Finding Love in Forbidden Places

3 STRIKES
Finding Love in Forbidden Places
A Memoir
By: Cody Draco

“My life is my poetry, my lovemaking is my legacy!”
- Lana Del Rey

Disclaimer

What you are about to read is a defiantly raw examination of three pivotal, taboo and formative relationships I have experienced. These relationships are each represented as a strike and are explored in their own designated section of the book. In an effort to protect the privacy of others I have reduced names to single initials. It is my opinion that there aren’t any villians or victims in this story, only immaculately flawed human beings. Make of my opinion what you will.

STRIKE ONE

My entire life changed in the summer of 2005. My parents split up, there wasn’t a messy divorce as they never married, and my mother decided to uproot my older sister and I from Massachusetts to Florida to be closer to her mother for support. I was under the impression that we were visiting for a few weeks on vacation and remember being quite confused when we had a new house, a mobile home in the same low income community as Nana, and I had a new room with completely different furniture. The one thing that remained with me from my early childhood was my stuffed animal best friend Bunny. We may have not been going back to Massachusetts and I had no choice but to adapt, but it sure took a long hot summer to settle in.

At eight years old, I wasn’t devastated when my father didn’t move with us, I more or less took things in stride, as much as one could with such great change at that age. However, I hated the humidity and the heat. I subsequently began to develop what everyone around me at the time dubbed as anger issues. My mother, in an attempt to quell my budding out-of-control masculinity enrolled me in Kempo karate lessons. This was after I had already met and become explicitly entangled with B, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Looking back, I believe the hardest part of moving to Florida had to be saying goodbye to the friendships I had formed along with the organizations I participated in. I was a Boy Scout, played Little League baseball, and even tried and failed at playing on a basketball team one year. There are two friendships in particular that I will touch upon as I feel that they represent the first expressions of my homosexuality. This is when the smoke began to rise from my volcano which would go on to erupt in later years.

Both M and T lived down the street from me, but I spent significantly more time with M. He was taller than me and we were both obsessed with Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. I don’t know how it started, but whenever one of us had to take a leak the other one joined. It was innocent enough as we were blissfully unaware of sex at the time. We would cross our streams in an X-pattern and laugh and laugh and laugh. I’m not sure where his mother was but we never got caught despite leaving the bathroom door open.

At some point, I had a birthday party, not sure what year it was, and all of my friends came to my house for a barebeque and pool party. Upstairs in my bedroom, I had a white bunkbed that was comprised of a bed up top, a desk underneath, along with a small closet for hanging clothes. M entered the closet to change into his bathing suit while myself and another kid or two waited. I being both curious and having a carefree sense of humor opened the door while he has getting dressed. This caused him to scream in surprise and I quickly shut the door. The other kids and I got a kick out of that and then the party started.

T was smaller and as I said before, we spent less time together but he was a friend nevertheless. One night he came to my house for a sleepover. We were playing with G.I. Joe action figures and fantasizing about what military life would be like. When it was time to go to sleep we climbed up into my bunkbed and continued to talk about our fantasy world, pretending we were flying in a helicopter. He was set on being a soldier and having a wife. I said something along the lines of “hold me, I’ll be your wife” and he did for the rest of the night.

In retrospect, I’m grateful that M and I bonded in the way that we did because not only did we have a great time due to shared interests but I was also able to explore my budding curiosity for other males in a safe space. I’m also grateful that T embraced me that night temporarily fulfilling a deep seated need in me despite us both being unaware of the reality or implications of my subconsious desires. William Pollack (author of Real Boys) emphasized the necessity of emotional bonds for young boys: “Boys, like girls, need to be touched, comforted, and nurtured in close relationships that are consistent and meaningful. Male bonding in these formative years is crucial for their emotional development.” My innocent experiences with these two friends at such a young age positively paved the way for further exploration to occur.

Fast forward to Florida, it’s another summer day when my sister and I are out for a walk along the pond that our new neighborhood circles around. At this point, we were adjusting to our new surroundings the best we could. By the front gates and guard shack there was a new mobile home being put in place. We watched from a safe distance, on the edge of the man-made pond, as the adults worked. After some time had passed, the property manager who lived on site arrived on the scene with her golfcart and three grandchildren, one of which was B.

While their grandmother oversaw the installation, B and his sisters joined me and my sister at the edge of the pond. We decided to play a game of tag using the dirty white lightpoles as safe zones to make things more interesting. There wasn’t anything particularly significant about this game other than it being my earliest memory of B, which in turn makes it the game that changed my life.

At some point, my mother began working under B’s grandmother as a secretary helping to manage the community we lived in. I believe this was after Hurricane Wilma destroyed our home in October of that year. We had only been in Florida for a few months and things were already going wrong, but as a kid it didn’t seem that way. My mother somehow managed to move us into another mobile home one street over and I continued to play with B and his sisters. Life went on.

I can’t take full credit for my own personal resilience during this time. Ann Masten once said: “Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains, and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities.” My mother was essential in sculpting my strength by displaying her own.

During this period of time, our respective families became closer. When we weren’t swimming in the community pool or running amok playing manhunt after dark, us kids would spend an increasing amount of time at each other’s respective houses in the neighborhood which naturally lead to sleepovers. The girls gravitated towards each other and B and I became inseperable.

B didn’t have a bedroom of his own and slept on the couch in his grandmother’s living room so when I would stay over their place I would sleep on the loveseat. In this way, I felt bad for B, thinking he deserved more. In other ways, B was better off than I was, he always had new namebrand clothes and fresh Nike shoes. Granted he worked alongside his father doing property maintenance and that was his payment, despite being only 6 months older than me. We were both poor and rich in different ways which created a constant push and pull between us. I may have been jealous of B’s visible six-pack abdominal muscles and boyish beauty, but at least my father didn’t hit me. Christmas became a contest of who got the cooler more expensive gifts. At school, he fit in and I did not. Everything would in a way even out between us, besides one thing… I wanted to be him.

Without a father around, I looked to B to be my guide to all things masculine. Everything he did I wanted to do. Everywhere he went I wanted to go. Everything he was into I gleefully threw myself into. I don’t know when exactly we began to explore each other’s bodies but it was during one of our many sleepovers that it happened and I began to feel inadequate. The frequency of our explorations increased and were strictly limited to after lights out. Somehow we knew that it had to be a secret shared only between us. At least, that is how we kept things until the following summer when his neighbor’s grandson came to visit.

D lived in New Jersey and was visiting his grandmother for the summer. B and D knew each other from previous summer visits. I was invited along on their adventures but was mostly relegated to being the token third wheel. This further advanced my feelings of inadequacy but I didn’t understand it at the time and maintained my desire to be attached at the hip to B. D talked dirtier than B and I and had a certain city grit to him that we both liked. We played a lot of Grand Theft Auto at D’s grandmother’s house. Well, D played while B and I watched.

His grandmother didn’t bother us while we were shut away in the guest bedroom playing video games. I suppose we were easy to supervise in that way. Even on the occasion we would break out into a threeway wrestling match, which I still have a scar from hitting the corner of a nighstand during one such event, she never intruded on our boyhood. B and I had previously discussed sharing our secret with D and including him in on our lights out ritual. I don’t know why we decided to take such a big risk but we did and D didn’t hesitate to take the opportunity to show off, even if it was the middle of the day.

While hanging out with D was fun and eye-opening in it’s own way, I preferred when it was just me and B. D had a temper worse than my own and I wasn’t always comfortable on his turf. I remember on more than one occassion he would grow fussy with our presence and kick both B and I out of his grandmother’s house. To this day, I don’t hold anything against D and I’m glad that he was apart of my childhood. His participation in B and I’s secret games further normalized the developmental experience I was having and helped me feel more lighthearted about it in the process.

By this time, B’s father and my mother were dating. It didn’t occur to me that this would affect the relationship between B and I in any other way than us being able to spend even more time together. How wrong was I! I was already well aware that B’s father had a bad temper and often took it out on his children, mostly B. So, I tried to keep myself at a safe distance from him and in his good graces the best I could. He should’ve been a father figure to me but instead I viewed him as a ticking time bomb. All things considered, I was happy my mother had met someone and that he happened to be B’s father. I will also give credit where it’s due, he was one hell of a cook.

