We exist across the nation of America and beyond, yearning for answers to our questions that are not well suited for the average heterosexual, or even homosexual, adult. From deep within our culture there is a vernacular of preconcieved roles and expectations.We are all rejected one way or another, whether it be being thrown out of our unloving homes, or the very essence of who we are in society. We are the queers; young, old, male, female, and everything in between or unidentified. That's who I write for. The countless boys and young men who are waiting for that form of 'validation', and the older generations who cease to stop hurting. Spinning their hurt, licking their wounds, and waiting for that same validation while participating in actions that lead them to the very same darkness they have become accustomed to remain intimate with, because FEAR is their lover and now knows them well. We breathe life into fear, otherwise it would not exist. I'm fortunate to have only 16 years of that, and not 40, but those boys need to learn to be the men they're supposed to be, and someone there to teach them with love and compassion, not an elder inflicting their own darkness and agenda onto them.
Men remain young boys inside waiting for someone to validate them with the love, protection, and consolation of the fathers they never had.
I feel it is my duty to be part of the change and construction, or re-construction, of other young men's lives. I will be the father of all boys willing to change and willing to be taught. But at the moment, I am a brother to you all. I will ponder with you the questions you may have about who we are to the world, but does it matter? You and I will be the men we are supposed to be if you follow the path of enlightenment. Peace is real, as is love. Only the enlightened know of it.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Boy In The Cycle
There lived something peculiar in my adolescent mind, something suspicious in my boyhood, that I wasn't quite prepared to admit to myself at the tender age of 12, let alone to someone else if there had been anyone, though like everything we disavow, we still breathe an evanescent life into it every now and then...Being gay, we are all more conscious of ourselves and that we're somehow different then what's expected. And at the age of 16, which to my dismay is quickly coming to an end, after many changes and dramatic growth spurts, I admit something I would assume so many gay men do at some point in their life. I shine the light on every dark crevice hiding in the shadows of my consciousness. And I will not subsidize the manifestation of what every boy, gay or straight, needs, to subsidize the psychology of what may or may not be the fine line between perversion and the common relationship between men and boys that has always been.
We all need men in our lives. Why do the gay youth of today REALLY feel aloof and take their lives? Maybe they're lacking fathers, maybe they don't know their place. They may search in the wrong place to find darkness, and fall victim to hurt by the hands of the wrong men. To be an isolated gay youth without a family or 'place' intact, is to be a marble bouncing around in an anxious cycle. My attraction to older men struck an anxiety in me that was drawn from the mistrust of that concept. Knowing better, not to search for and act on impulse in the wrong places at the wrong times, I let it live on its own. Now, I see it in me, waiting to be articulated. And that's just what this is for. These words are not waiting to be validated by someone else who experiences the same thing. At least now, I can say it. I can describe the way men were seen from my eyes, and the way it was so repressive to have to keep it in the dark. What was so confusing was that I didn't know whether or not to see other males as 'players on the same team' or the object of my affection. They're both, and that's what confuses the roles of lovers and fathers and friends, all men and boys...I'm attracted to older men who signify 'fathers', and that's one of the most common sexual manifestations of gay culture.
No conclusion is to be drawn from this at the moment, just a very simple discovery, and the chance to finally be a son. Not from the people I was born into, who never had me as their son anyway, but the family I come together with on my own. The family I dreamed of for 16 years. Grateful I don't have to search in all the wrong places, and go another 16 to 20 years hurting, if I had even lived that long. I could have been a dead boy who never even lived, but now I'm a growing spirit, learning everything that lies right under our noses, the truths that exist with or without our acknowledgement.
Our universe, I think, is kind, so I've been taught.
We never stay in the dark...There always comes a light, if we choose to see it. With each and every lesson I learn as a boy, I love it more and more.
