I want to take a little time to tell you about a couple of friends who were important parts of my life during my late teenage years. I haven’t seen either of these men in a long time now, and I have to admit it makes me a bit sad.

There was a guy I knew for quite some time, a friend of mine once upon a time, who liked to pretend that he was some sort of spiritual sherpa, styling himself as a pagan of some nebulous variety. This was a man who took himself far too seriously for being little more than a sexual predator masking his predation behind a transparent facade of offering spiritual guidance to vulnerable and naive younger girls. I liked to compare him unfavorably to something more like a poor man’s Rasputin than anything else.

This was a man who assembled a flock of teenagers around him in his 30s…and I derived endless pleasure from fucking with his mojo wherever the opportunity could be found. I’ve always been kind of a prick like that, but it does help to show you that it isn’t just those of a Judeo-Christian faith that I enjoy tormenting and mocking for no other reason than the sheer pleasure I discover in doing so. I spent a good deal of time toying with his insipid little playthings as well, though I tended to display a touch more reservation where they were concerned because I genuinely felt kind of bad for them while simultaneously thinking they were all functionally retarded.

Thankfully I had another friend around that same time who was equally inclined towards socially inappropriate behavior and poor impulse control. There was one time when he and I happened to find the decaying head of a deer in a dumpster while visiting the fast food joint where one of our mutual friends was working, as the manager who almost exclusively deserves the credit for running it right down the toilet. This friend of mine and I were immediately on the same page as we hoisted the head from the dumpster and placed it in the back of his truck.

The head of that deer was placed with care, as threateningly as possible, inside the front door of our self-styled guru’s apartment simply because he had the poor common sense required to leave his door unlocked in case anyone happened to come by…that was a habit he quickly curbed thanks to us. That evening we stopped by again and found the deer staring up at us from the garbage can behind the apartment and we promptly extricated it and placed it on the rail of the deck behind the apartment so that it would be staring right at our friend when he stepped outside to smoke. What was done with the bit of carcass after that was unknown to us, all that could be said is that we never tracked it down after using it that second time.

The number of times that we tampered with this friend’s “altar” are probably beyond measure, individually and together. Frequently it was something as simple as moving things around in subtle ways when he wasn’t home while other times it was more invasive actions such as passing amounts of urine into various oils and “potions” that he had crafted and utilized for assorted purposes…there might have been some semen as well, also there was feces.

Those were good times in my life, and I realize just how awful all of that makes me sound…but I do peculiar things when I get bored.

That partner in crime was a terrible person for me to be around, and I totally concur with that assessment. Not only was he the sort of person who encouraged me to not bother holding myself back where aberrant impulses were concerned, but he was almost aggressively averse to behaving like a sane human being himself.

He and I developed a game once (one that we continued to play for quite some time) while bored and driving around aimlessly, and it should be mentioned that we were also quite high…probably from drugs that we had skimmed from what we were selling to Job Corps students at the time. The game became known as Next Blue Car, we weren’t terribly creative about it, so shut up. The objective was simple; drive aimlessly until you encounter a blue car of any kind, follow this car until you happen across another blue car, and begin following that car…repeat. Two caveats of the game were what made it a more truly antisocial activity; the first one is that you do whatever you have to in order to follow said blue car (including rapid, illegal U-turns and excessive speed in order to remain less than a car length from the target) and the other rule being that if the car pulls into a driveway or a garage you are to park directly in front of the house or in said driveway with the engine running until either another blue car comes along or an hour has passed, casually ignoring anyone who might confront you for being there. These additional elements were what had the capacity to make our game honestly quite terrifying to the occupants of the blue car in question. This became our default form of entertainment when nothing else was holding our attention sufficiently.

We purchased blow guns once along with a healthy surplus of different varieties of darts for them and developed a habit of routinely surprising one another by firing darts at each other whenever the urge was upon us, typically when it was least expected (occasionally while the victim was asleep or even mid coitus). There were also extended intervals of time during which we had blow gun wars with one another, no protective eye wear or clothing included. The blow guns were nothing, however, compared to the time when we procured a couple of hatchets from the tool shed in a stranger’s yard and proceeded to attack each other with little by way of restraint. This was certainly a high point in my life as far as decadence exceeding common sense and self-preservation is concerned. Surprisingly enough, neither of us was seriously injured.

In all the time I spent with this particular friend there was only one time he was ever angry with me. This was a time when we were parked along the side of a highway, I can’t recall why, but there were a bunch of us there, in a couple of vehicles…maybe someone needed to change a tire and we all stopped together. His daughter (who couldn’t have been more than four years old at the time) was being a pest and I casually told her to go and play closer to the road. He might have been less upset with me if she hadn’t listened to me. I think he might have actually hit me if it weren’t for the fact that he recognized as well as I did how that would have played out, and how rapidly the whole thing would have spiraled out of control.

I haven’t seen him in years, more than a decade in fact, and I openly admit that I miss him a great deal. I have no idea where his life has taken him…but I would be far from surprised if I were to learn that he was no longer with us, though I suspect that he would say the same thing about me if asked.

When a woman asks you what you would do without her in a cutesy, playful manner, the correct answer is most certainly not to inform her that you would either be with someone else or you would be alone, and that either way things would probably be about the same. I could write a book consisting of nothing more than things not to say to a romantic partner, all of them things that I have said at some point in the past. One would think that, with all of my experience with women, I would not be such a truly abysmal jackass when it comes to talking to them…one would be painfully incorrect.

Contrary to all of my impulses, asking a woman if she washes her asshole with Windex because I can see my tongue in it is neither an appropriate pick-up line nor an endearing attempt to elicit a smile. Similarly, role-playing a mentally challenged cannibal during foreplay is no way to segue into intercourse. These are just a couple of examples of just how poorly I read the situation when it comes to interacting with women, even those with whom I am romantically involved.

It’s not all fun and games though. My failures when it comes to interpersonal relationships are often less entertaining and a good deal more shameful…not just where women are concerned, but that is what I’m talking about here.

One could argue that killing the first girl I loved might have set me off along a really dark path in life, and I certainly can’t disagree. I have fucked up my relationships in some unbelievably fantastic ways…but that remains the pinnacle of how disastrous I have been to another human being…at least so far. If only my poor judgment ended there.

Less than six months after the accident I began seeing a girl who was one of the friends of the girl who had died. We bonded over our mutual loss and similar interests and tastes. She was an amazing girl, sweet and funny while being aggressively punk rock and forceful enough with her personality that she dragged me screeching like a rodent from the shell I was comfortable living in…we will ignore the fact that only a truly atypical rodent would live in a shell; I’m atypical like that. We had a couple of months together, and I was beginning to function in a sense, in a way that I hadn’t since the accident.

Even at the time I knew that she was good for me (this isn’t one of those situations where it’s all in retrospect) and that I was probably about as happy as I could be under the circumstances. None of that stopped me from walking to the interstate one morning and hitching away that summer. I called home a couple of times to let my family know that I was still alive and I called that girl now and again only to hang up when she answered…I think some part of me knew that she would be able to talk me into coming home if I allowed her to speak.

