Michael was one of ten mentor/mentee pairs in PEN American's PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program honored with the L'Engle Rahman Prize for Mentorship. You can read more about him here (scroll to the very bottom) and read his essay here (PDF alert).
There’s Poison in the Spring — A Memoir
There’s Poison in the Spring — A Memoir
This memoir is a work of nonfiction. Although creative language is used throughout, special attention has been given to details and facts. Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect identities.
Foreword
When I sat down to write this memoir it was to answer a question a friend had posed to me. She had asked, “Knowing what you know now, and being where you are at this stage in your life, what one thing in your past would you change if you could?” I have heard this question before, but never really gave it much thought. Usually, one little thing or another simply jumps up in my mind and I blurt it out. Each response varies. So, I decided to write through it. It was supposed to be a brief essay to help me understand what went wrong in my life, where it took the negative turn, and what could I have done differently. As I hit the 100,000-word mark, I realized there was no easy answer.
That first draft was raw. It was much too dark, I believe. As the memories came rushing back (and tears began to cascade) I realized there was much more pain buried in my heart than I was willing to share. I started toning it down and stamping back the emotion. I found myself tucking away little pieces that I didn’t want to share. In other words, I was compartmentalizing my life all over again. By not wanting to share it with my friend, I wasn’t willing to relive it for myself. What I needed was a bit of a disconnect. It turns out that this style of writing really works for me, and it allowed me to sort through the original question (and my life) therapeutically.
By the third draft, I believe I was getting closer to a goal of not writing as a victim or victimizer, but as a survivor of both. It was then that I realized that writing is a formidable weapon. By writing about my life, I was able to sort through the soupy mix of pain and confusion, bitterness and animosity, and that all too familiar foe that bars peace of mind, shame.
I realized also that regret is a skilled hunter. A wolf who stalks weak and maimed prey, hoping to devour the future. It begins by eating the delicate innards of hope, progresses to tearing the sinews that bind together peace, which then frees it up to savor the sweet morsels of its victims’ sanity. Regret, driven by guilt, often becomes shame. I see shame as that limp, lazy, distant stare in the rabbit’s eyes when it realizes that fighting back has become futile. The clench of the wolf’s jaw is just too much. The rabbit stops kicking. Then, it no longer flinches. It just hangs there, limp, refusing to survive. It gives up. It’s very easy to succumb to regret, which leads to shame, which, in turn, can lead to suicide. I was on the verge of giving up.
It wasn’t the first time that shame led me to the edge of the cliff. The wolf chased me before. I can recount many occasions where it stalked me and had gotten close enough for me to feel its hot, urgent breath; see its trembling jowls slick with slimy, anticipatory saliva. I have known that hollow and heartless stare, and I remember sensing the beast’s debased hunger. I recognized its obsession with swallowing whatever peace I could muster. Regret was wearing me down and shame was going to kill me.
I told my friend that it would be hard to go back and change any one thing in my past. After all, if I were to change one thing, it would cause a butterfly effect. I’d miss out on friendships I nurtured. Maybe my children would have never been born. So many of my cherished experiences would be altered. But I chewed on the question for a while, and I realized how selfish my response was. My friendships. My children. My experiences.
I realized there was one point in my life that could have made a difference. There was that one moment in time when I was a confused, five-year-old boy when I could have changed everything. Not only would it have made a difference in my own life, but it could have made a difference in so many others’ as well. If I had said something. If I had spoken out that very first time I had been molested. If I had gone to my father or told my grandmother. But, I didn’t. And as I’ve learned and experienced through these years, most children don’t speak out. And speaking out is the only thing that can begin the breakdown of the cycle of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. That is the key that unlocks the door so that victims can face shame head-on.
There’s Poison in the Spring is set in the year 1991. It opens in, of all places, a mental hospital. But it isn’t just about the mental hospital or the people I met there. It’s also about what led me to the mental hospital. It’s about severe childhood trauma, the abuse that caused it, and the dysfunctional family life that harbored it. It’s about the “little” things that eventually led to the “big” things that led me to delinquency as a teenager. The story moves from one hospital to another, and the time in between hospitalizations, and tells of people I met along the way. It’s strange writing about some of them today because I marvel at the impacts these individuals have had on my life. I cannot remember many of my high school teachers’ names, nor can I recall most of my classmates, but those people that I do remember, I remember in great detail. The events I write about in this volume are vivid and remarkably clear.
The title of the memoir is a double entendre. There’s Poison in the Spring is about the poison in a young boy’s life. Poison that was administered at a very young age and persisted until he was on the verge of giving up. It’s also about the spring of 1991 when he found himself in the grasp of a nervous breakdown, plagued by voices others couldn’t hear and demons others couldn’t see. It’s about feeling hopeless and alone even when others were actually trying to reach out to help him. It’s about drug and alcohol addiction, compulsive thievery, satanism, confusion concerning sexual identity, and the explorations that confusion led to. It’s about psychotropic medications and running from things feared, rather than facing them. Ultimately, I believe it’s about missed opportunities.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that others might benefit from my story.
Others might be able to learn from my mistakes, and maybe even stop before they make the big leaps to becoming victimizers. Writing my story has also helped me to live through my regrets, embrace remorse, seek peace, bury shame, and accept the fact that I am here now. In the now. There is positivity still inside of me that I can offer the world. The way that writing has helped me, I believe it can (and will) help others. I’m not one that really harbors some arbitrary belief in hope, since I see hope as a wish minus the genie, but I do think that there is a much broader hope for humanity if we strive to help one another rather than take advantage of each other. And because of that particular kind of hope, I encourage every victim of childhood abuse, whether sexual, physical, emotional or all three, to tell your story. Don’t for one second think it’s too late, or it won’t make a difference. It not only can but in many cases, it will. Not only can it help someone else, but it can help you.
Writing truly is a weapon. Use it and use it again. By doing so you can counteract the poisons that plague us all.
Chapter 1
Greenwell Springs Mental Hospital — March 1991
A mental hospital has a very unique odor. Of course, it reeks of pine oil, mint oil, and other disinfectants, but that’s not what I’m talking about. There is another quite peculiar aroma. Anyone who has been in a psychiatric ward has likely noticed it. Patients, employees, and visitors have all sensed it.
It is not particularly malodorous, nor does it cause the sinuses to protest. It’s just different. It evokes the need to seek security, and heightens awareness, while simultaneously engages curiosity. You might feel an impulse to look over your shoulder and scrutinize blind spots. It’s not dissimilar to that feeling you get when you smell ozone in the air just before lighting plunges from the heavens to singe the earth with a kiss of destruction. I believe it’s due to the high concentration of troubled minds. You become cognizant of despair that rests on the edge of palpability. Your mind wrestles between haze and clarity before settling on an even more confusing alternative: mental illness is tangible.
My senses were inundated on March 13, 1991, when I stepped through the entrance of Greenwell Springs Psychiatric Hospital. That odor teased my nostrils, sending my 16-year-old mind into a frenzy of very mixed emotions. The combination of sights and sounds (and that smell) overpowered me. It left me with the coppery taste of fear beneath my tongue and a deeply pervasive knowing that there are others like me, and they were there. The building was a place where hopelessness dwelt, and, for some reason, I desired to go deeper inside. I needed to be there. The hospital was a womb and a silken web, and I was drawn to the warmth of the spider’s belly.
Angry, depressed, confused, afraid, sad, and vengeful; my mind was a total wreck. I was angry at the world, believing it to be cruel and vicious and unwelcoming. My sadness and depression were rooted in hatred for myself and the feeling that I’d always be alone. I was confused about who or what I was. There were voices all around me, demons in every reflective surface, while my own reflection was streaked with tears and blood. I loathed mirrors, yet I was subdued by anguish if I didn’t check each one for monsters. There was always at least one.
The demons themselves were ghastly creatures that didn’t conform to any specific images depicted in the movies. I knew they were lurking behind trees, slinking around corners, and hiding in fog, but it was in mirrors where they took on their sinister, dark, and fluid forms. Some resembled people I knew. I could make out the characteristics of my stepmother, Bulinda, and several cousins. Some reminded me of classmates, while others looked rat-like or reptilian. I wanted them all to go away.
I walked into the lobby that day with a black garbage bag slung over my shoulder. It was stuffed with a few changes of clothes, some composition books and writing implements, as well as various hygiene items. I also had a Sony Walkman and half a dozen cassette tapes of all my favorite bands: Metallica, Skid Row, Motley Crüe, and Pink Floyd. To some, these groups were just rock stars and musicians, but to me, they were poetic gods who outwardly expressed all the things I kept inside. Theirs were the reincarnated voices of Poe and Browning, Frost and Cummings, Hemingway and Morrison. They gave voice to the mental tears cascading and catching in the basin of my heart, leaving the pain to rise in a mist of dissolved emotions.
I walked beside my mother, Ailene. Grant, her boyfriend, walked behind us. He was the man who, in less than a decade, would marry my younger sister, Raechel. The lobby was bright, and the hospital’s whiteness was strangely inviting beneath the fluorescent lights. Peach-colored plastic chairs were lined up in neat rows atop speckled vinyl composite floor tiles. Plastic shrubs and small trees in decorative terra-cotta pots adorned the room. There were two vending machines against a wall. One of them advertised various prepackaged snacks, and the other sold cold drinks. A Southcentral-Bell payphone hung on a wall next to a short hallway that led to a set of sturdy-looking double doors.
“You wanna coke or som’n?” my mom asked.
I nodded yes, but she was already fishing for change out of her purse.
She gave me a handful of quarters, nickels and dimes, and told me to get her one too. In the South, all sodas are generally referred to as “coke.” If someone asks you for a coke, you will likely respond with, “What kind?” I already knew that in my mom’s case she wanted an actual Coca-Cola. A coke for me meant either a Pepsi or a Dr. Pepper, in that order.
I walked over to the machine and deposited the 55 cents required for purchase. To the left of the machine, there hung a framed print of a tranquil prairie scene. The picture was covered in reflective glass, and I could see grotesque faces with snarling mouths and sinister eyes glaring at me. Voices echoed in my eardrums, saying, “You will die here!”
“Good!” I retorted, realizing I’d done so quite loudly. Several people looked up from their magazines, but only briefly. They returned attention to the periodicals they perused, so I resumed staring at the malefic grins and mocking laughter in the reflection. The demons’ guffawing faces were out of sync with the sounds in my head. Grimacing, I returned to my mom, who was standing at the receptionist’s desk, and popped the tab on the Coke before handing it to her. There wasn’t any Pepsi in the machine, so I sipped on a Dr. Pepper instead.
As I surveyed the waiting room, I noted that it didn’t appear much different from any other hospital waiting room I’d been to. Several sets of double doors hid hallways that led to different areas of the facility, undoubtedly concealing deep secrets of the world beyond. I looked through the windows of the doors located to my left. They guarded the exit. It had rained relentlessly during the drive up from Berwick — a little town tucked away in the coastal marshes and swamps of south Louisiana. But now, the sky beyond the doors was clear and bright. Sulky gray thunderheads gave way to azure patches of sky. Cumulus clouds to the west allowed crepuscular rays to beam brightly. Vehicles in the parking lot, the pavement itself, verdant oak and elm foliage, and lush St. Augustine grass, all glistened in the sun’s luminous glory. The world always looks fresh and new after a spring shower washes away the grime.
A spasm rippled through my torso and caused my shoulders to tremble as I imagined myself bursting through the doors and sprinting out into the awaiting springtime world beyond. Instead, I would wait for the doors on my right to open — offering me the secretive new world beyond. That secret place beckoned to me.
Behind the desk, a plump and pretty black lady hung up a telephone. “H’ah can I help ya,” she asked with a beautiful smile.
“I’m Ailene, and dis is mah son, Michael. Miss Paige, o’va at Fairview Hospital in Bayou Vista, she sent us.”
The lady turned to the appointment book on the desk to her left and placed her finger next to an entry. Her movements caused the sweet floral perfume she was wearing to waft through the air. She jotted down a quick note and reached for the phone. As she keyed in a three-number code, she said to us, “Y’all can have a seat ‘n someone’ll be wit’chall shawtly.”
My mom and I sat down on the peach-colored chairs, and Grant walked outside to smoke a cigarette. The sanitary lobby was enveloped in silence. Only the occasional turning of a magazine page broke the stillness. A gnawing chill made the room feel like a mortuary. When joined with the silence and scents, I started to feel an eeriness that I hadn’t noticed before.
“These people are gonna he’p ya, Son,” Mom whispered. “You just behave an’ do what dey tell ya.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A loud click-pop came from a set of double doors behind and to the left of me. The doors’ magnetic locks disengaged. I grew acutely aware of the little hairs rising on the nape of my neck. That was immediately followed by an almost painful tingle behind my jaw. Then came the sharp metallic taste of copper that burned my tongue, causing my jaw to clench. When the door swung open, I gazed upon a very attractive white lady casually walking toward us. The welcoming smile on her face filled me with a distinct impression of warmth and kindness. She wore a creamsicle skirt-suit accented by low, white pumps. Poufy, bird nest-styled bangs accented a cute, round face with deep, brown eyes set in a clear, tan complexion. Her hair was light brown with frosted tips that rested loosely upon her shoulders. Impossible as it seemed, her wide, bright smile broadened even more as she approached us. That not-so-unpleasant, unique odor also accompanied her. In fact, it grew thicker. I decided it must be heavily concentrated beyond the doors, and the spider sent its beguiling muse to tempt me with an erotic enchantment. As she addressed my mom I got lost in her words, until she turned to me and stuck out a petite hand.
“Hi Michael, I’m Crystal,” she said in a soft angelic voice, “and we’ve been expecting you.”
Her eyes were the embodiment of compassion. That soft, ultra-feminine hand took hold of mine. It was a touch that generated soothing waves of calmness. I needed to follow her... anywhere.
“Come with me, Michael.”
She was delicate and sincere. Enticed, I followed as she led me to her inner sanctum, not knowing if she was taking me to a sanctuary or a tomb. Nevertheless, I followed, because there might have been no difference between the two.
* * *
After the interview, I signed the voluntary admission forms that gave the hospital my consent to observation for 72 hours. If I would’ve refused to sign, I’d have simply gone home with my mom, which also meant going home with Grant. After signing, she escorted me to Southwing, where I was told to strip. A nurse handed me a white linen hospital gown that was covered with green polka dots. Then I was placed in an empty white room with padded walls. Barefoot and lacking my glasses, I sat in a corner of the room. My visit to the psych ward began on suicide watch.
It wasn’t long before I was yelling at the taunting, snickering voices that were belittling me. My screams were forced through torrents of tears that could no longer be held back. A fragile dam had burst, allowing an emotional flood to pour through, carrying with it the twisted memories of a boy with a shotgun and the acrid taste of cold, hard steel resting between his teeth. I had wrapped my lips around the barrel, the bitterness of spent gunpowder saturating my tongue, while fear and despair and loathing washed over and through me. The raging tempest of suicidal ideation had whirled into a certified attempt the previous night, and I remembered it all. The spiraling vortex of jumbled emotions sucked me in —
My big toe was inside the trigger guard, the shotgun’s barrel was in my mouth, and the diamond-tipped needle on the record player had just lifted to swing back to the beginning of the black, vinyl disc spinning at 33 RPMs on the turntable. I heard a click as the needle made contact. Crisp popping sounds began to radiate from the speakers, followed by an electric guitar’s distorted, darkness-delving strikes. The gloomy chord progression helped my courage to rise. Other instruments joined in to create deep and sinister sonance as the death-laden melody filled my bedroom. Malice in the music was then joined by the mesmerizing voice of Ozzy. “Gen’rals gathered in their masses,” he whined, “just like witch-es at black mass-es!”
The hypnotically arcane music enthralled me, and I felt a strange warmth blanketing me as I sat on the cold tiles of my bedroom floor. Two crescendos were about to meet. I knew that all I had to do was push the trigger. Push my toe downward against the trigger and it would all be over. No more voices, no more demons, no more memories of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Bulinda. Death would also free me of the sexual fantasies planted in my childhood by several older cousins. Everything would just go away If I’d press the god-damned trigger.
Seconds turned to minutes, as fear of death battled the hatred of living. Then, Ozzy howled, “Sa-tan laughing spreads his wings! Oh Lord yeah!”
Taunted, I started to wonder. Would there be only darkness — nothingness – when I cross over? Would death be the end? It was then that I realized how tightly I was biting the barrel. I opened my eyes while simultaneously unclenching my teeth. My lips were tingling, and my tongue was gritty with little chips of tooth enamel. I removed my toe from the trigger guard and pulled my face away from the deadly blue-steel phallus I’d willfully placed in my mouth. The taste of gunpowder, oil, and iron became more prominent. Gently, I maneuvered the weapon over to my left and leaned it into the corner. As I stood, I could feel how my back had adhered to the door I was sitting against. Sweat had saturated my shirt.
As my senses started to clear, I realized that I was trembling, somewhat violently. Numbness and tingling were alternating in my extremities, and I was dizzy. My nose was dripping snot, and my cheeks and eyes were raw from salt-heavy tears. Making my way to the bed, I crawled onto it. As the vertigo subsided, the alternating numbness and tingling receded as well. I allowed the damp nighttime air to wash over me as it wafted between the slight opening between window and sill. It was a false sense of peace, for the tumult wasn’t over. I sat there on the bed, willing my thoughts to become more lucid while reflecting on the melancholia I was experiencing. The dark gravity of my situation became clearer. My suicidal ideation had become something deeply macabre. Had I pushed the trigger, a .410 slug would have launched through my soft palate, into the gray matter, exiting through the top of my skull. It would have blown through the thin, wooden bedroom door, carrying gobs of brain, blood, and bone into the hallway. That mixture, and the unmistakable stench of spent gunpowder, is what my mom, Grant, and Raechel would have encountered when they walked in. But instead, I gave in to the fear of dying. The fear that pain may not end in death and that the torment I felt might continue, or be even worse, after death. It might follow me to the other side.
Then, I heard the front door being violently slung open, followed by slapping, booted footfalls urgently crossing the tiled floor of the government housing unit. Suddenly my bedroom door crashed open with a loud bang, the force sufficiently strong enough to lodge the doorknob into the drywall behind it. I immediately leaped up, but Grant’s powerful, calloused hands latched onto me, and he jerked me off my feet. He then slammed my slight, 140-pound frame against the wall, knocking the breath out of me and causing the windows to rattle. One of those hard hands found my throat and started to squeeze. I was attempting to gasp for air while continuing to stare into his eyes. He wanted to kill me, so I taunted him by keeping my eyes focused on him. In my own head, I yelled, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME, MOTHERFUCKER!”
Instinct kicked in in much the same way it did earlier when I’d sat with a shotgun barrel in my mouth. My mind fought against death, and I started to clutch at his grip. Nevertheless, I started to lose consciousness and the world turned grey just as I heard my mom yelling, “Stoppit! You gonna kill ‘im!”
When I regained consciousness, I was lying face down on my bed. I heard my mom, who was still screaming at Grant. I heard her say she was going to call the cops. Little starbursts were popping all around me and my ears were ringing loudly. I sat upright, and although Grant was no longer in the room, I still smelled his beer- and cigarette-tainted breath as I gulped at the crisp air coming in through the open window beside the bed. My mom’s boyfriend (and my sister’s future husband) had nearly succeeded in killing me. Had he accomplished it, an alternate history would’ve been written. He’d have gone to prison and my sister would have never birthed his child. I would not have had an opportunity to commit the crimes I’m guilty of — the crimes that led me to prison. Many future choices rested on the events of that March night, and it is bizarre now to imagine the smorgasbord of interchangeable outcomes.
When I was able to stand, it took a few moments to loosen myself from the grip of vertigo that set the room spinning. I walked to the door, the knob of which was still embedded in the wall, and peeked out. Down the hallway, to my right, I saw the sofa in the living room. My 13-year-old sister was nestled against Grant, who was sipping from a fresh beer. He looked to his left and stared at me menacingly, then curled his arm around Rae and pulled her closer. She snuggled deeper into his side. I heard my mother’s voice, which sounded like it was coming from outside. She was likely talking to Uncle George, the cop who was my Aunt Donna’s husband.
I stepped backward into my room, dislodged the embedded doorknob, then closed the door. I was consciously thankful that my baby sister, Karli, was spending the night at her friend Carissa’s house.
My record player was still on. The music stopped and the arm lifted once again. It swung back to the beginning and set back down. Crackles and pops, and then the dark melody returned. Nearly 30 minutes had elapsed since I’d first bit down on the barrel. The shotgun was still in the corner. When the door was flung open, it had been hidden from view, but it was once again visible.
“There’re three shells in it,” I whispered.
Instead of my own brain exploding, I envisioned the three of them meeting that fate. Fate that I could deal to them. I slid on my blue jean jacket and laced up my black jungle boots. I picked up the loaded weapon and rubbed my hand over the hard, smooth, heavy, wooden stock. I envisioned Karli’s blue eyes crying and I began to sob at the thought of causing her mental anguish and distress. So I returned the gun to the closet, and, instead of slaughtering my family on that cool night in March 1991, I climbed out of my window and walked to the graveyard. I lived just two blocks from the cemetery where a 300-year-old live oak stood. I spent the night curled up in its lofty branches that overhung Fourth Street. On that particular night, that old man was a friend and a comforter.
Chapter 2
The Winding Backroads to Dysfunction
My father, Ronald, and I lived with my grandmother in the three-bedroom house my grandfather built. We moved in with Maw-maw and Paw-paw in 1976 after my mom ran off with the man who’d knocked her up. I was 21 months old when my mom and dad’s divorce became final. He was awarded “care, custody, and control” and, according to all accounts, she didn’t even show up at the courthouse. Later in life, she said, “They wasn’t gonna let me have you, Michael.” Growing up, I felt like she didn’t even try, and I think there was a cancerous resentment inside of me because of that. My Maw-maw became my surrogate mother, often introducing me as her “baby.”
My Paw-paw died from a mysterious respiratory disease related to asbestos in 1978. I think my grandmother really relied on me after that, seeing me as the beginning of a brand-new meaning and purpose. She called me “Son” and treated me as if I were her lastborn. I was spoiled rotten.
I started kindergarten in September of 1980, and my cousin Mark came to stay with us briefly that same winter. I remember it was a very cold winter. I can recall standing in front of a gas space heater every morning just to get the blood flowing. It was also the winter that Mark started fucking me. I was too young to understand that what he did to me was wrong. It was a “game” he played with me. He was the first, but he wouldn’t be the last. I was five years old, and he was somewhere around 14. I didn’t understand that there was an evil lurking in some parts of my family, an evil that planted its seed in each new generation. It was like a dark spirit impregnating us with an undefinable ugliness wrapped in perversion. By the time Mark moved back home with his dad, my Uncle Chuck, he’d taught me to accept the fact that I was nothing more than a sex toy.
Once in the summer of 1981, my cousin Dale babysat me while Maw-maw went to a doctor’s appointment. He laid down with me for a nap. He was behind me, spooning, and he started to fondle me. He gasped, expressing surprise, when I reached behind me and took control of the situation, just like Mark had taught me. Afterward, I closed my eyes and went to sleep. My fascination with sex was set in stone, and from that moment on I could never seem to get my fill. I wanted to experience more of it at any cost.