School wasn’t going well. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any friends there but I didn’t have any that I would invite home. For some reason, at public school I felt embarrassed to be living in a trailer park. It was a definite downgrade from our modest two-story home in Massachusetts but it wasn’t that big of a deal. I had one friend in third grade named J, who showed me his penis in the back of the classroom when the teacher wasn’t looking. Other than that, I clung to my friendship with B. It was my lifeline except for when I was being bullied by a group of boys in my grade. Somehow they knew I was a faggot before I did.

The bullying didn’t hurt me as much as B’s silence about it. He never came to my defense or stood up for me, despite being around for a bunch of it, especially after school when I was spit on and shoved around at the playground. I understand now that he must’ve been scared to be associated with a suspected queer. He always passed as straight better than I did, despite us both expressing outward interest in girls. This privelege of his kept a constant wedge between us publicly, despite being step-brothers. Brokeback Mountain came out in December of 2005, the month B turned 9, and while we didn’t watch it, hearing his father’s homophobic remarks about it, surely made B view our relationship in a negative light.

Speaking of Brokeback Mountain, here is a poem I wrote that includes it:

The Summer Before Brokeback Mountain

we met the summer before Brokeback Mountain
was widely released in movie theatres
I was the Jack Twist to your Ennis del Mar
kissing you softly in the dark after your father hit you hard
you were as tough as your childhood
eternally bruised but still blossoming
I made you brighten with my endless penchant for fun
I disarmed you with my colorful candor
you poked me in the ribs with your clever comebacks
we would split a whole pizza between us
while highly caffeinated we praised Jesus
making up swear words we could say in front of our parents
sounding close enough to the real thing to get us in trouble
you were up for anything that I suggested
whether it be playing basketball or riding bicycles
from the outside looking in
it probably seemed like you were in charge of our chaos
being six months older and built physically stronger
your outside appearance stood in stark contrast to my own
I had the brains and you had the brawn
somehow we complimented each other to our cores
making each day a new adventure not a list of chores
never becoming bored of the other’s presence
I look for your laugh at the end of every joke
I listen for your voice in the background of every song
everything that has happened since
have been echoes of earlier on

Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist who has studied gender and sexual identity development in children, suggested: “Children who can pass as straight often feel immense pressure to maintain that image in order to avoid bullying, exclusion, or ostracism, even if it comes at the cost of suppressing their true selves.” I suppose that maybe it’s actually a blessing that the cracks appeared in my armor so soon after becoming involved with B. While it took many years to reconcile my feelings and formally identify as queer, I was at least able to begin the journey of discovering who I truly am.

On one occassion, his Aunt M was visiting from Texas and for some reason thought it would be funny to force B and I to kiss in front of everyone. We were both mortified despite having kissed before in secret. The added audience and potential of being seen as gay, outing the true nature of our relationship, disturbed us both deeply. When alone, we agreed to stop what we were doing in secret, but eventually relapsed with even more fervor.

This tension between us would often erupt in physical violence. One day while helping B and his father remodel a mobile home in the neighborhood, we got in an argument while alone in the house and I shoved him which made him fall backwards over a rolled up carpet. He proceeded to chase me outside around the house. I swiftly turned around with my arm outstretched, he ran neckfirst straight into it. This was just one of our many memorable brawls. “Boys will be boys” they say. It probably didn’t help that we were both big fans of professional wrestling at the time.

This is how things stayed from third grade to seventh grade. Life was moving full speed ahead yet there were many slower more formative moments shared in secret between B and I. One night we stole cigarettes from his grandmother and smoked them behind a wooden fence. During the day when nobody was home we snuck into his father’s room and watched heterosexual pornographic movies, both in awe of the female breasts and male appendages.

Jean Piaget said: “At every level of development, the child must lose his earlier innocence in order to enter into a new mode of understanding the world.” B and I were beginning to understand the vast adult world around us while continuing to sneak away to enjoy the special ageless world shared between us.

Suddenly we were moving again, this time two and a half hours away to Central Florida. My mother and B’s father were now engaged and were consolidating the families into one unit. The mobile home community we had lived in had sold to a new management company. My mother and B’s father were both given opportunities to transfer to a different property. We were all excited for the change, becoming an official family, and I was personally relieved to escape the relentless bullying I faced alone at school.

Jennifer Finney Boylan said, “Every time we move, we leave behind part of ourselves, only to find new pieces of who we are in the places we arrive.” This was surely the case as B and I moved into our shared screen porch bedroom in the new trailer park. Despite the increased chances of being caught due to tight living quarters, the only comfort we ever needed was eachother. This is when our physical relationship evolved, becoming more intentional and knowledgable, with an increased need to wash our sheets. We shed our boyhood skin and stepped into full blown puberty.

It was the summer of 2010 and all of us kids were hooked on the television show Jersey Shore. I remember having a distinct desire of wanting to be J-WOWW even though she was a female. I found her to be confident, strong, sexy, and afraid of nothing. Perhaps, she represented everything I was not and everything I could never be for B. I have no shame in admitting that I wanted to be a reality television star for many years after. The drama, friendships, endless partying, and hook-ups are what I thought adulthood would consist of. The energy between B and I was now electrically charged with something undescribable. We talked about wanting girls all the time but constantly found our skin stuck to each other’s skin.

Sex wasn’t the only thing that kept B and I stuck together for so many years. Michael C. Reichert spoke about how emotional connections between boys are vital for their development: “Friendships between boys offer a refuge in a culture that often encourages them to suppress emotions… a true bond can allow them to experience affection, empathy, and emotional resilience.” Together we created a safe haven, tucked away from the outside world, where we could be naked in both body and spirit. Freedom was found in each other’s arms, hearts, and laughter.

Soon enough it was time to go clothes and supplies shopping for the new school year. Our minds were set on skinny jeans and Vans shoes, staples of the skateboarding community and further popularized by one of our favorite music artists Lil Wayne. Since we lived on the edge of the county we had to wake up extremely early for my mother to bring us kids to school each morning. It wasn’t long before my mother and B’s father found a lakefront house to rent in town and close to school.

B and I shared the garage while our two sisters (his other sister lived with his mother) got their own bedrooms. We were ecstatic to be out of the cramped trailer and done with the early morning commutes to school. It helped having our own space to stretch our legs. At first the garage was your normal two car garage, concrete floor, small bathroom, and laundry machine hook-ups. Eventually B’s father transformed the space, building two makeshift bedrooms with dry wall, thus seperating B and I. The funny thing is that this would be the year where we became the closest we would ever be.

The cracks in my straight facade were cracking more each day, but each night I would ask B if he wanted to “do it” and he’d say yes. We would wait for everyone in the household to go to sleep and then indulge in each other. One particular night before his father constructed our bedrooms, B and I were on his bed in our boxers when his sister barged into the garage. She saw us and asked “what are you doing?” to which I quickly replied “comparing our muscles”. Somehow that was sufficient for her and she didn’t suspect anything else, but B became very paranoid about being found out. This event wasn’t enough to stop the ball that had been in motion for years. We were increasingly ravenous.

I later wrote these poems about this specific period of time with B:

Way Out West

it was not you who I loved
but the reflection staring back at me
through wild blue eyes of reckless abandon
darting in the dark under a ceiling sea of glow stick stars
you never held me back when you held me in your arms
with freedom unbound to explore its own identity
each chemical imbalance unhinged every hormonal epiphany
I was misled to believe that I could manifest destiny
look at what has become of me
stranded way out west

Power Outage

the crack in the doorway is dimly lit
by the eerie glow of electronics
a radio plays a late night mix of 2000’s popular hits
while an oscillating fan slow dances with itself
moving the thick midnight air around
standing by is a shadowy figure
watching two bodies release their rage against each other
what started off as sweaty sheets and stress relief
has led to a mental power outage
trauma is an invasive species
that wraps itself around our throats

During this time, we began to exchange the words “I love you” after orgasm. I started it, but he didn’t stop it. He would only whisper it, seemingly reluctant to admit his true feelings, but those whispers meant the world to me. For all intents and purposes, we were both still straight, but I was slowly becoming decidely less so. In eighth grade I fell in love for the first time and it wasn’t with my girlfriend. I became madly obsessed with my relationship to B. So much so that every song that played on the radio made me think of him.