I didn’t stay away too long, hitchhiking with little to no money is a recipe for ending up doing some terrible things for money. I avoided that unpleasant outcome and I returned to the region but stayed with various friends and acquaintances rather than returning home like I should have. I don’t regret not going home, a great deal of fun was to be had during that summer, but it broke my heart every time I called the girl I had abandoned…the answering machine message in her home had even been converted into a plea from her for me not to hang up if I was calling. I stopped calling. She was better off forgetting that I even existed.

It wasn’t long after that when I began running into a girl who thoroughly fascinated me; tall, with porcelain skin, eyes that appeared black unless the light hit them just the right way needed to reveal the green that they actually were, and with a sense of style that I found totally captivating. Of course she was involved with a friend of mine, or someone that I liked to consider a friend…though my subsequent actions proved me to be far less of a friend to him than he had been to me. He passed away recently, and I wish I had gotten a chance to spend more time with him before that happened. We had barely spoken in a decade or so and yet he was one of the first people to show an active interest in my novel after it was finished.

Fuck! I let myself get sidetracked; I do that sort of shit all the time…sorry about that.

I knew that she was involved with someone I respected a great deal, but no amount of respect I had for him was sufficient to override what I wanted…and I wanted her. How she could have conceivably ended up with me eludes me to this day, when she had someone better…especially when I consider our earliest interactions.

She was quietly sitting by herself on the trunk of her car when I sat down beside her, the first time I ever made the choice to speak to her. I looked directly into her eyes and suggested that she either thought that she was somehow better than the rest of us which was why she was always off by herself or that she was mentally challenged and knew we would deride her if we all found out just how deficient she was. It was only a week or so later that I stole the keys from the ignition of her car and told her that she would only be getting them back after she kissed me.

Sometime around Halloween of that year we conceived our daughter, my first born…her’s as well, but that’s irrelevant because this is about me.

Both of us were too damn young and ill equipped to be parents…but I was definitely the more toxic component within our relationship. When it was good, she and I were almost perfect together…the problem was that the good became more and more frequently occluded by the rest of our relationship, which is to say, the bad.

She is, thankfully, the only woman I ever laid a hand on in anger. I can offer up rationalizations and justifications, but they are all bullshit…no matter how many other factors were present at the time, there was no excuse for me hitting her. You can condemn me for it, I wouldn’t blame you, and I have already done so myself. But I am not here to make myself look good, I tried to warn you about that before…sincerity requires that I share these details as well.

Our daughter was still a baby, no more than a month old when it occurred. Her mother and I had been at each other’s throats more than usual since before she was born, and the additional stress and strain of being new parents was not alleviating things in any way. In the middle of this particular fight I packed up our daughter in her baby carrier and headed to the door. She ran after me and tried to yank the baby carrier from my hand. I told her that I was going to spend an hour or two with my family and that I was taking our daughter because she was my daughter too. Her response was to shout, “She is not!”

I think back to that moment and I wish that I could step back for a second and breathe. In that moment though, there was no stepping back for me. I hit her…before I even knew that I had moved, it was done. No, I didn’t hit her in the face or anything that dramatic, as if that somehow makes things better.

She was on the phone with the cops almost immediately, still fighting with me the whole time. I knew that the police were on the way, but I stayed right there. I did end up hitting her a couple more times, kneeling on the floor in front of her, deflated as I was from the shock of what had happened; these were not blows like the first one, there was no intent to harm her, more ineffectual bursts of frustration and sadness than anger…there was no strength left in me. Even worse than the action itself, a couple of friends had arrived at that time and were witness to that final, proud few moments before the police arrived.

I went with the police without putting up a fight at all and I spent a couple of nights in a juvenile detention facility before being released to my mother. I can’t imagine how my mother thought of me when she had heard what happened or when she picked me up from my incarceration, or how she felt bringing me back to her house for a couple of days before I went to live with my father. While I was locked up my things were moved out of the apartment that she and I had shared and moved into my father’s house. When he was picking up my things he apparently apologized to her and told her that this was his fault…but it wasn’t, I had done this to myself, and there was no dispelling my guilt and passing the buck on to someone else, not even my father.

Obviously she and I tried to work things out after that, primarily for our daughter’s sake, and we both believed that things could be different if we gave it another chance. She and I had our son only 15 months after our daughter was born…but we were never ok after that incident, and we honestly didn’t last too long after giving it another chance.

We continued living together for a couple of years even though a relationship between us couldn’t possibly function after what had happened…we tried our best to keep things stable for our children, and we did a surprisingly admirable job of it, all things considered, which isn’t saying much. All we really accomplished was making us hate one another and ourselves. It was not a good place for either of us; a place filled with recriminations, eroded trust, and hostility.

We dated other people near the end, but hated having to bear witness to one another trying to be happy with someone else, perhaps because we both still carried around some faint shred of the hope that we’d had when we first found each other….this led to some awkward situations.

It was shortly before our son was born that I began seriously dating another girl who is still an important part of my life and one of my dearest friends. She was too good for me from the beginning, she was (and still is) almost unnaturally beautiful, smart and talented, and she had a family that would have placed her in a higher caste if we lived in a different society from this one. I still don’t know what she ever saw in me.

It was shortly after my son was born when we discovered that she was pregnant. This brought to light some questions of paternity, since I was bachelor number two in this scenario…but of course it would turn out that she would be giving birth to my second son.

She and I finally ended up falling apart after she cheated on me with another guy…even though I tried to still work things out after that, she left me. It was probably in her best interests to move on, away from me. The problem is that the guy she left me for turned out to be a total nut, but that is a story for another time.

A while after that, after she and I had both grown and reached different places in our respective lives than we were in when the relationship dissolved, she expressed an interest in trying to give our relationship another chance, but I was too stupid and self-loathing by that time to take advantage of her obvious lapse in judgment.

This will never end if I keep going into details here. I will stop this particular chapter here and write up an addendum later on, so that I can provide further examples of how I am unsuitable for relationships. I feel like I have covered that enough for now. You might need a reminder later on.

I’ve heard it said that children of broken homes are predisposed to create broken homes of their own when the time comes around, but I happen to think that’s an irresponsible bullshit mentality. It’s thoroughly dismissing our own accountability for the choices we make in life, and that sort of thing always tends to piss me off.

I won’t deny that it is a bit more of a challenge to build a healthy and stable home and family life when your dominant example is far from being either of those things…but life itself is a fucking challenge, and we’re supposed to overcome them, that’s part of the joy and spice of life. I admit that I’m not the most sympathetic person when I hear the sort of victim mentality that’s manifest in claiming that a troubled childhood will produce more of the same when that child becomes a parent in their own right. The worst part is that I am a walking fucking billboard for that philosophy being correct…but I am not a fuck up because my childhood was difficult. I’m a fuck up because, plain and simple, I am a fuck up.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have never been adequately suited for relationships, not the functional variety at the very least. This is the sort of thing I am reminded of time and again, just when I start to believe that something is different. My insecurities, my aberrant state of mind, and my overall poor impulse control have definitely worked against me plenty in the past…but there is also the simple fact that I have typically been happier on my own, that allowing someone to truly become a part of my life has always terrified me.