I started playing “doctor” with my other cousins. Most of them were my age, but it didn’t really matter. Neither did it matter what gender they were. My obsession with all things sexual started when I was five years old, and it only got worse as I grew older. I didn’t see boundaries, didn’t know that such things existed. I did, however, embrace secrets. Secrets were important and should be kept. When Mark first touched me, before it escalated to oral copulation, and before he penetrated me anally, I should have gone to Maw-maw. I should have told her, but I didn’t tell. I kept Mark’s and Dale’s secrets, and then asked others to keep mine. Looking back, it was likely during that secrets phase when I was just a small boy that my identity began to take shape. The guiltless curiosity, “innocent” playfulness, and shared secrecy of it all had laid a foundation of deviancy that my entire existence would be built upon.
During the summer of 1981, the summer that Dale babysat me and learned I was already experienced in what he wanted, I also picked up some imaginary friends. My grandmother caught me talking to myself and asked about them. When I told her about Walter and Abigail, she explained to me that if I was the only one who could see them, then they were “imaginary.” I took pleasure in describing them to her. Walter’s hair was light brown and Abigail’s was dirty blonde. I described their clothes to her, what games they each liked to play, and how much I loved them. What I didn’t tell her were the secrets that I entrusted to them. I’d go off behind the shed and sit beneath the pecan trees in the backyard and wait for Dale to sneak through the woods to come to see me. Dale’s mom and dad were my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Raymond. They raised hogs. Dale, while tending the swine, would sneak through the woods to have sex with me in the shed. When we were done, I’d recount the experience to Abigail and her brother, Walter. They were my only confidantes.
While helping Maw-maw in the garden, Walter and Abigail were beside me. At naptime, they slept with me. When I played with my Tonka trucks, they were right there. However, while I was being used to satisfy someone’s sexual urges, they were not present. That’s probably when I needed them most.
* * *
My father was a severe alcoholic. I believe he turned to heavy drinking either during his marriage to my mom or shortly after the split. He was a regular at several local barrooms, but mostly at the 4-Way Bar just up the road from our house. His friends would drag him home after midnight and leave him, passed out, on the porch. He was a very large man (meaning fat) weighing close to 300 pounds at that time. It usually took several men to get him up the steps. I remember waking up during the commotion and hearing his body hit the floor, which made the old, raised, wood-framed house tremble. Barefooted, I’d groggily stumble down the hall. Dressed only in a nightshirt and underwear, I’d open the kitchen door to find Daddy laying on the floor, moaning and complaining about the world spinning. So I’d go and lay next to him, using his arm as a pillow. Slurring, he’d ask me to fish out his cigarettes and lighter from his left shirt pocket. I’d retrieve them and pull a Raleigh or Marlboro from the pack and place it between his lips, as his own arms and hands had been rendered useless from alcohol poisoning. Using both of my tiny hands, I’d hold the Zippo lighter up and roll the wheel until the sparks ignited into a flame. He’d expend what little energy he had left to lift his head so that the tip of the cigarette could meet the flame. They would touch and he’d pull on the cigarette, causing it to light, then his head would fall back onto the floor, and I’d extinguish the flame by closing the lighter.
Reaching across his big chest, I’d hold the cigarette for him so that it wouldn’t fall and burn his thick, black beard. At the end of each drag, I’d pull the cigarette away from his lips so that he could exhale the smelly smoke. I’d watch the bluish-gray cloud rise into the air and linger, held there by the oppressive south Louisiana humidity. Eventually, he would fall asleep, and I’d go throw the cigarette butt off the end of the porch, then crawl back into the crook of his arm and curl up against his side. I’d awaken the next morning in my own bed. My father or my Maw-maw must have returned me to it and tucked me in. Daddy always woke up before the sun came up and went to work. I don’t ever remember him not working. He was employed by the State of Louisiana for the Department of Transportation and Development. It was a job he acquired shortly before I turned two and held until his death 29 years later.
It was my father who gave me my first taste of beer. A decision he made in his own drunkenness. It was during a large family gathering that is often called la boucherie (pronounced lah-boosh-a-ree). A pig roast. As I mentioned earlier, my aunt and uncle raised hogs, and I remember the family taking part in the Cajun custom only once in my early childhood. Tradition was already waning. My memory tells me it was in 1981. It was surely in that general timeframe.
Basically, the men dug a rectangular hole in the ground and roasted a hog in it. I remember my dad shooting the pig between the eyes and then hanging it up to drain all the animal’s blood. The blood was saved in a five-gallon bucket so that later Maw-maw could make blood boudin (pronounced boo-dan) with it. The head would later be boiled with peppers and spices to create a Cajun delicacy called hog head cheese.
It was at the boucherie that I asked my dad for a sip of his beer. He’d been drinking for most of the day already and I don’t know if he’d have handed me that “pony” bottle of Miller had he been sober. But he did. And I filled my mouth with the sour, yellowish liquid. He asked if I liked it, and, with my cheeks puffed and filled with beer, I nodded yes. Just for the record, at that point in my life, beer was the worst thing I’d ever tasted. After taking another sip, he handed me what remained in the bottle, and I ran off to hide beneath an azalea bush to drink it in the shade. When I awoke, I found that I was in my own bed, but could not recall how I’d gotten there.
Shortly after that, my dad started sobering up. He met a woman named Karen and was dating her. She moved in with us for a while. I really liked Karen. She was nice to me. She’d sit beside me, and we’d color pictures together and make noodle art. After they broke up, Karen continued to live with us for a while. I moved to Daddy’s room, and she got my room. It was she who introduced my father to the woman who’d become my stepmother, Bulinda. And it was Bulinda who would inevitably devour my childhood. I say it was inevitable only because I was powerless to stop her. In 1982, I was a helpless, seven-year-old, sexually abused little boy, who bonded mostly with two imaginary friends named Walter and Abigail, and a male cat I named Samantha. I was already displaying subtle signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder. One example was evidenced when petting kittens. If I stroked one of them three times, then the rest of the litter had to receive the same attention. If one received more attention, I felt an overwhelming need to start over and add the extra stroke to the others. I had certain “step patterns” I needed to follow when going up or down stairs. And I felt abandoned when my cousin stopped meeting me in the shade of the pecan trees. I was already fragile when Bulinda showed up, but I’ve no doubt that she relished in my further demise.
Chapter 3
Food for the Boa Constrictor
Bulinda worked with Karen on the Mississippi River. They were longshoremen, so these were rugged women—strong and dominant. Bulinda, however, lacked the maternal characteristics that Karen possessed. Bulinda had no living children, having had two abortions and what she called two “stillborns.” She did help to raise her niece and nephew, but by their own accounts, she was a cruel, vengeful, and overbearing custodian. Also, her training as military police in the Air Force tended to intensify her need to be in control. I was deathly afraid of her.
Shortly after Karen introduced them, my dad and Bulinda started dating. Karen eventually moved out and Bulinda moved in during the spring of 1982. Aside from the obvious reasons, this was a very confusing and troubling time for me. It was around the same time I started to feel a deep longing for my mom. Not just a mother figure, but my “real” mother, Ailene. The memories I’ve retained of my mom up until that time in my history are few and scattered, but what I do remember is a strong desire to be with her. Bulinda seized upon that desire and started slicing into my already thin relationship with my mother. It started with negative statements and name calling, but it didn’t stop there. She would call my mom “worthless” and “slut,” but then she stopped letting me spend summers with her. Then the phone calls were stopped. Finally, birthday cards and letters stopped coming. At least that’s what I was told. Years later I found quite a few letters while digging through boxes in Bulinda’s bedroom. Letters from my mom that I had never received.
Daddy married Bulinda in the summer of 1983 and they purchased an old mobile home to live in. They set it at the far end of Maw-maw’s property. For a large portion of the next seven years, I would be confined to a bedroom in that trailer. The first year wasn’t so bad, but it progressively got much worse. I entered third grade at the end of August 1983, and upon arrival of my first report card, Bulinda introduced me to what she had termed “restriction.” Not because of bad grades, but bad conduct marks. I was an A-B student in all my subjects, but I was displaying negative behavioral traits. I didn’t want to stay in my seat, leaving it without permission. I was also prone to talk in class and, with my mind wandering aimlessly, my teachers said I struggled with paying attention. Sometime during the previous year, I’d been placed on a “conduct folder plan,” which meant I carried a manila folder that I had to take home every day to be signed. My teachers would record my conduct for the day as well as homework assignments. That folder followed me from second grade to third, and then to fourth grade. I carried it with fear and trepidation. Many of the painful beatings, as well as the endless days spent restricted to my bedroom, were the result of notes and ratings placed in that folder by well-meaning, yet seemingly naïve, teachers. Like a prisoner forced to carry his own corporal punishment order, and deliver it daily to the warden for execution, I carried my conduct folder. Eidetic images of a little boy stepping off the school bus, then slowly walking up the driveway to the front door, turning the knob, walking in, and then handing that folder over to Bulinda before “assuming the position” to receive a painful paddling, then being ordered to my room, still play across a giant screen behind my eyelids. I’m haunted by those memories.
Restriction felt more like constriction. I was being suffocated by loneliness and crushed by despair. And throughout it all, especially in those early days, I didn’t know how to ask for help. I just accepted the treatment I received as normal and deserved, assuming that all children were subject to whippings with cypress paddles painted red to represent fire and long-term bedroom restrictions. No less than six months out of every year, and sometimes as many as eight or nine months, were spent confined to my room. When I was allowed to go out and play, I didn’t treat my playmates well. I was often barred by their parents from playing with them, mostly because of my lack of control. The behavioral problems I exhibited in school were carried over to after school which ended up causing more separation. With no other way to describe it, it was an endless cycle of self-destruction that followed me my entire life.
Chapter 4
Socio-Sexual Masochist
When I entered Greenwell Springs Mental Hospital in the spring of 1991, I did so with a misplaced belief that I could somehow be “fixed.” As if there were loose nuts and bolts, worn-out belts and hoses, and a leaky carburetor in my mind that could all be tightened and replaced so that I’d function like a “normal” person. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was continuing to confuse sex and sexuality with comfort and acceptance.
I spent my first night on suicide watch. Early the next morning an orderly escorted me down Southwing, past the nurses’ station, past the girls’ rooms, and through the double doors that separated us. He and a nurse delivered me to another orderly and informed him that I was on “suicide precaution.” That was a status designated as a step down from “suicide watch,” which was reserved for those very likely to attempt suicide. I’d been on suicide watch when I was in the padded room wrestling with demons.
After the nurse left, the orderly showed me to my room, and that’s when I met Brady. We would be sharing a room along with another boy named Justin. Justin had a great sense of humor and did a great impression of that guy from The Goonies. The one that yelled, “Hey you guys!” He even resembled the big fella. Brady, on the other hand, was beautiful. If the recipe called for two parts grunge, one part skater, and a handful of poet blended vigorously with a generous helping of artist… then you’d be cooking up a Brady.
Soft, mostly straight, dark brown hair hung about eight inches below his shoulders. His deep-set, brown eyes peered mysteriously through parted bangs that hung to his chin. Light brown peach fuzz coated the thin space between his small, somewhat dainty nose and soft, sensuous lips. A few wild brown hairs sprouted from a dimpled chin. His complexion was medium to olive and mostly clear of acne. Several tiny beauty marks speckled his face and neck. He dressed in black stonewashed jeans that were shredded at the cuffs due to him walking on them. He wore a pair of unlaced black and blue Adidas high-tops that I could tell he’d skated in. He sported a black Slayer T-shirt beneath a blue, black, and gray flannel that he always wore open, never buttoned. He was also waifish and only stood 5’6” in height.
Brady’s mom brought him to the hospital to be treated for depression and suicidal ideation. Among other issues, he had a crush on his best friend, Andy, and like most gay or curious kids back then (me included), he was “in the closet.” He described his friend, Andy, as being well-built and muscular, painting him as an Adonis-like man-child. Brady was exactly the opposite of his best friend. He was having a difficult time dealing with his feelings regarding his attraction to Andy and was horrified at the thought of losing him. So rather than risk rejection and abandonment, he chose to tell his mom that he wanted to kill himself. She promptly brought him in for a psychiatric evaluation.
I was finally attempting to face my own confusion concerning sexuality. Although our circumstances were different, I was no less addled. In the early 90s, gay men and women, as well as bisexuals and transgendered individuals, weren’t as stigmatized as in previous generations, but it was still an awkward time. For myself, I was a deeply emotional boy who desperately wanted to bond with girls. I loved being around them. I wanted to cuddle and hug and play with their hair. I could talk for hours on the phone, and I just wanted to cut loose and act silly. There was a certain arousal when I was around them, but I was even more aroused by the male anatomy. Sexually, I was attracted to boys. I didn’t know how to combine the two different sides of me. How could I love and be loved and just be myself? What would it take to make me whole? I was also prone to fall in love after just a single kiss, susceptible to misreading another person’s attention as sexual innuendo, and I was subordinate to my abandonment issues. I considered myself a “slave for affection.” On the other side of the equation, I fantasized about living alone as a hermit on the side of a mountain. How was I to make the sides agree?
Looking back, it’s strange to see all these divergent personalities come to life as I write this memoir. As far as I know, I never had issues like being “Tom” in one instance and “Sue” a few moments later. Nothing that dramatic. It was more like a drastic mood shift than a personality switch. One moment I was a “class clown,” then a sullen and depressed introvert, which then gave way to a happy hermit. My sexual personality was the same way. I hungered for solitude and loneliness, then cried out in defiance and desperation when consumed by lonesomeness. I grew accustomed to feeling shamed and embarrassed. I looked forward to it. There were no limits to my inextricable dualities. To add to the torment, I was suffering from audio/visual hallucinations. The demons, Walter and Abigail, other voices telling me to kill myself, and others, made my mental state even more confusing.
Brady and I were kindred spirits on the Plains of Confusion. I had my demons with which to contend, and Brady had his. Everyone that I’d meet at Greenwell Springs was trying to claw back a little sanity from the confusion their own demons had stolen. Some would win, while others would not; nevertheless, all of us would bear the scars for a lifetime.
During our first three or four nights in the room together, Brady and I whispered well into the early hours of the morning. The orderlies kept poking their heads in to tell us to go sleep, but we ignored them. We were bonding. That was a time when we still believed in magic. Telepathy was something we could practice together, so we tried to read each other’s thoughts. We swore that we had succeeded. Brady and I gushed about music and the lyrics we wanted etched as epitaphs on our granite. We surmised that everything that felt good in life was considered bad. Together we decided humanism and existentialism were ideologies to embrace. It was during those first few nights that I would decide that there were no excuses in this life, only consequences.
Chapter 5
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Take Me to the Island of the Blue Dolphins
By the time I entered fifth grade, school had become an escape. It was the one place I could go to avoid Bulinda. Even then, it was neither a safe haven nor a curse, but rather a bit of both. I was drowning in physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, being strangled by depression, and shackled by paranoia. Mark had long since disappeared, bouncing around from state to state, getting his throat sliced in a fight, but surviving. Dale had lost interest in me and ended up in prison for committing a sex crime against a young teen girl. Another teenaged cousin, Leonard, had taken to coercing me and my also-10-year-old cousin, Destiny, into playing “truth or dare” with him. That was also my first experience with child pornography. (The term “child pornography” is not a proper description of what is actually happening. A better name for it might be “images portraying child sexual abuse.”) Leonard took photographs of us in various stages of sexual interaction. I remember feeling jealous because once he was aroused, he would send me away from the woods so he could spend time alone with her.
About halfway through fifth grade, I started to experience a new stage of depression. I couldn’t get through a day without crying in class. Several girls had expressed an interest in me, and I should have been happy about that. I had friends that were into the same things as I: basketball, drawing, and cars. Yet the closer people got to me, the more I withdrew, wallowing in self-pity. Every day. Then, I’d return home and regard Munchkin, our new family dog, with weighted suspicion. I believed the Doberman pinscher was secretly recording me with cameras and microphones that Bulinda had implanted in the dog’s eyes and ears.
At night, sleep was a game that I couldn’t win. I’d lie awake until one, two, even three o’clock in the morning, unable to fall asleep, so I’d daydream. I created worlds where I felt loved and wanted. I fantasized about some of the girls in my class as well as some boys. Sometimes, I wouldn’t sleep at all, then rise like a zombie when my old-fashioned brass alarm clock hammered away at 5:30.
Fifth grade drifted into sixth and nothing improved. If anything, my depression grew worse. I withdrew even more. When restricted to my room, all I was allowed to do to pass the time was do homework, read, or contemplate how to be a better boy. Needless to say, I did a LOT of reading and spent very little time contemplating how to be a better boy. I did daydream about being free — truly free. I created whole scenarios of a life living off the land, traipsing through the swamp, like the Cajuns of old. My imagination was the only place where I could be wild and free. And it was through books that I achieved the most liberating of all freedoms. I read the Little House series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and became a settler struggling to exist on the plains. Jeremiah Johnson and Grizzly Adams brought me to the wild frontier and helped me navigate through the seemingly endless wilderness. Huck and Tom and Jim taught me that explorers are nothing more than runaways dashing into the unknown. The Robinsons gave me a tour of an island paradise, and a native girl on The Island of the Blue Dolphins gave me hope when I felt like it was easier to just give up. My Side of the Mountain made me crave freedom even more, so much so that I wanted to run away and find a hollowed-out tree to live in.
I was given a set of World Book Encyclopedias, courtesy of my Aunt Carol and Uncle Joe for Christmas. Aunt Carol was Bulinda’s sister. The set also came with World Book Yearbooks that covered every year from 1963 to 1982. I got those in December of 1985 and had already read every volume, cover to cover, by the following Christmas. Not just the Yearbooks, but the encyclopedias themselves, A to Z. By the end of sixth grade, June 2, 1987, I’d also taught myself how to tie dozens of knots, learned about puberty and anatomy, and decided on what I wanted to be when I grew up — an archaeologist — all because of days, weeks, and months engrossed in World Book Encyclopedias.
While the clock governing my young life was ticking ever-so-slowly by, I consumed all the classics. I burned through Moby Dick, Treasure Island, Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights, The Catcher in the Rye, and the most boring book ever written — The Great Gatsby. After polishing off The Count of Monte Christo (my favorite novel of all time) I turned to modern authors. I started with Darkfall, by Dean Koontz, then The Shining by Stephen King. My fantasy and thriller appetite were whetted, so I dove into Anne Rice’s romantically morbid passages. I did my sixth- and seventh-grade book reports on normal titles like The Red Badge of Courage and Where the Red Fern Grows. But, at night while unable to sleep, I read lengthy books filled with horror, mythological creatures, and sex. That world was so much easier to live in.
* * *
During the break between sixth and seventh grade, in the summer of 1987, I was restricted to my bedroom for two months. If I was lucky, I’d get to spend the last three weeks of vacation not in my room. I believe it was due to bad conduct marks on my report card again. I was standing in front of my bookshelf, about to remove an encyclopedia, when I distinctly heard a delicate, small, sweetly Southern voice say, “Michael.”
My skin tingled as goosebumps covered my flesh. I turned in every direction, trying to discern where the voice came from, and who it belonged to. It was a young girl’s voice, so it couldn’t have been my dad. He was still at work anyway. I was certain it wasn’t Bulinda either, because it was too early in the afternoon. It was my job to knock on her door at 3:30 to wake her up for work. She had taken a new job as a correctional officer at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, the state prison for men located in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, where she covered the night shift. Besides, the sound I heard was soft and innocent, unlike Bulinda’s forceful and antagonizing voice.
I walked over to the door and peeked out into the hallway. To the left, I saw my step-grandmother’s bedroom door. It was closed. Grandma Howard, Bulinda’s mother, was a sweet old lady who later apologized to me because of her daughter’s “mean streak.” When I stepped into the hall and looked left into the little nook where the bathroom door was, I saw that it was ajar. So the bathroom was vacant. Turning my attention to the right, I saw the entrance to the short hall. It was covered by an old quilt made by my paternal grandmother. It was used as a drape to segregate the mobile home into two sections. The front half consisted of a living room and kitchen. A medium-sized window AC unit was used to keep the front of the trailer cool. Grandma Howard’s bedroom had its own separate unit. It was tiny, but efficient at cooling the small room — as long as her door was kept closed. The largest AC unit in the trailer was in the master bedroom. Bulinda couldn’t live without it. I was allowed a small oscillating fan in my bedroom, which, in south Louisiana, was better than nothing at all, yet inadequate.
I crept to the quilt-curtain and gently eased it aside, being extra cautious in case Bulinda was on the other side. A gust of chilled, conditioned air immediately washed over my face. It felt very nice compared to my stuffy room. Even with the window open, a small fan offers little relief from the sweltering heat of a Louisiana summer.
Grandma Howard was sitting in her glider rocker. Her mint green housecoat accented the chair’s darker blue cushions. She was sound asleep and missing the soap operas that flickered across the television screen. I could barely hear the sound coming from the set, so I was able to determine the TV was not the source of the little girl’s voice. I wondered if Grandma Howard might have been talking in her sleep.
Still puzzled, I shifted my gaze over to the corner where Munchkin’s doggy bed was located. She had looked up at me as soon as I parted the Shroud of the Holy Conditioned Air God, but quickly lowered her head and feigned sleep. Munchkin was three years old, and although a rambunctious puppy at heart, she was very intelligent. She knew the difference between the cool Canadian comfort of the north end of the trailer when compared to the mighty Amazonian heat that tormented me in my cell to the south. I tapped my leg lightly, but she sighed and looked away. Tapping my leg again, while whispering a verbal command, garnered her attention and held it. “Munchkin, come here.”
With another sigh, deep this time, she came to life. First, she lifted herself onto her front legs, extending her snout into the air in an exaggerated stretch. Her eyes were looking in my direction, though not directly at me. I think she was hoping I’d forget about her and go about my business, but I kept staring at her. Eventually, she made it onto all fours, but then started dipping into the downward dog yoga position. Tick-tock-tick-tock, the seconds passed. Once in position, with her back legs jutting upward and front legs pressed to the floor, she pushed her long, slender nose and head forward. Still side-eyeing me, she opened her mouth and yawned wide. A short, high-pitched squeal escaped, and then her jaws snapped shut. The Doberman took a step toward me. A second one followed. Convinced that I wasn’t going away, she relented and trotted, joyfully now, past me. She brushed against my legs and continued down the hall, her silver choker jingling as she went. She turned left, into my room, and I heard a loud kerplunk when she hopped onto my bed. She let out another deep sigh. I sighed too as I closed the curtain. Rather than a sigh, it was more like the stifling heat was sucking the air out of me. I walked back to my room where Munchkin was still squirming around, trying to find the best spot for the breezy fan to soothe her. Finally, with yet another long sigh, she gave up and stopped moving, then glared at me through pitifully loving eyes as if to say, “Boy, you are so lucky I love you!”
When I joined her on the bed, she placed her snout on my thigh. As I stroked it, she closed her eyes, and I started to rationalize about what could have happened. When I’d first peeked into the living room, Munchkin was still lying on her bed. I was certain that she was unaware of the voice that called my name. The volume on the television was much too low for me to hear from inside my bedroom, and more than anything, the voice sounded as if it was right next to me. Almost like it was just inside of my head, next to my eardrum.