Here is another poem I later wrote that captures how deeply I fell in love with B:

All of It

“nothing will change”
is something you didn’t say to my face
which rested mere inches away from your own
but it was something I misheard in your sigh
when you would exhale
as we laid side by side
after reaching mountainous heights
our burgeoning bodies barely fitting
on a floppy twin sized mattress
where we learned how to make love
using our hands and our lips
to simultaneously arouse and pacify the other
you were my soldier
I was your healer
as mystical as those moments were
nothing felt realer
I still remember the symmetry our bodies made
in the dimly lit rooms
where we would escape
unfortunately time has begun to erase
the details now hidden behind a gentle haze
but I will not make the rookie mistake
of forgetting our rougher traits
like the way your blood tasted when I accidentally bit your lip
or the way the chewing tobacco lended a scent to your spit
as selfish as it was I didn’t want you to quit
the good
the bad
I wanted all of it


It was also during this time that B secretly invited two girls over from school. So, naturally out of jealousy I did the same. We tried to keep the noise to a minimum but eventually the girls were laughing too loud which woke our parents. We kicked the girls out the side door attached to B’s bedroom but it was too late. Our parents were pissed and B’s father took his rage out on me first, shoving me onto my bed. I was terrified as he was massive compared to me and could have easily killed me. I had seen how he would beat B and wanted to steer clear of being on the receiving end myself.

It was becoming increasingly more difficult to hide my emotions and the self-loathing I was experiencing as I tried to come to terms with being gay was unbearable. I wasn’t sleeping well and it was making me irritable during the day. One night I was lying on my bed doing math homework and a spider fell from the ceiling onto the page. I screamed and in that moment something snapped inside of me. I decided that I needed to move again. When the school year was over I was going to live with my father in Massachusetts.

Despite not being close with my father, I was desperate to runaway from my feelings for B and the paranoia of being found out both at school and on the homefront. Paul Amato said: “The absence of a father can create a vacuum in a child’s life, where they may seek validation and affection in inappropriate or harmful ways.” It was in this vaccuum that B and I blossomed. While I can see now how my relationship with B may have been harmful it is ultimately the only connection that ever truly saved me from the pain and loneliness of my homosexual existence.
My last night with B was spent passionately in lovemaking from the moment our parents went to sleep to the moment the sun rose and my mother noisily moved laundry from washer to dryer outside of his bedroom. We both knew that I was leaving for Massachusetts, but I was in complete denial that this would be the tragic end of us.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.” To become the young man that I felt society pressured me to be, I attempted to kill the strongest and most intrinsic connection I ever had. Spoiler: I failed.

It was now the summer of 2011 and I was fourteen years old. I moved in with my father and his girlfriend. They lived in a two-story condo and I had my own bedroom. I was excited to be living in a new city and to have the freedom to explore it. I had been obsessed with Lady Gaga ever since her performance of Paparazzi at the VMAs in 2009, a song that unbeknownst to me resonated with me deeply due to the nature of my relationship with B. Now she was advocating for the queer community on a much larger scale with the relase of Born This Way. I somehow made no effort to hide my admiration for her and her music, despite being deeply and fearfully closeted.

Internally, I was making serious strides in terms of accepting myself and my deep love for B. Externally, I was becoming a stereotypical jerk of a jock. I joined the football team and serial dated girls. B and I kept in contact sporadically and by winter I was on the wrestling team grappling not only more male teenage bodies, but an addiction to cough syrup. I was feeling increasingly isolated and on edge. The loss of B was finally hitting me and it wasn’t a small inconvenience. It was a giant meteor crashing to the earth causing mass extinction. I smoked weed for the first time with a couple of varsity wrestlers before our end-of-season awards ceremony. From the outside looking in, I was one of the guys. Meanwhile, I felt like a fraud.

When my name was announced for the JV Wrestler of the Year award I was in disbelief. Instantly I thought that my father and his girlfriend had bribed the coach for the award to cheer me up, but he insisted that I made a huge impact on the rest of the team’s spirit despite by losing record. Everyone seemed to like me, but I couldn’t stand myself. None of this fulfilled me the way B could and I continued to spiral downward.

By spring, I was a long distance runner on the track team and I had burnt through many superficial relationships with girls. My reputation as a manwhore was known throughout the school, despite not having sex with a single girl. My nights were spent restlessly in bed, wide awake listening to music that reminded me of B. My father and his girlfriend were beginning to fight more frequently and I was increasingly beginning to feel like a fish out of water. My plan was to enroll in the Protective Services program at my school the following year so I could prepare to go to college become an FBI agent. I was obsessed with the television show Criminal Minds due to the psychological nature of it all. However, my grades were slipping. I started the year off strong academically but I couldn’t keep up the charade. I was deeply suffering and it was showing on the outside like an open sore.

In my last class of the day, I was called to the guidance counselors office. There I was ambushed by her, my father, and my father’s girlfriend. They wanted to talk about my grades and what I had been bothering me lately. I wasn’t acting like myself and everyone could see it. Except I wasn’t acting like myself in the first place. I was acting like who I thought I was supposed to be. I stormed out of the school in a defiant rage. I’m not sure where I went to decompress for awhile but it surely wasn’t back to the condo. I had been cornered and the truth was dangerously close to be revealed.

D.W. Winnicott said: “It is a joy to be hidden, but disaster not to be found.” Nobody found me my freshmen year in Massachusetts, but I certainly found myself. In this hidden state of self-exploration I experienced a profound mix of agony and ecstacy. I missed B terribly with every bone in my aching body. In his absence I further developed my connection to and taste in music, leaning on it as a crutch for my emotional mood swings.

One night my father and his girlfriend were arguing and somehow I ended up in the middle of it and started arguing with her. He got angry at me for talking to her in that way and started to argue with me. Then she jumped in so that they were both arguing with me. I went upstairs to my room and he followed me in a rage. We continued arguing which led to him putting his hands on me, shoving me into the bedroom wall. In that moment I was shocked and reminded of B’s relationship with his father. I vowed to myself that night that I would never let another man touch me in that way again.

It was now summer and my sister was visiting the city. I had work later that afternoon as a youth track coach, but wanted to treat her to my favorite beachside restaurant. We decided to take one of our father’s girlfriend’s dogs with us. We walked and walked and walked. I remember it being a lovely New England summer day. It was one of those days where the sun and breeze were in perfect balance so we didn’t sweat too much. Our dad called and was angry that nobody was at the condo to let a technician in to fix the stackable laundry machine. He was stuck in traffic and couldn’t make it in time. I was angry because he never communicated that we needed to stay at the condo that day. He ended up showing up at the restaurant and yelling at us to get in the car, he was taking us back to the condo. I yelled back saying that I needed to go to work. He said that I wasn’t going to work. I unbuckled my seatbelt and he tried to grab hold of me with one hand while the other was on the steering wheel. I told him three times to “let go” and he didn’t. I punched him in the face with my cell phone, causing him to need several stitches under his eyelid, and jumped out of the moving vehicle.

When I arrived at the track on the north end of the city I called my mother in tears and told her that I needed to move back to Florida. I also told her that my father and his girlfriend had been arguing and I had overheard her threatening to kick us out of the condo. I told my mother that I couldn’t focus on school anymore because the threat of being kicked out at any given time was too much of a distraction. While true, this was only the tip of the iceburg in regards to what was going on.

James Hollis said: “The son must metaphorically slay the father in order to be born as his own man. The rebellion is not against the father, but against the father within the son.” My father never stood a chance. The distance between us was always too great. The years I spent developing without his influence and the war I was waging in my soul rendered him useless. From this point forward, I had no choice but to father myself.

