confusion and the sadness and the rage, nowhere to put it, they just had to hold it in, swallow it like a memory, like a bible story without a logical conclusion. Most of them weren't able to do that very well. His father turned sullen, his mother went mad, his sister became angry, the other turned to god demanding an answer, demanding an explanation, and she promised to serve him forever until he provided an answer....
The eldest knew about holding secrets, knew what that took, knew what it took out of a person, and he could do it no more. He ran away, took his secrets in borrowed suitcases he promised to return but knew he never would. But of course he couldn't say that, that he would never come back. How he longed to hear himself say those words to his family, to see his father's face, to watch his sisters wipe away their mother's tears. But what if it wasn't true? He couldn't say the words for fear the fates would somehow turn against him. So he just left it all behind, didn't leave a note, ran all the way back to the state where he was born, lived a wild and free life, met many like-minded people, found one whose soul he thought belonged to him. They shared their lives together, lived a life of public shame but private ecstasy. They cherished having discovered another who shared their sensibilities, who didn't question every move of the other.
But then a great tragedy struck his lover and left him crippled, crippled and drunk, and he stood by and watched as the lover ruined both their lives with alcohol and lies. But he had pledged his love forever, and if he took anything out of the church he was raised in with him when he left it was that the love of a mate is the most important, the most sacred, the most worthy of sacrifice. And so he sacrificed a good portion of his life for his lover, whom he no longer loved and with whom he no longer shared even the tiniest morsel of intimacy. His attentions turned to drunken encounters in darkened corners, where shame grows like mold in an unkept bathroom, a dripping faucet, a shame, shaded eyes, guilt, self-hate, desire unattained.
Eventually his lover tried to kill him and he was able to free himself from the clutches of that withered flower. But his future looked no brighter, his dreams no longer as vivid as in his younger days. Shame haunted him through the death of another lover, the death of a mother who never really knew who he was, and as he took in a much younger lover who was addled with his own set of addictions, addictions that allowed him to weave elaborate lies to get what he wanted, what he needed. And then, when that no longer worked, he beat him up and left him bruised and bleeding, inside and out, stole his possessions and told him he would be back for the rest, "So you better not even try to go anywhere."
He lay there in his apartment and cried. He lay there in his empty living room and cried, his TV gone, his furniture gone, his dignity sold on the corner for a needle's worth of something someone in a moment of desperation called "love."