“Hey!” The voice called me again.
I jumped, which caused the dog to shift, but she didn’t even open her eyes. It was the same sweet voice as before. Sweet or not, had Munchkin heard it, she’d have become very alert. She appeared to be oblivious to the sound.
“Hello?” I questioned aloud.
That garnered Munchkin’s attention and she looked up at me. She regarded me with a peculiar stare of confusion. Soon, she relaxed and went back to sleep, ignoring my conversation. I talked while rubbing my dog’s head, then her side. Eventually, she rolled over so I could scratch her belly. Fleas scattered as I gently stroked her tummy. She may have thought I was talking to her, but I was actually getting reacquainted with an old friend. The difference was that Abigail was able to respond, and she had a lot to say. Later that summer she reintroduced me to Walter — and I could hear him too.
Chapter 6
The Consequences of Kindness
To label me “socially awkward” is to barely touch the surface of who I was in seventh grade. Plagued by major depression, hallucinations, low self-esteem, and severe insomnia, I cried a lot in class. I was exhibiting manic mood swings as well. That caused most of my classmates to avoid me. I didn’t have anyone I truly considered a friend, much less a “good” friend. I had lots of acquaintances, but no one to really confide in. I did try to associate with others, but it usually ended badly.
It was during seventh grade when some of my classmates tried to offer me help. Following a school assembly featuring guest speakers who talked about drug abuse, depression, and teenage suicide, I sat alone on the edge of the sidewalk and contemplated what the guests had talked about. They offered advice on how to spot those kids in our peer groups who might be struggling with drug addiction and depression. Also, those who might be suffering other types of abuse and could possibly be contemplating suicide. Excluding drugs, the speakers were describing my life. I remember how uncomfortable I felt as several students turned to look at me after a guest speaker offered a new revelation.
When Kari and Julie approached me on the sidewalk, I was recording my thoughts in a composition book that had become my first writer’s journal. It contained short bursts of random thoughts as well as poetry I’d woven together as a type of code. I wrote to express my thoughts, hidden emotions, fantasies, and inner turmoil without having to say it all out loud. The girls had taken the messages of the guest speakers to heart and approached the most obvious nervous wreck they could find. They sat down next to me; Kari beside me and Julie next to her. Kari glanced at the notebook I’d just snapped closed and decided against small talk. She cut right to the chase.
“Are you doin’ drugs, Michael?” she inquired.
I could sense genuine compassion in her voice. It was obvious that she was truly concerned about me.
Without looking up, I responded, “No.”
“Look, me and Julie can both see some’n’s wrong. Everyone sees it, Michael.” She paused briefly, then questioned, “Why are you so sad?”
“I’m not,” I lied. “I just don’t have any friends.”
“Well, now ya do,” she whispered as she placed her hand on my arm.
That’s when Julie chimed in with, “We’re here for ya, Mike. Ya know, like, if you needta talk ‘er som’thin’.”
I sat in silence. Those few seconds felt like an eternity, but I finally raised my head and looked at the girls. Tears, heavy as rocks, welled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. Simultaneously, I was overwhelmed with relief and shame when Kari hugged me. Julie stood and circled around to sit beside me. She, too, placed an arm around my shoulders.
Kari gently pressed, “Talk to us, Mike.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I didn’t know where to begin.
“What’s goin’ on?” Kari asked. “I know I’ve only known you for a coupla years, but Julie’s known you since kindergarten. Whateva it is, you can tell us.”
I broke into deep, unrelenting sobs, and told the girls almost everything. Kari retrieved a tiny package of tissues from her purse, and, one after another, she handed them to me. I used them to wipe my eyes and blow my nose as the pain inside of me poured freely. Occasionally, one of them dabbed at the tears on my cheeks. I confessed I was depressed, and I didn’t sleep more than an hour or two each night. I told them about Bulinda physically abusing me. I admitted to them that I thought about killing myself daily. They kept whispering, consoling me, urging me to “just let it go,” and I did. I let go of the pain through words until the bell rang to signal the end of recess. The girls reassured me that they’d be there for me whenever I needed to talk. After I hugged them both, we parted and went our separate ways, with me heading to the boys’ room to compose myself.
In the restroom, I rinsed my face. I was drying off when Harvey and his friends entered. They instantly began to taunt me, making sounds like a crying baby, and calling me a “little girl.” I just lowered my head and tried to walk past them, but they blocked me from leaving. Pushing me back and forth between them, they tormented and spat on me. I started to fight back but that only gave them more resolve. I fell to the urine-scented bathroom floor. The nastiness clung to my clothes and exposed skin, and the ammonia stench clung angrily to the inside of my nostrils. The bullies pushed me down repeatedly and circled me like vicious, mocking hyenas.
I finally managed to roll beneath a stall wall, then quickly engaged the little slide lock, certain they wouldn’t get down on the floor to follow. Seconds later, the tardy bell sounded, and the boys hurried from the boys’ room. I stood and dusted myself off, dislodging little bits of tissue that fell to the floor. My shirt and pants were splotched with wet spots — unmistakably pee — so I just sat on the toilet and wept. I’d been in the stall for five or 10 minutes when I heard footsteps making sticky sounds across the bathroom tile. I held my breath and froze as fear grabbed at me. My eyes were squeezed tight as I thought about Harvey and his friends returning to torture me some more.
Then I heard, “Are you in here, Mike?”
It was Doug. He wasn’t an enemy. He was one of the original students in my gifted and talented class. For a few years, he and I were the only two in our class. Doug was a good guy, and he was probably the smartest person I knew.
“Yeah,” I responded.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, just having some stomach issues.”
“Oh, okay. Well, Mrs. Landry sent me to look for you.” He sounded concerned.
“Can you just tell her I’ll be out soon?”
“Yeah, sure. Do you, like, need anything?”
“No, I’m good, Doug. But thank you.”
“Okay.”
And with that, he was gone. I managed to clean myself off well. Then I realized how little I could see. After some searching, I located my eyeglasses in the trash can. They must have fallen off during the scuffle. I’m sure one of the boys had thrown them away. One of the arms had been snapped off and the lenses were scratched badly. I found the broken arm at the bottom of the trash can.
“Well, at least they didn’t break them in the middle,” I whispered with a sigh.
Nevertheless, that was a devastating blow, being that I’m severely myopic and I have bad astigmatism. My father could only afford to purchase new eyeglasses for me every couple of years. The broken arm would have to be repaired as best as he could. He would use epoxy, wire, plastic tubing, even tape to mend the frames. As for the scratches, I’d just have to adapt. Learn not to notice them.
I balanced the broken spectacles on my nose and looked in the mirror, then folded them and put them in my pocket. I walked to class hoping that I didn’t smell like pee anymore. I wasn’t sure if I did or not. I may have become nose-blind to the odor. When I reached Mrs. Landry’s class, I walked in and made my way to my seat. The questions I had about whether I smelled like pee were quickly answered. Several students looked up and scrunched their noses as I passed them. I’d just taken my seat when the intercom came to life.
“Mrs. Landry?” The secretary called.
“Ye-es?” the science teacher responded.
“Can you please send Michael Richardson to the guidance office?”
“Will do.”
I was already rising to leave when Mrs. Landry turned to me and nodded. My classmates started whispering and a few must have heard something humorous. Giggles and chuckles seemed to follow right behind me.
* * *
I knew the guidance counselor’s office well, as this wasn’t my first trip to see Mrs. Miller. It was, however, the trip that would usher in numerous changes and a whole new set of circumstances in my life. When I entered the little office, Miss Lena greeted me and asked me to have a seat. She informed me that Mrs. Miller would be right with me. I sat down and looked through the slightly parted blinds in Mrs. Miller’s little connected office. She was talking to another student, a new girl named Dana, so I shifted in the cushioned chair to get comfortable.
I wondered why she had summoned me. Surely Kari and Julie hadn’t broken my trust and told her about our talk? It’s not that I didn’t trust Mrs. Miller. I’d known her since second grade when she and my teacher, Mrs. Halphren, recommended to my father that I be tested for the gifted and talented program. My father did make an appointment and had me tested. Not only was an IQ test performed, but a psychiatric battery as well. Mrs. Miller had already suspected I was in some type of mental distress. In second grade I was exhibiting hallmark characteristics of depression and anxiety as well as symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. My first examination by mental health providers took place in early 1983, shortly after my eighth birthday. My IQ wasn’t in some super high range, only 121, but it was enough to get me into the program. That made my father happy, but not Bulinda. She believed the program was some sort of governmental brainwashing experiment like MK-Ultra. She was even more perturbed at the doctor’s diagnoses. I was diagnosed with ADHD, manic depression, and a behavioral disorder characterized by antisocial disorder. Among other things they prescribed Ritalin and recommended that I start receiving therapy. The prescription was never filled, and I didn’t meet with a therapist for another four or five years. Bulinda kept me out of the program until fifth grade and explicitly forbade me from seeing Mrs. Miller, who’d tried to no avail, to explain the benefits of not only the program but therapy as well. She warned Bulinda that if she barred me from chasing my full potential in Gifted and Talented and didn’t address my mental health needs, then she’d be dooming me to a negative fate. Bulinda left that day threatening to have Mrs. Miller fired. She even talked to several attorneys about filing a lawsuit against the school.
I’d gone to visit Mrs. Miller several times over four or five years, but always on my own. So, I sat there wondering why she’d sent for me. I was nervous and I knew that if Bulinda were to find out, there’d be hell to pay. I would have to be careful when dressing for PE for a least a week.
Finally, the door opened, and Dana walked out, smiling as she passed me. Mrs. Miller looked at me and flashed a huge smile.
“Michael!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been expecting you! Come in, come in!”
Her eyes were lit brightly. She appeared to be in a great mood, so I eased up. Thinking that this was going to be a good visit, I took a seat in a leather chair that was twice as comfy as the one in the lobby. Mrs. Miller pulled a leather office chair on rollers from behind her desk and placed it right in front of me. She sat in it, placed her elbows on her knees, and leaned forward. Her face was barely more than a foot from mine, and as her smile faded, her brilliant blue eyes turned from orbs of excitement to those of warmth and concern. Compassion marked her countenance.
I was terrified.
Chapter 7
A Penny for My Thoughts
In its early days, Greenwell Springs Hospital was the type of place you might read about in one of those “haunted hospital” books. It housed patients who were dying from tuberculosis, many of whom did die on the premises. They were subsequently disposed of in the hospital’s crematorium. Greenwell Springs had been a lunatic asylum, a poorhouse, and a facility used to incarcerate sexual predators before the 1970s. For many, it was the final stop on a train to nowhere and a layover for others on their way to prison. Complete with its own morgue, the beautifully manicured grounds held secrets that fed the phobias of many teenagers, myself among them.
During the intake period, it was required that I stay on the ward. That meant no outdoor recreation, no off-the-ward game room, no walks to the cafeteria, and no school. I spent my days and nights being monitored by nurses and orderlies. I was ushered down a hall filled with administrative offices to get my identification card. That same hall had several rooms occupied by various medical and psychiatric doctors who questioned and poked and prodded me. I was given a tetanus booster and other injections, then returned to Southwing.
I took all my meals on the ward and quickly learned to like institutional food. I also got accustomed to “pill line.” Like clockwork, four times every day, nurses wheeled in a medi-cart and hollered, “Medication!” We all lined up to receive our psychotropic meds: mood stabilizers, antidepressants, anti-hallucinogens, and tranquilizers, as well as other pharmaceuticals. We affectionately referred to pill call as “happy hour.”
I met Dr. Simon on my third day, and he prescribed an antidepressant, Asendin, and an anti-hallucinatory, Mellaril, to treat my diagnoses of major depressive disorder and personality disorder with borderline traits. He also noted I had a “general behavior disorder.” That basically translates to “rebellious teenager who refuses to obey authority.” As he added notes to my file, I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly was being written. Every so often he’d mumble something and shake his head as if arguing with himself. I wondered if he might be struggling with a disorder of his own.
After a week, I was granted “Level 4” status, which allowed me a bit more freedom to move about. It allowed me to attend school. I was able to walk with the other boys and girls of Southwing to the cafeteria and game room, as well as participate in outdoor physical activities. It was during my first excursion to the dining hall that I caught sight of her. She walked out of the dining room as I was walking up the sidewalk to enter. A small group of “Annex” girls accompanied her. The Annex was a newer section of the hospital that housed younger patients, those under the age of 15. I was 16, so I resided on Southwing, located in the oldest part of the hospital complex.
The girl was slightly taller than me. Her hair was dark brown and very curly. So dark it was nearly black. She wore it cut just above the shoulders, and it bounced as she walked. A plump, pink smile exuded an aura of happiness, aided by hazel eyes that were speckled with green. They were the kind of eyes that could keep someone spellbound, enthralled. Not in the cliché sense of captivation, but by real magic. The kind of enchantment that literally causes you to do a double-take and remain staring — locked in the gaze. I knew her eyes. They were Abigail’s eyes. Abigail’s were a bit icier, somewhere in the blue area of the spectrum, rather than green; still, Penny’s reminded me of hers. There was a darkness in how they peered mysteriously from beneath a shadowy brow, contradicting the cheerful energy that glistened within them. She stared at me as she passed, and I felt a freshness that I hadn’t known before. After we passed one another, I turned left into the dining room and she turned right at the end of the walk, no doubt on her way back to the Annex.
“Her name is Penny,” Dawn informed me.
“I think she’s 13,” Jason offered.
“She’s been here for over a year,” Kara said.
Everyone seemed to know her, or at least know something about her. I felt like I needed to know everything about her. Confusion and anxiety, as well as a deep longing like a sailor’s desire for the sea, overwhelmed me. I returned to Southwing after dinner and enjoyed silent reflection about my encounter with Penny. After lights-out I wrestled with sleep, tossing and turning because I couldn’t stop thinking of the girl with enchanting eyes. Abigail’s eyes.
Finally, late into the night, or early in the morning, Sandman’s fingertips pressed gently upon my eyelids. As I closed my eyes to the shadows of the room, his gentle murmurings whispered a slumbering spell behind my right ear. Somewhere in the darkness, vaguely audible, demonic chants and jeers competed with angry howls from the devil’s coyotes. But I thought of Penny and drifted off to sleep.
* * *
I tried to talk to Brady about Penny, and it instantly caused a gulf between us. He distanced himself from me, both physically and mentally, and I cringed at the rejection. It literally happened overnight. I saw Penny, talked to Brady that night, and by the next day, I felt like he wanted nothing to do with me. I believe this was because I wouldn’t shut up about Penny. He and I had a “connection” and now I was obsessed with a girl.
But then the day after that, he and I were sitting alone in the common area, chairs across from each other. He was drawing, and I was writing, when he suddenly tossed aside his drawing pad, grabbed me by my wrist, and dragged me behind him. Tossing my notebook onto the chair, I followed him without protest.
Miss Donna, a kind, sweet, young, black nurse had walked through the double doors, escorting a dark, handsome and well-built young man with a wet-styled curly mullet. He eyed Brady as he passed, while Brady attempted to avert his eyes from the boy. The new guy wore a thin dark mustache over thin lips. When he passed us, he smiled at Brady.
Brady hastily led me into the music lounge, pulling me wildly towards the snack machines in the back of the room. In front of a security-screened, crank-style window, Brady released my wrist and began pacing rapidly back and forth. He’d walk four or five paces in one direction, whirl around quickly, then go in the opposite direction. His flannel shirt, unbuttoned (as usual), whipped around behind him with each turn, following him like a cape. With his head hung slightly forward and tilted a bit to the left, he repeatedly used the middle finger from each hand to sweep his long bangs back behind his ears. He was biting his lower lip. Clearly, Brady was vexed, and dammit if that didn’t make him appear even sexier!
“God! You are so fuckin’ cute when y’ur freakin’ out!” I said amid a smile and a laugh.
“Shut uu-up!” he whined back. Then he went into a series of, “Oh god, ohmagod, ooooh-god…”
I watched and waited patiently, occasionally glancing at the door. I’d accidentally closed it as Brady pulled me through it. A closed door was a big no-no. Brady grabbed me again, by the shoulders this time, and pulled me down to the floor. I was in a squatting position, and he had transitioned to his knees. We were completely out of view, hidden behind the large, upholstered lounge chairs — even bigger no-nos. I switched to my knees so he and I could be face to face. Brady leaned forward, his warm delicate cheek brushing ever so gently against mine. I could smell the shampoo and conditioner he used, White Rain. Cheek to cheek, with his lips pressing softly against my ear lobe, he nervously whispered what was already obvious to me.
“That’s Andy!” His body trembled as he spoke the words.
Chapter 8
Mental Tears and Heart Scars
Adolescent psychiatric wards are full of kids who, intentionally or not, wear their issues on their sleeves. Depression, addiction, eating disorders, phobias, behavioral problems, and innumerable manias are evident on the faces of the hurt and lonely. The scars tell the story. Some of those scars are deep purple welts, traversing wrists and arms. Others are dark, vile, infected tracks caused by years of intravenous drug use. Sometimes the pain is evidenced by puffy, gray bags beneath dreary, bloodshot eyes no longer capable of shedding tears. Then there are the “promiscuous” souls, whose movements and mannerisms are easy to spot due to exaggerated flirtations and sexual innuendos, more than simple undertones. This last grouping is often only applied to girls, although it’s not a fair application. Illnesses, disorders, and addictions are nondiscriminatory, and the hospital housed kindred spirits. Boy, girl, gay, straight, black and white... the differences were abundant. It was our scars and tears that bound us. Our blemishes and fractures may have been different, but we were all broken just the same.
I’d been broken for long before my first trip to a mental hospital. It is hard to ask for help, especially when we are young, but not asking could lead to irreparable harm not only to oneself but to others around us — especially those we love. If I had just asked for help, then the teachers and counselors as well as other family members would have acknowledged what they could see in the scars I bore, and they might have helped me. It’s not that I didn’t have the opportunity to ask. For whatever reason, be it fear, shame, or some morbid congenial attraction to masochism, I didn’t ask. I started to, but then caved and chose to suffer instead.
* * *
I think back to seventh grade when I sat across from Mrs. Miller and remember how afraid I was to express my pain. And when presented with an invitation to ask for help, I ignored it. I was more afraid of the outcome than I was of the ongoing anguish. Schoolmates, Mrs. Miller, and others prodded me, but I was terrified. I wasn’t intimidated by them, but by my stepmother. If she were to find out that I was talking to Mrs. Miller about my problems, she would have a field day blistering my ass. So, when I started crying, pouring out the pain, and giving away my grief, no matter how good it felt to rid myself of these burdens, I also felt like I was inevitably setting myself up for more trouble. I told her about a lot of things that day, but mostly I just cried. I sobbed until the rivers ran dry while she scribbled on her notepad. Every now and then, she’d smile and offer calm, soothing words of gentle encouragement. I’d take a deep breath, then continue. Her face often portrayed soft sadness, sometimes disgust, and occasionally her own eyes would become glossy with tears.
I left her office that day feeling deeply relieved, like a weight had been lifted. At first, I was angry at Kari and Julie for breaking the trust I’d placed in them, but then I realized they were just trying to help. Since the age of seven, I’d been dealing with my emotions by burying them, denying them, and by exhibiting negative behaviors. I knew I was an emotional wreck, but I’d somehow accepted that that was who I was. My up and down, twisting and turning, mania-driven, roller coaster ride of a life was in shambles. Sleepless nights led to tear-filled days which in turn not only led to negative behaviors, but also to deviant desires that were destructive. The school year preceding that confessional meeting with Mrs. Miller was when things really started getting bad. But by seventh grade, I’d latched onto urges that I didn’t understand, and therefore failed to control. I was deeply impulsive and that was the beginning of recklessness. My desires needed satiation.
One such urge was masturbation. While sitting in class, an intense sudden sadness would latch onto me, and tears would form, then fall for no apparent reason. I would lay my head down to hide them, but that only drew more attention. Then came the whispers and giggles. Sometimes the teacher would excuse me from class, granting me leave to compose myself. In the restroom I’d wash my face, then sit quietly in a stall, attempting to comprehend what was happening to me. I’d often masturbate. It was as if I was aroused by my own misery, my sadness. Dread acted as an aphrodisiac. That only added to my confusion, which in turn led to more depravity. I was practicing self-gratification up to six times each day. At least two or three of those times were at school: sometimes in the boys’ bathroom, sometimes in the gym locker room. I also found ways to discreetly relieve myself in class. At home, I tried to stimulate myself through painful means, like inserting various objects into my body and practicing autoerotic asphyxiation. The more things I tried, the more shameful and confused I became. I’d regularly perform oral sex on a male cousin my age, usually while watching porn. I begged another to have anal intercourse with me and “treat me like a bad girl.” I asked another cousin, a younger female, to perform oral sex on me. I was a depraved, 12-year-old sex addict.
I didn’t know what other 12-year-olds were doing, but I didn’t think it was the things I was doing. I felt sick and hopelessly driven by warped fantasies and consumed by a perverted sexual fire I couldn’t extinguish. What seventh grader could ask for help from such affliction? On that fateful day in Mrs. Miller’s office, I only touched on a few topics, no less important, that were weighing me down, but that was enough to cause her to act.
I was the closest I’ve been to happy in quite some time. The bus ride home that afternoon was almost dreamlike. A heavy weight had been lifted. Unfortunately, a new weight encumbered me immediately when I walked through the door at home. Bulinda met me in the living room with the red paddle trembling in her left hand. Mrs. Miller had called her, and a conference was scheduled for the next day. Just the act of receiving a call from the counselor to schedule a meeting was enough to instigate a severe paddling and a long bedroom restriction. I was told that I would spend the rest of the school year, which was only at the halfway point, alone in my room.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I don’t remember even laying down. I sat on my bed and contemplated suicide instead. I tied a sturdy noose, figuring I could take a flashlight, sneak into the woods, and quietly hang myself. Or I could get a razor blade out of the medicine cabinet and end it all in a gory, blood-spilling demise. I wrote several different suicide notes. Of course, I masturbated several times, but not even that could diminish the fear that filled me. That phone call was a catalyst. Bulinda’s seething anger and hatred towards me were about to erupt. I just knew it. I could feel it. Regardless, when morning arrived, I went to school.
I was called to the counselor’s office around 9 AM. My dad and Bulinda were in the guidance office’s waiting area, and they looked furious.
They’d already spoken with Mrs. Miller, and now the counselor wanted to see me. Bulinda refused to let her be alone with me; her animus was a black aura filling the room. Most of Mrs. Miller’s questions had been answered because Bulinda’s behavior confirmed it all. She’d called me to her office that day so I could say three words to her. In front of Bulinda and my father, she needed me to say the three words that, in 1988 Louisiana, would have not only inspired her to intervene but would also have forced her to. In front of them, with Miss Lena sitting at her desk to witness, Mrs. Miller needed me to say, “Please HELP me.” Staring at the floor, fighting back tears, and experiencing that all-too-familiar metallic taste of fear... I said nothing.
Chapter 9
Love Like I’d Never Known
I became invisible to Brady. I could still see his smile, hear his raspy voice. I was still aroused by his scent and always knew when he was in the room. But he no longer saw me. When he looked at me, he was looking through me — past me. My voice was inaudible to his ears. Brady was captured by something — someone – that I couldn’t compare with. He wanted Andy and I became a stranger.