We all need men in our lives. Why do the gay youth of today REALLY feel aloof and take their lives? Maybe they're lacking fathers, maybe they don't know their place. They may search in the wrong place to find darkness, and fall victim to hurt by the hands of the wrong men. To be an isolated gay youth without a family or 'place' intact, is to be a marble bouncing around in an anxious cycle. My attraction to older men struck an anxiety in me that was drawn from the mistrust of that concept. Knowing better, not to search for and act on impulse in the wrong places at the wrong times, I let it live on its own. Now, I see it in me, waiting to be articulated. And that's just what this is for. These words are not waiting to be validated by someone else who experiences the same thing. At least now, I can say it. I can describe the way men were seen from my eyes, and the way it was so repressive to have to keep it in the dark. What was so confusing was that I didn't know whether or not to see other males as 'players on the same team' or the object of my affection. They're both, and that's what confuses the roles of lovers and fathers and friends, all men and boys...I'm attracted to older men who signify 'fathers', and that's one of the most common sexual manifestations of gay culture.
No conclusion is to be drawn from this at the moment, just a very simple discovery, and the chance to finally be a son. Not from the people I was born into, who never had me as their son anyway, but the family I come together with on my own. The family I dreamed of for 16 years. Grateful I don't have to search in all the wrong places, and go another 16 to 20 years hurting, if I had even lived that long. I could have been a dead boy who never even lived, but now I'm a growing spirit, learning everything that lies right under our noses, the truths that exist with or without our acknowledgement.
Our universe, I think, is kind, so I've been taught.
We never stay in the dark...There always comes a light, if we choose to see it. With each and every lesson I learn as a boy, I love it more and more.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
7PM Horizon, reflection of boyhood.
I sit in the amber lighting of a room, a light from far away, mailed from across the country, in the desert, it came to me. I sit there in that light, on my bed in an outter burrough of NYC at sixteen years old. There are streetlights outside, a full view of them dimly lit from my seated position on the bed. I don't see what the the lights are attatched to, just glowing ovals of orange. I hear everything, disguised as a muffle of white noise; cars. This is what peace feels like. I visualize the entire country, the entire world, the oceans, the little boys and girls who grow up thinking that their abductors who maybe molested and rented them, are their mothers and fathers. I am exonerated from the anxiety of the perpetual questions, what can I do, what can I do, and where the hell am I from, never mind where I am going. How can I help? These questions have ceased to live and taunt me in this moment. Someone so young should never have a heavy heart, but that is sadly what our youth, the youth that I am a member of, experience, sometimes for the rest of their lives. How can someone with so many years ahead to fall together take their existence so seriously? Maybe seriously enough to lay down and die by their hurt. Listen not to your elder's "wisdom", if you are able to decipher it just as their undying hurt from child to adulthood. They will never truly experience life. Learn on your own. I know now, that I couldn't wrap my brain around the lack of wisdom or appreciation or gratitude of life from grown men and women. Those were my parents, living for their lunch breaks and nice and stupid television shows each night before they grow older and die, as the sixteen year old boy who may have once been their son, but now is his own boy, was never prepared to realize that he would some day be an older boy, growing into a man. When I see photos of your children, or I see a mother laughing and a father stroking his son's hair lovingly, I hurt that this really was reality and not a movie script, that I never got to experience. I feel the love in me I could one day give my child, but now can never recieve from my absent mother and father and siblings. I realize my responsibility, my capability, now, and I can no longer go a day more feeling like I don't want to be the age I am, but younger. Because I am not a little boy, but I am not yet a man. I like the fact that I'm gay because I think it adds character and understanding to my male soul. Aside from teenage hormones, and loving men and boys, I feel both the feminine and masculine spectrum, and I am not afraid to live through both of them. I'm not sure when this peculiar aggression had grown inside of me, but it is there, seemingly living its own life, causing frustration of want in me. The want to feel another boy, as soft and smooth as I now could never be without a very painful hot wax, his soft lips, my fingers gently dancing through his hair, as I hold him tight, and hum him into slumber. Or the want of a man in his thirties, stocky and strong, but gentle and fuzzy in the right places, he and I in a warm tight embrace, wrapped around each other like a pair of contracted rattlesnakes, his fingers dance gently across my neck and down my spine. This time, its not about the thrill of the illegal daddy/boy roleplay I'd thought about since age 5, but its just about the converging of males alike. Just a nightly reflection of my boyhood.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Fear and Youth in America.