Where problems don’t exist naturally I have sabotaged myself more than enough for a lifetime or two. Little things become amplified from my perspective and I become easily irritated at the slightest provocation, trivial little problems become deal breakers, and I begin looking for a way out. I panic when I feel like someone is getting close to me to an extent that I’m not comfortable with, which leads me to become defensive and to take things far less seriously than I should. I was always closed off and guarded, emotionally distant and unavailable to an unhealthy degree. At one point I described myself to a girl I was involved with as being like a treacherously rocky shore, hiding dangerous stones beneath the surface of what might appear to be a safe harbor…and the closer the ships drew in (the ships being women in this analogy, did I really need to explain that to you?), the greater the damage that was done. I don’t know why I felt that it was dangerous to be close to me, but it was like that before the accident as well, it just got worse after that.

I’ll spend a little while really going into detail regarding what I mean when I talk about how ruinous I am in relationships, right now I’m more focused on the broken homes that I mentioned previously. If I was not hardwired for relationships you can only guess how poorly suited I was for parenthood. There was a substantial part of me that never wanted kids, primarily because I was horrified that I would end up being just like my father and that any children I had would be subjected to a life where they would experience the same sort of perpetual state of terror that I had…or worse.

I was still all sorts of fucked up from the accident when, only a year later, I discovered I was going to be a father. I tried to put on a brave face and be supportive, I wanted to smile and be happy about the new life that I was helping to bring into the world…but I had to pretend, in order to do so. Inside, I was so fucking broken and damaged, I was petrified…this was like a nightmare for me. I was suddenly going to be in a position to fuck someone else’s life up just like I was fucking up my own. I’d be lying if there wasn’t a part of me that considered running as far away as possible, it would be better to be raised with no father than the father I was going to be…of course, I did not run. My oldest daughter was born when I was 17 years old and her brother was conceived only six months later, entirely without any intention on my part or the part of their mother.

Not only was I barely more than a child myself, but I was also intensely filled with guilt and self-loathing in about equal measure at that time in my life. I was certainly not fit to be a father to anyone, nonetheless those two beautiful children, even if I had the slightest idea what I was doing, which, I might add, I did not. I would like to say that I gave it my best effort, at least my failings as a parent could be perceived as less of an overall failure of character if that had been the case…but I know damn well that I could have done a substantially better job of it than I did. The fact of the matter is that I still could be a better father than I am today, but I am trying…and I have been for quite some time now. It just took me a little bit too damn long to finally pull my head out of my ass and learn that I could do something more than fail miserably.

Having had additional children over the intervening years (because I clearly never learned to quit while I was ahead), I haven’t gotten much better at knowing what the hell I’m doing…I have no problem admitting that. I can say with certainty that I have never laid a hand on my children out of anger, nothing more than the occasional spanking, at least…and I subscribe to the school of thought that punishment of that variety is not a bad thing, even though I’ve never been able to accomplish a spanking without feeling bad about it immediately after. I am still far from perfect in my parenting, and anyone who has witnessed the way that I interact with my children would be ready to join in a chorus of affirmation there. I’m flawed as all hell, but I think I have done a reasonably good job of insuring that the children know that I love them and that I am always there for them. I realize that I have still been emotionally distant and disconnected, even from the children, for a major part of their lives…but that didn’t mean I didn’t love them and treasure them just the same.

I worry sometimes that I might have fucked my own kids up in a lot of the same ways that I have been, and still am to this day, fucked up. Somehow, though, they have all seemed to turn out quite well, despite my influence. I’m proud of them, even when they make mistakes…thankfully they tend not to make mistakes comparable to my own. Maybe I have gotten lucky enough that they learned from my errors and haven’t felt the need to replicate them, or maybe they are just better people than I was, better people than I am today. Either way, I don’t have much to worry about there.

They may be products of broken homes and a severely broken parent, but they are in no way broken themselves. I may be living proof of the fact that children of broken homes produce them in turn, but my own children give me a fair deal of hope that they can provide ample evidence to the contrary. Let’s keep our fingers crossed…and don’t be so jaded.

Being a writer is not a new thing for me, which might come as a surprise considering the lack of quality and polish that my writing exhibits. This is not some calling that I discovered for myself in adulthood…it’s something I have been doing since childhood, almost as far back as I can remember. With the childhood that I had, there is smart money riding on the probability that storytelling, for me, began as a form of escapism…fashioning worlds where I had a semblance of control that I lacked in the real world. It was probably my way of working things out as well, trying to obtain some rudimentary understanding of things and making sense of what I was experiencing in everyday life.
I know that I have been persistently vague so far, regarding the specifics of my childhood, at least where my home life is concerned. I will get to it, the good and the bad, in my own time. This is my story and I will tell it however I damn well see fit. I’m the storyteller here, just like I always have been in my life…but this marks the first occasion where the story I’m telling is a true one, where I am the protagonist (a role I don’t really think I deserve), and that makes things more of a challenge than you might think. You may not enjoy being subject to my seemingly arbitrary whims, bouncing here and there through my life, but that is how this works for me…the only way it works.
So, I was telling you how I have always been a writer. I began telling stories at an early age, rudimentary and trite by any objective standard, but they were stories just the same. The earliest written things were little tales featuring Tom the turkey, if I recall his name correctly. They were stupid little stories about Tom’s insipid adventures in the life of a turkey, culminating in something about how he sacrificed his only begotten son for the sake of Thanksgiving dinner. I’m kidding about that last part, he sacrificed himself; the Jesus parallel was just more entertaining to me just now. Tom did actually get eaten in the end, not as a sacrifice, I’m sure…but really just because he was the wrong turkey in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of my stories have a fairly optimistic outcome, as you can clearly tell.
It’s the unwritten stories from my childhood that were the most important to me. It could have been because my early years were plagued with violence and fear that I began concocting more and more intricate and frightening depictions of what was going on in the world all around me. The real world apparently wasn’t scary enough for me, I suppose…so I imagined far worse things around every corner and lurking within every shadow.
Initially these musings were cobbled together from stories I heard along with bits and pieces of horror movies that I’d seen (I was too young to read when this first started), gradually becoming more original in nature as my imagination developed in its own right and took hold. I spent a great deal of time alone while I was growing up, wandering through the hills by myself regardless of the weather or season. These were some of the best days of my life. There were days when I would wake up and head off immediately into the hills, only returning home after it had gotten dark…other aspects of my childhood might have been traumatic, but the degree of freedom I was allowed to experience is something I will always treasure.
In my little world I was being hunted and stalked by an assortment of creatures, my only goal being to survive in the wilderness on my own. I look back and wonder how I could have possibly wanted more terror in my life than I already had…but that was apparently just what I desired, or maybe it was just all that I knew.
At first these were stories that I told only to myself, things to keep me scared in my free time, as scared as I was at home…upon further reflection maybe it was a coping mechanism, a method by which I could keep myself in a constant state of wariness? Over time I began to involve the few friends I had made in this narrative tapestry of horrors that filled my life, in the same way that other children might play cops & robbers or cowboys & Indians. I would weave together new mythologies surrounding the small town where we lived and surround us with beings and creatures that thirsted for our blood…trying to immerse us so deeply into the fiction that we lost sight of it being anything but the reality that we experienced in everyday life.
This spoken and interactive form of storytelling preceded my actually writing anything by a couple of years and it continued well into my adolescence…populating the darkness with horrors that kept me awake at night, bringing my nightmares into the waking world.
I’ve heard it said that an active imagination is a healthy thing in a child, but I get the distinct feeling that the particular manifestations of my imaginings may very well point towards something quite unhealthy. I guess it’s up to you to make that determination; I am too biased to reach a viable conclusion.