After a few nights of listening to Brady and Andy whispering into the wee hours of the morning, giggling then sharing silence together, I decided it was time for me to move out. Southwing’s Boy’s Hall had four rooms. Each room had three beds, except for Room One which had four. Room Three had only one occupant, a boy named Liam, and it was the farthest away from Brady. So, I asked to move there. The nurses were hesitant at first, but the move was approved, and I moved in with the boy who’d been in Southwing the longest.
Liam was an inch or two taller than me, and physically larger as well. He was a good 20 pounds heavier too, although he was two years younger than me. He was 14 and supposed to be housed at the Annex, but due to his size and physical presence, he was a resident of Southwing. Liam was in no way menacing in appearance, nor was he violent. As big and strong as he was, I likened him to a gentle giant. His ash-blonde hair was brushed and parted on the left. Brown eyes rested behind lazy lids with long dark lashes. When his full pink lips offered a smile, they revealed well-kept teeth, although a bit crooked. His mouth seemed both innocent and seductive. Liam was the proud owner of a prickly five o’clock shadow, while at 16, I could barely muster a light mustache and a few soft wild hairs on my chin. Compared to my own thin 140-pound 5’7” frame, Liam was a tall, plush, openly gay teddy bear.
Just one day after moving in with Liam, I found myself sitting next to him in the dayroom, mesmerized by his nimble fingers as they worked. Back and forth his fingers went, weaving an intricate pattern, by tying knots in embroidery floss. Overhand double knots this way, then again in the other direction. He was expertly crafting a wearable work of art, a friendship bracelet. From 12 strings of six colors, Liam was able to create something beautiful. Something meaningful. Black, baby blue, mint green, violet, peach, and white all came together to form a pattern of Xs and diamonds. The finished product would be about half an inch wide and would act as a bridge to form a union. He was making it for me, his new friend.
We chatted as he worked. When not watching his fingers working the floss, I longingly stared at his sexy mouth. Every time he stopped talking, he reverted to absentmindedly nibbling on his bottom lip. Occasionally his little pink tongue would dart out through parted lips to rest between them as if to aid his concentration. It’s also possible that he knew I was watching, and he was doing it intentionally, to entice me.
During the 3 PM shift change, the incoming nurses and orderlies would spend about 15 minutes in limbo. It was then that Liam and I slipped into the shower together. There were two shower stalls in the little shower room. He hung his clothes and towel on the stall farthest from the door and turned on the hot water only. The room quickly filled with steam and that’s when he joined me in my shower stall. The already opaque shower curtain fogged over as our heat joined the hot water vapor to create a steam room that allowed us to share sticky love in each other’s arms. Liam’s strategy of enticement worked to ensnare me, and I was conquered. Touché, Liam. Touché.
At night, restlessly awake, sobbing for any number of reasons, Liam would kneel beside my bed and try his best to comfort me. He’d gently stroke my back and wiggle his fingers through my hair. He caressed my cheeks in his palms and wiped away my tears, then gave me soft warm kisses. It was easy to open up and tell him everything that hurt. I completely trusted him. I whispered in the dark about my demons, both real and imagined, and described the horrible things Bulinda did to me. I confessed the sins committed by and with my cousins and told him how back then I didn’t feel bad about what my older cousins did to me, how I actually looked forward to it and didn’t reject it at all. Now, because of what they did to me, I wondered if they were the reason for some of my problems. Throughout all my confessing, Liam was delicate with me, tenderly touching me here or there, swallowing my pain, and giving me his love. He was my medicine, and I was his.
Sometimes, being the gentle boy he was, he asked if he could lay with me. I’d nod yes and succumb to his warmth. His strong and comforting arms snuggled me within their grasp, his cheek pressed gently against the back of my head, warm breath shaky as it breezed past my cheek. I loved the way I felt when I was with him. We listened for the orderly’s squeaky chair to sound its alarm, telling Liam to return to his bed. Every 20 minutes or so, the orderly made his rounds, peeping into every room and looking over every bunk. Then he’d return to his chair, make a notation, and resume watching TV. That’s when Liam would come back to me. More than once, we drifted off to dreamland together, only to be awakened when the overhead light was turned on. We were on top of the sheets, of course.
Miss Donna, a beautiful young black nurse known for her fabulous smile and precious dimples, started to act slightly different around me. Not in a bad way though. It was more like a gentle recognition as if to say, “You’re okay.” Maybe it was okay. Maybe it was okay to be loved?
Chapter 10
Red Ribbon in White Clover
I tried on several occasions to talk to the girl with Abigail’s eyes, but to no avail. She was always preoccupied or otherwise uninterested in me. Then, one night in the game room, Penny approached me while I played foosball with Anthony. She stopped my shot to get my attention.
“Michael... Right?”
“Yeah?”
“K… look Michael... Stop asking my friends about me.”
I open my mouth to offer some kind of witty retort, but she cut me off, “I ain’tcha type, a’ight?”
For some reason, that part sounded more like a question. The slight uptick of inflection when she said “a’ight” came out more like, “a’ight?” So, I started to ask, “How do you...” But she cut me off.
“Because I ain’t! I am ba-roe-ken!” The word “broken” had three syllables, all stressed, as she said it. Then, she ended the conversation with, “‘Sides, I wouldn’t go wit you in a million years. So, fo’get me.” With that, she whipped around and rejoined her girlfriends at the pool table, leaving me looking stunned and bruised.
When I turned around, Anthony smiled and said, “BURNED! “ and started laughing.
I did indeed feel burned. Yet, I did what she told me to do and stopped asking about her. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. In fact, I thought about Penny even more! And to who did I express my pain of rejection? Liam. Without any consideration for his feelings, I selfishly burdened the boy I loved. All I could think about was my own pain, not the emotional garbage I was dumping onto Liam’s shoulders. But as usual, he exchanged my pain for his love.
* * *
On a clear afternoon at the end of March, the nurses and orderlies gathered all the level ones, twos, and threes and led us out to the softball field. It was actually just a huge, lush pasture with massive patches of red and white clover located just outside the hospital fence. It was across a little gravel service road that ran alongside the grounds. Surrounding this open area were tall fat oaks and ashes, as well as elms, sycamores, and pecans. All were completely clothed in fresh full foliage.
A small set of aluminum bleachers sat at the front edge of the property and a lot of the kids ran over to sit on them. One boy started plucking what I assumed were spiders from beneath the bleachers. One by one he popped them into his mouth. A few girls were doing some cheer routines they’d practiced over at the Annex as groups of boys separated into two teams. As for me, I was mesmerized and moved by the natural beauty of the scenery encompassing me.
In the distant trees, I could see and hear robins, blackbirds, and blue jays fussing over branches. A mockingbird was diving and pouncing on something at the far end of the field, screeching a violent curse as he did so. Probably a wayward garter snake whose luck had run out. Little beige wrens and speedy grey swallows fluttered and fleeted in hyperactive acrobatics at the tree line. I imagined cottontails were hiding from the sun, all over in the woods. Squirrels chased one another in and out, over and through, round and round this tree and that one.
All manner of butterflies, decked out in the colors of the rainbow, floated on the warm spring breeze that carried the sweet scent of grass clippings. Dragonflies were feasting on swarms of gnats that hovered and swayed in fluid unison above a clover patch. Honeybees buzzed to and fro, diligently working to fill the Queen’s quota. March is the official start of Louisiana spring, and that warm, bright afternoon in 1991 was better than typical. One can expect an afternoon shower on any given day, but save for a few billowy puffballs floating lazily on the breeze, that day was clear. The day they chose to take us outside, off-campus, couldn’t have been more beautiful. It was perfect.
Some of the nurses and orderlies were playing with us while others watched from the bleachers. One nurse, whom everyone loved, stopped clapping and cheering. Her gaze was fixed on the girl sitting in a clover patch out past centerfield. The girl wore a baseball cap and a cream-colored T-shirt with baby blue stripes. Her back was to us. A cluster of dragonflies had moved closer to inspect the oddity in the clover.
I lost interest in the game as my focus turned instead to the girl in the field and the nurse that was approaching her. I could hear the nurse talking, but I couldn’t identify what she was saying. I could still hear leaves rustling in the breeze soughing through the trees. I heard the song of the cicadas competing with crickets and jostling birds. All part of nature’s perfect tune — until the nurse stopped three feet short as the girl started to stand. At that moment, at least to me, nature disappeared. As she turned to face the nurse, I saw that her cheeks were wet with tears and her dark brown curly hair moved softly in the whispering breeze. Some of it was sticking to the moisture on her face. Crimson ribbons clung to the lightly tanned flesh of her left wrist. Little red tears dripped from her fingers, falling in quick sprints to the clover beneath. A twisted piece of metal dropped from her trembling right hand — an old paper clip she’d found during the walk over. She shook from a sudden spasm as more tears cascaded from her eyes. I could now hear her sobbing. Miss Donna rushed to Penny and took her in her arms. She applied pressure to her wrist and started walking the girl back to the safety of the hospital.
The rest of the orderlies gathered us together, took a headcount, and marched us back to the institution. I walked alone, separating myself as much as I could from the rest of the group. The weight of despair pressed its crushing weight on my shoulders, and I felt as if an anchor had been tethered to my heart and tossed into an abyss. I felt like I was absorbing Penny’s misery. Tormented by osmosis.
Penny went to the infirmary and was placed on suicide watch. That evening at dinner I sawed a plastic knife across my wrist but realized its serrated edge wasn’t enough. I pressed harder but still only barely broke the skin. I don’t know if it was suicide I was seeking, or just enough bloodletting to ease the torment, but by the time I got back to the ward, someone had already told Nurse Boucher about my “dry run.” Two nurses, accompanied by two orderlies, were waiting for me and they escorted me to the padded cell. Like Penny, I was on suicide watch.
Shivering and naked sitting in a padded room, surrounded by monsters, and trampled by demons that now lived outside mirrors, I screamed. And I screamed some more. I was trying to drown out the jeers and taunts. In my mind’s eye, I saw Penny, but I screamed for Abigail. Nurse Boucher and Miss Angela returned with the “Green Jeans” team — a group of specially trained orderlies. They subdued me while Miss Angela talked to me in a soothing calm voice. I felt an icy sensation followed by a horrible burning in my hip. An injection. I stopped fighting and they slipped a hospital gown over me. White with tiny green polka dots. I scurried into a corner and within seconds the medication took hold. It was a tranquilizer and I felt numb. As my eyelids got heavier, I found it harder to scream. I don’t know if I was speaking or thinking it, but I begged God to kill me. And then there was peace.
Chapter 11
The Whipping Boy Has a Voice
Asking for help is hard. I tried asking for help three years earlier, in 1988 in Mrs. Miller’s office, but I froze up at the last moment. Although bruised and battered physically, my mind was tortured more than anything else. While my bruises could be covered with clothing, my emotional and mental issues were becoming more evident. Mrs. Miller really needed me to ask for help that day. Needed to hear me mouth the words. If she jumped the gun and acted prematurely, then her job could be on the line and the school could be held liable. It was a very different time back then. This was before the McMartin child abuse case that electrified the nation and started the conversation about widespread sexual and physical abuse of children. In the end, that case probably did more harm than help, but it did a least open the door and pull away a dark veil.
Had Bulinda not been in the room, had I not felt so intimidated, and had I not been so emotionally destroyed, I believe I would’ve asked for help. Instead, I went back to class more broken than ever. That afternoon when I returned home, Bulinda was waiting for me. She was alone. My father was at work. I saw her sitting in dim light as soon as I walked in the door.
“Put your books down and stand right there,” she said in a low monotone voice while pointing at a space on the floor a couple of feet in front of her. She was sitting in her recliner. Once I was where she’d ordered me to stand, she sat forward and stared up at me. A long silence followed. It felt like an eternity. Satisfied with the palpable fear she’d instilled within me, she looked away from me and started laying out the many things “that bitch” had covered at the morning’s meeting. The way I was treated at home — month-long restrictions, vicious paddlings, emotional abuse. Bulinda was furious and she accused me of being a manipulator, just wanting people to feel sorry for me. She laughed about my “so-called voices.” Although her speech began as a slow long monotone, by the time she got to “lying about being sexually abused,” it had risen to the loud shrill scream of a banshee. Cursing and mocking me, she screamed, “You’re a sick little faggot!”
I stood there in silence, staring at the tortoiseshell patterned carpet beneath my feet. Tears flowed in thin rivulets down my cheeks and slipped off my chin.
Suddenly, she stood.
“Stop with the fake fuckin’ tears!” she screeched.
That only caused more tears to fall. The more tears I cried, the more insults she hurled at me. Then I tried to hold my breath to stymie the flow. I must’ve fainted because when I came to, I was on the floor, and she continued her tirade. “You’re just a fuckin’ attention whore, you little drama queen!”
When she finally stopped the assault, her voice had grown hoarse. Her face was more purple than red. It was the face that would one day stare at me through mirrors, and then torment me with its brooding snarl as it crouched in corners. At that very moment, I thought she might pass out because she was panting so heavily. “Maybe I will get lucky, and she will die,” I remember thinking. Wishing.
As she continued to hyperventilate, I started to stand up. But she started to scream again, having caught her second wind.
“Stay-down-there-you-sick-li’l-pathetic-piece-of-shit!”
I obeyed.
Munchkin had disappeared, skittering down the hall when Bulinda’s voice had first started rising. Even she was terrified of that woman.
Seconds turned to minutes, and as her breathing returned to something closer to normal, she focused on my face. I could feel my own countenance changing. Anger fomented within me, and judging by the changing expression on her face, she saw my fury too. Whether it was insolence or just pure brazenness represented with a smirk I’m unsure, but it affected her. She went on the offensive.
“You wanna say something, bitch-boy?”
There were no more tears falling or even forming. The trembling in my limbs had subsided and the voice that came out of me portrayed absolutely no timidity. Still on the floor, I stared up into her eyes and let the words fly.
“I wish I’d have pulled that fuckin’ trigger when I had a chance!” I snarled through clenched teeth.
Bulinda’s face went slack. Her eyebrows raised in surprise as her mouth fell open, bottom lip quivering. She was processing the words I’d boldly spoken... and she was afraid. For the first time in the six years I’d spent bending and breaking beneath Bulinda’s domineering presence, she showed fear. I relished it!
Her eyes shifted back and forth, reviewing what she’d heard and scanning the face of the speaker. Her training as an Air Force MP went into high gear. She tried to read my eyes, but I didn’t blink. The fear I watched crawl across her face was too sweet to miss. Those words struck her with more force than any physical blow she’d ever pummeled me with. I could see her questioning what I could have possibly meant by that statement. Time continued to creep. What felt like an hour was likely more like a minute. Finally, her mouth closed, and she swallowed deeply. Her eyebrows shifted again to give away her thoughts. There it was. Understanding. Revelation. She’d gotten it. That’s when I made the move to get quickly to my feet. I was sure this time: if she hits me, I’ll kill her.
I braced myself for the blow, readied for impact. We were standing less than three feet apart, and for the first time, I realized I was a few inches taller than her. She was looking up at me and that made me feel good.
It was she who broke the silence. In a low shaky nervous voice, she said, “Go to your room.”
I turned my back to her, walked to the sofa, and retrieved my backpack. Then, without the slightest glance or acknowledgment that she was in any way relevant, I pushed the hall curtain aside and stepped into the blasting furnace that was the back of the trailer. There was a crack in Grandma Howard’s door, and I could see the short, frail woman peeking through it. I turned and stepped into my bedroom, then switched on the fan and dropped my backpack. Upon hearing the fan starting its oscillation, Munchkin came slinking out of the bathroom where she’d hidden. She sat next to me, and I stroked her head while standing in the breeze. I took slow deep breaths and shook off the last remnants of fear. The fan seemed to wash me, cleansing and calming me, as it blew the negative energy away. My adrenaline level was subsiding, and it must’ve been replaced by dopamine because I felt high and happy.
On the other end of the trailer, I heard Bulinda stomp into the kitchen and turn on a faucet. They were splashing sounds and then she shut the water off. After a brief pause, she stomped back to the living room. I heard her snatch the phone from its cradle and press numbers in rapid procession. The house was in such profound silence that I faintly heard the ringing tones on the other end of the line. Then she spoke.
“Alma, is Ronald busy?” There was a brief pause, then, “Can you get him for me? This is important. An emergency.”
My father must’ve gotten on the line because Bulinda was terse and forceful. “You NEED to come home RIGHT now!”
Whatever she was feeling and thinking, she couldn’t wait an additional two hours for my father to get off work. Fear was again taking up residence within me. She slammed the receiver down hard and then stomped through the kitchen. Bulinda opened and slammed her bedroom door, then engaged the lock to keep me out.
Satisfied that fear was terrorizing her, I went over to my bed, kicked off my shoes, and stretched out. I was smiling. I knew that I was in the eye of the hurricane, and the storm’s backside was quickly approaching. Round two was coming and it would likely be violent. Yet a gentle peace flowed through me. It just felt good to finally win a battle. My first attempt at fighting back felt awesome.
Munchkin jumped onto the bed and lay beside me with her head on my chest. While I petted her softly, I heard Abigail say, “I’m so proud of you.”
“Me too,” Walter chimed in.
“Thanks, y’all,” I responded.
From the corner of my eye, I saw something flicker. When I looked to the right, I saw a young girl with long, ringlet-filled dirty blond hair. She was standing next to the bookshelf. Although the oscillations from the fan should have stirred her hair and dress, she was still. The only “movement” I could discern was the glimmering blonde highlights that appeared to sparkle throughout her locks. She was dressed in a cream-colored dress that looked as if it came from a movie set based in the 19th century. She was beautiful and elegant, her hazel blue eyes shimmering as though illuminated by an internal light source.
“Hi,” I whispered. A smile of adoration spread across my lips.
“Hi,” she responded, adding a girlish wave, flicking the fingertips of her right hand.
Seeing Abigail brought instant comfort. Then, like a bad electrical connection, she vanished. I stood and walked over to a pile of my favorite books haphazardly resting on my dresser. I picked two, one in each hand. One of them was My Side of the Mountain, the other was Island of the Blue Dolphins. I pondered my decision briefly, then settled in next to Munchkin with my choice. I would need a young girl’s determination, bravery and survival instinct if I was to make it through the coming storm. The storm I set in motion when I loaded those words, aimed and fired them at Bulinda.
Chapter 12
Take it On the Run
The statement I used that day was not just a meaningless reference to some wishful thinking on my part. I believe that Bulinda was able to piece together a string of events and situations that helped her realize she was standing at the precipice of a cliff. That statement is what caused her to back away from me. It came from something that had happened the previous year.
The beatings I received from Bulinda really ramped up during sixth grade. She’d become downright vicious. I was becoming more and more numb to the pain her beatings caused and had started using them to aid in my own search for sexual taboo. For instance, she would order me to lie face down on the couch or across a footstool so that she could paddle me. I would do as told. Lying down in a prone position, I put my hands beneath me. Not to prevent me from reaching back to block the blows, but so that I could fondle my boyhood. At 12 years old I was masturbating up to a half-dozen times a day, and turning physical pain into sexual pleasure helped to fuel my desire. I had been bowing down in humiliation for several years already, so being a sexual masochist somehow felt “right.” I wasn’t just absorbing the pain; I was relishing it. I would “finish” just as she finished swinging. Her heavy breathing, caused by swinging the paddle with vicious turpitude, matched mine.
After one particularly harsh beating, where I’d received upwards of three dozen lashes, I was in my bedroom cleaning up my mess. I didn’t hear her sneak up on me until I heard her gasp. I was standing against my dresser with my pants and underwear crumpled around my ankles. Deep purple and green stripes marred my pale buttocks and she saw her handiwork. Whether it was the marks or the semen I was wiping away with a towel, I’m unsure, but her gasp got my attention. Under her breath, she mumbled, “Sick fucking pervert!” Then she left. I continued with the cleanup. Whippings from her became rare after that, but no less brutal. Not because of some empathetic reasoning, and surely not because of any sense of guilt, but because I got off on it. And she had witnessed it, quite literally, firsthand.
* * *
Towards the end of sixth grade, a few months after she saw more than she wanted to see, I crept into her bedroom. I slipped her palm-sized .25 caliber pistol from a little wooden box on my dad’s chest of drawers and put it in my pocket. I also took his 20-gauge shotgun and a box of shells out of the closet. Stealthily, I left the room and went to my room where I could load the long gun. The pistol was already loaded. Then I returned to their bedroom. I walked up to the bed and raised the shotgun, leveling it a mere six inches from her skull. Only a few pounds of pressure on the trigger remained between us. I tried to coax myself into pulling the trigger, but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I returned the weapons to where they belonged, forgetting to unload the shotgun – a mistake that didn’t go unnoticed, and came back to haunt Bulinda nearly a year later.
I went back to my bedroom and filled my backpack with some clothes and a hunting knife. I included matches and a lighter, some cordage and a few canned goods, as well as a canteen of water. Finally, I rolled up a wool blanket and tied it to the outside of the pack. I dressed and climbed out my window, mounted my bicycle, and struck out to find a mountainside to call my own. Beginning my trek in the flat, balmy swamps of south Louisiana meant that I had a hell of a long trip ahead of me.
After several hours of pedaling, I’d made it out of St. Amant (the tiny town I grew up in), and through Gonzalez on Airline Highway. I was well into Prairieville, which is awfully close to the southern edge of Baton Rouge, when an astute Louisiana State Trooper took notice of the determined young boy with a backpack riding a BMX-style bicycle on a major state highway at two in the morning. He swung his cruiser around, crossed the median, and proceeded to cut me off.
The cop quickly ascertained that I was not on my way to a friend’s house when I couldn’t name a single street around us. After I caved and gave him my name, and told him I ran away, he put my bike in the trunk and asked for my father’s name. I provided it and he got my address from dispatch, then he turned the cruiser in the direction of home. He tried to talk to me during the drive, but I remained silent. I wanted to tell him everything. I really did. But all I could think of was, “What if I tell him and he confronts Bulinda?” And, “What if he doesn’t take me away from there?” I envisioned the beatings I would receive, and even worse, I thought of the horrible place the cop might bring me. Bulinda had told me about the dangers of a “boys’ home.” Remaining quiet, I surmised, was the best thing to do.
It was painful to see the look on my father’s face when he opened the door. I may have hated Bulinda, but no matter how much my father’s decisions hurt me, I never hated him. So, seeing his face go pale when he looked at the officer, then down at me, then at the officer again, hurt.
As he stood there in his underwear, trying to clear muddled thoughts, the trooper started to speak.
“I’m very sorry to wake you, Mr. Richardson, but it appears that your boy here,” he placed his hand on my shoulder, and I flinched, “went for a late-night bike ride.”
“There must be a mistake?” Daddy questioned.
“Sir, “the officer was measuring his speech, “I pulled up behind your son on Airline... He was almost to the parish line.”
The officer’s words were clear, but my father still seemed confused. This didn’t make any sense. When the officer handed Daddy my backpack, his confusion switched to clarity. The impact of that recognition hit my father like a blow to the midsection, and his eyes shifted to me. His chest began rising and falling rapidly as his anger grew. He spoke low but sternly. “Go to your room.”