Fear is the heart of ignorance. Fear is when I'm in the shower, the forceful hot water pouring over my hair and skin, wishing I'd only be this much taller, wishing my face looked this much better. Fearing if I don't exhibit these things I won't be the object of admiration? No, that I won't be taken as seriously and loved by the culture in which I am born into. As I type this up, I feel that despite the indifference of the people, and the obstacle, that I can, if determined and and resilient, but most of all, MOTIVATED, that I, one person, one teenage boy, can find that sense of belonging that better enables me to discover and carry out my nature.
The arrogant mediocracy, the angry voices, and the violence has drowned my inner dialogue. Where does the angst of youth come from? That FUCK YOU to the world? It comes from the giant collage of what could be, should be, and anxiously what is not yet discovered by the teenager. My young gay mind would perhaps be better off without the black or white ideals of the gay MAN. The gay teenage boy is more often that not depicted as a skinny sissy boy. Or, the gay teenage boy is an athletic jock with striking features. I am informed by porn that makes me feel inferior. A topic a boy my age is inevitably educated about.
So, as I have lied on the floor in despair, with not enough energy to walk downstairs to swallow the whole medicine cabinet plus my mother's prescription medications for the final breathe, the emergency exit, I have felt the agony of torment. Tormented that I am not valuable, and cannot be, as I am a physical reflection of my arrogant parents whose lives only matter to them and other arrogant people who do not contribute to or respect the world they live in. This is when I realize and re-play again that it isn't how valuable you are, its what makes you valuable, your purpose, your nature. And I'm stickin' around for this show until it ends itself.
The past generations (circa 1950s) were so patriotic, if you asked a room full of teenage boys who would fight for their country, you would probably see twice as many raised hands than you would now. We live in the age of the internet, of technology. Are they even teaching kids how to tell time anymore? Work doesn't equal money to my generation as much as it did THEN. And for us young people, what is there to do but have more free time and oppurtunity to criticize ourselves and live up to these American TV ideals?
I don't say fuck you or WAKE UP to the ideals themself, as its the people who give them life. I say fuck you and WAKE UP to the kids, to the people, that it is so valuable to. False misjudgements of what is value has, and will continue to, sink my generation's sense of worth and responsibility!
Remember hearing about the Columbine shootings? I was 5 years old then. Now I am 16 years old on December 30th, 2010. I was born in the year 1994. And look how homicide has now turned to suicide. Better of worse, either way, the condition of America's youth must be recognized. The teenager will always be scared, but we can reassure them and set better examples for them! For me, for us! They are, we are, I am the future.
The arrogant mediocracy, the angry voices, and the violence has drowned my inner dialogue. Where does the angst of youth come from? That FUCK YOU to the world? It comes from the giant collage of what could be, should be, and anxiously what is not yet discovered by the teenager. My young gay mind would perhaps be better off without the black or white ideals of the gay MAN. The gay teenage boy is more often that not depicted as a skinny sissy boy. Or, the gay teenage boy is an athletic jock with striking features. I am informed by porn that makes me feel inferior. A topic a boy my age is inevitably educated about.
So, as I have lied on the floor in despair, with not enough energy to walk downstairs to swallow the whole medicine cabinet plus my mother's prescription medications for the final breathe, the emergency exit, I have felt the agony of torment. Tormented that I am not valuable, and cannot be, as I am a physical reflection of my arrogant parents whose lives only matter to them and other arrogant people who do not contribute to or respect the world they live in. This is when I realize and re-play again that it isn't how valuable you are, its what makes you valuable, your purpose, your nature. And I'm stickin' around for this show until it ends itself.
The past generations (circa 1950s) were so patriotic, if you asked a room full of teenage boys who would fight for their country, you would probably see twice as many raised hands than you would now. We live in the age of the internet, of technology. Are they even teaching kids how to tell time anymore? Work doesn't equal money to my generation as much as it did THEN. And for us young people, what is there to do but have more free time and oppurtunity to criticize ourselves and live up to these American TV ideals?