I began writing this for a couple of different reasons, first and foremost because I needed to get back into the habit of writing something, anything at all…and we all know that rule number one is to write what we know. Where my fictional writing is concerned, it mostly concerns horror, and I felt it might be beneficial for me to explore the horror of real life and how it influences who I’ve become and what I do.
Almost as important, I felt that this might just be a healthy bit of self-exploration and would certainly be cheaper than therapy. It was almost arbitrary that I opened up and shared myself with you, without restraint, and I figured that there would be a couple of people who might be interested in seeing me vulnerable and exposed…If only out of morbid curiosity or spite.
I could not have anticipated the overwhelming show of support and encouragement I have received, from friends and acquaintances as well as total strangers. I expected, at most, to reach one or two people like I usually did with the things I’ve written in the past, and that was fine with me…it was relatively safe and provided me with the illusion of openness without the reality of truly being laid bare in the eyes of anyone. I am not the most interesting fellow and I definitely don’t expect anyone to hang from my every word, so I have been floored by the unprecedented number of people who have been showing an active interest in what I’ve had to say.
This shocking development led to another impetus being adopted behind my decision to continue writing all of this, one that only came about after a few of my stories had been shared…that is my hope that maybe I could potentially reach someone and speak to them in a way that might resonate somehow for them, and maybe improve their life in some small way. Through the sharing of my experiences I started to hope that I might make a difference somewhere, for someone. I dismissed that as being a damned silly thought almost immediately, but I am starting to wonder if maybe I wasn’t too quick to cast it aside…maybe I will be able to help just one person by continuing to open up like I have so far.
I have a small request for you, whether you take me seriously or not…share all of this with anyone you know who might benefit from it, whether because you know they are hurting or because you feel they would derive some pleasure from a total stranger making an ass of himself by sharing these deeply personal aspects of his life with anyone who happens to come along. There is no sense in my exposing myself like this if no one is there to witness it. The vulnerability is a sham if I am not putting myself out there without hesitation…in for a penny, in for a pound.
I am not special, though, and my story is not unique or original…the details may be individual to my life, but the overall theme is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination. There are countless men and women, boys and girls, who have suffered through experiences quite similar to my own and many of them even worse. They are everywhere. If you don’t open yourself up to them without judgment and allow them to reach out to you in their own way (on their own terms) and with their own timing…there is no safe assurance that anyone else will.
It’s up to you to try and make a difference for the broken and the damaged, even if you are among them…don’t you dare second guess yourself like I always do. You might be surprised at just how much healing can come from two broken individuals coming together and simply focusing on the parts that don’t bear the scars left behind, until they can look at one another and no longer see the scars, but the person as they are meant to be.
The world around us and life itself are full of darkness and horrors beyond our everyday imaginings. That darkness has a way of penetration us when we are at our weakest, and consuming us from the inside if we let it. I am the first to admit that it can be seductive in its own way, and that it can be a relief to grab ahold of that darkness and embrace it. Once you do, it never really goes away…and I honestly don’t know if that is even a bad thing, but I am in no position to judge that without bias. Even with that darkness everywhere you have to remember that there is also so much light in the world as well, and you have to insure that other people are seeing it to.
Fuck what I have had to say so far, as well as the rest of what I’m going to share with you after this. None of that is important. What matters is that you take one small lesson away from all of this and make a positive difference in someone’s life, even if that life happens to be your own.
What are you doing still sitting there? Get off your ass and make the world a better place in some infinitesimal way. One person can’t change the world, I know that, but a population is constructed from nothing more than one person and another and another…if you all choose to make a difference, then it will fucking happen.
Don’t worry, I’m not done…I have so much more to share with you.

My maternal grandfather was quite possibly the most important influence during my childhood, and after my father was functionally removed from the picture he stepped in and took over in the role of father figure for me. Quite sincerely, I could not have asked for anyone better to have fulfilled that need in my life.
He was a hard working man right up until the decades of smoking took their toll and forced him to require an oxygen tank just to breathe. I spent summer months and weekends in the spring and fall accompanying him to flea markets and threshing bees, assisting him with small engine repair (a skill that he picked up during his time in the Navy). At the time, being barely even an adolescent, I sometimes got bored and looked at the days spent thus way as a bizarre form of punishment…and I wish that I could go back and smack that ungrateful little shit and teach him to appreciate the lessons he was learning as well as the time he was fortunate enough to spend with a great man.
My grandfather was well respected in the small community where I grew up, and with good reason. As selfish and stupid as I could be when I was younger, my grandfather was the one person I was least inclined to behave disrespectful towards. There was something about him that elicited a degree of compliance from me that no one else ever really could.
This story isn’t about my grandfather; I just wanted you to know a little bit about the man because he plays an important role in the story I am about to share.
I made a passing reference to the violence that punctuated my childhood, both at home and in the outside world. I’d like to take this little bit of time here to discuss the violence outside of my home, so sit down and pay some damn attention…maybe you will learn something.
I told you before that I didn’t make friends easily (and still don’t, as you’re probably aware), and that may have been a bit of an understatement. I don’t know what it was about me as a child, at least not specifically, but I apparently rubbed people the wrong way pretty badly. It could be something as simple as the fact that I was taller than all of my peers until right around high school, it could have been because I was smarter than most of them (if not all of them) and they resented me for it, it could have been due to the fact that I was always a little bit different (and I know I’m not fooling anyone by trying to pretend it was some miniscule bit of peculiarity I exhibited), or it may very well have been a combination of some or all of those things…I never did learn why I was singled out the way that I was.
I don’t remember when it started, the years back then blur together for me this far away, but it may have been as early as first grade when the beatings started…and they continued for years.
There was a certain group of kids consisting of classmates as well as older friends of theirs and family members who determined, for whatever reason, that I was something to be broken. I played basketball with some of these boys and later participated in Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts with them, but there was no sense of being comrades between us outside of those circumstances.
Looking back from the vantage point of the present, it seems like I was subjected to their bullshit a couple of days a week all through the school year, but I know it couldn’t have conceivably been that frequent; they would have had to get bored with it if that had been the case. It was frequent enough that it hammered itself into my memory pretty severely though. It wasn’t always the same faces taunting me, hitting and kicking me…some days it was only two or three of them, other days there were five or six of them. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was scared. Anyone would have been frightened under those same circumstances.
It had to have been one of the first times that this happened when my grandfather came out yelling and chased the boys off before helping me to my feet. My grandparents lived diagonally across the street from where I attended school and had a clear view of the parking lot where most of this violence took place. I actually feel bad for my grandfather sometimes because I know that he had to witness the same thing happening to me with far too much frequency. That first time though, he made me promise that I would not get into fights with those boys. He told me that I was not supposed to fight back, that I needed to avoid them and get away from them if it happened again.
If anyone else had asked me to do the same thing I would have dismissed it and done whatever I had to do. But I did not take that promise to my grandfather lightly.
Over the following years it happened again and again, some days I could get away without a scratch…but there were plenty of times which ended with me on the ground, beaten and sobbing out of frustration and pain, and none of those times did I even attempt to fight back. I took what they dished out with as much dignity as the situation allowed, escaping if the opportunity presented itself. I could run like a motherfucker if properly motivated.
For the longest time I almost resented my grandfather for insisting that I not fight back, most profoundly during and immediately following one of the beatings.
As I got older I looked back on his request and tried to understand why he would ask me to just take it without raising a hand to defend myself. When I was in a particularly negative state of mind I worried that he saw something bad in me, something possibly passed down to me from my father, and this was his way of doing the best he could to help me overcome that potential monster hiding there beneath the surface. I know that wasn’t his reasoning at all, and that he was simply teaching me to be a better and stronger man, and that violence wasn’t a solution. The funny thing is, when I have really let myself look closely at my life, I wonder if he wasn’t unintentionally killing two birds with one stone there. I still suspect, and fear, that there is something down there, lurking beneath the skin…and I learned to keep it there through the lessons my grandfather taught me, of discipline and self control. He may not have seen something terrible inside of me but I know myself well enough to suspect that it is in there…and that is where it can damn well stay.
All of that aside, there did finally come a time; perhaps it was after a particularly bad beating that I experienced (or maybe he was just tired of seeing those smug little shits beating on his grandson), when my grandfather told me that I had his permission to fight back the next time, but only if they hit me first. I can still clearly recall a sensation that can only be equated to having shackles removed at that moment.
As it turned out it wasn’t me being hit that served as the impetus for my bring able to respond in kind. I was in the next yard over from my grandparents’ house, playing with the boy who lived there. He was the nicest kid, a bit on the slow side, but he didn’t treat me strangely…which may explain why I have an easy time building rapport with individuals suffering from various sorts of mental handicap.
A few of the boys who routinely beat me up showed up and started behaving like the assholes that they were. I don’t know what led to it but one of them shoved the neighbor boy over and I felt like I was free to retaliate. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I hit him hard enough that he went over the white picket fence that separated that yard from my grandparents’. It sounds like embellishment, and you are free to assume it to be just that, but I assure you that I have been entirely forthcoming in this, as with the rest of what I have shared with you.
I’ve always been stranger than I look, and I was justifiably angry at the time. My grandfather was right, that was the last time I had to worry about those boys after school. There was only one other incident during grade school when I used violence as a means to an end. This time it wasn’t justified and I felt terrible about it. In the hallway one day another student began saying some rude and cruel things to me and I didn’t catch myself before I could react.  I hit him once in the chest and cracked five or six of his ribs…I was 11 or 12 at the time. I immediately felt awful for hitting him and worse after learning how badly I’d actually hurt him. After that I got myself in check and really internalized the importance of avoiding violence.
There was another period of a few years after the accident when I lost track of the lessons I had learned from my grandfather, when there was nothing but anger fueling me, but I did finally get myself back under control…too late to avoid leaving some damage in my wake, but I never claimed to be perfect.
I could have turned out much worse though, and almost certainly would have without my grandfather providing me with his influence and teaching me that violence is almost never the correct answer.