Back in Florida, everything had changed, besides the horrendous heat and humidity of course. In my absence, my mother and B’s father had broken up which meant that our former family unit had also dissipated. While I was upset that I wouldn’t be living with B again, I remember being surprisingly more upset that I had failed at striking out on my own. My career plans were ruined and I had to start from scratch. I guess knowing that I would see B at school eased my mind a bit.

Soon enough my sophomore year began. Again, I started off the year strong academically. I opted to not join the football team. Seeing B at school was a blessing at first but then quickly became a curse when I kept bumping into an insivible wall that had been erected between us emotionally. My year in Massachusetts didn’t prevent us from being friendly, but he had new friends now and would only entertain me for a few minutes during lunch. As much as I had changed over the course of our year apart, B had even moreso. Gone was the boy I fell in love with in my formative years. He was replaced with an emotionally unrecognizable teenager.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.” I don’t know where I thought that B and I would meet to resume the relationship we once had. My only thought looking back is that I wasn’t thinking at all. My connection to B was strictly a matter of the soul. When he had only meaningless words and a superficial friendship to offer me during school lunchbreaks I broke completely. I began running ten miles nearly every night while listening to music by my latest therapists Lana Del Rey and Daughter. At this point, I knew I was irrevocably heartbroken but I didn’t know I was manic. My diagnosis of bipolar-schizoaffective disorder would come a decade later.

Wrestling season was fast approaching and I signed up for the team in hopes of recapturing my former glory. I had made a new friend in gym class named T and he quickly became my new infatuation. He was tall, handsome, and frustratingly reserved. I channeled all of my heartbreak and pent up energy into becoming his friend. It worked to varying degrees and temporarily helped me heal from the hurt of losing B. He didn’t seem particularly interested in me and we didn’t fall to our knees in painful bouts of laughter the way B and I once did, but I persisted. He joined the wrestling team and we became partners despite being in different weight classes.

The problem with this arrangement is that being that physically close with the present of object of one’s desire can lead to certain bodily reactions as a hormonal teenage male that aren’t publicly acceptable. So, it’s safe to say that during practice I was in my head a lot. I overanalyzed every move and was tortured by T’s every touch, no matter how rough he threw me to the mat. After a few weeks of pre-season practice I simply stopped showing up. When asked by T and the coaches why I quit I had nothing to say for myself. I continued spending time with T in gym class but we weren’t ever that close again.

The frequency of my nightly runs increased as did my thoughts of suicide. I began drinking wine and writing songs to cope. Eventually this behavior culminated in me getting wasted and writing a note to my mother. It was a cry for help and I left it on the kitchen counter for her to read in the morning. The next day I was admitted to a crisis center for at-risk youth. I spent a week there and was prescribed Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant. They couldn’t properly diagnose me at the time because I wasn’t opening up and my mother’s perspective on my condition was limited to what I allowed her to see.
While in the crisis center I grappled with my feelings for B and T. Not only did I face my depression head on but also my sexuality. It was there that I decided I needed to come out of the closet or I was going to die suffocating inside of it. Without talking to anybody about what I was actually going through I managed to have a transformative experience.

It was just another day in gym class when I told two girls that I was bisexual. I did it in a delusional hope that it would circulate around to T which it did, but nothing changed between us. I didn’t confess my crush to him and he mentioned having a gay friend. I still wanted him but I didn’t have the balls to outright say it. Instead, one day in the boys locker room before class I tried to instigate a fight with him. I was desperate for some kind of reaction out of him, which I never got. He remained calm and distant. Two things I would go on to be perpetually attracted to in a guy.

B found out about my sexuality, as did most of the school. When I went to talk to him at lunch one day he told me point blank that he wasn’t gay and that he didn’t want his friends to think he was by being seen with me. I’m surprised that I didn’t punch him in the face. I suppose my love for him still ran so deep that the sting of betrayal trumped any anger I felt. I naively thought coming out would magically change everything and I would find myself experiencing a love that I could be with in the light. It’s laughable now but it was devastating then.

One day, my ex-girlfriend from eighth grade showed me the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I broke down in tears because I related to the main character Charlie more than I had anyone before. His struggle to fit in at school and battle with depression struck a chord with me. I sank further and further into mine as I finished sophomore year and transitioned into junior year alone.

At the end of 10th grade, I qualified for advanced placement classes in both history and english the following year. This renewed my interest in going to college, but I had a new plan. I was going to study journalism in Vermont. My thought process was that I wanted to travel the world, leaving B and T as far behind me as possible. Unfortunately, I started the school year off strong academically but gradually slipped again midway through. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to go to school and I developed an intense case of social anxiety. By now, I had transitioned from identifying as bisexual to identifying as gay.

My was mother was afraid of truancy and brought me to the local police station in an attempt to scare me into going to school. This worked for a little bit, but my mental health continued to deteriorate leading me to drop out of school officially. If I couldn’t be gay and happy I was intent of becoming nothing at all.

It was that time again, another move. This time we were going to the west coast of Florida. It was just going to be my mother and I as my sister was starting college. I decided that maybe a new school would be better for me so I gave it a try. My one stipulation was that I be placed in the lowest level classes. I thought taking the pressure off myself academically would allow me to navigate the waxing and waning of my mental health.

At the new school, I quickly made some friends and even met my first real boyfriend N. I thought he was cute, slender, and most importantly gay. We even both loved Lady Gaga which made me feel as though I had found a kindred spirit. Despite all of this, deep down I still wanted B, but I was trying to move on. Emotionally there was a disconnect between us from the beginning and overall it was a very superficial arrangement. However, we did spend time together outside of school under the guise of being friends. I tried to re-create the physicality of my relationship with B to mixed results.

N wasn’t a very physical person and I understand that better now in my late twenties than I did as a hotblooded teenager. The chemistry just wasn’t there between us despite my best efforts of starting a fire. Eventually we broke up and I found myself an older college boyfriend with a car. This was another short lived failure of a relationship but at least the sex was fulfilling. Believe it or not, I broke things off because he wanted too much of it and too much of me. Remember, I was into distant aloof guys not clingy emotional guys.

The reason I dropped out of school again? I was intellectually understimulated and extremely disconnected from my peers. Maybe things would have been different if I opted for higher level classes, maybe not. At this point, I wanted to go to community college to be a fish farmer, and took an elective in marine biology until our class was displaced to make room for a general science class. When I lost that elective I lost the one thing keeping me interested in school.

During this time I didn’t speak to B. It wasn’t until his second arrest in our twenties that I reached out and became his prison pen pal for a period of time. By this point, we had both strengthened our relationship with God, and while he still claimed to not be gay and refused to acknowledge the true nature of our past relationship, there was a warmth in his words that I needed to feel in order to heal. I forgave B for abandoning me after I had abandoned him for Massachusetts. We are on good terms to this day.

Here are a few more poems I wrote about my experiences with and without B:

The Stranger I Knew

the world is full of people
billions in fact
the stranger I knew
was a boy I met way back
when I was eight years old
new to the town
in which life changed forever
we met on the edge of a pond
centrally located in a trailer park
we played a game of tag
using the dirt covered lamp posts as safe zones
I probably should have stayed there
childhood hands on the cool metal
while the world spun around us
adults installing a new mobile home on a nearby lot
but I didn’t know any better
I knew instinctually that he was my friend
and that I didn’t want our game to end
so it didn’t
us boys became young men
and we both pursued young women
but I never felt secure in their presence
the way I did in his
we had grown up alongside each other
like two trees with branches mangled and roots entangled
heartbeats in syncopation
there were no shady motivations
just pure love and acceptance
any time we would fight
with our fists or our words
it wasn’t long before we realized
life was mundane without the other
nobody could make me laugh the way he did
I felt sore ribs poking out of my still developing frame
as I clutched myself tightly the way a full harness does on a rollercoaster
what a ride it was
what a time it was
to be loved in that way
what I would I give to spend one more day
with the stranger I knew
and who I will love always