I don't say fuck you or WAKE UP to the ideals themself, as its the people who give them life. I say fuck you and WAKE UP to the kids, to the people, that it is so valuable to. False misjudgements of what is value has, and will continue to, sink my generation's sense of worth and responsibility!
Remember hearing about the Columbine shootings? I was 5 years old then. Now I am 16 years old on December 30th, 2010. I was born in the year 1994. And look how homicide has now turned to suicide. Better of worse, either way, the condition of America's youth must be recognized. The teenager will always be scared, but we can reassure them and set better examples for them! For me, for us! They are, we are, I am the future.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Next stop, Christopher St.
Last friday after school I decided on, and had planned earlier that week, that I'd wander into Manhattan with no particular purpose or destination. I couldn't withstand the consecutive hours of school and the lonely minutes after dismissal. Boy after boy I would pick out and watch, and this time my eyes caught a small boy, skinny and short, with an innocent smile and cute brown eyes, curly brown hair like a Roman statue. My love of innocent boys who seem to me like paintings or sculptures come to life, their colors dancing as they move, as they smile and look nervous. A passionate sympathy strikes me, and for that moment I enjoy this chromatic feeling, not thinking of the time the moment's over. Ah, a boy! A boy's temperament is not like that of a man's! It is nervous, tender, soft. I didn't wonder why I myself didn't seem to manifest this color of tenderness. At that moment, I wanted to embrace him. The beauty then leaves my sight, I perambulate through more high school students, then suddenly I'm outside of the building and on my way home.
Its dark, completely black because of winter's early night. I get on the bus to the Staten Island Ferry. Its a long, sightful ride, as I watch a man in work clothes sit at the very front by the door, nervously knowing my eyes on him, glancing a couple times. I don't hide my curiosity or admiration of the way the hair on his head looks to me. I wonder what it feels like, not like that of a boy's I'm sure. Moments after my eyes shift to a young boy no older than 8 years old. I remember what its like to be around strangers at his age. He is bored, restless. Not like me, I was curious. I sat quietly, smiling, and watching the people while I sat not in a car or a bench or a classroom, but in the wonderment of my young world. I feel compassion for the boy as I would for a younger sibling if I'd had one.
The bus ride is over, I arrive at the ferry. As I see how small the crowd of waiting people is, if you could call it a crowd even, I feel pleasant. I watch them with the book from my English drama class in right hand, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. I sit, after circling around looking for someone interesting, finding nothing. There is a large group of high school boys who probably attend a technical school, talking loudly about a boy who only wants to go to college to fuck all the girls, but how his parents wouldn't pay for it. They look to be 17 to 18, seniors. I'd only been 16 since last June, and I'm a junior. I notice a fashionable modern punk, more hipster really, young girl from maybe 20-23, who I'd seen and possibly spoken to briefly in my boring, culturally impaired neighborhood. She's with her...boyfriend? Yes, I think so. They shared a playful closeness. I feel warm, the feeling of others' content happiness influencing me.
I look to my right, standing now, in front of the soon to be opened doors, as the ferry docks. I see a young gay couple, wearing big fur hats, hugging and smiling as they speak. I like this going on around me, the tenderness and playfulness of the couples makes me smile. I feel alive, infinite. Going nowhere, going anywhere. With no one and anyone around me. As I've been so insecure about my short height, 5'6, I watch a very small man pass me by and feel a sense of guilt and amendment with myself realizing the instant relief it had influenced on me. I'm empathetic with him, as he seemed insecure himself. Being small in a big world, as a man at his age, 34 maybe, must have taken some toll on his confidence. The ferry docks. The doors open.