Speaking of sex, before I move on to something entirely unrelated, I have had a lot of it. That is not meant to be a boastful statement, in fact this is one of those things I am not entirely proud of, I’m simply trying to lay out the facts so that you can determine how I should be weighed and measured.
You may find it surprising, to look at me now, but I was apparently a handsome and appealing young man once upon a time…I know, that seems pretty alien to you, and I feel the same way, but all evidence seems to support that being a factual assessment. More surprising than my erstwhile sex appeal and good looks is the fact that I haven’t always been as socially awkward and terrified of human interaction as I am today. Sure, I have always had some deeply ingrained insecurities and a poor self-image, I have often thought of myself as having less of a personality and more of a collection of assorted neuroses…but I was better able to compensate, or overcompensate for those things when I was younger, sometimes even with a degree of charm and charisma.
These factors played a large part where my promiscuity is concerned, the good ones as well as the bad. The positive attributes, that I sometimes wonder how I might have ever exhibited, made me attractive to members of the opposite sex (albeit those with questionable taste, if you ask me), and the negative perception I had of myself led me to be inclined to use intimacy as a method by which I was able to obtain some sense of value and worth. Yes, I am aware that I have just transcended my physical form and become a troubled adolescent girl right before your eyes…those of you who know of my constant battle with body dysmorphia may argue that I reached that state of transformation quite a long time ago. Checkmate, motherfucker!
Having embraced a fairly hedonistic philosophy in my youth, I can’t pretend that I actually regret my sexual history. It would be disingenuous of me to force out some tears and beg you for understanding. I enjoyed sex, and I enjoyed providing pleasure to others who similarly enjoyed it. There is nothing to be ashamed of in two people, or sometimes three, finding pleasure and comfort in the joining of mind and body.
I try to wax poetic there, but I assure you that I mean it quite sincerely as well. Sex has always been best for me when I feel that the participants are losing themselves in the experience, when the rest of the world fades away like something ephemeral. Admittedly, that has been a rare enough thing…that is, sadly, not how it always works out. A lot of the time sex is a drunken, rutting experience punctuated by grunts and slurred expletives, the sort of thing that would make Ron Jeremy cringe.
My admitted enjoyment of sex isn’t the greatest contributor to the number of partners I’ve had…though it would be a better story if that were the case. My biggest problem has always been that I have a damnably difficult time saying, “No,” to anyone of the female persuasion…and that has included a handful of women I wasn’t even particularly attracted to.
When I say that I wasn’t attracted to them I don’t exclusively mean physically, though the women in question didn’t appeal to me that way either. I am able to find things that attract me to most women; whether we’re talking about physical characteristics, a certain degree of intellect or artistic ability, personality traits that thoroughly captivate me, or even some more nebulous quality like the sound of her voice or the way she carries herself. I need you to know that I am able to find attractive aspects in most women without much difficulty because that is important to understand when I tell you that I have slept with women I was not remotely attracted to, solely because they displayed an interest in me and refusing them was something I couldn’t bring myself to do…also, there is a distinct possibility that I might have been a sex addict.
Thankfully that unsavory element of my psychology has become marginalized over the years, though I always do wonder if it isn’t just lurking there in the darkest corners of my being, waiting for an opportunity to emerge again. I think that I am ok though. But I would say that, wouldn’t I, if I were an addict?
Most of the time there was a mutual attraction, and I am grateful to my good fortune that this is the case. I don’t have numbers that I can toss out here for you, and I might have a difficult time doing so even if I were inclined to do that. I think it is safe to say that we’re still talking about double digits rather than triple…and I am not going to examine that any further because I don’t want to, and because memory isn’t what it used to be which leads to a margin for error in my calculation that I would prefer to avoid acknowledging. The specific numbers don’t matter, it’s sufficient to say that I honestly feel that it has been too many; not that I regret the experiences, I just believe that there could have been far fewer and that I might be a less deplorable human being for it. To my credit, for whatever it might be worth when it comes to salvaging my dignity, the number of one night stands can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There has to be something that can be said for quality combined with quantity, as long as we disregard the times I have been unfaithful, because there have been quite a few over the last two decades since I started actually having sex. Those indiscretions are fewer than you might think, but more than there should have been…because even a single instance was more than was acceptable.
Back to the topic of quality though, that weighed pretty damn heavily towards my becoming intimate with so many women. It was one thing I was good at, though I’m sure that I have my detractors…everyone’s a fucking critic. Within actual relationships the sex was never really a problem. I may have been emotionally distant, difficult to communicate with, intensely critical at times, and sometimes actively hostile or aggressive when not wallowing in depression…but the sex was healthy. There were times when I felt that I communicated better with my respective partners that way than with words or any other potential medium. The problem being that they weren’t satisfied with that in lieu of more traditional forms of conversation. Damn it though, I was just trying to play to my strengths, working with what I had. If only we spoke the same languages I night not be perceived as such a terrible pain in the ass to have been involved with by so many women.
As much as I would like to edit some numbers from my history, I have to say that each individual encounter was a unique experience. There are those who claim that sex is sex and that a hole is a hole…those men are fucking idiots. Each woman felt different from any other, she had a different scent, taste, and texture…a different rhythm and motion. Each kiss carried nuances that another’s kiss did not. Each body felt worlds apart from those before or after. I may be a piece of shit in your eyes for being a whore with flimsy rationalizations to justify my behavior, but I assure you that I never accepted payment for intercourse. I can sincerely state that, though there were definitely partners that rank as being essentially incomparable to me, each partner was able to bring something wholly different and special to the situation…even those I would honestly not have slept with if I could rewrite the past.
Ultimately I recognize that I am not a good person by any stretch of the imagination…but I know that already, so who the fuck are you to judge me? I can rest comfortably, knowing that I never used anyone for sex or took advantage of anyone. My morality may be questionable but I have always had a strict code wherein I would not sleep with someone who was intoxicated unless we had already established a sexual relationship together. That may not be much, but it is a damn sight better than a lot of people can say.
It’s a stretch to call me a gentleman, but I like to think that I might fall somewhere closer to that end of the spectrum in some loose, poorly defined sense of things…as long as we disregard a lot of what I’ve said here. I strongly recommend that we consider doing precisely that.