I Didn’t Know Love

upon further reflection
I didn’t know love
but somehow I managed to impress upon you anyways
with every fibre of my being
every breath I took
my desires were oriented towards you
spending time with you
whether laughing or fighting
smiling or crying
each moment was magic
sensations were heightened
the gravity of your presence meshed well
with the levity of my essence
your absence has left me with millions of questions
I didn’t know love
and I certainly don’t now
my body past it’s prime
my mind more bitter with time
twenty-six years old
wrestling the hands on the clock
trying to turn them back
to return to what I’ve lost
innocence
something that can’t be bestowed upon us
no matter how successful we become
nobody has the authority of God
gears are beginning to rust
I no longer trust
the organs keeping me alive
I can feel them grinding to a halt
it might just be my mind
but nothing makes me feel alive
the way you did when we would play our childish games
with every ounce of effort we could muster
I didn’t know love
but I knew how to live
I learned from you that the moment is where the magic is
but I am getting too old to believe in magic
without appearing foolish
I am unafraid of that perception
we were once fools foolishly in love
without the proper training
without knowing what it was
we took everything for granted
we had love but didn’t understand it
now we look for pieces of each other in every person that we meet
collecting them like trading cards in hopes that one day the set will be complete
we experienced it all and are now trying to relive that with others
some of which have gone on to become fathers and mothers
I didn’t know love
but I knew you were the one
when you shook me out of my shell
and taught me how to run

Those Days in Which We Stretched the Hours into What Felt Like Years

my body is a prison
my mind is the sole inhabitant
you freed me every time you touched me
releasing me from feelings of inadequacy
but I’ve been detained several times since then
those days in which we stretched the hours into what felt like years
have long since been forgotten by others who were there
I hold you in the highest regard
but for you I am a mere footnote in your history
a brief moment in which you weren’t what you appeared to be
what was it about me that made you take off your identity?
stripping down
showing skin
we fell in love
stumbled in sin
my confidence was reliant upon your critical reception
I passed the inspection and was worthy of your affection
the way no other man had been before
I was the first of many loves that’s for sure
but now when we speak
it’s surface level pleasantries
you found God and won’t admit
to how you used to lie with me
a twisted secret in the sheets
the gentle brushing of bare feet
I found God too
and despite his supposed disappointment in me
he congratulated me
for documenting my life with such brutal honesty

Parentheses

we smuggled our love in parentheses
despite being the exclamation marks
at the end of each other’s sentences
your abrupt punctuation punctured my lungs
causing the breath of life to escape me
why did you put a period after us?
I wanted to be an infinite run-on sentence
now I am crippled and incomparable
to the boy whose body you once ravished
you were a viking pillaging a village
you set me on fire
I went on to burn others
I was a victim of my own desire
longing for your acceptance
self-destructing at your denial
you were the catalyst of my rebellion
gone is the golden child

As Ally Condie said: “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.”

STRIKE TWO

I was now eighteen, a two-time high school dropout with zero prospects, and you guessed it… we moved again. This time, I moved back to Central Florida and my mother moved to Daytona for work. I stayed in my Nana’s old trailer in the same neighborhood we had all first moved into the summer before eighth grade, she had passed away at this point. My mother visited me on weekends. On paper this sounds like an ideal arrangement for a new adult, but the constant seclusion caused my social anxiety to become worse and my depression was as bad as it had ever been. I kept myself occupied by reading books, listening to music, and writing songs. Eventually, a job offer I couldn’t refuse rolled in unexpectedly by way of my sister’s boyfriend.

A local auction house was liquidating a furniture store and needed an extra set of hands during the week. There wasn’t any promise of future work or being signed on to the team but I jumped at the opportunity. My sister’s boyfriend warned me that the owner was gay and that he thought I was cute based on a picture he had shown, but I didn’t think much of it as the owner also had a fiance. I wasn’t focused on anything other than being the best employee I could be.

At first, I struggled to lift anything other than artwork and mirrors. My wrestling days were long behind me at this point and my muscles lacked definition. I was slender, smart, and because of my social anxiety I had this way of being anxiously talkative. One of the first things W said to me was “what’s up with that hair?” in reference to my unkept shaggy locks. I was a lost puppy in search of a good home, so I made a mental note to get a haircut as soon as possible.

W was over twice my age and modestly good looking. His charisma carried him far and his relaxed command of his business is something that I admired from the start. He had an overabunance of confidence and I desperately wanted to lap up any excess in hopes of becoming more confident myself. I quickly became known for my radiant smile which was actually a byproduct of my endlessly heightened anxiety. One of the regular consignors and clerk at the time on auction nights picked on me asking “why do you smile so much?” which instantly brought me back to my days of being bullied.

Somehow I made my mark, despite not lifting any of the heavy furniture. I constantly asked questions and looked for ways in which I could be helpful which helped me standout against the competition. W asked me to help finshing the auction set-up that Friday and in that moment I knew I was on the cusp of greatness. That Friday my next task was simple, decorate the stage that was being stacked with furniture with household decor items. I went into overdrive purposefully placing items in places where they would shine the most. T, a high schooler and part-time auction staff member, wasn’t too pleased with my arrival on the auction scene and subsequent takeover of the stage decorating process. I remember on that first day together we butted heads over where a certain piece of artwork was being placed and I didn’t back down, in fact I bulldozed over him.

W’s fiance M visited for lunch. I could immediately sense the tension between the two and M had such a dark energy about him compared to the light that W lured me in with. I kept my mouth shut and ate, only speaking when spoken to. Mentally, I was taking notes. As soon as M had arrived W’s light dimmed and he became more withdrawn. I got the sense that their relationship wasn’t all that it appeared to be on the surface. I wasn’t in awe of these two gay men being engaged, I was saddened.

W had taken a liking to me, even commenting on my strong work ethic, and continued to offer me work. This didn’t stop him from making fun of my lack of physical strength or my shaggy hair. It was the following week when we were alone in his truck heading to a vacation home to pick-up items for the auction. “M’s pretty cute, don’t you think?” he asked me. “You’re not so bad yourself.” I said, feeling bold. “Oh really?” he laughed, caught off guard. There was a tension building between us and we were both very much into it.

We arrived at the vacation home and nobody was there. W shut the door behind us and we began to makeout. It didn’t take long before our clothes were off and we were exploring each other’s bodies for the first time. We didn’t say much, but we both definitely wanted this to happen and he threw me on the bed, taking full control. It was one of the beds that we were supposed to be moving back to the auction house for sale. I let him, as I had never been with a man like this before. I trusted his leadership in all circumstances, professionally and personally. Then, he was inside of me.

I had lost my virginity to a stranger earlier that year, in an effort to “get it over with”. This couldn’t have been more different from that. I had feelings for W and they were getting stronger by the second. He was making me feel like an adult, a man, something valuable and desirable. I didn’t want it to end. When we finished, I took a quick shower. There wasn’t any soap but I let the water run over me as I breathed heavily. I met W outside at the truck and trailer, he was chainsmoking cigarettes. Despite not being a smoker myself, outside of that one time with B many years prior, I asked for a cigarette. This surprised him as he didn’t peg me for a smoker. I told him I wasn’t and he lit it for me.

Jean-Pierre Gagnon said: “Older men are often sought as father figures by young gay men, not simply for romantic involvement but for the fulfillment of an emotional and developmental need: to be recognized, mentored, and nurtured by a male figure who they perceive as capable of offering the love and protection they craved in childhood.” While standing there smoking an earned cigarette next to the boss I was falling in love with, I felt empowered and manly.

“Nobody can know about this” he said. I knew the rules by heart, as I had played by them my entire life. My relationship in the shadows with B primed me for this moment. I was well prepared for my starring role as public sidekick and secret lover. I should’ve been upset about having to be “the other woman” but I honestly wasn’t. I knew that I offered W something M never could, love without expectations.

While we never did have another vacation home moment, M became increasingly suspicious of us. He had spies everywhere from the vintage clothing store owner across the street to the consignor and clerk that questioned my smile. He even had T, my archnemisis among the auction staff. The worst part wasn’t the walking on eggshells, I danced on them. No, it was the fact that M painfully pretended to be my friend. He’d pull me away from my work duties to ask for my thoughts on W and their relationship. I played along with my nervous smile strudy as any shield but my patience was wearing thin.