I find a place to sit, by a window in a horizontal row of green and wooden seats, so I can see outside, the lights and bridges though the darkness and the water, and also see the people on the boat I'm riding with at sea. I read a few lines from the character of Blanche DuBois from my book, but cannot resist the wonderful feeling of not being alone in a tiny room. How lonely it has been for me! To have nothing, nothing, in a horrible mess of a room the size of your closet for months. But I smile, thinking, I'm living just outside of the the greatest city in the world. I can wander and wander through it, maybe even be so bold to try entering a gay bar on Christopher St with my young face unshaven, possibly appearing old enough to, which had this day, gotten me mistaken almost for a substitute teacher at school. No, I think, I am much too small to be 21. My face is old! But my body has, most unfortunately, not had major breakthrough, except for the improving results of my weight lifting I'd started in August. Maybe all in good time, but not this night. I get up as the ferry approaches Manhattan's docking station, feeling good and calm, not like the previous times I'd ridden this boat.
I walk quickly but calmly as part of the crowd, watching the people indoors waiting to dock the arrived ferry. I walk down the stairs, out the door, and walk into the subway. The 1 train arrives, waiting for its passengers. I walk into an empty car, sitting there for a couple minutes before a few more people enter. The gay couple in the fur hats from the ferry walk in, and it makes me happy that I'm traveling in the same car as them, because I didn't get a good last look at them, and would maybe have never seen them again. One of them, the smaller, thinner guy, I swear, had glanced at me several times. It makes me remember how I'd always felt like I'd given off a crazy vibe, an alien presence, but I now rationalize it, thinking maybe he's looking at nothing, or if he is starring at me there may be something interesting he sees, perhaps the book I'm holding with half nude Marlon Brando.
I wondered if we'd get off at the same stop. Christopher St. I get up, they don't. I leave the train car, and look at them and some of the others...I walk towards the exit and up the stairs to Sheridan Square. First, I go the wrong way, opposite of the pier, which is where I decided to go. I end up walking around a fenced in baseball field I think I'd passed before going to some gay art event that would make me the only minor there, once again. I walk past Christmas trees lined up on the sidewalk. I end up in a nice neighborhood of apartments. I see lights on, TV's flashing. I walk past two men entering their apartment. I want to follow them, I smile and laugh to myself when I think of something bizarre. I imagine me smashing into their door screaming "HELP!" They open the door and say, "What is it, who are you?" I reply, "...its cold out there, and I'm lonely." Then I hand them my jacket and jump into their bed with my arms outstretched smiling saying "Ya know, this bed looks softer than it really is. Come give me a hug. Go get me a drink, will you? Whiskey. On the rocks."
I think of my other two gay cousins, I like the one who's 30 better than the 19 year old college student; I think he's autistic or something, but the older one, I remember pictures of him when he was14 and I was just born. He looks the same, but hairier. I hope I'm never that hairy! All three of us are really hairy, but he's the hairiest. It reminds me of Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox - the scene where he's in front of the mirror panicking because of all the hair on his body, that's me. If I'd have been alive in 1985 he woulda had nothin' on me. Even though they'd never get a REAL teenager to play a teenage boy.
After being on the phone with ______, I walk back the other way where I came from, and head towards the pier passing a bondage leather store, a tattoo shop, some food places, and other things I seem not to notice. I do think about my next tattoo, but know I'm not quite prepared for it this night. Not enough money for that. I reach the pier, the only one there other than, oh my what a shock, two men hugging. I wish I was hugging someone, a sweet tender boy who feared danger but craved it, so he can bring out the devil in me and I can rock his little world. After being there a few minutes, I go back to Christopher St and sit by this bar starring up at a building. I like the way it looks inside this particular window. There's a kitchen lit with a simple light fixture, its yellow, the lighting. The walls are white, there's a wooden pantry that looks old. There's some kind of plant by the window. My view is interrupted by two big queeny Hispanic men. One of them cocks his head to side, smiling, and says something to me. Either he hit on me, or said something rude. I couldn't hear him. The guy behind him is smiling, wearing glasses, and holding a cigarette in one of his hands. I laugh playfully with my sly look, but they're gone almost instantly. I wonder how old I appear in this motorcycle jacket, dress shirt, slacks, and my messy curled beard.