When asked, my usual response is that I lost my virginity at the tender age of 15…this is not an entirely accurate statement, but the truth is a bit more complicated and would require more of a convoluted answer than is typically being requested with that inquiry.
What is the truth, you ask? Well, you’re probably going to be disappointed that you asked by the time I’m through…but I can oblige, though I remind you that you have been warned.
My first sexual experience was when I was around eight years old, maybe a little younger, prior to the divorce. Next door to our house in Piedmont there was a girl, a few years older than me, who I ended up spending a lot of time with…it could be said with some accuracy that she was my only friend at the time.
I don’t know anymore how it could have began, but at some point while we were playing together she decided that she wanted to see my penis. I didn’t know what I was doing, this was a different time, when children weren’t exposed to semi-pornographic material during prime time television and I hadn’t yet seen my first pornographic magazine…so you would be safe in assuming that I was entirely out of my depths.
Over the next couple of months she would regularly lead me into a shed that was essentially an expansion on a chicken coop, if I recall correctly. She would touch me and ask me to touch her in different places. One of my clearest memories of those experiences was of her having me kiss her vagina, though that word wasn’t in my vocabulary at the time. I remember her telling me to keep licking it and holding my head down there, I also remember that I wasn’t enjoying it because it smelled and tasted like pee…which was the word in my mind at the time.
These experiences were brought to an end when her grandmother walked in on me standing there with my pants around my ankles after the girl had left briefly. I told the woman that I was taking a pee, because I knew, even at that age, that the truth would get me in trouble. I was told to leave and that I was not welcome over there anymore. I remember the way the family next door would look at me after that and knowing that it wasn’t fair that I had gotten in trouble the way that I had while I was keeping my mouth shut to keep the neighbor girl from being dragged into it. To this day I don’t know if anyone ever told my parents or grandparents about me being caught over there like that, literally with my pants down.
There was no penetration, though probably only because I wasn’t physically capable of it, so I don’t know if this would have counted as me losing my virginity…but it certainly stands out as my first sexual experience with a girl, or anyone at all.
Even after becoming sexually active by my own volition, it took me some time before I was comfortable performing oral sex on a woman…those first experiences had kind of soured the whole idea for me. I feel almost silly about that now, because I have come to enjoy that particular intimate act a great deal.
This is where things are going to get a bit more interesting. During the remaining years of my childhood I really only had a couple of friends. I wasn’t well equipped for making friends and influencing people, as my mother would occasionally describe things. One of these few friends factors heavily into the story I am sharing with you now…it would be safe to say, I think, that he was my best friend during the following years.
A homophobe reading this might do themselves a service and skip forward a little ways, since I wouldn’t want to upset those tender sensibilities…or maybe they should just stick it out and discover some previously unknown fuel to burn in contempt for me. If you’re still here I can assume it is safe to go on…but that is sometimes an erroneous assumption to make. I have shared the following information with some people over the years, close friends and some family members…and it has been those I most expected to display open mindedness that were the ones who typically expressed disgust. People can be funny like that.
From around third grade through eighth I had one friend with whom I probably spent substantially more time than any other. I don’t know if our shared experiences were common, or if he and I were just in a unique place where we were comfortable experimenting and exploring with one another. I don’t rightly know why or how it happened, but he and I developed what is, to date, the longest sexual relationship of my life. Of course, it could be argued that it doesn’t really count…but you can decide that for yourself.
We spent the night with one another quite a bit and wandered around by ourselves through the mountains which were practically in our back yards…and during these times we spent together we occasionally began to explore our sexuality and one another’s bodies. It began innocently enough with touching one another, watching each other touch ourselves, and learning what felt good to us. Over time our exploration became more intimate, performing oral sex on one another…sometimes even making a sort of game of it, waking each other up by performing oral sex on each other in turns. I recall one occasion where I pretended to remain asleep just to be selfish and not reciprocate. Yes, I admit I can be a bit of a prick…seriously though, I was a kid, fuck off.
I will avoid sharing the sordid details with you here, at least most of them. We only took things beyond oral sex once, while wandering through the hills together…neither of us seemed to particularly enjoy anal sex too terribly much, and our mutual exploration was pretty well at an end by that time.
I’m one of those people who has trouble saying that I don’t like something unless I have experienced it for myself, something that has gotten me into trouble a few times. It was from experience that I determined not only that I wasn’t exactly inclined towards homosexuality but that I also wasn’t a big fan of anal sex. Aren’t you happy to know that detail about me?
So, there you go…that’s the long-form answer to the question of when I lost my virginity. Don’t you feel special now?
Honestly, either of those stories is probably better than the story of the girl I slept with at 15, the one I say that I lost my virginity to. That night itself was fantastic, seven times we had sex in that one night…and that wasn’t just my interpretation of it, she ended up promoting me sexually to another girl only about six months later. It was the events that followed shortly thereafter where my perception of things become a bit jaded.
A month or two later a couple of my friends felt that they had to tell me about her going down on a mutual friend of ours while they were all driving through the hills together. I stewed for a while, waiting for one of those friends to get off work, at which point we drove to the apartment my girlfriend shared with her older sister.
This is where shit gets well and truly fucked up, and I hope you enjoy it, because I did not. When we arrived at the apartment it was to discover my girlfriend drunk, in the bathtub with our mutual friend she was blowing a week or so before as well as another of our mutual friends…this one being the person I considered to be my closest friend at that time in my life.
I was livid, if that word even approaches describing what I felt at the time. They all slipped out of the back door after I had been briefly distracted and a chase did indeed ensue.
There was no violence though. I had spent my whole life, up to that point, learning to reign in my violent impulses to avoid becoming my father (something I will discuss at another time)…progress that, sadly, ended up hitting a major setback less than a year later when I became little more than an animated vessel for anger and self-destructive impulses. You know how that came about already though, so I thankfully don’t need to address it again.
Needless to say, that spelled the end of my relationship with the girl who took my virginity.