I lowered my head and did as I was told. Behind me, I heard the trooper say, “Michael... Everything is going to be all right. Life is hard, son, but it gets better.”
I nodded a subtle yes but continued walking. My father continued to talk to the cop for several more minutes, then closed the door. Heavy footsteps made their way down the hall, and I saw his large frame fill the entrance to my room. I was sitting on my bed, removing my shoes, when he flipped the light on. His stare alone was devastating. His face was a mix of anger, surprise, disappointment, and sleepiness. I’m sure he was embarrassed, too. The last thing he said to me that night was, “Don’t go to school today. I’ll see you when I get home.”
I reclined on my bed. With tears welling in my eyes, I sobbed quietly. A cold, wet nose pressed against the side of my face. I turned my head to face Munchkin. She gave me a mostly dry doggy-kiss, then climbed onto the bed, taking her usual spot between the wall and me. Later, in the middle of the night, she would straighten her legs and brace her back against the wall. Then, with a hard push, she’d expel me from the bed. The family dog, the animal I was certain had cameras and microphones implanted in her eyes and ears, was my best friend. My only friend. But not even her love could defend me from the beatings I received over the next three days, and then almost daily for the next three weeks. When school ended, I was on restriction again for the summer.
Chapter 13
An Easter Egg Hunt, an Angel, and a Penny
Easter morning, March 31, 1991. I’d only been at Greenwell Springs hospital for 18 days, but during that time, I’d had a crush on and been abandoned by Brady, fallen in love with the affections of Liam, and been placed on suicide watch after witnessing Penny bleed in a field of clover. I got off suicide watch the day before Easter, just in time for an egg hunt hosted by the staff.
The hospital’s picnic area was as picturesque as any park. A walking path wound its way beneath oak, elm, and pecan trees, all with new, verdant foliage. There were picnic tables, blossoming azaleas, and a few dozen boisterous, laughing kids.
A pleasant, tropical breeze wafted through the trees, displacing the thick, humid air of the Louisiana springtime. Nature set the mood and laughter accentuated the joy as we ran about searching every nook and cranny, and thick tuft of grass for colored eggs. Angel, Dawn, and I seemed to be drawn to each other that morning. Together, we hunted. It all felt natural, and although new to me, I was happy.
After half an hour of hunting, we joined other kids at the refreshments table. Kool-Aid, duplex cookies, and potato chips were in abundance, as were potato salad and baked beans to complement hamburgers and hot dogs. Most of us were stuffing our faces with wonderfully delicious comestibles. But not Angel. She’d picked out a lone potato chip, a big ruffled one, and nibbled on it as we walked. One tiny, little, salty piece at a time.
By 11 AM, the temperature was already hovering somewhere in the mid-80s. We stayed on the path beneath the trees. Everyone wore shorts and T-shirts, skirts and tank tops, and such. Everyone but Brady and Angel, that is. Brady wore his typical uniform of black jeans, dark flannel, and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a band’s name: “ANTHRAX.” He eventually succumbed to the heat and removed the flannel. He tied it to his waist, allowing it to trail along behind him. Brady would never be caught dead in shorts.
Angel, on the other hand, was often too embarrassed to wear shorts. That day she was wearing blue jeans and a blue and white checkered button-down shirt. She described herself as a “skater chick” but didn’t exactly look the part. She had long, loosely spiraled curled, light brown, and frosted hair. It hung down past her waist in sexy “wet look” layers that, although weighed down with styling mousse and Aqua Net hairspray, bounced and flittered in the breeze. Her bangs were raised and teased in that famous “bird nest” style. Her makeup was flawless, if not too dark, but it covered more than blemishes. Angel was beautiful. She possessed the kind of beauty that is often described as breathtaking.
At five-foot-one-inch, Angel rarely wore shorts (although she looked amazing in them) because she was ashamed of her weight. She weighed 95 pounds. That was up from the 80 pounds she weighed when she arrived at the hospital, yet she still described herself as a whale. Angel suffered from a disease called bulimia. At Greenwell Springs, her eating and bathroom habits were closely monitored, so she learned how to make a little look like a lot. She appeared to be gorging herself on potato chips when she was only eating one. Without her makeup, her skin appeared translucent. Tiny, purple, damaged capillaries encompassed her eyes, mouth, and nose. Liquid foundation, two shades too dark, covered her scars. Angel’s demons appeared to be skin deep, but they were much more profound. As much as I loved the others, Angel was my favorite. During my stay at the hospital, hers was the sincerest friendship.
The three of us walked and talked and discussed hopes and dreams. They both appeared to have somewhat clear ambitions for the future. For Angel it was entertainment, and Dawn wanted to be a child psychologist. A lot of people seek to imitate those who have helped them. I had no real plan to succeed at anything. I’d always assumed I wouldn’t make it to age 18, so roaming the Earth like a solivagant hermit until “that” day came was good enough for me. I figured if someone didn’t kill me, then I’d eventually get around to doing it myself. I held no ill-conceived notion that I could have a productive future. So I talked about dreams I had when I was about seven or eight years old. I wanted to be an archaeologist. I romanticized about digging up dinosaur bones and ancient cities. Later, I thought I might like to be an architect, designing buildings by which I’d be remembered. A modern-day Wright. By the time I made it to Greenwell Springs, I saw nothing in my future. But listening to the girls’ talk, I started filing little bookmarks of hopefulness that might come in handy one day.
Fast-paced footfalls came slap-slapping behind us, and before I could turn around, I felt a finger jab beneath my shoulder blade. I lunged forward and spun around, surprised by what I was confronted with – a happy, pink smile, and glistening hazel green eyes. I stared in confusion as her smile only broadened, happy with my response. I saw an exuberant expression of ecstatic joy. Penny looked... happy!
“Penny!”
“Michael!”
She giggled and continued to stare at me. “Can we talk?” she asked.
I looked at the girls I’d spent all morning with. They both smiled. Angel responded before I even asked, “Absolutely!” She giggled and took Dawn by the arm and walked ahead. Penny and I were alone.
She explained to me how she had begged staff to take her off suicide watch, though she doubted her plea would work. Then, while she was sitting in her room, the orderly told her she could get ready to go outside. That was just five minutes before her running up to us. She was sad that she missed the hunt, but that wasn’t why she wanted to come out anyway. I handed her the little basket that contained the eggs that I had left.
“Awww! Thank you!” she said and acted bashfully. I couldn’t help but notice the bandage that dressed the wound on her wrist. “You’re da reason I wanted ta come out today,” she said. “Why did you do it?”
“Why’d I do what?”
“Whatever you did to get put on suicide watch? Was it cuz o’ me?”
I was shocked to find out that she knew. I thought about the question and how to answer it. I didn’t know if my dive into the realm of death would trigger another episode with her, and I didn’t want to be responsible for causing her any more pain.
“You looked sad and scared when Miss Donna was takin’ you back,” I started, “and in some stupid way I just didn’t want you to be alone,” I finished.
She looked at the ground for a moment, sighed, then looked into my eyes. “What you did was stupid... Only a dum’ass would wanna die for me, or with me, or whatever.”
I smiled and stuck my hand out. She took it cautiously. I could feel that she was trembling ever so slightly. “Hi... I’m a dum’ass, and I’m pleased to meet you.”
After an awkward pause, she burst out in girly giggles and said, “Ask me!”
“Ask you what?”
“The question, dum’ass!”
I was puzzled, but then it hit me.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. She was biting her lip, and her dreamy eyes sparkled. She waited until I finally asked her. “Will you... um... would you be ma…uh…will you go wit me?” I asked, working through a stutter.
“Yes!” she said quickly.
She grabbed me around my neck and hugged me tightly. I hugged her back. Then we heard several people cough and clear their throats. We’d been spotted in an embrace. That was a good way to get written up for PDA, or “public display of affection,” and that could leave to level drops, loss of weekend furlough, or worse. Our relationship was just beginning, and we were on the verge of being told not to associate with one another.
We released and looked in the direction of the sounds of dissuasion. Fortunately, it was three orderlies that would not blow this out of proportion. Miss Donna, Miss Angela, and TJ all shook their heads “no” in unison. We were safe, but we’d be cautious. We held hands and walked on the path together. Handholding was acceptable, even encouraged.
On Easter Day, 1991, less than three weeks after my arrival at Greenwell Springs, I asked the girl with Abigail’s eyes to be my girlfriend, and she said yes!
Chapter 14
A Deeper Taste of Addiction — Summer of ‘88
Bulinda was scared.
When she was finally able to put two and two together, and especially after she talked to my father, her “beaters” were broken. And although Father did not let what I said slide, after that whipping, even he let up on punishments. I was no longer going to be Bulinda’s whipping boy, that was certain, and other things were changing as well.
After my seventh-grade year wrapped up in mid-1988, I spent the first few weeks on restriction. But then my Aunt Carol and Uncle Joe invited me to visit them in Biloxi. Uncle Joe was an Air Force retiree and they lived just outside of Keesler Air Force Base. I was 13 that summer and it was the first time I’d ever been on any kind of vacation. My aunt and uncle, technically step-aunt and step-uncle, lived three blocks from the beach. Uncle Joe brought me out and taught me how to throw a cast net. I netted enough shrimp for Aunt Carol to make a thick shrimp and potato stew. Although I genuinely loved the beach, I spent most of my time at the swimming pool.
The pool was a giant. It was an indoor, larger-than-Olympic size swimming pool with retractable roof panels. It only cost a dollar to swim from 8 AM till noon and another dollar from 1 PM till five. I often went to both sessions. I spent quite a bit of time on the diving boards, the highest of which was three meters. I went to the pool to practice swimming and diving, but by my third or fourth day there, I found sex.
Cody was an athletically built competitive swimmer who took notice of me the first time I climbed up to the high dive. My first attempt ended painfully, leaving me with a skull-splitting headache. The second attempt led me to give up for the day. It was almost a full-on “belly buster.” Cody was a lifeguard and he stopped me when I climbed out of the pool. He had blond hair that was kind of shaggy and deep blue eyes beneath brown eyebrows. When he noticed me glancing down at the generous package in his Speedos, he laughed and said, “Whoa, stud. Eyes up here!” I blushed and then blushed more after he put his arm around my shoulder and led me back to the shower and changing rooms. We only made out a little that day, but I showed up early the next morning to consummate our new friendship. I spent time with him nearly every day, and by the time I left Biloxi, I was able to stick a decent jackknife.
I returned home after a month on the Gulf Coast. It had been the most invigorating time of my life. I’d forgotten what depression felt like. Wrapped in Cody’s embrace, I tried not to think about leaving. I wondered if all college boys were as loving and affectionate as he was. And I also wondered if being gay wasn’t so bad. With Cody, I didn’t feel like a toy to be used and discarded when he was done.
* * *
I started to spend a lot of time in the woods. I was obsessed with nature, and that’s where I felt most at ease. So I spent a large portion of the remaining summer vacation in the woods behind my grandmother’s property. I also went down to the bayou. It was only 300 or 400 yards from my backyard. I fished and swam and spent nearly all my time alone. Since I wasn’t restricted to my room nearly as much as before, I utilized my liberty to wander in the woods. I ventured out farther from my house, and before long, I was building little “trapper camps” all over St. Amant. I imagined them as my own little hideaways in case I ever needed to run away again. I checked on them often, regularly making repairs and reinforcing them. Sometimes I’d find a family of raccoons living in one. Other times I’d find a camp destroyed. Another time, there was a “no trespassing” sign nailed to a tree that had been a support for a lean-to I’d built.
I spent my evenings watching TV on Grandma Howard’s little set in her bedroom. There were only two televisions in the home, one in the living room and the other in her bedroom. Bulinda got fired from her job as a correctional officer in the winter, so my Aunt Sharon offered her a job with training at her small manufacturing company. They assembled various industrial products like respirator bags, windsocks, and gear bags. Since the work was piecemeal, Bulinda worked late into the evening, and my father joined her after he returned home from work. Grandma Howard watched the television in the living room and allowed me to watch sitcoms in her room. It was on one of these nights I started stealing. I mean, really stealing. Not just cereal and cheese to eat behind my parents’ backs, but substantial amounts of money. That in turn led me to the much broader realm of thievery.
It started one night when I was checking Grandma Howard’s room to make sure Bulinda hadn’t installed any spy cameras with which to record me. My paranoia had not eased up at all. If anything, it was getting worse. I checked under the bed and in the closet. I looked between the slats in the window unit air conditioner. Eventually, my search for cameras turned to just plain old nosy digging. I opened the nightstand, checked the cabinets on the headboard, and then the bottom compartment of her dresser. While down there I spotted her purse. It was nestled next to the dresser. I recognized it immediately, having seen her carry it on several occasions.
I paused briefly to check the door to be sure the coast was clear. Opening it just a crack, I peeked, then walked out into the stifling heat of the dark hall. I tiptoed to the curtain divider and pushed it aside so I could go to the kitchen and get some water. Grandma Howard was sound asleep in her glider rocker. In the kitchen, I looked out the window. Aunt Sharon’s shop was less than 100 yards away. The lights were all on. Bulinda and Daddy were still at work, so I quickly returned to the bedroom to resume my search for nothing in particular.
Back in the room, I left the door open just enough so that if Grandma pulled the curtain back at the other end of the hall, the pressure change would pull on it. It would work like an alarm. Then I went back to the purse and slid open the zipper of the main compartment. Inside I found several trinkets, small compacts of makeup, a bottle of perfume, and a lot of receipts. There was also a bag of cough drops. She had used the menthol drops as a quit-smoking aid, and although she did quit smoking, she gained a new habit. I closed that compartment and checked the door. Seeing nothing, I nervously returned to my scavenger hunt, this time unsnapping a fat side compartment. The only thing in there, the thing that made the pocket bulge, was a huge ladies’ pocketbook. I removed and opened it, then gasped. There was a lot of money in it! Fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds were all lined up in order. All the bills were crisp and new. There was more than $1000 in it. Without even thinking about it, I removed a twenty, folded it, then tucked it inside my waistband. I closed the wallet, returned it, then snapped that compartment shut. There were still two compartments left to explore.
I opened one and quickly ascertained that it was much larger than I’d first thought. The section contained little slips of paper, more receipts, and close to a dozen envelopes that resembled the ones you might get from a bank teller. I latched onto one and slipped it free from its nest. It too was full of cash! I pulled the stack of bills out of the envelope and counted the money. It was more than $900. I returned the money to the sleeve and set it beside the purse, then paused for a moment to listen to my surroundings. Cocking my head to one side, then the other, I perceived no telltale signs of anyone approaching, so I returned my attention to the purse. I checked more envelopes, all containing large sums of money. Grandma must not have trusted the banks because she was carrying her own personal vault in that purse!
The air pressure suddenly changed, and the door latched closed. My little alarm had worked. I quickly returned the envelope, secured the purse, and pushed it against the dresser. It was then that I noticed the first envelope I had set beside it! The one with nearly $1000 in it. I snatched it up, tucked it in the other side of my waistband, and hurriedly flopped onto my belly on the bed. Just as I got my hands up to rest my chin on, the door opened. It was Grandma Howard. My adrenaline was out of control. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. I’d been so caught up in the sneak (and subsequent theft) that I didn’t notice my sitcom was over, replaced by a primetime news program. That was my cue to get up and leave.
Back in my room, I recounted the money. Money that I’d just stolen from the kind, elderly lady who had given birth to a demon.
* * *
I’d like to tell you I returned the money and that I never stole anything ever again. But the whole point of this memoir is to lay myself bare, offer myself up for judgment, and tell the story so that maybe my sins won’t seem so inexpiable. The shame less burdensome.
The truth is, when I snatched that first envelope of money, it really was because I’d simply forgotten to put it back into the purse. I know, I know... what about the twenty I tucked in my waistband? That one I wanted to steal. That’s why I didn’t exclude it from the story. The big envelope, however, was life-altering. That single event turned me onto a new thrill, a wild desire that was close to being sexual in nature. Exciting, scary, and exhilarating were ways to describe it. I went back to my room that night, recounted the money, and trembled with excitement. The intensity of that high outweighed any regret I’d felt. I hid the envelope by putting it into a zippered sandwich bag and sliding it beneath the carpet in my bedroom, right under the cat’s litter box. I did consider sneaking it back into her purse, but only briefly. The thrill won out.
After a few weeks, I started to ponder what I could spend the money on. I didn’t steal it because I needed it, so now that I had it, what do I do with it? I couldn’t start blowing it on random stuff. How would I be able to explain away new things? I contemplated saving it for a rainy day. Thoreau and Kerouac started out with a least a little cash, albeit money they’d earned and not stolen.
One day I ended up taking the original $20 bill and rode my bicycle to a local convenience store near my school. I’d been experiencing a whole new kind of freedom. Not long after the I-should-have-killed-you-when-I-had-the-chance episode, which my father beat me half to death for, Bulinda seemed not to give a damn about what I was doing most of the time. Maybe she caught a glimpse of a maliciously molded little monster of her own creation. One thing she had to have concluded was that if she’d have kept pushing, she was going to instigate her own demise. It was right around the corner because I’d had enough. She might succeed in pushing me over the edge, but I was going to try damned hard to kill her on my way down.
As she loosened her chokehold on me, I ventured out, focusing on new experiences. One of the things I did every afternoon was ride my bike several miles to my Uncle Carlton’s house. He raised and trained expensive hunting dogs that were used to track deer, rabbit, coon, squirrel, and dove. He was also a taxidermist. I had shot a rare black squirrel, and I also had a trophy largemouth bass. I wanted them both mounted, so Uncle Carlton let me clean his kennels to pay off the debt. I also got to assist him in the taxidermy shop. The freedom to bike to his house also allowed me to sneak off to other places too. One of the little stores in the village had a few arcade games, and I became a frequent visitor to that establishment.
I got hooked on the video games and found out they sold Topps and Donruss baseball cards. I had a shoebox of old baseball cards shoved under my bed, so who would notice if I added a few more? I started by adding dozens and then hundreds of cards. I quickly became an avid collector. I’d say I became addicted to the act of collecting.
On one afternoon my old nemesis, Harvey, walked into the store while I was playing a game called Pole Position. He walked up and stood beside me, watching me play, and I worried that he was about to start in on me. I imagined him dragging me out and beating me up in the parking lot. Without looking at him I asked if he wanted to play. He said, “Hell yeah!”
I dropped another quarter in the machine and stepped to the side. After placing a few more quarters on the dash I moved to the other game and started blowing up tanks and helicopters. After a while, I asked Harvey if he wanted a snack, to which he replied, “Hell yeah!”
I handed him two dollars and he bought a Snickers, a pack of gum, and a fountain drink. (Yes, all of that for two bucks in 1988.) While I paid for my own snacks and a dozen packs of baseball cards, Harvey walked back down the aisle that the games were on. That aisle was also the soda aisle. At the end of the aisle were beer and wine coolers. I gathered my items and walked over to see what he was doing, and nearly ran into him when I turned the corner.
“I almost forgot this!” he said loudly and held up a quarter.
We walked out of the store and mounted our bikes, then Harvey told me to follow him as he peddled towards Beco Road. We crossed the bridge over New River Canal, where I instantly grew worried. Harvey, like me, lived on George Lambert Road. It would make sense for me to use Beco, which snaked along in a winding parallel to George Lambert. I would just stay on Beco to Taylor Sheets, make a left, and at the next stop sign, I’d quite literally be home. The mobile home I lived in was just across the street from there. Harvey, on the other hand, would be traveling several miles out of his way to get home. Once again fear was tugging at my chest. The anxiety was so strong that it felt like it was going to split the top of my skull and burst out. Yet I followed him anyway.
Across the canal, Harvey made a sharp left onto a shell driveway that paralleled the canal. That offered me a little relief. The driveway followed the canal all the way to George Lambert. Just when I’d relaxed a bit, Harvey made a quick left and disappeared down the embankment leading to the water’s edge. I stopped on the shell drive. Harvey was at the bottom, looking up at me. He dropped his bike and hollered, “Come on man!”
Several scenarios began to play out in my head. Did he want me to come down there so he could beat the shit out of me? Rob me? My baseball card habit led me to dip heavily into the stash of stolen cash. At that very moment, I had more than twenty bucks in my pocket. I took a deep breath, got off my bike, and cautiously made my way down the slope. Harvey smiled and disappeared under the bridge. I dropped my bike and stopped when I got to the squishy mud at the water’s edge. When I looked beneath the bridge, allowing my eyes to follow the slope up to where the bridge met the top of the embankment, I saw Harvey sitting against one of the concrete supports. I could smell the creosote. Its pungent, chemical odor was strong enough to make my eyes water. I saw that Harvey was drinking from a bottle containing red liquid. I crawled up and sat next to him where I breathed in the fermented aroma arising from the red juice in the open bottle. When Harvey opened his mouth to speak, the smell floated on his breath. “Mad Dog,” he said as he handed me the flat, glass bottle.
I looked at the label: “MD 20/20.” I’d had beer before, and I’d tasted tiny amounts of liquor when I found it in a cupboard somewhere. Maw-maw kept rum and gin for various cooking and baking projects, but I’d never had anything that smelled so delicious. I put the container to my lips and tilted it back. It tasted sweet and fruity, with a hint of banana. I swallowed the malt liquor and scrutinized the bottle again. “Banana Red” was written on the label. That explained a lot. I took another swig, bigger than the first, and passed the bottle back to Harvey. By then he had pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds and was packing them on his palm. He asked if I smoked and I said, “Hell yeah!”
The truth, however, was that I’d tried tobacco and didn’t care for it. I didn’t like the taste of cigarette smoke. My dad smoked between three and four packs a day and Bulinda consumed two or three packs herself. Our trailer was always filled with cigarette smoke — thick, blue-grey, non-dissipating clouds of it. But when Harvey handed me the pack, after he removed a cigarette for himself, I pulled one out and lit it. Breathing in long and deep, my head immediately began swimming dizzily. I think I nearly fainted. I don’t remember coughing or choking on the smoke. In the movies, people always seemed to cough when they first inhaled, but I didn’t. I handed the pack and lighter back to Harvey, and he passed me the bottle. I took it and leaned back against the concrete support. There we sat. One kid who’d spent nearly all of middle school being harassed and humiliated and beaten up by the other. The bully and his prey sat together drinking cheap liquor, smoking premium cigarettes, and shooting the breeze in the cool shade.
“How’d you get all this?” I slurred.
“When I went back to get that quarter, I just went to the liquor cabinet and swiped it. Bottle’s flat, so you just stick it here,” he said, as he tugged on the front of his waistband. “Cover it with your shirt and they’ll never see it!”
“What about the cigarettes?”
“I bought ‘em.”
“Where?” I asked, curious as to how he could purchase them since he was the same age as me, 13.
“Shit, you can buy ‘em anywhere, man! Just go to the counter with a five and ask for two packs o’ Reds. Even if they look at you crazy, they gon’ sell ‘em to ya.”
“Won’t they just do that for this stuff too?” I asked, pointing to the bottle.
“Hell naw! Are you stupid? They can go to jail for that shit!” he mocked.