As I walk towards the subway, I think I see someone I kind of know. Big bearded Latin fashion queen. I cross the street, in front of the cigar shop by the 1 train. A black tranny passes me to the left, then back to the right with a very flamboyant thin black guy. I feel his gloved hand touch the opening of my jacket, he winks, then goes on his way. I smile, and think its funny that the only people who hit on me are trannies and men over 85 since I was 15. Though, there were a few other subtleties that I wasn't quite savvy of picking up on, mostly because I subconsciously didn't want to. I longed for someone to hold, a boy my age. His eyes would glimmer, they would want me. Need me. He'd be soft, tender, smooth, with absolutely no sign of facial hair. He would hug me affectionately, with his head on my chest.Or a man in his early 30s, who would be short in height with a scruffy but clean beard. He would be handsome and funny, as would I be, and we'd laugh together. I'd want to fuck him, probably watching his ass at the moments he's in front of me, sometimes our warm knees would touch and I'd be filled with passionate desire, but he wouldn't do more than hug me because of my illegal age, but I would see that he'd want to.
I'm on the subway, not paying much attention to anything. I get off at the ferry...After hearing an old black couple "discretely" discuss their anger over a bad drug deal, the ferry arrives. THANKYOU. I get on, feeling the night still. I watch the people as always, and get up when the ferry is approaching Staten Island. A ferry worker is talking to a woman, he is very short in height compared to her, compared to ME. I get off, walk outside where I end up waiting for my bus in the cold, but I don't mind it. I don't wait more than 20 minutes. I get on, the bus ride isn't as long as it is getting there, as always. I stare at my reflection the whole ride, wondering if I could be attractive, and what I'll look like as a man. I don't care because its now that matters. The future doesn't exist, and good looks don't seem to either for me. Sometimes I feel handsome, sometimes I feel like a small, pale, white boy with no sex appeal. I admire tall skinny boys. I think I want to look like those twinkie boys more than I want to touch them sometimes. I get off at my stop in Rossville, by the plaza of stores. I walk around the L shaped plaza, and empty parking lot, to the side road where my parents' house is around a few winding curves. I walk into my parents' house...I'm "home."
Its dark, completely black because of winter's early night. I get on the bus to the Staten Island Ferry. Its a long, sightful ride, as I watch a man in work clothes sit at the very front by the door, nervously knowing my eyes on him, glancing a couple times. I don't hide my curiosity or admiration of the way the hair on his head looks to me. I wonder what it feels like, not like that of a boy's I'm sure. Moments after my eyes shift to a young boy no older than 8 years old. I remember what its like to be around strangers at his age. He is bored, restless. Not like me, I was curious. I sat quietly, smiling, and watching the people while I sat not in a car or a bench or a classroom, but in the wonderment of my young world. I feel compassion for the boy as I would for a younger sibling if I'd had one.
The bus ride is over, I arrive at the ferry. As I see how small the crowd of waiting people is, if you could call it a crowd even, I feel pleasant. I watch them with the book from my English drama class in right hand, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. I sit, after circling around looking for someone interesting, finding nothing. There is a large group of high school boys who probably attend a technical school, talking loudly about a boy who only wants to go to college to fuck all the girls, but how his parents wouldn't pay for it. They look to be 17 to 18, seniors. I'd only been 16 since last June, and I'm a junior. I notice a fashionable modern punk, more hipster really, young girl from maybe 20-23, who I'd seen and possibly spoken to briefly in my boring, culturally impaired neighborhood. She's with her...boyfriend? Yes, I think so. They shared a playful closeness. I feel warm, the feeling of others' content happiness influencing me.
I look to my right, standing now, in front of the soon to be opened doors, as the ferry docks. I see a young gay couple, wearing big fur hats, hugging and smiling as they speak. I like this going on around me, the tenderness and playfulness of the couples makes me smile. I feel alive, infinite. Going nowhere, going anywhere. With no one and anyone around me. As I've been so insecure about my short height, 5'6, I watch a very small man pass me by and feel a sense of guilt and amendment with myself realizing the instant relief it had influenced on me. I'm empathetic with him, as he seemed insecure himself. Being small in a big world, as a man at his age, 34 maybe, must have taken some toll on his confidence. The ferry docks. The doors open.