My first couple of hours in the hospital consisted of numerous x-rays and images being taken. I realized how badly injured I was when asked to stand for a series of x-rays and, upon reaching my feet to the ground, it felt as if my spine was collapsing like an accordion on raw nerves. I have never felt anything before or since that has compared to that pain, and I sincerely hope that remains true. I was assisted in laying back down and advised not to move until they had a chance to examine the images they’d already taken.
The doctor who came to see me expressed a sort of admiration when the first words from my mouth were essentially my begging him to tell me about the two girls who were brought in with me. He indicated that he was pleasantly surprised because almost anyone else, in his experience, under the circumstances would have started out by asking what was wrong with themselves before even thinking about anyone else. I didn’t deserve his respect or admiration; at that point I couldn’t have given a shit less about my own condition, even if I had been rapidly dying. I was there by the actions of my own stupid hands, but those two girls were there because of me as well.
It was then that I was informed that the one girl was being airlifted to Sioux City, IA due to the severity of her injuries (which consisted of a shattered ankle and pelvis along with numerous other fractures). It was devastating to hear that she had been hurt so badly, enough so that it took me a moment to collect myself and recognize that he hadn’t told me anything about the one person I was most concerned with. I had to ask him directly about her and his hesitation before answering was all it took to confirm my worst fear. I don’t recall what he was saying and was only able to focus a fraction of my attention on his words at the time, he was telling me that she hadn’t made it to the hospital…he was telling me about the extent of her injuries when I interrupted him, insisting that I needed to see her.
Her mother had been contacted and was on her way to the hospital to identify and claim her daughter’s body. The doctor informed me that I would have to wait until she arrived and approved of it before I would have permission to see the body myself.
I had never met her mother before this and I was terrified. I knew that there was no way she would agree to let me see her daughter, not after I had helped to kill her. The wait during the following couple of hours was horrible. I imagined numerous scenarios in which the woman tried to kill me after the trauma of losing her daughter hit home…and in none of those would I have lifted a finger to stop her.
I couldn’t have been more wrong, though. Her daughter had learned from a wonderful example in the woman I met that afternoon. I had no way of knowing how difficult it must have been for her to look at me and talk to me with compassion…but she didn’t shy away from it. She was kind and understanding and she didn’t decline my request to see her daughter.
I was wheeled into a room where there was one other occupant, still and silent. A nurse helped me onto my side so that I could face the girl who had been sleeping so peacefully only half a day before. My mind played cruel tricks on me. I kept seeing her chest rise and fall with breaths that she wasn’t taking and subtle movements of her eyelids that she wasn’t capable of making.
I had to stretch awkwardly and painfully in order to take her hand, muttering unintelligible pleas for her to just come back to me and squeeze my hand. I spent the whole time talking to her, and I have no idea what I was saying any longer. I remember trying to pray to any gods that might exist to simply let me take her place, crying that I would give anything to have me be the one who had died in her place…an exercise in futility.
The nurse was patiently waiting outside for me to tell her that I was ready to go, but that never happened…I probably never would have called out for her. I was finally removed from the room when they needed to prepare her body for being transferred across the state for funeral preparations.
I spent the next couple of days in that hospital, becoming acquainted with the god awful uncomfortable back brace that I would be wearing for months to follow. I was miserable and depressed; if those words even come close to describing how I was feeling…my interactions with others could probably best be described as being despondent.  Something about me made a positive impression on one of the nurses who was caring for me though, as she kept in regular contact with me for a few months after I was discharged.
The ride back home was a terrifying ordeal in its own right. The state had been hit by a winter storm and my mother and my favorite of her brothers had driven across the state to recover me from the hospital. I was more than a little bit uncomfortable being in any vehicle for a long time after the events of a few days before, and the steady snowfall did not help matters at all. It was even more uncomfortable being forced to face two people who expected better of me, two members of my family who believed in me and the “limitless potential” I had always been told I exhibited by family, teachers, and the like. I can’t imagine the disappointment they must have felt, and thanks to my own children turning out far better than I had, I doubt I ever will be able to.
I didn’t know whether I should attend the funeral. I felt that my presence there would be disruptive, that it would be an insult to her memory, that it was a sacrilege of sorts. I would likely have avoided the funeral altogether if I hadn’t been able to ask permission of her mother, to ask if my presence would even be welcome there.
It was at the funeral when I learned that she used to talk about me now and again to her mother and grandparents, that she had a fondness for me that I had been entirely oblivious to, that preceded that single night we had together while she drifted off to sleep peacefully as close to being in my arms as she ever was. It wasn’t until some time later that I learned from the other victim of the accident that they had only joined the driver and I in that vehicle because I was there and they had trusted me…which taught me that people were better off not trusting me.
Between the cocktail of pain medication and muscle relaxers and the emotional turmoil of the circumstances, most of the funeral is a blur to me. I do remember not wanting to leave the gravesite until well after most everyone else had gone. My mother was grateful (and I suppose I was too) for the two friends of mine who had also remained behind, because it was those two boys who finally got my attention away from the cold ground and helped me to my feet, encouraging me that it was time to go. Aside from the cemetery ground keepers, we were the last four people still there.
I honestly hadn’t noticed that we had been left alone. My mother’s fear may have been right, I might have intended to crawl down into that hole myself…I don’t adequately recall.
After the funeral, her mother kept in touch with me, and when it was time for her to return home in December, she asked me to join her and her parents on the trip. They were good people, better and kinder than I could ever hope to be, so I know that there wasn’t a malicious desire to hurt or torture me for my part in the tragic accident…but they wouldn’t have been more successful at applying torture if their motives had been cruel. I traveled with them for hours, welcomed and treated with more kindness that I did not deserve.
When we arrived I was shocked and appalled to discover that the bed I would be sleeping in for the next few days was a bed belonging to a ghost. I slept on sheets that she had slept upon countless times while staying with her mother. I lay awake at night staring at posters she had placed on the walls and listening to a stereo she had listened to while sleeping in that room as well. I went on walks with her mother through a town where they had walked together many times. I shared meals with a devastated family suffering from a terrible loss, and this was the one time in my life when I sincerely entertained the thought of suicide. It was, in fact, at that point when I stopped taking my pain medication…only partially because I felt that I deserved the pain, and was cheating somehow by deadening it.
It was only a short while later, after returning to school for the spring semester, that I swallowed those pills I had been saving. It didn’t work out as planned, I became disoriented and barely functional, and sick…but I kept breathing. Some friends, good friends I didn’t deserve to have escorted me from the school and kept watch over me to see if I needed to be taken to the hospital. I was high, but I was alive…and there have been times in my life when I wish that had turned out differently as well.
Well, there you go…that particular story is done. I’m sure there is more I could say, details I didn’t include…but you’ll have to live with it as is, because I am tired of sharing this bit of my life with you. There is a limit to my endurance, and we have reached it.

The morning of the worst day of my life started off beautifully, which only serves to show how terribly things can change. She was still sleeping against me when we woke up shortly after sunrise. I don’t think I even recalled falling asleep a few hours before, the last thing I remembered was the quiet sound of her breathing as I ran my fingers through the hair of her sleeping head. That would have been the perfect moment to have opened my mouth and told the truth. I have no doubt that she would have been angry with me for the deception, but I similarly have no doubt that she would have forgiven me…she was that kind of person, the sort of girl who couldn’t even conceive of malice directed at another person.