W visited me one night at my trailer and he brought groceries. At this point, he had started buying me gas station drinks and snacks along with lunches when we went on the road together for work. He knew my financial situation and took it upon himself to take care of me. He cooked lemon chicken and we ate. I’m not sure how he got away from M that evening but I’m glad he did. When we finished eating we made love and then he had to go home. I wasn’t satisfied, not completely, I wanted him all to myself.

We understood and cared for each other deeply, even sharing a similar first experience with love. We bonded over the heartbreak that occured in our respective youths and tended to each other’s wounds. What we shared was something more than physical. It was profoundly spiritual.

W’s parents loved me and I loved them. They also noticed my work ethic and how much I cared for W and the business. This infuriated M, who was not in their good graces. He may have been their son-in-law but I was in their hearts. My muscles were slow to form but W and his father taught me techniques on how to move furniture safely. Soon I was taking on a heavier workload as I had been taking notes on all aspects of the business operation.

When the business was doing well W was happy, when it wasn’t he wasn’t. I did everything I could to take things off his plate. By this point, I was working full-time and I was fully integrated into the business operations acting as an assistant store manager of sorts when I wasn’t on the road. I took immense pride in my position and in the quality of my work. I had successfully went from nothing to something.

M destroyed all of that when he confronted W and I about the nature of our relationship. M threatened to ruin W’s small town reputation and in doing so the business. At this point, I had moved in with my sister and her boyfriend as they were renting a house near the auction. I had no car and had been relying on W for rides to work and home. I had been paying part of the rent so when W fired me from my duties to appease M I was put in a tough position.

I quickly got a job at a family owned restaurant down the street from the auction, but they couldn’t offer me enough hours to cover my portion of rent until a few months later when a full-time position was set to open up. W and I were still in strained contact and one night I spiralled. I got drunk, called W, and threatened to leave town on the next bus out. Both W and M showed up and brought me over to their house for the night, where I continued to my emotional exorcism. We then began to discuss everything.

Well, M and I talked on the patio while W detached himself by chainsmoking cigarettes. In my drunken emotionally raw state, I kissed M, which garnered an understandably awkward response from W. He was visibly uncomfortable with the entire situation. His fiance and paramour seeming to get along was not supposed to be in the cards after everything that had transpired.

The three of us shared their bed that night, not sexually. I slept in between them. W says this was a test by M to see if W could resist the temptation. I woke up the next day conflicted and decided that I was going to move forward with my plans to leave town. Without a well paying job and without access to W, there was nothing left for me. I moved to Daytona to be with my mother and to start over.

I had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove. I quickly got two jobs, one stocking groceries overnight and another unloading delivery trucks at a box store. I hated both. To distract myself from W, I scoped out the local dating scene and found myself meeting up with K, a boy my age. He was emotionally distant but physically attractive so we fell into a friends-with-benefits situation.

It wasn’t long before W came knocking on the door of my new life. I forgot to lock it. He was still with M but they were having serious problems in their relationship. Before one of my night shifts at the grocery store, he took me to a lighthouse to talk. We spent the afternoon discussing everything that had happened and the intensity of the feelings we harbored for each other. Standing at the top of the lighthouse and looking out felt like we had reached a distinctively new peak in our relationship.

I spent the rest of the summer safely in Daytona while the relationship between M and W dissolved. Once the coast was clear, I moved in with W for transportation reasons and resumed my duties at the auction. We were finally together, or at least I thought. W refrained from officially dating me due to a fear of retaliation from M, but that didn’t stop him from loving me to the best of his abilities. I was back and better than ever.

It was during this time that W became increasingly withdrawn from me emotionally as he tried to hold his crumbling world together. His lack of commitment to our relationship in a traditional sense began to take a toll and weigh heavy on my mind. He became more and more focused on the business which led to a brewing jealousy inside of me. I felt like I was competing against an impossible opponent, his livelihood.

W and I decided to give our relationship a proper chance to bloom. We agreed to focus on fixing what was broken but his turbulent business and something else kept him pre-occupied. Two months later he came clean. He had been talking behind my back to someone named J who lived in Brazil. He went as far as leaving me to babysit his dogs and his business while he visited J for a week. My loyalty to him knew no bounds.

Unsatisfied and not involved in a committed relationship, I sought attention from an outside source. A started off as another friends-with-benefits situation and as a means to get W’s attention but quickly turned into the most toxic relationship that I have ever been involved in. I was relying on alcohol more and more to dull my emotional ache. A’s personality was grating and his constant need for sex despite a lack of chemistry was a major turn off for me.

A and W got along well enough at first, but A was jealous and insecure due to the intensity of my relationship with W. He was constantly making disparaging remarks about W and accusing me of cheating on him with W. W looked down on A, but supported my decision to be in a relationship with him. W felt that A could give me something he couldn’t, commitment.

I was so sick of being the middleman in the back and forth between the two of them that one day at W’s house I decided to seduce them both at the same time. I wasn’t interested in having sex myself but I wanted to prove a point. I undressed to my underwear and strutted around, my barely legal body still at the peak of it’s vivacity. They both didn’t know what to do.

So, I instructed them. “Since you both hated each other so much, why don’t you fuck?” I asked. They hesitated at first and then when they realized I wasn’t playing around they did the deed. I didn’t even really watch as I wasn’t remotely interested in seeing them together. I had a point to prove and I proved it. No matter how things appeared on the surface, neither of them would ever have control over me. I was my own man.

From this moment on the dynamic between W and I changed drastically. By this point, I had come into my own and was fiercely independent. I didn’t need someone telling me what to do even if they were technically my boss. There was a tension growing between W and I that led to an emotional drift.

A begged me to leave the auction and W behind, so I did. I moved in with A for awhile and even worked with him at an automotive parts warehouse. This wasn’t enough, he wanted me to love him the way I loved W. It wasn’t possible as A didn’t love me the way W did. We didn’t have the same foundation of respect, care, and natural chemistry. Still, I tried to make the doomed relationship work by suggesting we move to New York to be near A’s family and focus exclusively on us.

We spent a few winter months together, in which I got a job and A didn’t. I made his car and insurance payments so he could drive me to work. This wasn’t enough and A was becoming less and less satisfied with the situation. So, we moved back to Floirda into the room A had been renting before and things progressively got worse. Eventually, the arguing with A had gotten so out of hand that he threatened to throw my cat outside. I drew my line in the sand, called W and packed my bags.

W came to my rescue and for that I’m eternally grateful. I reluctantly moved back home with my mother, who had transferred jobs and acquired a mobile home in the same neighborhood as Nana’s old trailer which was now occupied by my sister. I frantically searched for a new job and landed a cashier gig at a Mexican restaurant.

My twenty-first birthday was fast approaching and my new life was blossoming. It didn’t take me long to acclimate to the restaurant work environment and develop strong connections with my co-workers. I was no longer on top of the world, in fact I had fallen from grace considerably, but I was determined to pick myself up from the dirt. I was determined to change.

W and I continued to see each other sporadically, meeting for dinner or to make love. He had sold the house he shared with M and moved into a mobile home in the outskirts of town for financial reasons. Sometimes I would spend the night with him. It was on one of these occasions that something terrible happened. I became separated from my body. I let him fuck me but I felt numb and detached. I cried silently into the pillowcase. He had no idea I was feeling this way as I didn’t say a word. I wanted him in a way that wasn’t sexual. The canyon between us was too vast to cross. Later, I would go on to write a poem about this experience. I will include it here:

Pillowcase

the sex never lives up to the hype
his body never seduces me like his lusting eyes
I tell him that I like it when I really don’t
but I would rather be here than at home
I shrug it off as simply acting my age
feeling physically too close to someone
while being emotionally drained
I begin to cry while he gropes me from the back
my tears puddle on the pillow
which is warming like a pot of coffee
slowly
which is warming like the planet
controversially
I’m counting the seconds as they march on
towards the conclusion of his pleasure
I may have initiated this
but I can’t wait to get it over with
if something bad once happened to me
I can’t really say
my mouth is full of his pillowcase


As time went on W and I danced together in various degrees of separation and closeness. I began smoking marijuana more frequently in an attempt to lift the fog of my ongoing depression. I became increasingly involved in the world of people my own age. For awhile, I felt fulfilled but only in a surface level kind of way. I even became a manager at work, temporarily fulfilling my need to be needed by others. Deep down I was lonely and afraid that I would never fall in love again.