I find a place to sit, by a window in a horizontal row of green and wooden seats, so I can see outside, the lights and bridges though the darkness and the water, and also see the people on the boat I'm riding with at sea. I read a few lines from the character of Blanche DuBois from my book, but cannot resist the wonderful feeling of not being alone in a tiny room. How lonely it has been for me! To have nothing, nothing, in a horrible mess of a room the size of your closet for months. But I smile, thinking, I'm living just outside of the the greatest city in the world. I can wander and wander through it, maybe even be so bold to try entering a gay bar on Christopher St with my young face unshaven, possibly appearing old enough to, which had this day, gotten me mistaken almost for a substitute teacher at school. No, I think, I am much too small to be 21. My face is old! But my body has, most unfortunately, not had major breakthrough, except for the improving results of my weight lifting I'd started in August. Maybe all in good time, but not this night. I get up as the ferry approaches Manhattan's docking station, feeling good and calm, not like the previous times I'd ridden this boat.
I walk quickly but calmly as part of the crowd, watching the people indoors waiting to dock the arrived ferry. I walk down the stairs, out the door, and walk into the subway. The 1 train arrives, waiting for its passengers. I walk into an empty car, sitting there for a couple minutes before a few more people enter. The gay couple in the fur hats from the ferry walk in, and it makes me happy that I'm traveling in the same car as them, because I didn't get a good last look at them, and would maybe have never seen them again. One of them, the smaller, thinner guy, I swear, had glanced at me several times. It makes me remember how I'd always felt like I'd given off a crazy vibe, an alien presence, but I now rationalize it, thinking maybe he's looking at nothing, or if he is starring at me there may be something interesting he sees, perhaps the book I'm holding with half nude Marlon Brando.
I wondered if we'd get off at the same stop. Christopher St. I get up, they don't. I leave the train car, and look at them and some of the others...I walk towards the exit and up the stairs to Sheridan Square. First, I go the wrong way, opposite of the pier, which is where I decided to go. I end up walking around a fenced in baseball field I think I'd passed before going to some gay art event that would make me the only minor there, once again. I walk past Christmas trees lined up on the sidewalk. I end up in a nice neighborhood of apartments. I see lights on, TV's flashing. I walk past two men entering their apartment. I want to follow them, I smile and laugh to myself when I think of something bizarre. I imagine me smashing into their door screaming "HELP!" They open the door and say, "What is it, who are you?" I reply, "...its cold out there, and I'm lonely." Then I hand them my jacket and jump into their bed with my arms outstretched smiling saying "Ya know, this bed looks softer than it really is. Come give me a hug. Go get me a drink, will you? Whiskey. On the rocks."
I think of my other two gay cousins, I like the one who's 30 better than the 19 year old college student; I think he's autistic or something, but the older one, I remember pictures of him when he was14 and I was just born. He looks the same, but hairier. I hope I'm never that hairy! All three of us are really hairy, but he's the hairiest. It reminds me of Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox - the scene where he's in front of the mirror panicking because of all the hair on his body, that's me. If I'd have been alive in 1985 he woulda had nothin' on me. Even though they'd never get a REAL teenager to play a teenage boy.
After being on the phone with ______, I walk back the other way where I came from, and head towards the pier passing a bondage leather store, a tattoo shop, some food places, and other things I seem not to notice. I do think about my next tattoo, but know I'm not quite prepared for it this night. Not enough money for that. I reach the pier, the only one there other than, oh my what a shock, two men hugging. I wish I was hugging someone, a sweet tender boy who feared danger but craved it, so he can bring out the devil in me and I can rock his little world. After being there a few minutes, I go back to Christopher St and sit by this bar starring up at a building. I like the way it looks inside this particular window. There's a kitchen lit with a simple light fixture, its yellow, the lighting. The walls are white, there's a wooden pantry that looks old. There's some kind of plant by the window. My view is interrupted by two big queeny Hispanic men. One of them cocks his head to side, smiling, and says something to me. Either he hit on me, or said something rude. I couldn't hear him. The guy behind him is smiling, wearing glasses, and holding a cigarette in one of his hands. I laugh playfully with my sly look, but they're gone almost instantly. I wonder how old I appear in this motorcycle jacket, dress shirt, slacks, and my messy curled beard.