I decided that I’d already asked enough stupid questions, so I tilted the bottle back once more and enjoyed another long swallow of the powerfully sweet nectar. Together we sat, smoking cigarettes until the bottle was empty. Harvey chucked the bottle into the canal and got up. I could tell that it was time to go. So I joined him. We mounted our bikes and headed out.
By the time we reached his turnoff, I was already getting sick. The world was spinning, and I got disoriented. I continued towards home after leaving Harvey and in less than a quarter mile I wrecked my bike. I was in the middle of the road, in the sharp bend of an S curve when I started spewing my stomach contents all over the asphalt. I vomited until only dry heaves remained, rocking my body in painful convulsions. Had a vehicle been speeding around those curves at that very moment, my life would’ve ended that day. I rolled over and lay in the road, staring at a cloudless sky. Fortunately for me, no cars came. Groaning, I felt Earth spinning on its axis. When I was able to muster enough energy to stand and walk over to my bike, which had rolled to a stop in a briar patch, I pulled it loose and checked it for damage. It was fine. Then I looked at the road and wrinkled my nose at the sight. Broad swathes of chunky, red vomit were splattered all over it, like swathes of paint.
I walked alongside my bicycle and stopped on top of the bridge over Duck Roost Bayou, where I leaned over the side to watch the lazily flowing brown water. I struggled with the drunken stupor the devilishly delicious drink had put me in. What had gone down tasting of sweet, intoxicating honey, now tasted like sour poison as another spray of acidic bile erupted from my mouth. I almost fell over the side into the muddy water below. I’d finally expelled what was left of the malt liquor, so I made my way down to the bayou’s edge where I pulled off my T-shirt then squatted beside the fishy-smelling, turbid water. I rinsed my face and slurped some of the water into my mouth to wash away the acrid taste of puke. As I swished it around, I could feel silty grit passing between my teeth. I spit the water out and breathed deeply through my nose. Feeling slightly refreshed, I sluggishly returned to my bike, then made my way back home. My dad arrived home just before I did but must not have suspected anything. He messed around for a moment then walked over to Aunt Sharon’s to help Bulinda. I took a shower, which helped to enliven my senses some more, then made my way through the backyard and into the woods. Lumbering through the underbrush, I made it to one of my little lean-to trapper camps, crawled beneath it, and passed out. Other than the azalea bush incident when I was six, it was my first time being shit-faced drunk; it wouldn’t be my last.
My addictions and habits continued to expand as I headed into eighth grade. I’d taken to stealing, drinking alcohol, hoarding baseball cards, smoking cigarettes, and wandering alone through the woods.
Then I found my dad porn’s collection.
Chapter 15
Hospital Growing Pains
Liam received word that he was going to be released. He’d been accepted by a halfway house and became excited that he’d be leaving; yet we both fretted over being separated. Our friendship was about to be cut short. I knew that in a week or two I’d have no one to hold me, no one to comfort me in my times of sadness, no one to love me physically, and no one to truly care. My relationship with Penny was new, and I was in uncharted waters. An all-consuming childhood fear crept back in, and dreadfulness occupied my thoughts. I would once again be alone. Whether confined to my bedroom, shunned in school, used and pushed away by family, it all came down to feeling and being alone. It’s a terrible confusion when, as a child, you want to be left alone so as not to be caused to feel pain and sadness and loss, but to also desire a feeling of wantedness. I think that maybe it is easier to go through life detached rather than abandoned.
My first few nights without Liam were the hardest. Shadows slithered across the walls of my room, crawled along the ceiling, and slinked across the floor. Fiendish whispers taunted me, growing louder with the passing of each torturous hour. Anthony, my new roommate, slept peacefully through the night while I attempted to stifle any sobs that tried to escape. They were determined to not be silenced. I was tortured again and again on my little cot and there was no one there to comfort me.
It wasn’t until after Liam left that I found out why he was there. A judge had ordered him there instead of sentencing him in Louisiana’s juvenile court system. Medicated with lithium and other psychotropics, and through counseling, Liam had progressed well, and his moods were stabilized. Several weeks after his departure we received word that he had been re-institutionalized at a different hospital. Rumors spread as to why, but none of us really knew the answer. Regardless of whether he was a sex offender or not, I loved Liam and I somehow knew I’d never see him again.
Eventually, I was able to focus more on school, and my assimilation with the others. I also grew fonder of Penny. Time at the hospital was flying by and a lot of it had to do with school. The only time I truly enjoyed school was while I attended it at Greenwell Springs Hospital. I excelled, as usual, at art and English, and struggled with math. I started, though never finished, several pen and ink pieces, and worked on a few copper tooling projects. But writing was the thing that seemed to come naturally. It was also the route that led me to the pasture that offered me the most peace.
Poetry was my favorite avenue of all, and rather than just writing and following my own ideas concerning verse, I wish I’d paid more attention to form and actually learned how to write. The same holds true when it comes to writing prose. I didn’t focus enough on grammar and punctuation, nor did I work hard enough to expand my vocabulary. What I did do was practice a free-flow style of expression. My art teacher and my English teacher were one and the same, and she loved my writing.
The school was set up a lot like adult education classes. The idea was that most of us would return to the public school system, so the goal of Special School District #1 (the governing body for educational services located in hospitals and other state-run facilities) was to keep our spongy brains expanding.
March bled into April and with April came hotter, more humid days capped off by evening showers. The entire school had PE together and it was right before lunch. We often played kickball and it was then that Penny and I were able to spend the most time together. As our one-month anniversary passed, we became more and more fascinated with one another. I would say enthralled even. I missed Liam, but I found that the more I opened up to Penny, the more I trusted her. She was no longer just the girl with Abigail’s eyes — she was my girlfriend. But she was quickly becoming more than that. She was turning into another obsession. So much so that I gave her my grandmother’s engagement ring and asked her to marry me.
Like me, Penny had been sexually abused. Like me, Penny struggled with depression. Like me, Penny struggled with her identity. Like me, Penny was prone to addiction and obsessive behaviors and habits. And like me, Penny was easily manipulated by ever-changing and over-exaggerated emotions. Fate, it seemed, was setting us up for a painful fall.
During this time, others took notice of us. Several girls were vying for my attention, and other boys were doing the same with regard to Penny. Rumors about Penny mingling with this boy and that started fluttering on the breeze and I became jealous. Then, one day I gave her reason to be equally as possessive of me.
I’d been placed in a small “growth” group that consisted of just two boys and two girls, and facilitated by one counselor, Miss Shields. We came together in the Southwing girls’ lounge for our sessions. Basically, we just sat around and talked about what was bothering us and we were encouraged to open up and trust our peers. Ideally, we’d help one another grow and develop better relationships and improve our social skills. It was all going well until Miss Shields was summoned one day to some emergency, leaving the four of us alone in the lounge. Finding ourselves unsupervised... we gave into nature. Tricia latched onto Anthony and started kissing him deeply and sloppily. Crystal turned to me, and we instinctively locked mouths. When Miss Shields poked her head back into the room, we didn’t separate fast enough, and the damaging domino effect was set in motion. All four of us received an incident report for PDA, lost a level, and lost snack machine privileges. But by dinnertime, word about what had happened reached the Annex. Penny went ballistic and had to be restrained. I’d broken her trust and although our relationship survived for a while longer, I never regained it.
I was hurting as well. Sure, Crystal was cute and promiscuous, and I really liked her tomboyish style, but she wasn’t Penny. She didn’t have Penny’s eyes. Abigail’s eyes. That night in the cafeteria Penny let me know how she felt. She called me a “fuckin’ asshole” and a lot of other derogatory monikers. I rightly deserved it. I may have begged her to forgive me, but I didn’t believe I deserved forgiveness. I apologized, but she wouldn’t hear it. She got up, left her tray, and walked out. She was emotionally devastated, I was the cause, and Penny broke up with me.
The next afternoon, Penny and Crystal got into a fistfight on the sidewalk while moving between classes. By the time I reached the commotion, they’d already stopped throwing punches and were wrestling on the ground. Penny’s nose was gushing blood and Crystal had blood coming out of her mouth. When they separated, I ran to Penny and hugged her. She buried her face between my shoulder and neck and started apologizing. Hearing her say that she was sorry added to my regret and guilt. I knew that it was all my fault. “Mr. Green Jeans” had been called and the squad showed up and grabbed all three of us. They led the girls away towards the infirmary and escorted me back to Southwing. Wayne, the orderly escorting me, brought me to the head nurse, Mrs. Boucher, who wanted to know what had happened and what was my involvement. I told her everything and how it all tied together. I broke into tears as I confessed it was all my fault.
The normally reserved and stern elderly nurse placed her soft and wrinkled hand on my arm and spoke gently.
“Michael. We all make our own decisions. No one can make you do or feel anything unless you choose to. Ultimately you have to make a choice! Even if the situation seems impossible, or even unreasonable. Even with a gun to your...” She stopped at that. I think she realized she was about to paint the wrong picture in my mind. Then, with a passive wave of her hand, as if she were wiping something off a chalkboard, she finished with, “Penny and Crystal made their own choices.”
This wasn’t old nurse Boucher talking to me, it was a wise grandmother sharing with me one of those little jewels of life. One about personal responsibility.
When I went back to my room and pulled off my dingy white St. Amant Track T-shirt, I saw the front was spattered with blood, as was the shoulder where she’d buried her face. I turned it around and saw two crimson handprints, remnants of Penny’s bloody hug. I managed to keep that shirt, through one hospitalization after another, one incarceration to the next, and through each relationship that was to come. I held onto that shirt for nearly two decades as a reminder about making choices.
* * *
The only prom I ever attended was at Greenwell Springs Mental Hospital. I escorted Penny, of course. We continued to have our ups and downs, but obsession drove us both to stay together. Depressed and lonely people tend to attract one another. I wrote a lot of poetry to her and drew pictures of hearts and roses with her name emblazoned across the paper. I had a Quiet Riot cassette tape that I recorded a “secret” message to Penny on. There was a lengthy section of blank tape at the end, right after the song, “Love’s a Bitch.” That’s where I recorded my “I’ll always love you” message.
Teachers and staff and groups of girls from both Southwing and the Annex decorated the gym with banners and ribbons and balloons. A giant banner with “An Enchanting Night to Remember” was hung across the stage area. It definitely was.
Many of us wore clothes that had been donated by a local church group. The hospital also had a large room filled with donated clothes, most of which came from past patients. There were clothes in that room that dated back to at least the forties or fifties. Penny wore a donated royal blue strapless gown with ruffles on the sleeves. She looked stunning. Miss Donna bought new stockings for her and loaned her a pair of glossy black high heels. I wore black slacks and a powder pink button-down with a skinny blue tie. Black loafers finished out my “hip” uniform.
It really was prom. All the girls styled each other’s hair, did each other’s makeup. Angel and Dana, Tricia and Sarah, Kara and Penny, and all the others were giddy with excitement. The whole hospital was abuzz with an energy that expelled the morose, heavy sadness that lingered like a thick fog in its halls. It pushed out and replaced something else as well. The scent. The odor of mental illness. It had been replaced, if only temporarily, by a euphoria that smelled like perfume and sweat and teenage hormones raging against misery. We were all happy — normal.
The DJ played request after request, and I learned how to do the electric slide that night. My request to the DJ was for a song by Motley Crüe titled “Without You.” Penny and I broke the six-inch-between rule the staff had implemented during slow dances, but no one seemed to notice.
The night was coming to an end, the DJ made the announcement, saying “This one here is the last dance y’all. Make it count.” The most quintessential slow dance song of all time followed.
Halfway through Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye,” a boy named Jesse snuck over to the light panel and flipped the switch. The gym instantly went dark and at least half the crowd started whooping and hollering and whistling. Penny and I were not among them. Our bodies locked together, and our mouths found each other. Her warm lips begged me in, and our tongues mingled in a moist embrace. The lights were only off for five or six seconds but it was all we needed to seal our spring love. On prom night, in a dark gym at Greenwell Springs Hospital, beneath a banner that read “An Enchanting Night to Remember,” Penny and I shared our first passionate kiss. It was to be the only kiss we’d ever share. When the lights came back on, we knew we’d been caught. Miss Donna was looking right at us. She mouthed the words, “That’s the last one!” But she wasn’t the only one that saw us.
Three days later, I was brought over to the Annex. A meeting had been scheduled between the two treatment teams, mine and Penny’s. Our relationship was deemed inappropriate, and according to a least one doctor, “harmful,” so the intervention was for us to have a “healthy breakup.” The spring of our love was over.
Chapter 16
Baseball Cards, Break-Ins, and Porn
I became addicted to collecting things early. In 1988-89 I was in eighth grade. That school year was comprised of my thirteenth and fourteenth years of life on this earth. If the seeds of my emotional and sexual psyche were planted during the previous eight years, beginning at age five, then it was in eighth grade when fertilizer was added. They germinated during the summer, beginning with a gay love affair with a college boy, then stealing a fat envelope of cash from my step-grandmother, and tasting malt liquor for the first time. I was addicted to sex, addicted to the thrill of stealing, addicted to alcohol, and now addicted to baseball card collecting. I know that doesn’t sound like it fits, but it does. All the addictions (and others you’ll soon learn about) did their part to fill an emotional or sexual need. Well, for the most part.
I took baseball card collecting very seriously. Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens, Ricky Jackson, Darrell Strawberry, and my two favorites, Mark McGuire and Jose Conseco, were all huge names in the late ‘80s. I collected their cards religiously. Looking back, it’s safe to say that most of my idols had addictions. Collecting cards gave me a sense of fulfillment, but there was also something else to it. Comradery. Not necessarily friendships, because I didn’t share any other life experiences with my trading partners, but close enough. The only thing I had in common with them was card collecting. The most important person, to me, in the group, was Al. Al was my go-to guy for purchasing packs of new cards and box sets, as well as the trade journal Beckett Monthly. The only cards I could get at the little Triple S Convenience Store were Topps and Donruss, but Al went to the Card Stop shop in Gonzales. I’ve never personally stepped foot in the place, but I spent at least a thousand dollars there during the 1988-89 school year. I’d hand Al 30 or 40 dollars every week and he’d come back the following day with cards and magazines. I acquired mint condition rookie cards, some of them autographed — like Ken Griffey, Jr. — and even an autographed Jose Conseco baseball. My card collection required three codependences. The first was stealing. The second was social dependence. And the third was the obsession itself.
I had to steal money to buy the cards, and that money came from Grandma Howard’s purse. What started out as an accidental thrill (kind of) had become a greed-driven necessity. Then I became socially dependent on the little “club” of collectors that accepted me. I didn’t feel so alone. It was so powerful, the need to be accepted, that I became obsessed. That obsession led to me feeling like I needed more cards so that I would be more accepted. I know it sounds childish, but that’s because I was a child. I was 13.
As my collection grew, so did my anxiety. I had no place to store it! I had thousands upon thousands of cards. All but about 500 had been sneaked home from school in my backpack. I had to find a way to hide my hoard!
Right around that same time was when I really started branching out into wooded areas all around St. Amant and Acy. I already had two nice trapper-shacks in the woods on my grandma’s property, so branching out and finding new adventures was next in line. My sense of adventure was strong. Being “sneaky” and tramping through unfamiliar places raised my dopamine levels to near euphoria. I truly enjoyed being in the woods and finding old, abandoned structures. I searched for acceptable spots to build more camps, hideaways that were my secret domains. There were dozens of these camps all throughout the woods in and around St. Amant. Little patches of disturbed ground where I erected lean-tos and built campfires, tossed empty bottles of Mad Dog and Yoo-Hoo, and things I’d stolen from barns and sheds. Things like axes and machetes, lanterns and leather goods, and knives. When my dad threw out an enormous stack of old porn mags, I saved them from the burn pile. I hid a few of my favorites beneath my dresser, but the rest I wrapped in heavy plastic and stashed in my camps. And that is what gave me the idea to hide my card collection. In one of the old barns I snuck into, I found nearly a dozen empty military ammo boxes. I wrapped bundles of cards in plastic and buried them in ammo boxes at the locations where I built my camps. That way I could make room to continue to grow my collection. Obsessively.
The same thing happened with skateboards. I was beginning to hang out with a group of guys that were into the skate culture. Cody, Ben, Travis, and my cousin, Tony, were my first real friends, not just acquaintances. Cody would go to the skate shop and buy equipment for me. I’d rough it all up a little so my dad would believe me when I told him someone had given it to me. I was becoming more driven by deviant thinking. I was scheming.
When I ran out of money from the first envelope, I went back to the purse. It had been many months since I’d taken the first one. I opened the purse and saw that several new envelopes had been added to the vault. I removed one. It was thick and when I counted it, a surge of adrenaline flooded my brain! The envelope contained 13 brand-new crisp $100 bills. The thrill was so strong that it gave me an erection. For all I knew she could have just added it within the last few days. I could have returned it and not taken any more money. I could have allowed regret and guilt and shame to turn me around that day, but I didn’t. I struggled with all these emotions regularly, but when it came to manias and compulsions, I just had to fill the need. Feeding the thrill was a necessity.
By the time the new year rolled around I was drinking alcohol regularly. Mostly I drink “rotgut” like MD 20/20 and Red Dawg beer, but occasionally I was able to steal small flat bottles of liquor like Seagram’s VO. Pretty much any small thin flat bottle of alcohol left unguarded in a display case was susceptible to my appetite for consumption. That’s how I found vodka. With its “cloak of invisibility,” vodka allowed me to numb myself at school. By adding a few shots of vodka to a bottle of orange juice, I could hide my blooming alcoholism while at the same time feeding a new thrill — drinking in school. Now I could drink nearly every day and maybe not get caught. The alcohol was barely perceptible on my breath. New habits brought me in contact a lot more often with my old friends and some new enemies. Walter and Abigail were welcome, but now demons were lurking in reflective surfaces. They were not defined, mostly just shadowy blobs, but they were menacing and terrifying. And I could hear them. Besides the snarling and growling and squealing like pigs, they belittled me. They told me to kill myself — and others — and pointed out the hate that I knew was inside me. So I retreated deeper into the woods and further into deviancy.
No longer satisfied with just sneaking through woods, stealing tools from barns, and feeding my obsessive-compulsivity through ill-gotten gains, I turned my attention to entering people’s homes. Sometimes a resident would even be home. That intensified the high, perverted as it was, even more. There was a thrill in doing these things and not being detected. Being “invisible” felt good. It was exhilarating and made me feel alive.
I didn’t sneak into houses necessarily seeking to steal anything. At first. In the beginning, it was all about the secrecy, the stealth of it all. I can now identify this voyeuristic fetish as being an obsession that carried a sense of violation. It was a feeling of arousal that sprang from my knowledge that I was there, mixed with the homeowner’s ignorance of my presence. That all changed one balmy Sunday morning during the second half of the school year. I walked through the woods adjacent to a subdivision not far from my house and entered someone’s backyard. The first window I tested was not locked. I lifted it slowly and waited, listening for any sounds of life. Just raising the window made me lightheaded. The rush made my muscles feel energized and gooseflesh rose on my arms. The mental alertness was invigorating. I felt alive, and something else. Powerful. In those instances, I was not the powerless little whipping boy I’d been programmed to be. Instead, I was a quiet, hidden force able to move in and out of people’s lives, and livelihoods, without their even knowing about it.
Through the window, I could see a thin strip of light about two-and-a-half feet long running along the floor on the opposite wall. The bedroom door was closed, so I crawled into the house through the window. Once inside, my excitement only grew. I took deep breaths, trying to ease the panic and push out the fear. I had two choices: flee through the window I’d just climbed through, or fight by moving forward with the unauthorized entry. I stayed. I stood up and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness and gather my bearings. Even before I could see clearly, I knew that I was in a girl’s bedroom. Teenage pheromones and their receptors are aggressive, and although modern humans tend to lack many of our prehistoric ancestors’ natural instincts and extrasensory capabilities, there is at least one trait we still possess. Standing there in the dark I could smell her.
My eyes quickly adapted to the dark and I could see that I was alone. So I walked to the closed door, listened, turned the knob, and pulled it open a crack. All I heard was the rhythmic ticking of a wall clock somewhere in the home. Other than the tick-tocking clock, the home was enveloped in a preternatural silence. For some reason, at that very moment, I thought of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. I stepped into the hall and walked to each door I encountered, stopping to listen at each barred entrance, and only peeking into the room when I was certain I hadn’t heard any turning pages or heavy breathing by a content napper, or pet sounds made by a dog ready to pounce. I was also listening for changes in air pressure, and the hammer being cocked on a handgun. I processed the entire house, going through another girl’s bedroom and one shared by at least two boys. The master bedroom held kinky treasures — sex toys like a whip and handcuffs in addition to a huge porn collection in the closet. The mom and dad in this cute family were heavily into bondage and sadomasochism. There were titles like “Schoolgirl Sex Slaves” and “Daddy’s Girl.” Some of the VHS tapes looked homemade.
In the den, I found an oak and glass gun cabinet. It was locked, and although I could’ve broken the glass to steal the rifles, that’s not why I was there. The whole point was to go unnoticed. But I wanted to feel the guns, to hold them. I reached up to feel for a key on top of the cabinet. There was no key, but I did find something else. Grasping the object, I brought it down and gawked at what I’d found. I rubbed it affectionately, moving my fingers over the cold smooth finish. I massaged the rigid grip that looked customized. The Beretta 9 mm was sleek and clean, and holding it made me horny. I pulled the slide back slightly to reveal a shiny brass casing at the ready. I had seen this weapon on TV, and I knew the police were wary of any person possessing a semi-automatic handgun that was capable of firing so many bullets in such rapid succession. When I left the home that day, back through the same window I’d entered, I took three souvenirs with me: a photograph of a classmate that I’d removed from a pegboard on her bedroom wall, a pair of dirty panties from the hamper in her room, and the Beretta, which I tucked in the back of my waistband like Magnum P.I.
When I scampered back to the woods that morning, while many families were in church, I was smiling, scared, excited, and ashamed... The photograph depicted the smiling face of a girl. She sat behind me in social studies. A girl who’d teased me for years. A girl whose photograph and panties I now possessed. I brought all three items with me to school the following day. The gun stayed in my backpack, but the panties and picture didn’t. I placed them together on a bench in the boys’ locker room during PE. It was a clandestine operation of course. I sought revenge against a girl who had tormented me viciously and relentlessly (and continued to do so even though she never found out I was the one who’d embarrassed her). Several boys teased her fiercely about the stained cotton panties they’d found with her picture. Humiliated, she cried and suffered the embarrassment and despair and torment I knew all too well. She got a full dose of it, and I went home that day and cried. I felt horrible. I hated myself for what I’d done. I went into the woods and drank to get numb. Ashamed, I learned that revenge was not my forte. That day, while sitting beneath a lean-to debris shelter, I held the pistol to my head. It was the farthest I’d ever gone. The closest I’d been to actually committing suicide.
Chapter 17
Up, Up, and... Oh, Wait!
Penny and I had been forced apart nearly a month before my discharge from Greenwell Springs. I occupied my last 30 days by taking art and sock hop classes (yes... 50’s rock ‘n roll dancing...), going on furloughs, and attending vocational rehabilitation. School ended for the school year, but we were still required to take summer school. I was 16 so I had the choice to go to the vocational rehabilitation center located on the hospital grounds. There, I took a typing class and a woodworking class. I enjoyed both. I was the only boy in the sock hop class, so I had to dance with all the girls. I really liked the dance class, but I caught a lot of flak from several of the girls’ “hospital boyfriends.”