Time went by and when I could no longer fend off my loneliness I began dating a different A. This A is tall, calm, distant, and an avid pot smoker. Our first date is at an art musuem followed by lunch at a taqueria. I thought my prayers had been answered. I started spending more and more time with him, frequently sleeping over at the house where he rented a room. His roommate was gay too which made me feel as though I was finally entering a community of likeminded individuals.

A wouldn’t discuss his past in Colorado and I didn’t push him, despite the desire to know him on a more personal level. We played board games, card games, and video games together. He introduced to me to shows such as Star Trek: Voyager and The Good Place along with his favorite movie The Fifth Element. We would also walk his dog while playing Pokemon Go.

We were also budding nudists, enjoying a healthy mix of alcohol, weed, and hot tub alone or in the company of his roommate and friends. I was finally getting a taste of what I thought adulthood would be based on my formative experience of watching Jersey Shore, minus all of the drama. Then on one of the rare nights I was at home, A sent me a message. “I got drunk and was unfaithful.” he said.

He wanted to talk about what happened, but I didn’t. The betrayal remined me too much of what W had done to me in the past with J. I had halfway moved in with him and simply wanted my stuff back. After fucking A in his car to avoid conversation, I spent one last night with him. In the morning I collected my things and he brought me home. We never spoke again.

The following poems reflect on my experience with A:

Passenger Seat

when I pulled you into the passenger seat
where I sat alone astute previously
I didn’t consider the fact
that it was your car that we were physically engaged in
I was in seemingly full control of the situation
yet when looking back I wish I had handled things differently
sure you may have cheated on me
but I didn’t have to pack your dignity amongst my belongings
never to return your messages
forgetting your last name in the process
of a seemingly sudden separation
our goodbye was a feral act of desperation

Campfire Song

the words that spilled forth from your lips
would make an incredible campfire song
if only I could remember what was said
on those clandestine nights we spent
in each other’s orbits
revolving around the pipe
packed full of green bud
getting high with you
was my favorite thing to do
after a hectic shift at the restaurant
where dealing with people drained me
but you weren’t like the others
you were calm with a tinge of sadness
the kind of company I wished to keep
that was until you cheated on me
a drunken indiscretion ended
a once great partnership
from this I learned the importance of commitment
and began to fear losing myself in the arms of another


By now I was working at two different restaurants, Mexican and Asian. I ended up leaving the Mexican restaurant and found myself thriving in the new environment of the Asian restaurant that made me feel valued and respected. The culture involved more alcohol and marijuana and I lost myself in both work and self-destruction. In an attempt to fix my repeatedly broken heart I focused on achieving professional status.

I soon became the man everyone relied on and it felt great… for awhile. Then W stopped by unexpectedly, now dating N and living in an apartment nearby. He had ordered to-go and was waiting for his food. My mind went blank, I panicked, giving him both his order and someone else’s on accident.

My position within the restaurant began to take a severe toll on me both mentally and physically. I began to put extra hours in off the clock as I was training for assistant manager and seemed to never have enough time to get everything done. I couldn’t focus on my training because someone always needed something from me and there were several occasions where the restaurant’s operation threatened to come to a complete halt. I was in over my head and tried to explain that to my supervisor.

At around 10 PM, she told me to go home and get some rest. So, I started to walk home and when we finally hung up the phone I walked into the nearest pond and tried to drown myself. When I failed to end my life and began to feel as though I was being followed by co-workers I fleed the area, finding a nearby lake to continue to try and kill myself in. I failed and wrote a few poems on the matter which I will share here:

Damage Control

since I was born I have been on fire
looking for a safe place to burn
I thought I found it in the arms of a lover
then another
then another
it was not until I turned twenty-five
that I tried to extinguish the flames
by drowning myself in a nearby pond
I hope you somehow understand
this is me trying to make sense of it
a desperate attempt at damage control
before I lose my job

Schizoaffective

my body was floating in the middle of the lake
it was dark and I was understandably afraid
somehow the thought of alligators never crossed me
as my mind was swimming towards the shore without me
I was screaming for help
but nobody could hear me
I saw shadows in the distance of people trying to kill me
then I felt a stillness overcome me
God sent what must have been an angel to rescue me
the strength of which unraveled the weeds that entangled me
I heard the insects get louder
the birds did too
it was hard being that vulnerable outside of the bedroom
when the stage breaks and the curtains come crashing down
it’s easy to forget your lines
the ways in which you’ve lived your life beforehand
without the knowledge that was never yours to obtain
my pale skin glistened like a package of trafficked cocaine
I opened myself up and then reeled myself back in
spent the rest of the night running from the demons within
in the sunrise I felt sick
my head continued to spin
the implication of where I had been
began to sink in

I ended up back at the crisis center I visited in my youth, this time being admitted into the adult section. A few days and several prescriptions later I was released. I returned to work but it wasn’t the same, I wasn’t the same. I struggled to perform the most mundane tasks as I grappled with my near death experience. One day, while doing the bare minimum to get by, I was asked to do more work than I was capable of at the time by a traveling trainer. I exploded in a quiet rage, told my co-worker that I needed to go home, and gave him the middle finger with a sturdy “fuck you”. I was then fired.

Here is a poem I wrote soon after the situation in an attempt to understand why it happened:

Elevator

I am the elevator with so many buttons to push
when I am out of service some people get pissed
as they are not used to taking the stairs
have I not contributed enough?
have I not made it easier on the others?
being centrally located and consistent in my ups and downs
thoughts racing back and forth to match the ebb and flow of their tides
am I not deserving of patience as I undergo emergency repairs?
routine maintenance may have prevented some of these issues
but I am no burden to bear on my own
be careful when banging on doors that are temporarily closed

Not long after my mental health deteriorated completely and I entered psychosis. I ended up in a local hospital, then was transferred by ambulance to a mental health facility two hours away, then I spent a single night at home before my mother brought me to a residential facility where was I finally properly diagnosed bipolar-schizoaffective and lived for a month. She knew I needed more help than I had been given and she was right.

After a month of inactivity in residential treatment and twice daily doses of lithium, I had gained a lot of weight. I was no longer the slender, smart, and sexy young man of the past. I was now stuck inside the body and mind of a broken, fat, mentally ill loser. W may have supported me from a distance during this time, due to his relationship with N, but he never made me feel ugly or other. It was these rare conversations that encouraged me to pursue a “normal” life despite my illness. That along with my crush and subsequent stabilizing friendship with residential housemate P.

It was six months before I mustered up the courage to go back to work. I returned to the Mexican restaurant after a two year absence to find myself surrounded by a brand new staff and management team. Gone was the chatterbox overachiever. I replaced him with a reserved, guarded, and anxiously on edge version of myself. I was in a constant state of worry that people would find out how mentally ill I was.

I gradually got my footing socially and professionally, reluctantly becoming a manager again. I even opened up about my mental health struggles in an effort to normalize them with the rest of the staff in mind. I wanted others to feel comfortable about their own struggles. W’s relationship with N continued to progress and our conversations were extremely brief and limited during this time.

A year and a half in, I quit my job. I no longer felt valued and I was having issues with the new assistant manager. I also relapsed in terms of my mental health which lead to more hospitalizations and tweaking of medications. Despite my best efforts, I could never quite put things back together. I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t able to be fixed, I was broken beyond repair. There was no going back to who I used to be.

W married N and I wasn’t invited to the reception. I wouldn’t have gone even if I was. My soul still believed that we belonged together, mortal circumstances had simply gotten in the way. I still believed the same thing about B. I never fully let go of those I’ve loved. When I was ready to dip my toes back in the water that is work, it was at the auction house with W that I found myself again.