Of course I didn’t say a thing, no matter how much I wish that I could go back and change that fact…if I had, we wouldn’t be experiencing the conclusion of this chapter of my life together. If I had simply done the right thing, I would be a better man for it…but I did not, and we’ll have to decide together what that says of me as a man.

I was shortsighted and took the beginning of the day as a sign that life was going to turn out just fine. I learned real fucking quick that the beginning of a thing has little to no relevance to determining how that thing will end, and if that is the only lesson you learn from me it will make this whole ordeal worth something.

Our agenda that morning was so simple. We were near some of the other girl’s family on the Eastern side of the state, so we were going to stop there and let her visit them for a short while and then we would continue on our way to dropping the girls off as intended. Everything seemed to be going smoothly for us that morning and we filled up the tank again before leaving town (without paying for it, as you could probably guess) after that brief interlude with her family.

We were well on our way down the highway when a police officer came along, heading the opposite direction, most likely due to the fact that the cops had been called because of a handful of kids in a minivan driving off without paying for their fuel. I don’t adequately know how to describe the feeling I experienced as I saw the cruiser whip around in the rear view mirror with lights and siren going, but terror and stomach churning nervousness fall monstrously short as far as descriptions go. In a perfect world my friend would have recognized that we had reached the conclusion of our strange little journey and it was time to call it quits…instead, he accelerated.

Nothing about this situation could have played out well for us from that moment on. The girls were terrified and screaming from the second row seat, begging him to stop the vehicle…but there was no indication that he was hearing them at all. Until that time I had never really considered that a minivan could reach speeds exceeding 100MPH, and I genuinely hope never to experience that again.

To my credit, the little bit that I might deserve, I tried to get my friend to pull over at least long enough to let the girls out. I pleaded with him and swore that I would stay with him to see it through to whatever end we met if he would just stop and let them out.

There was no getting through to him though, and under the circumstances I can understand how he would have driven on, oblivious to the pleading from the rest of us in the vehicle. He was as scared as we were; more so, I suspect, because he knew that he was behind the wheel of a stolen minivan. During the few minutes that followed the officer beginning his pursuit, there was nothing else going through my friends mind but a desperate need to escape and a cascade of fight or flight hormones.

I was angry with him for quite some time after this, and I liked to pretend that I would have done something differently if I had been behind the wheel, but I don’t know that events would have played out any differently had that been the case. Under the same conditions I may have had the exact same panic response that led him to run rather than stop and accept the consequences for our actions. The simple truth is that I don’t know anything of the sort, and it was unfair of me to be angry with him for reacting out of fear.

The high-speed pursuit didn’t last long even though it felt like forever while it was happening. My friend pulled off from the highway onto another road as soon as the opportunity presented itself, presumably to try and lose the officer and extract us from the god-awful situation we were in. Sadly, diverting our attempted escape onto this alternate road directly led to the horrible outcome that was soon to arrive. No one would have anticipated the sudden transition from pavement to gravel, but the inevitable outcome of hitting the gravel surface at close to 120MPH was highly predictable.

We were out of control almost immediately and the minivan flipped into the air before rolling a few times and coming to a stop upside down a good distance from the road.

The specifics of the accident are difficult to recall, having happened so damn fast. I remember my seatbelt snapping and I have some flashes of recollection of being thrown around inside of the vehicle before being apparently ejected from the rear hatch of the minivan. I remember bouncing and rolling along the dry, hard-packed dirt ground for a while before things finally became still.

I don’t recall losing consciousness at all, but I sure as hell wasn’t fully coherent at first. It was the sound of the other girl crying that shook me out of the daze that I was in. I picked myself up from the ground and stumbled over to where she was laying on the ground. I could see that she was hurt, and badly, but I tried to tell her that everything would be ok and that there had to be an ambulance on the way. She asked me if I saw her friend, and it took me a little while to locate her.

I frantically searched the ground for her, my eyes not focusing quite right, but I did finally see her a short distance away. She wasn’t crying at all and didn’t appear to be moving, so I began to walk over to where she was laying as quickly as I could.

I was almost there when the officer yelled from the road for me to lay down and wait for the paramedics to arrive. My body wanted me to listen to him, but I had to get over to her so I just kept walking that direction until I couldn’t stay on my feet any longer. It had been pure adrenaline that kept me going that far and I had just burned through it, I guess. I don’t really remember hitting the ground, but I was laying there again, my head tilted awkwardly to the side to keep my eyes on the girl who had only a short while before been sleeping peacefully pressed up against me. I swear that she was breathing and looking back at me, but the mind plays tricks on us during times of great stress and I can’t trust the things I believed myself to have seen.

I would later find out that the van had landed on her during one of its rolls and that her heart had burst from the pressure…something to that effect. My lies and cowardice, selfishness and stupidity had literally broken her heart. That was the lesson I carried with me from that horrific day.

She didn’t make it through that morning, didn’t even survive to make it into the ambulance as far as I know. I didn’t know any of that until later. If she was still breathing while I lay there on the ground with my eyes locked on hers, I may have been the last thing she saw before she passed away…and she deserved something so much better than that, she deserved to see something beautiful and peaceful to carry with her into the end.

Her friend’s injuries were severe enough that she had to be flown from the nearby hospital to one where they could properly tackle the rebuilding process required to repair the damage from the accident. I saw her again just a few years ago and she still walked with a noticeable limp, and it made me wince to see it.

Beyond numerous contusions and psychological damage that I will carry with me the rest of my life, I fractured five vertebrae in my middle and lower spine. My insistence on walking around immediately after the accident certainly couldn’t have helped that condition.

The driver was uninjured and taken into custody. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to serve a year in a juvenile detention facility for the part he played in the accident. There was no attempt to convict me of anything, apparently determining that I was being punished enough thanks to the injuries I sustained in the wreck…but I would have gladly traded places with my friend, if it had been an option. Some part of me wanted to be punished, needed it…but I was not. The owners of the minivan did not press charges out of some sense of compassion for the children who had been involved in the theft and subsequent tragedy, but I remember halfway wishing that they had…just so that I could have been held accountable.

I was only a month shy of my 16th birthday, and I was a killer. I may not have been behind the wheel, but I was just as complicit in killing the first girl I loved as the boy who had been driving. Growing up Catholic taught me about sins of commission and sins of omission…and that is a lesson I took to heart. I was actively involved in the theft that placed the fateful Dodge Caravan in our careless, stupid hands…that was a sin of commission. I spent the couple of days during our little road trip neglecting to tell the truth, which would have saved us all a great deal of pain and suffering…that was a sin of omission. I may not believe in God, the dogma of the Catholic faith, or any of that silly spiritual nonsense…but the concept of sin is something that I can embrace, sin is the way that we wrong those around us, the choices we make that directly or indirectly hurt the people in our lives.

This is the point where I should tell you about the time spent in the hospital and the god awful, painful nightmare that was her funeral…but I can’t do it, not right now. I’ve spent too long thinking about this tonight, picking at wounds that I’ve never quite allowed to heal, and I need to step away for a bit. I’ll tell you the rest, just not right now.