There were also off-grounds excursions for level one and level two patients. We went to the old Robert E. Lee theater to watch the one-dollar matinee, enjoyed swimming in the Amite River that flowed along the backside of the hospital property, and even attended a big indoor carnival at the Centroplex in downtown Baton Rouge. (The Centroplex was later renamed the Raisin’ Canes River Center.) I was actually part of a small group responsible for a bake sale to earn funds to attend the fair. Then, two weeks before my release, while home on a weekend furlough, I met Lacy.
Grant and my mom picked me up early on Saturday morning. They were in a hurry to get back because my baby sister’s father, TC, was due to arrive by lunch. He was driving in from the Texas hill country with his family. They were coming to pick up Karli early so that she could spend the summer with her dad. They were waiting for us when we got home. I took notice of Karli’s stepsister immediately. She was short, maybe an inch over five feet, with California blonde hair and sky-blue eyes. She had a very feminine “cuteness” quality but was also tomboyish. It was a strange combination, to say the least, but I found her very attractive. I found myself lusting after TC’s stepdaughter. My sister Karli’s stepsister. A 17-year-old hellcat named Lacy.
She and I hit it off immediately. Niceties turned to flirtations, then to deep passionate kissing. I don’t know why it happened then, and I especially don’t know why it happened with her, but I felt a level of sexual attraction I had never felt with a girl before. My bond with Penny wasn’t based on sexual attraction. The few girls I’d ever dated didn’t have that effect on me. The closest had been Mandi, less than a year before. But even that was an emotional obsession, not a sexual interest. In fact, only two boys had ever garnered such powerful allurement: Cody, the collegiate swimmer and lifeguard, and Ben, a guitar-playing skater that I never mustered the nerve to confess my love to. Not even Liam or Brady caused that level of desire to rage within me. But Lacy did. Before, when I was with a sexual partner, it was for their physical release and my emotional need. But when I was near Lacy, I burned with passion, and I wanted to bury myself inside of her so that she would burn too.
On Sunday morning, we walked over to my cousin’s shotgun shanty. It was me, Lacy, my other sister Rae, and my cousins, Sonny and Solina. They’d moved across town after their mom, my aunt Donna, split from her husband George. Once there, it was loud music and lots of laughter. Good times were had. Lacy and I made out and after a while, she went over and whispered something in Solina’s ear. Solina grinned deviously, then walked over to me. She informed me that Lacy was “ready.”
I looked at Lacy, then Solina. Puzzled, I asked, “Ready for what?”
Everyone laughed.
“Is she ready to leave?” I finished embarrassing myself.
“God, y’ur dumb!” Solina chuckled. Then she leaned over and whispered in my ear.
My eyes must’ve bulged when I blurted out, “OH! That!” My voice cracked a little when I said it. Everyone laughed, even Lacy. “Ha ha... Laugh it up, y’all.”
Solina took me by the hand and led me to the back of the little house. Lacy followed. Solina’s bedroom was all the way in the rear and a bare mattress lay in the middle of the floor. No box spring, no frame, just a mattress. She pointed at the bed, smiled, then turned to leave. As she walked to the door, she looked over her shoulder. She fluttered her eyelashes and said in a sexy voice, “Have fun, y’all!”
It was in the middle of June, in south Louisiana, in a house with seven-foot ceilings and no air conditioner. That meant the temperature was at least the same as it was outside. The little room was like a sauna. The window was open and the only thing circulating the air was a worn-out box fan that likely already had 100,000 miles on it. On top of all that, I had my own awkwardness to contend with. I was a sexually confused, 16-year-old medicated boy who’d never gone all the way with a girl. Lacy, on the other hand, seemed to be a semi-pro and was obviously more comfortable with the situation. When we had both shed our clothes and I slipped my fingers inside her, feeling her warm wetness from the inside, THAT was already further than I’d ever been with a member of the opposite sex. I’d been close to it when I was with Mandy six months earlier, and a little closer to it with a girl named Tammi two summers past, but I was never able to convince myself to “do it” with a girl. And on that sweltering summer day in a musty old shotgun house, sweating with a beautiful, sultry girl beneath me... I was still unable to do it.
She tried every little trick she knew. And believe me, she knew a lot. She did not give up easily. In fact, she tried for over an hour to get me to a place where I could enter her, but it just wasn’t happening. I couldn’t perform. She finally gave up with a sigh. We were both drenched in sweat, and although we smelled of sex, neither of us could consider what we did that day anything close to it. So we put our clothes back on.
She gave me a soft kiss and said, “You just let me handle it, okay.”
“Handle what?”
She giggled a schoolgirl’s snicker and said, “Just shut up and follow me, ya big dummy!”
We walked through the adjoining bedroom, past the bathroom, and then the kitchen. As we approached the rest of our group congregated in the front room, Lacy turned on the Michelle Pfeiffer. She acted as if she could barely walk and was panting heavily. The fact that we were soaking wet and smelled like sex probably helped to sell the lie. We were a sticky mess! Solina handed Lacy a brush so she could tame the rats’ nest that was her hair, and said, “Hell yeah!”
We exited the house as quickly as possible, and although it was just as hot outside, walking in the shade felt 10 degrees cooler. What Lacy had done, saving me the embarrassment I was sure to suffer, made me feel good inside. The way she carried on, “talking me up,” made me feel confident. I didn’t want to go back to the hospital, but I had to. I considered running away, but that would get me no closer to trying again with Lacy. That evening, just before embarking on the two-hour drive back to the hospital, Lacy pulled me into the bathroom. She kissed me long and seductively, and whispered, “Next time... okay?” It wasn’t really a question. She was letting me know that it wasn’t over yet.
During the ride back, I tried sorting through my confusion. Was I straight after all? Was I just a horny gay boy who’d fuck anything walking? Or was I bisexual — attracted to members of either sex? And what of the familial ties? Although Lacy and I didn’t share any blood relation (she and Karli are not blood relatives either), it was still awkward. Was it the fact that she was my kid sister’s stepsister that made it so exciting? The idea that it was so taboo was hot, and I was looking forward to another try. I wanted her to be the first girl to allow me inside of her. I craved intimate release with Lacy. It was time for me to go from hospital to heaven.
Chapter 18
Hospital to Heaven
Prozac was still fairly new in 1991, and studies about its effects on a teenager’s cognitive and behavioral development were not very clear yet. Studies later determined that Prozac could cause violent outbursts and even enhance suicidal ideation in children under the age of 16. Dr. Simon, after hearing of my trouble with trying to obtain an erection, canceled my Asendin and prescribed Prozac to help me combat my depression. Two weeks later, I was released from Greenwell Springs Hospital. On June 25, 1991, the day after my discharge, I woke up to Lacy performing oral sex on me, and this time there was no issue getting my libido to line up with my anatomy. I spent the next three weeks stuck to Lacy. We made love every day, three to five times a day. In the morning right after Mom and Grant left for work. Again, an hour or two later. Again, in the cemetery, or in the woods, or at my cousin’s house. At night in my sister’s room after Mom and Grant went to bed. The thrill of getting caught raised the excitement level to just above intoxicating. Even Rae got involved by telling me to perform oral sex on Lacy. Apparently, no one had ever “gone down” on her and she’d mentioned it to Rae. I’d never done that to a girl, so with Rae right beside her, I performed oral sex for the first time. More taboo. More deviancy.
A lot had changed during the 101 days I spent in the hospital. Friends like Jesse and Beverly moved away while new friends like Markey, Daniel, and Kandice moved to Berwick. There was also a new boy named Benji. My sister, Raechel, and cousin, Solina, were arguing over him. Solina got pregnant by Benji and that ended the argument. The rest of the old gang remained the same. There was Dicky and Ronnie and of course my cousins Sonny and Solina. Occasionally our friend Johnny stayed out of juvie long enough to hang out with us too. The only person missing was Karli. She was still in Texas with her father.
Raechel and I were getting along very well. There was occasional tension because of all the time Lacy and I spent together, but nothing serious. So for the first three weeks after returning home, there were abundant escapades of sexual awakening, barbecue, and beer on the Fourth of July, along with boogie boards and bikinis and sex on the beach. After those three weeks, my mom made arrangements for Rae and me to join Karli in Texas for a month. So on July 15, Grant and Mom brought me, Rae, and Lacy to Houston to meet up with TC, who was driving in from Junction, Texas. That evening, sitting in the plush leather back seat of a new navy-blue Cadillac El Dorado, I crossed the bridge into paradise.
The only time I’d ever been away from south Louisiana was the two summer vacations I’d spent in Biloxi. So when I saw the rising and falling Texas hill country, through road cuts and alongside clear, fast-flowing streams, I was in awe. The farther west we drove along Interstate 10, the more enamored I became. Then that old blue-green trestle bridge came into view. A scintillating, aquamarine reservoir filled the space beneath it, and I saw people swimming and splashing. Others were flying kites. TC turned the air conditioner off and rolled down the windows. The smell of barbecue and cedar and fish and evergreen filled my nostrils as we crossed the bridge, passed the park, and drove through town. We passed an old courthouse and a marqueed one-screen movie theater, then eventually turned off the main road. As we passed a place called The Milky Way, I smelled burgers cooking. It was an old-timey drive-up diner that would still sell you a cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper and hand-cut French fries. I had 30 days with which to make the most out of this trip, and I intended to do just that!
I knew that Lacy had a boyfriend, and she made it clear that she would have no problem setting me up with her friends. She held true to that and introduced me to a girl named Autumn, but it would be someone I’d meet on my own that I’d spend the most time with. Another girl who left an indelible mark in my memory.
A few days after arriving, Rae, Karli, Lacy, and Lacy’s sister Theresa, and I all went to the theater to watch Freddy’s Dead in 3-D. Two girls were sitting right in front of me. One had curly ash-blonde hair, and the other had straight black hair. They were tossing popcorn back and forth at each other and I took a chance by throwing some of my own. It got their attention. After brief introductions, I left with them in Linda’s car once the show had ended. Maria, the black-haired girl, had to check in at home after the movie and got stuck there after her little brother saw me in the car. So it ended up being just me and Linda. I hopped in the front seat, and we talked while she drove. She took me all over town. Up in the hills were beautiful ranch-style houses built out of smooth, flat, river rocks. While up in the hills she put her car in park in the middle of the road and turned the brights on. I asked what she was doing, and she told me to wait. We chatted some more while I waited and got to know each other. She’d just turned 17 and was a senior in high school. She liked the way I dressed because it was different from the Wranglers and western shirts all the boys around town wore. Just then, she pointed. I’d been staring at her, so I followed her finger. On the road in front of us, several deer were staring at us in the light shine. Their eyes were glowing and ears twitching. They were smaller than the deer back home, but the little buck was proud. He grunted then walked on. The three smaller does followed. I started to speak, but Linda said, “Wait.” I kept watching. Another minute passed and then another half-dozen deer came into view. These were less cautious. They casually crossed the road, disappearing through another yard. Dozens more crossed during the next 10 minutes and although I hadn’t noticed it before, Linda had scooted from behind the wheel and was sitting next to me on the bench seat. I reached over and held her hand, and she rested her head on my shoulder.
When it looked as though the show was over, she got back behind the wheel and put it in drive. I asked her if there were someplace we could go and park, get out and enjoy the night. She brought me down to the dam that creates the town’s reservoir. There are public parks on both sides of the reservoir and the dam goes from one park to the other. The top of it is only about 18 inches wide, and although the current flowing over it is fairly strong, it’s rather easy to walk across. After “teaching” me that, we crossed back to her car. I picked her up and sat her on the hood and we kissed. The first was short and soft. So was the second. I kissed her the same way Cody had kissed me three summers earlier. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done to me during that buildup to the heat of passion. I kissed the corners of her mouth, then one cheek, up to her temple and forehead. Then down again. Temple, then cheek, then chin. Then I kissed her neck with little open-mouth kisses, closing at the end of each, ending with a gentle little suckle. With each one of those, Linda gently moaned. I felt her getting warmer, the pulse in her neck quickened. She raised her arms and ran them along my sides, then pulled off my shirt. I kissed her dewy, eager lips, this time searching for warmth. As they parted, her tongue pushed into my mouth and mingled with mine. Now she was taking control. Still kissing me, she unfastened the button on her shorts and pulled them off, our mouths never breaking seal. Then, as she kicked the shorts down her legs, till they fell from her ankles, she reached for my belt. Instinctively I ran my hand along her thigh, beginning at her knee, then moving slowly towards the warmth I could feel radiating from her cleft. Linda was noticeably trembling now. I broke the kiss and moved my mouth back to her neck, which she anxiously offered. I sucked hungrily just beneath her ear. My hand contacted the downy fluff between her legs. Her pubic hair was damp. Her breathing became heavy and labored, and she scooted to the very end of the hood, opening her legs wider as she did so. Our bodies made contact where she was warmest, and her hands grasped my ass before pulling me forcefully into her. There in the open, at a park situated on the banks of the South Llano River, beneath a canopy of a billion twinkling witnesses, we made love. Once, twice, three times. But not once during those hours did I ever achieve climax. We met a dozen more times to make love and not until the last time, on the night before I left Junction, did I have an orgasm. It wasn’t her fault. I just couldn’t finish.
On my last night in Junction, my sisters, Rae and Karli, along with Lacy, Theresa, their uncle Robert, Linda, and I all went skinny dipping on the opposite side of the river, directly across from the place Linda and I first made love. It was there, with everyone watching (we were all naked), that I was able to release and be one with Linda.
Chapter 19
The Calm Before the Storm
The summer of 1991 was the best summer of my youth. More than 29 summers later, it’s still in the top three. But that summer was the proverbial calm before the storm. A massive hurricane was building, and it would slam into everyone and everything I know and love. All of the emotional garbage that had been pumped in over the years of depression was beginning to expand and swell. Squall lines were forming, and I turned into a wild, destructive cyclone with a wide path of destruction. Hurricane Michael was spinning helter-skelter and out of control.
My sisters and I returned home in mid-August. I took my medications as prescribed and abstained from alcohol consumption. In my heart and mind, I did want to be a better son and brother, and a decent person. I tried to rationalize and normalize the deviant thoughts and behaviors of my past as being just the imaginings of a confused boy trying to cope with and push through the complexities of growing up. (For the people who are prone to saying and believing statements like, “Lots of kids are abused and go through bad things and they don’t grow up and do bad things...”, this chapter is to try to help you and more importantly help abused and emotionally troubled children to understand that lumping all these people together is like calling all candy chocolate.)
By ignoring and burying the abuse I suffered from ages five to 13, I was building a future destined to fail. A better example might be illustrated through the life of a goldfish, who only sees a distorted world through the curvature of the fishbowl. By not tackling my emotional and mental health problems earlier, by not speaking out sooner (and backing down due to fear), I convinced myself that I could fix my mind on my own. That taking psychotropics alone was all the outside help that I needed. One of the deepest facets of abuse is secrecy. Not saying anything. And even after all I’d been through, I still didn’t know how to say anything. It was always easier to just bottle things up. This was evident not just when it came to the things that happened to me, but to things I knew had happened or were happening to others.
Before I left Junction, Lacy told me about several occasions when Grant tried to seduce her to have sex with him. Although I was angry, admittedly mostly out of jealousy, and I knew I should tell my Mom, I didn’t want to cause any more problems. My relationship with my mother was always like walking on eggshells, so telling her about Grant’s predatory proclivities, leanings I should have been able to identify within myself, was not an option I’d pursue. I was also dumb when it came to my view of Grant. Although I disliked him, despised him even, I saw him as my stepdad. I thought of him as the provider for my mom and sisters. I didn’t understand that what he was really doing was living for free with us in a government housing project while he hoarded cash for his own future. Then, after he was able to buy a nice mobile home, he abandoned my mom and Karli and moved Rae into his bed. Rae graduated two years later and went to college. Grant married his former stepdaughter, my sister Raechel, and they had a little girl. Telling Mom what I knew about his attempts to bed Lacy may have prevented his further access to a young girl with “daddy” issues that arose from sexual abuse when she was a small child. I watched him groom Rae in the same ways I had been groomed. The same grooming techniques I’d subconsciously use to the same ends, hence continuing the cycle.
Seeing older men engaging in sexual relationships with young people was nothing new to me. Not only did I see it often, but I’d also experienced it. (Bear with me here. I know that these “relationships” were not, are not, relationships, but rather abuse. That realization did not come to me until much later.) Setting aside my own experiences and not yet fully understanding the psychological damage I had endured, those relationships and encounters were all around me. This can’t be illustrated more clearly than in my cousin Barry’s relationship, and subsequent marriage, to Beatrice.
* * *
Barry is Bulinda’s nephew. He moved in with us when I was in eighth grade, and he slept on my bedroom floor. He was in his early twenties, and I enjoyed hanging out with him. He had a hot rod Ford truck, and it was that truck that led me to have more freedom. Barry used to take me out to cruise the strip with him on Friday and Saturday nights. He let me smoke but not drink alcohol.
One Saturday afternoon while we worked on his truck, he asked me if I’d like to meet his girlfriend. Up till then, I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend, so I said yes. During the drive out to Prairieville, Barry told me the relationship was “kind of a secret” and he wanted me to keep it that way. He said that her mom and dad were okay with it, but it wasn’t exactly legal. I promised to keep it confidential and when we arrived at their house, an old beat-up mobile home on a shaded lot not much different from the one in which I lived, I saw and understood why. Beatrice was a 13-year-old seventh grader. I instantly, instantly likened their secret relationship to the experience I had shared with Cody the previous summer in Biloxi. Beatrice adored Barry and him her. It was evident in the way they looked at each other.
A short time after that meeting, it may have been Easter break in 1989, Barry and I went out to a place in Walker, Louisiana called Hilltop Trailer Park. He told my dad that we were going out there to help a friend move. The truth was that Beatrice would be out there spending the weekend with someone she knew. People that were unopposed to their relationship. As soon as we arrived, Beatrice introduced me to Tammi.
Tammi, as I look back on the things that shaped my views on everything in my life, became the model for what I was to later gauge as “attractive” and “sexy” when it comes to members of the opposite sex. She was short, maybe five-two, and thin. Her hair was brown and curly, her skin a rich dark beige, having been kissed by the sun. She had brown eyes, though the color was not as important as the expression, and pouty pink lips that begged to be kissed. She wore ratty flip-flops that highlighted small, dainty feet that ended in tiny toes that exhibited painted Day-Glo nails. A pair of very short, cutoff blue jean shorts covered a plump though petite rump. She sported a baby-blue and pink pinstripe spaghetti strap top that was cut off halfway between her belly button and perky B-cup breasts, leaving her midriff bare.
I was 14 and Tammy was 16. She is solely responsible for teaching me how to make out with a girl. She was dominant, choosing to sit on top of me and be in control of things. She taught me how to flirt and tease, and she showed me that making out with girls is a whole lot wetter and messier than with boys. As badly as she tried to get me to go all the way, I didn’t give in. I wanted to hold her, to cuddle, to stroke her hair, and softly rub her warm flesh.
That night, on our way home, I asked Barry, “Why do girls wanna kiss so much?”
He just laughed and said, “They just really like to use their mouths for everything.”
The other thing that I gathered from the one-day education Tammi gave me was that necking involves a lot of spit. She reminded me of girls that were portrayed as slavish sex objects I saw in rock videos on MTV. Tammi became another page in a book written about lust and life and lack of self-control.
Chapter 20
No, Really! My Bed Ate Me, Doc!
When summer break ended and school returned to session in 1991, I was supposed to be entering my junior year. Unfortunately, I’d only achieved little more than a third of the credits needed to graduate high school. I knew it would be next to impossible for me to make up the lost two-thirds in only two years, and I think I allowed that weight to guide my preconceived failure. After a fight that led to my being suspended, I quickly sank back into depression. I started drinking again, stealing liquor just like I had before. My regular drinking buddy was Johnny. He was a year or two under me and had recently dated my sister Raechel. It was he who’d originally introduced me to LSD. And boy, did I like it. I took to acid like a fish to water. I loved the worlds that acid allowed me to live in. I felt like I belonged in those worlds, and I liked living in an alternate reality. Memories were easy to recreate, and new events were alterable. Others had no more jurisdiction over me because I could now tune that world out. I could block forced reality and create my own. Until things got out of control.
One night at a house party thrown by a girl named Keri, I had taken — over a few hours — about eight or 10 hits of acid torn from a Mickey Mouse blotter. It seemed weak because after the first two hits I didn’t feel any different. So I tore off more, and then more. I started horseplaying with a friend, Robert, and during our roughhousing, I pushed him, and he fell on Keri’s little sister, causing her to cry. This angered Rob and he called me out, telling me to meet him outside. Then he walked out the door and leaped off the steps. He retrieved a broken two-by-four that was lying under the edge of the trailer and started pacing back and forth. Robert appeared to be changing. I closed the door, reopened it, and looked again. Rob had grown! He was seven feet tall and hairy. He’d turned into a menacing Sasquatch and the two-by-four in his right hand was vibrating and glowing. The monster monkey glared at me, challenging me. I closed the door again, backed away, then started to panic.
I was standing in the living room and there was a gun cabinet there. I checked the doors, realizing they were locked, but the drawer at the bottom wasn’t. When I slid the drawer open, I found a huge weapon, and I recognized it immediately. It was a Colt Python, .357 Magnum. Nickel-plated with a custom grip. My cousin Barry had one just like it. Only his had a powerful amber lens, two-by-twenty scope mounted on it. I lifted the heavy weapon from its foam resting place and flipped open the cylinder. It was loaded. I stood up, the pistol in my right hand. I was going to kill Bigfoot. Just then, the door opened, and Keri gasped. Sonny walked in behind her, and they both ran to me. One of them removed the gun from my hand. Sonny ushered me out the back door and somehow I rambled home. I know multiple people escorted me across town, but I don’t know who they were.
I climbed through my bedroom window and sat on my bed in silence. The room was mostly dark. Only the soft light from a red lava lamp and faint moonglow illuminated the small bedroom. My nightstand contained all my pills. I retrieved them from the drawer and sat on the floor, then poured them out before me. There were green and white Prozac capsules, yellow-orange tablets of Mellaril, and two different white pills. One was Cogentin, used to curtail negative side effects, and the other was Klonopin, an anti-anxiety, nerve pill.
I sat there, going through the usual negotiations that occur when one contemplates suicide. First, I told myself I wanted to die, followed by fear of the unknown. Then there was regret. What if my death causes more pain for someone else? That’s the most absurd empathy one can encounter. I tried to think of reasons to live but only discovered more excuses to die. I thought of how much better off the world would be without me. In the end, that was the argument that won out. I saw myself as a scourge of misery that only brought others down. I was convinced I needed to die.