As I walk towards the subway, I think I see someone I kind of know. Big bearded Latin fashion queen. I cross the street, in front of the cigar shop by the 1 train. A black tranny passes me to the left, then back to the right with a very flamboyant thin black guy. I feel his gloved hand touch the opening of my jacket, he winks, then goes on his way. I smile, and think its funny that the only people who hit on me are trannies and men over 85 since I was 15. Though, there were a few other subtleties that I wasn't quite savvy of picking up on, mostly because I subconsciously didn't want to. I longed for someone to hold, a boy my age. His eyes would glimmer, they would want me. Need me. He'd be soft, tender, smooth, with absolutely no sign of facial hair. He would hug me affectionately, with his head on my chest.Or a man in his early 30s, who would be short in height with a scruffy but clean beard. He would be handsome and funny, as would I be, and we'd laugh together. I'd want to fuck him, probably watching his ass at the moments he's in front of me, sometimes our warm knees would touch and I'd be filled with passionate desire, but he wouldn't do more than hug me because of my illegal age, but I would see that he'd want to.
I'm on the subway, not paying much attention to anything. I get off at the ferry...After hearing an old black couple "discretely" discuss their anger over a bad drug deal, the ferry arrives. THANKYOU. I get on, feeling the night still. I watch the people as always, and get up when the ferry is approaching Staten Island. A ferry worker is talking to a woman, he is very short in height compared to her, compared to ME. I get off, walk outside where I end up waiting for my bus in the cold, but I don't mind it. I don't wait more than 20 minutes. I get on, the bus ride isn't as long as it is getting there, as always. I stare at my reflection the whole ride, wondering if I could be attractive, and what I'll look like as a man. I don't care because its now that matters. The future doesn't exist, and good looks don't seem to either for me. Sometimes I feel handsome, sometimes I feel like a small, pale, white boy with no sex appeal. I admire tall skinny boys. I think I want to look like those twinkie boys more than I want to touch them sometimes. I get off at my stop in Rossville, by the plaza of stores. I walk around the L shaped plaza, and empty parking lot, to the side road where my parents' house is around a few winding curves. I walk into my parents' house...I'm "home."
Sunday, December 5, 2010
It Gets Better.
Remember when you were my age? Almost a kind of 'purgatory' of the human development. The cross between child and adult. Those unlimited rushed aspirations of youth. I am a boy of sixteen, and I've directly experienced that its through all of the noise this world sounds off, which comes sorrows, and your isolated pain, which we all individually experience as "isolated and unique", yet in fact there are undoubtedly others out there who experience this as such, the same way. To be a homosexual youth in our society, is leaving the mainstream idea of heterosexuality. Marriage, kids, the media; its predominantly heterosexual. Yet even in the gay "community", lies a lifestyle a youth such as myself would never seek to aquire. That noise that isolates an individual is not only expelled from the world at large, but from their sense of self. It does get better. One day, I can only hope that whoever is suffering not only from bullying or hatred, but what I was experiencing myself in my early childhood, self loathing and a continuum of confusion, can accept and exploit to themselves their own sense of identity and that they can live a life of well-being. A question I once pondered was "why would I be part of a gay community, there's no emphasized straight community", and that's because, quite apparently, gay youths (and adults) have had to go through a a turmoil of sexual recognition and acception that heterosexuals have not. To all those who are bullied, hated, self-denied, and lost in their own isolation, I think about you all the time and with strength, patience, and acceptance, it will get better. Be the spectator of your own life. Instead of ridiculing yourself, silence those insecurities, and experience the bigger world, for this negative experience is purely nothing, not even a little spec. It would only contribute to your own demise if you let it go on.
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