rituals

There is a point in the seventh grade when I think about suicide. I get all after-school special-y about it. This is something that teenagers go through. I ask Tara if she ever thinks about. I'm trying to stand out amongst the rednecks and hillbillies with my depression - suicide is so urban and sophisticated. Being alone inside the house after school before my father comes home, I can process the horrors of the day. After escaping the last possible opportunity for harassment for the day, getting off the school bus, now I'm ready for my breakdown. I take out the serrated kitchen knife and run it across my wrists. It's the isolation, I can't breathe. I know I won't do it, but take comfort in the option. And as long as I have the option I can keep going. I know my existence doesn't have to be like this, but I'm trapped for now. I take a few sips of my father's vodka to be dramatic. I was never into getting drunk even back then, but apparently I am into wallowing in my misery. It's the fear, never being able to relax, never feeling safe. Sitting on linoleum floor in the kitchen, leaning against wooden cabinets, wanting to hide, to disappear, I put the knife down. The insanity of being harassed and never fighting back, hiding it, being ashamed of it, never talking about it to anyone is hurting me. I'm living two lives now, both bleak. There's no help, no hope, not even a glimmer. Sometimes I pray before I go to sleep that when I woke up in the morning everything that I have known to be my life will actually have been just a dream. TV helps. I watch Oprah everyday after school. I put a frozen burrito in the microwave before the show starts. I eat a Little Debbie snack cake while I wait for my burrito to be done. I drink nothing but coca-cola, day after day. I take my burrito to the living room and eat it in a blur of gagging despair while I watch Oprah.

deadpan

At Springville Middle School, circa 1991, in Coushatta, Louisiana, I was named "king" of my seventh grade class. Or king of the white children anyway. On your knees, hillbillies, the bitch is back. The black children elected their own kings and queens. I suppose they had to do it that way to keep white children happy. No white king or queen would have ever won otherwise, Springville Middle School being a mostly black, public school. The white children will have equality! Welcome to every horrible stereotype of the South. It was the worst of my school years in a lot of ways. The most harassment, the worst alienation, and realizing that yes I did want to suck cock and I was okay with that, but having no access to cocks to suck. But I guess I still had hope, or I hadn't totally shut down anyway. There must have only been about ten white boys in the seventh grade and I don't think any of them would have been up to feminizing prospect of competing for the title of king. The irony: sometimes it takes a queen to run for king. And I can say with some confidence that I was the obvious choice for the job. How did the nominations work? I think the election "officials" came into class and asked for nominations and then students raised their hands to vote. Since there were so few white boys I was bound to be nominated. I didn't want to be king, the limelight would be too intense. The culminating experience, well, really the only experience for the kings and queens was a crowning ceremony and dance. oH and there was a parade through town. This sounds like Homecoming? But I don't remember homecoming or any football themes. When I was nominated, I suddenly did want the title, badly. I guess there was a run-off, but I'm sure the other contestants had no interest in competing. And this is the funny part, in order to win I didn't have to get the most votes, I just had to raise the most money for the school. When I told my father this part of the process he was troubled by the ethical standards of this election and decided not to help me. I started crying. Why couldn't he ever help me? I realized the absurdity of it too, but still I wanted it. Finally he conceded to help me raise money in order to become king. I went to my grandparents and they rolled up all their pennies for me. I was pissed. Can't you write me a check, Nanny? Now I know where her son gets his cheapness from. Other contestants had more creative ways of getting money. Wendy Wilson who was competing for eighth grade white queen put a donation jar at Fausto's Fried Chicken. It was good chicken, but not my scene. I continued to bamboozle family members for donations. Wendy lost and I won, but then again she was a legend of sexual promiscuity in our school, so she was already a queen in my eyes. Maybe I thought being King would change things for me. Or maybe I just wanted to go to a party or just be a part of something. To be, well, yes, validated.

facebook is gonna make me cry!

Sitting in the Breakroom in Oakland. The music is good, clubby. The guy next to me is trying to explain John Cage's experimental music to his girlfriend. I'm trying to read the Iliad, but who can concentrate? Apparently Patroklos and Achilleus were lovers. Is that supposed to excite me? My professor thinks so, but he assumes that all his students are nineteen and straight. More Thai food, this time with Geri. The economy's so bad that they're giving free Thai Iced Tea or Coffee with each entree. My coffee is gritty. Geri dilutes here tea with ice water to make it last longer because the economy's so bad. We look at the tuna strainers at Smart and Final, and we run the joke into the ground, as usual. My cousin from Louisiana calls. I'm nervous. He keeps calling me Kev and Man, with a southern accent that I wonder if I ever had. He sounds like such a sweet guy, really normal in ways that I never was. But he doesn't seem to think that I'm a freak which is surprising. Actually I'm worried about having to say the words, I'm gay. Not because I'm ashamed, but because it just seems silly to have to say it at this point. He doesn't ask, he's a hipster. He tells me about my father. Still lives in the same house, a hermit, worries all the time, does his own thing. Weird, weird, weird. In an even weirder, and perhaps beautiful, Facebook reconnection, I found one of my friends from middle school. She lives with her girlfriend in Armistead, across the river from Coushatta, and works at the truck stop/casino which is next to the Burger King. There was no Burger King when I was there. I've missed so much! It's not really surprising that she's gay, she was always kind of butch. What's surprising to me is that she still lives there. That she never felt the need to get away. I guess I didn't have to runaway, after all.