Being in close quarters with W proved more difficult than anticipated. Our natural chemistry was still intact and threatened to flare up into more if we weren’t careful. W was adamant about his commitment to N which pissed me off because I needed him more. We settled into a routine of work and camraderie. I was slowly getting used to having W as just a friend. When I finally settled into this new stage of life, W and N were finally approved for adoption.

Here is a poem I wrote about my relationship with W at this point in time:

Fire Starter

digging past the dead bodies
buried in my past
I find a soothing comfort in the fact
that what we had didn’t last
it was fragile
a high-wire act
an empire built upon my emotions and your ego
was inevitably bound to collapse
I fell for you like an asteroid
down into the earth I crashed
burning through the netting
when I tried to convince you to sign a suicide pact
I have spent the time since writing and revising
our long overdue obituary
the final scene in our story goes a bit like this
I lean in for a kiss and you lean further into him
was it the way I combed my hair or that I reeked of gin?
what is it about me that attracted you to him?
was I ever what you loved or was I just a stand-in?
a placeholder without a place to hold any longer
I have since come to know that I’m a fire starter

There was something about a newborn child that I knew I couldn’t compete with. The innocence, the untainted beauty, the dependence were all too much to go up against. W had swam out too far to be reeled back into my rocky shoreline. He was becoming a father. I was becoming nothing.

Here are a couple of poems that I wrote while exploring my waning connection with W:

Cavity

I am the crater you couldn’t live with
which makes me the mistress you didn’t have kids with
even if adoption were a financially feasible option
I would never raise them to hold you in high regard
the way I once mistakenly did
this is personal
I am vindictive
not the villain
but someone missing
there aren’t any flyers posted downtown
no loosely taped papers pole dancing in the streets
nobody is looking for who I used to be
besides me
I remember how hard you tried to be funny
overtly
my sense of humor had slowed down
it hurt me
the way you sighed after each attempt
made me feel as though I failed you
unimpressed I pressed forward
through a crisis of identity
who am I without you?
I’m still not sure
but revenge is sweet
and I’ll get my fair share
enough for a cavity

Love Hunting

I had myself convinced that
if I was successful enough
I would one day get you back
I pursued your love like a hunter
checking every trap I set
waking each day
with hopes that
your soul would be snared
and that I could finally be seen
as a perennial being
nothing I ever did was enough
I wanted more than abundance
I wanted more than sustenance
you were the object of my desire
until one day I finally got old and tired
I gave up on you in order to finally face me
only I couldn’t really see
because I became a ghost post-tragedy

As Nikita Gill said: “You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?”


STRIKE THREE

Now that W was married with a newborn adopted child I retreated further into my shell. He suggested that I put myself out there and start dating again so I did, somewhat. I made an online dating profile and swiped and swiped. I made small talk with several guys, but nothing clicked. By now I wasn’t interested in a “normal” relationship. I was on the hunt for something extraordinary and life-changing. Then I stumbled upon R, my former high school teacher.

We began talking over the phone via text message and spent months maintaining a comfortable emotional distance between us. I distracted myself by writing fiction and he remained busy with work. This slow burn suited us well, allowing us to both adjust to having someone significant in our lives. There was an inherent mutual respect already solidified. We thought highly of each other but weren’t in a rush to jump into anything. Eventually, an opportunity arose and I asked him on a movie date. Joker: Folie a Deux was releasing in theatres, starring Lady Gaga nevertheless. I wanted to go but not alone. He said he would see if there was room in his schedule.

He confessed to me that he was having a hard time navigating his feelings in regards to being my former teacher. While it had been nearly a decade since then, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling of teacher-student responsibility. I understood the position he was being put in and told him that I wasn’t in any rush to make “us” happen. I was simply happy to reconnect after all these years.

The following poems act as early reflections on this rekindled relationship:

Age Gap

I’ve dated an older man before
but he met me when I had already turned eighteen
on full circle days with you I freakishly feign maturity
because you still remember the awkward half drawn sketch
of who I thought I was supposed to be
what makes you different from him
is how you didn’t try to dictate me
you let me develop naturally
later blooming out of the greasy acne and grisly anxiety
for that I’m eternally grateful
for the time spent apart even more so
because in that abundant absence of you
I was able to not worship the pillar of adulthood
you represented so casually
you confronted me with so comfortably
I was able to sculpt myself
into the precarious masterpiece I was meant to be
I used to rage in these streets
now I’m at peace when we meet
awake in unshakeable belief
that who you want in life you will someday meet
someone of your caliber is an absurd rarity
I know this is not an act of courageous charity
we are equals in this conversation
you actually listen to what I’m saying
that is the greatest compliment
the most valuable form of currency
a man has ever dared to paid me

Next Chapter

I want you to be my next chapter
the point in my story where things turn
for better instead of worse
as they have so many times before
I want the lines contained within you
to be my most often quoted
as I know they would bring much needed joy to the world
I want our secrets to be kept close to the chest
sprinkled throughout the pages like pixie dust
glowing and decipherable only during sunset
able to be touched and traced but never felt in the same way
we did when they were newly lived
not yet sewn in
not yet sworn in as embroidered patches on jacket sleeves
not yet sure of what you mean to me exactly
do I have to be for this to be considered a love?
what are the requirements?
are there benchmarks already set?
trivial matters we haven’t met?
or do we say fuck conventions
and make up the rules as we go
on this impossible road trip to Lord knows?
I want to go wherever you go
I’m up for anything
does that entice you?
am I being too forward
is it impolite to press myself upon you in this way
in a serious manner as though I could die today?
sorry for the expectations
I only ever wanted to say
you may be the greatest excuse I ever met
to move past my previous heartbreak

By now I considered myself a serious writer and I sought validation from R. It was no longer enough to be both creating and publishing my work. I wanted to be distinguished in his eyes. His glowing review meant more to me as an artist than a Pulitzer prize. While I waited patiently for him to read and review my fictional works I struggled to find conversation starters. I didn’t want to discuss the weather. I wanted to survey the soul.

My prevalent detachment from my physical body proved to not be as much of a barrier to being loved as I anticipated. R made me feel seen without any sexual advances. While the jury was still out on whether our first date would happen I was content taking time to get acquainted with myself in parallel to getting acquainted with him. I began to revisit past wounds in an attempt to understand why they occurred in the first place. Understanding my personal history with love became my top priority as I wanted to undergo a metamorphesis and come out the other side as a more intentional lover.

In my remembering, I learned that the controversial nature of my forbidden relationships may have acted as a potent aphrodisiac but the love experienced existed due to simple, quiet, and innate connection. The sacred and the profane were two sides to the same coin. This coin is something I once collected and coveted compulsively in secret but a shift occured within me and I decided it was time to put on a public display of emotion. It was time to let go of my life in the shadows and step into the light.

My exploration of memories became a memoir, the one you are finishing currently. While some people may say that my relationships with B, W, and later R were “wrong” and that I should be ashamed. Newsflash, I’m not. In fact, I consider these forbidden loves to be among my life’s greatest achievements.

Not many people can say that they have loved as freely and as fully as I have despite society’s judgements. All this by the age of 27 nevertheless! While I don’t know where my life will take me, I do know that I will be taking these experiences with me into eternity.
I would like to end this memoir with the following poem. I wrote this piece with the intention of transmuting my pain of repeatedly not being chosen in love into a source of inspiration for myself and others to continue to bloom into the beautiful complex beings we are meant to become with or without external validation:

Flowers Never Picked

I used to want you to pick me
out of a field of a thousand flowers
but you never did and I am grateful
that I am still attached to my roots
that my stem remains unbroken
by harsh hands that were glazed
with a modest tan
once a flower is picked
it is most often placed in a vase
given water and a gaze
for a limited number of days
eventually wilting out of shape
the beauty of flowers never picked
is that they will bloom again
and again
and again

“In regards to these relationships,
I don’t feel fucked up… I feel free.”
- Cody Draco