I stared at the pills on the floor and then started picking them up. One at a time I began to swallow them. Then two at a time until they started getting stuck in my throat. I got up and walked to the door, made sure the coast was clear and snuck to the kitchen to get a glass of water. The cool clean liquid tasted and felt good as I swallowed it, freeing up the lodged pills. While standing at the sink I decided that if I was to take all the pills and still woke up the next day, then God intervened. If I died, then it was just my time to go. That’s what people always say, isn’t it? “Oh, it was just his time.” On my way back to my room, I wondered if there were beaches on the other side. I closed the bedroom door. Before I sat down again, I realized I hadn’t left a note! Everyone leaves a note, an airing of grievances, a rant against the wrongs of the world. I grabbed one of my notebooks that contained poetry I’d written. I wondered if my poetry would be famous someday. E. A. Poe’s verse seemed almost irrelevant until decades after his death. He died drunk, stoned, and alone. But he didn’t leave a note. He should’ve!
“I’m tired of living... sick of being sad... I hate myself... I hate the world... I’m sorry for ruining everyone’s lives...” I scribbled on a clean page in my notebook.
I put more of the pills in my mouth and swallowed them with refreshing water. I leaned against my bed and closed my eyes. The alcohol I’d consumed at the party seemed to be wearing off, and the effects of the LSD, I thought, had never reached full maturity. I started to wonder if I’d been sold bunk acid when suddenly I felt my heart skip a beat. It felt like it was slowing down! Did it just miss another beat? Then it was beating savagely, like drums. I felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I was overcome by fear, so I raised off the floor and sat on my bed. It was so soft. I sank onto it, into it. It felt like a giant marshmallow, but then it started moving! It wasn’t a marshmallow! It was a giant mouth! And it was trying to eat me, chewing me! I thought of an elderly man, toothlessly gumming a piece of meat, and I was the meat. Voices were chattering and laughter was echoing all around. Did the lights get dimmer? Wait... who turned the lights on? Then came the demons crawling through the portal hidden in my closet. I could smell sulfur, like rotten eggs. Did I light a match? Am I smoking? “NO!” I answered.
The bed was making progress, the old man was softening me up to swallow. Then the little demons jumped on me! I must’ve screamed because Karli flung my door open. She was supposed to be in bed. She was only there for a second, then she turned and ran across the hall. Grant came running into my room and immediately yelled, “Aw fuck!” He turned away and hollered, “Goddammit Ailene! Ya fuckin’ son’s tryin’ ta kill himself again!”
He walked out and Mom came in. She stepped on the few remaining pills, slipped, and nearly fell. Then I saw blood. Where’d that come from? Am I bleeding? I raised my arms and saw blood trickling from a wound on my left wrist.
My mom’s face was panic-stricken. She yelled, “Son! What have ya done? Wha-did-ya-do?” Her voice sounded muffled and her eyes (and the glasses she wore) appeared much larger than normal.
“I just took my pills,” I calmly offered.
“What?”
“My pills. I took my pills.”
“Son, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Stop talking gibberish!”
It was then that I realized something was very wrong. She ran out of my room and came right back with a towel. After wrapping it around my wrist, she started yelling, “What did you cut ya’self with?”
What? Cut myself? I wondered. Can she not see the fuckin’ bed is eating me? That’s why I’m bleeding!
The demons had already retreated to the closet, but I could still hear them. I saw Mom on the cordless, saw her mouth moving, talking to someone. Words were muffled still, but I could make out some of what she was saying. She said I was yelling about hungry beds and pissed-off devils.
I remember the emergency room. I remember getting my stomach pumped. I remember fighting a giant, angry snake that was coming out of my nose. But I don’t remember Mom saving me from my bed, nor do I remember the actual trip to the ER. I remember promising that I’d stop fighting the snake, and a feeling like dry heaving, but then I must have passed out. (Later on, I found out I’d had a manic panic attack and had been sedated.) When I regained consciousness, I was lying on a soft comfortable bed in a semi-dark room. My whole body was sore, my side hurt like I’d been coughing violently, and I felt like I’d been stabbed in my lower back. I was cold. I tried to sit up to search for a blanket and I had a sense of weightlessness. I couldn’t rise to a sitting position, so I relaxed my neck and let my head sink into the pillow, then inhaled deeply. I knew where I was. I smelled it. That same curious, not really malodorous scent. I closed my eyes and allowed that soothing revelation to guide me back to the oblivion I’d just come from. A place where I was both alone and surrounded by those who were like me. There is comfort in knowing that.
* * *
When I opened my eyes again, there was daylight shining through parted drapes. I felt terribly sick like I’d been battling the flu for a week. My guts were tied in knots, and I had that creeping, cold, dead feeling that lingers just beneath the surface of the skin after running a high fever.
Someone had been in to check on me; I was beneath a thick comforter. I pulled my arms from beneath the cover and rolled onto my side, pulling my knees in toward my chest. Okay, my legs worked. That was good. I managed to push the sheet and blanket off and was instantly attacked by a waxy chill that sent violent tremors throughout my body. After several attempts, I managed to pull my body into an upright position. I had a horrible case of cottonmouth and my mouth tasted of ashes.
I swung my legs slowly over the side of the bed and rested my feet on the floor. It was covered with a tightly woven industrial carpet. A tingling sensation, the feeling of crawling ants, moved up and down my legs as blood started to warm and circulate. Looking around I saw a second bed, empty, and a large window that was covered by heavy paisley drapes. Just a few feet from where I sat there was a private lavatory. I realized that I really needed to pee! Testing my feet, I found my ankles to be supportive, so I tried to stand. As I pushed off the bed, I felt confident, until I farted. Only, it wasn’t a fart. Thick, black, foul-smelling sludge poured out of my butt, flying right out of the thin, loose hospital gown I was wearing. I panicked and tried to run into the bathroom. But as blood rushed to my head, I fainted and fell forward, hitting the heavy wooden bathroom door, which caused it to slam. When the vertigo cleared, I saw that two nurses were trying to help me sit upright, having come when they heard the door slamming shut.
They got me up and helped me to the toilet, removed the soiled gown, then sat me down. The remaining charcoal sludge finished draining, completing its passage through my colon. The nurses had already started scouring the mess by the time the cleaning lady got there. I was flushed with embarrassment (no pun intended) and began apologizing emphatically. Sitting naked and cold on the porcelain bowl I kept saying, “I’m sorry. I am soooo sorry for this.” The two pretty nurses looked at me pitifully as one of them came in, dampened a washcloth with warm water, and started wiping the mess away. The nasty substance had slithered down both of my legs. She got most of it off while I sat there sobbing. I saw the other nurse and housekeeper through the crack in the door left by the nurse who was attending to me. I felt horrible for shitting everywhere.
“It’s okay sweetie! Shit happens!” she said, at first missing the pun. Then realizing it, she added, “You’re in good hands now, Michael.” I started to calm down a little.
After enough of the mess that was on me was wiped away, she helped me into a clean gown then helped me make the trek past the nurses’ station to the women’s corridor. That’s where the showers were located. My legs appeared to be working fine and I could no longer smell the nauseating stench of explosive diarrhea. Moving around also helped to repel the cold as more and more circulation returned, delivering much-needed oxygen and warmth to my aching muscles.
After a hot shower, I went back to my room and inventoried my surroundings. The nurses’ station was a large affair in the middle of the lobby. There was a TV viewing area complete with sofas and chairs with thick cushions and a big-screen television. There was also a nice kitchen — minus a stove. A huge side-by-side refrigerator/freezer combo occupied one corner, and there were cabinets that I’d later find stocked with cereals, soups, and snacks. The freezers were stocked with microwavable mini pizzas, TV dinners, and pints of ice cream. The fridge was piled full of cold cuts, vegetables, cheeses, yogurts, and condiments.
In my room, which I alone occupied, I saw that someone had laid clothes out for me. My mom had dropped a bag off earlier in the day. I changed into the clean clothes before realizing it was dark outside. I remembered it being light when I left to take my shower. When a nurse came to check on me, I asked her what the time was.
“Eight o’clock,” she replied. Then she opened the drawer on the nightstand and pulled out a digital alarm clock, plugged it in, and set it by her watch.
I told her thank you and then asked, “How long have I been out?”
She told me that she’d just come on shift at 3:00 PM that afternoon after having been off for two days, but she would check. She walked out, then returned a few minutes later.
“You were admitted yesterday at 2:20 AM.” She flipped through the chart and then said, “Looks like you’ve pretty much been asleep ever since.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “I’ve been asleep for almost 18 hours? Really?”
She looked up from the chart and said, “Oh sweetie! No. You’ve been out for almost 42 hours!” She caught the little giggle that tried to escape her lips. Compassionate now, she said, “But don’choo worry honey. Y’ur in good hands now! K?” She capped it off with a soft, caring look through light brown eyes. Truly empathetic. She was young, maybe 21 or 22 years old, very pretty. She reminded me of a grown-up version of my sister Raechel. Her name was Nurse Terry, and she was the one who’d cleaned up my poop.
Chapter 21
The Wolf
Suicide attempts are always cries for help. Some may call it a “cry for attention.” Both are true... until the attempt is successful. Then it’s, “Well, if we’d only paid attention.” But what about the suicide attempts that aren’t blatantly obvious? Depression, coupled with self-destructive behavior, is like slow suicide without a note. The behavior is the note. It is the attempt. It is the kid crying out for help when he or she doesn’t know how to ask any other way. I wonder how many people truly know what it’s like to try to act normal if they’ve never known what normal is?
When school had ended in June of 1989, I was done with eighth grade, I knew that the next step was going to be even more difficult. High school would be hard. Eighth grade had been another mental health roller coaster ride and most of my confusion only grew. I’d been giving into urges and deviant desires and medicating with vodka to numb the pain and drown the anguish. Trespassing in barns and sheds had given way to illegally entering people’s homes. That led me to thievery and voyeurism.
The last time I entered a dwelling with someone home was the most exciting of all. The level of violation was extreme. I spent nearly two hours in the home of a man and woman who were making love. I watched them for nearly an hour from a closet. While she was mounted on top of him, I snuck out and explored the home, allowing the erotic sounds emanating from the room to warn me. They came and went, and I hid each time they fell silent. Finally, they went completely silent, and I hid in a laundry room. A few minutes later the man left, and I heard the woman as she prepared for a bath. I heard the water stop flowing, and the woman’s moan as she slipped into an obviously hot tub, I abandoned my hiding place. I was able to get a few glimpses of her in the tub, but I didn’t risk gawking. As I left through the living room, I noticed the pictures on the bookshelves. They portrayed the woman and a nerdy-looking man with wavy hair and a pudgy belly. Very obviously not the athletically built blond-haired man that just left. I don’t know why, but I felt the urge to shatter one of the picture frames. I didn’t. Instead, I placed it face down on the sofa. Just to cause a little confusion, maybe some chaos for the cheater.
With all that I was doing, all the urges I gave into, and all the fantasies that I daydreamed about, I didn’t know how to stop them. I didn’t understand then what I was doing or why I was doing it. Even now I’m only able to write about what I did, not explain it all. Maybe it’s best if I don’t try to explain it all. That might somehow seem like minimization, and that’s not at all my intention.
Here’s what I know. I had a powerful craving to reach deep into an abyss and see what I could pull out — over and over again. Long before I turned 14 I knew what pornography was, I knew that the Polaroids Leonard took of me and Destiny were child pornography, I knew what truth or dare was, I knew how to make a man happy, I knew how to be sneaky, I knew how to hide my alcohol, and, more than anything else, I knew how to keep a secret.
I can’t tell you why entering a stranger’s home and foraging through their privates and unmentionables gave me a sexual rise that required immediate release, usually before I even left the home. I can’t tell you why I both hated and sought to be used sexually, why being called a “little cum dumpster” both enraged me with boiling anger and gave me a sick sense of pride. I DON’T KNOW WHY! There was this terrible sickness that wrapped its tentacles around me and wouldn’t let me go. That same sickness sank its fangs into my mind and pumped me full of venom. It transformed me. I started to see myself as a wolf. I was a hunter, a prowler, stalking the wilds in search of something. But what was I after? And why did I need it? Animals don’t question the need; they embrace it and then fulfill it. Compulsively. I surmised that that was why I couldn’t control the urges. Those insatiable needs, those hungers and desires were mine. More than that, they were me.
Chapter 22
Lakewood Hospital
My first stay at Lakewood Hospital was not nearly as dramatic as my time spent at Greenwell Springs. The setting was more professional, more adult-ish. In fact, I was the only minor there. At 16, I was the youngest patient they’d admitted up until that point. Most of the patients were middle-aged men and women with moderate to severe emotional issues and/or they were battling drug and alcohol addictions. I was pretty much the token kid on the 7th Floor, as the unit was known. The only person there that was even close to me in age was Tommy.
Tommy was in his mid-twenties. Other than being an addict and a hypochondriac, I thought he was perfect. He was a handsome man. He stood about 5’8” and was very thin, almost sinewy. Dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, scruffy George Michael beard…. Tommy was a rock star. He and I talked a lot about life in general. I found out he was the first cousin of a girl I knew well, Mindy. He used to have these “episodes” where he appeared to be engulfed by searing pain. I hated to see him like that, and it affected me emotionally, causing great distress. Staff told me that it was all in his head; the pain was imaginary – no matter how real it seemed. What I was finally able to put together was that it was all tied to the one thing Tommy wouldn’t talk about. The one thing he wouldn’t expand upon other than to say, “I’m an addict.” Although he had detoxed, his behavior was an attempt to get methadone. Staff said his pain wasn’t real, but I think it was very real. Pain can and will find a way to protect itself psychosomatically. Cravings and urges, addictions of all sorts, can and do metastasize as physical pain as the mind screams at the body, “Give me what I want!” I know that feeling, that pain, all too well.
Nurses told me that my and Tommy’s relationship was inappropriate. I did love Tommy, but it wasn’t in the way they seemed to assume. Nevertheless, he and I spent less time with each other.
I started gravitating to the recreational therapy room. There I could work on paint-by-number projects, puzzles, and even assemble model cars. Lakewood was a private hospital, very different from the state hospital I’d been to. It took some doing, but my dad’s insurance paid for the initial stay. The treatment staff acted differently; the freedom to move about was loose; and the food was different. The unit, located on the top floor of a regular medical center, was serviced by the hospital’s cafeteria staff. That meant our meals were prepared by an executive chef and crew, approved by dietitians, and served hot and fresh on the ward. Whereas Greenwell Springs Hospital was more like a camp that catered to poor and unfortunate kids, Lakewood was like a full-service hotel that offered psychoanalysis.
Counseling sessions and group therapy were different. These sessions had real goals that didn’t only focus on mental health, but living, social, and financial skills. It was not just a place for adolescent patients with behavioral problems to “tough it out.” There was a rage room that allowed me to thrash and punch at pillows and stuff, but it also doubled as a smoking room. So, the smokers, nearly all of us, could gather multiple times a day to get their nicotine fix. It was during these smoke breaks that I believe most of my therapy took place. (I know what you’re thinking: 16 years old, smoking cigarettes in a hospital? I get it. But 1991 was part of a different era.) I met Terrell and John in the smoking room. Both men were in their late 40s or early 50s, and they picked me up instantly on their “gaydar.” They were very nice and tried to explain that it was okay for me to come out of the closet, that homosexuality was not a bad thing – not a sickness. I told them I didn’t know if I was gay, said I’d been with girls, and found them appealing too. I expounded upon my interests and attractions. They advised me to be careful of my propensity to be attracted to those who were younger than me. It was Terrell who told me that when it came down to “finding” myself, or understanding myself, only I could do that. He encouraged me to accept whatever I find and embrace it. By not doing so, I would always be at war with myself.
I met Mr. Hubert of Lakewood. He was a Jehovah’s Witness who tried to convert me and damned near succeeded. He promised me one of his daughters’ hands in marriage if I devoted my life to doing the work of Jehovah. It didn’t take long for me to understand his belief system was fringe, even by his religious standards. He possessed grandiose illusions centered around cleansing the world of wickedness. I later learned (several years removed from Lakewood) that he killed himself.
Being at Lakewood did indeed start me on a path to try to “find” religion. I met individuals who came from many different religious backgrounds, and I became intrigued about the afterlife. Terrell was Catholic, John a Lutheran, Hubert a Witness. There was also Deirdre, the Witch, who believe that Kurt Loder was sending her private messages on MTV. There was no shortage of religious doctrine on the seventh floor. None of them truly appealed to me. All of it, except for Deidre, began and ended with a fear of hellfire and the threat of eternal damnation. I wasn’t interested in any god that resorted to threats to gain compliance.
I spent five weeks at Lakewood and got discharged when my dad’s insurance gave up on me. I went back to my mom’s home in the projects and re-enrolled in school. That only lasted for about two weeks. During those two weeks, I went wild. By then I was severely out of touch with reality. I was screaming “Fuck you!” to the world, but all along what I wanted was someone to help me. People only saw a kid acting out, incorrigible, in rebellion against the world. To some, like Bulinda, I was a master manipulator seeking attention, while others, like Aunt Donna, saw me as the embodiment of all that is evil. Maybe it was time to just be what everyone else knew I was. A little bit of Satan, a little bit of Poe.
* * *
My friend Marky found a copy of the Satanic Bible in the reference section at the Berwick branch of the St. Mary Parish Library. I stole it. Two days later I found myself pledging my life to the Devil. I wrote a contract promising to turn as many people as I could into devil worshipers, offering up a whole army of kids to rail against the Christians. All I asked in return was that he also allow me to lead them, like Manson.
Now, none of that is really found in the Satanic Bible. Anton LeVay is an existentialist. He wrote about carnal gratification and power over weakness in the absence of any type of heaven or hell. It was a very basic “do as thou wilt” philosophy. But I’d also read up on Crowley, who, by many accounts, was an incestuous nihilist. I read books about necromancy and the Black Mass, and Wicca taught by Yvonne and Gavin Frost. I quickly started assembling a morbidly eclectic blend of the various teachings that I encountered. Turning them into a belief system that satisfied my urges gave me the permission I needed to justify my deviancies.
There were all these news stories and articles about Satanic cults running daycares who were living and worshiping in subterranean tunnels that led to sacrificial chambers. Allegedly, according to various authors and undercover journalists, there were entire towns occupied by a debased populace of perverse denizens living side-by-side with demons and doing the will of Satan on earth. I was drawn to it. Thinking of such power gave my teenage mind the jolt it needed. What if, I asked myself, the reason I was able to see demons was because I was called to be a general in Satan’s army? Maybe, I surmised, the doctors were wrong. I wasn’t mentally ill, I was, instead, specifically chosen — prescient of a dark world that was coming! A return to animalistic existentialism. My urges and desires were to be embraced. Nature was the driving force behind my actions. I then understood that it wasn’t me that was sick, it was the world that rejected me! The world was sick! I was a super-sentient being. I was convinced of that.
In the Satanic Bible, there’s a list of the names of important demons. I started applying those names to my own demons. Once I knew their names, I’d hoped, I would be able to corral them, control them. But how could I control demons when I couldn’t even control my own emotions?
Not long after my discharge from Lakewood, I received a call from my friend Mindy. The conversation began with her saying, “Tommy’s dead.” Drunk and high as a kite, Tommy wrecked his car, decapitating himself and stabbing everyone who knew him in the heart. That was when I started feeling as if Death himself was following me. I wondered if I might be the reincarnation of Edgar Alan Poe. He’d been tortured by demons, drowned himself in addictions, and succumbed to sexual desires that others ridiculed him for. He pained to write and wrote his pain, explored the macabre with precision, and expressed his findings through perfect poetry and prose. If I’d been a better writer, maybe I’d have stuck with the idea that I was Poe reincarnated, but I’ve since abandoned the notion. I do believe that Death does indeed follow me, taunting me. I seem to lose everything I love and love everything I’ve lost. And still, no one hears the screams of a desperate, dying boy.
Chapter 23
Into the Deep
Halloween night, 1991. A night that was as cold as a witch’s tit. I’m not kidding. It was a cold, damp, windy night, and I was riding a bicycle wearing only a windbreaker over my clothes. It was the closest thing available when I’d gotten angry and stormed out the door of my mom’s house. I asked her if I could go to Bayou Vista with Dicky and Ronnie, and she told me no. They were going to Dicky’s girlfriend’s house, and I wanted to go. Mom reminded me that I needed to get up early to go looking for a job. I figured I could go with my friends that night and look for a job the next day. Why’s that so hard to understand, Mom? “I’m going with my friends!” I yelled as I took the windbreaker off the arm of the couch and slammed the door on my way out.
Now, it is NOT uncommon to wear shorts on October 31 when you’re a kid in south Louisiana. That time of year is usually just cool-to-mild, but not that night! The wind was blowing hard enough to make it feel like the temperature was close to freezing. It was an early cold snap for the Gulf Coast, the kind of cold usually reserved for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But we peddled on, against a wind that fought against us with sharp, slicing, 15 mph gusts. The wind had teeth that easily chewed through the thin material of the light jacket. Nevertheless, we struggled on and made the five-mile trip, turning up Southeast Blvd. and after another turn just before Fairview Hospital, arrived at the address Amy had given Dicky. An excited middle-aged lady with curly blond hair opened the door.
“Oh! You must be Michael!” she exclaimed as she touched my arm. “And I’m guessing you’re Ronnie,” she said as she acknowledged the pudgy, dark-haired boy behind me. And finally, “Of course that makes you Dicky!”
“Yes ma’am,” we all answered. Amy’s descriptions of each of us must have been spot on.
She showed us in and directed us to Amy’s door. It was closed and Amy said she’d be right out. Her mom, Mrs. Powers, asked if we’d like some hot chocolate and we said yes. When Amy came out of her room, I was refreshed with thoughts of why I’d been attracted to her. She was pretty and simple. Kind of a tomboy, but also feminine. Upon her arrival at Berwick High, I took an instant liking to her. It was a crush, but quite different. Amy was genuinely nice to me and became my friend. Our friendship was more like a bond between two girlfriends. She and I could sit on the bleachers and hold each other with neither of us expecting anything more. But then she started dating Dicky and our affection toward each other became awkward. Ours was a deep, platonic love, but Dicky’s jealousy hurt me and made Amy uncomfortable. All three of us were together in her bedroom, and all three of us were pretending to be comfortable with the situation.
Amy gasped and blurted out, “Ohmagawd! Lemme see ‘em!” She’d caught a glimpse of the waistband of my boxer shorts. They were Bart Simpson boxers. They depicted images of Lisa playing the saxophone and Bart dancing. The phrase “Do the Bartman” was stamped all over them. And they were glow-in-the-dark.
“I want them!” Amy demanded with a smile. What could I do? I walked into the closet and took them off. When I walked out of the closet with boxers in hand, I searched for a dirty clothes hamper to discard them in, but Amy snatched them from my hand. She held them up to look at them. Thank God there were no embarrassing stains on them, but I’d also just ridden my bike five miles to her house. Sheesh!
“Um… Make sure you wash those, okay,” I said. I couldn’t believe I’d just given the girl I love my dirty boxers in front of her boyfriend — my best friend. When Amy’s mom knocked on the door, I expected her to hide them. Nope.
When the door opened, Amy held them up higher and proudly shared them with her mother. “Mom! Look what Mikey gave me!”
“Oh Amy, give the boy back his drawers!” her mom chuckled, then handed them back to her.
Amy clutched them to her chest and with a toddler’s disposition, pouted, “No!”
When it was time for us to leave, well after 1 AM, Mrs. Powers said we could leave our bikes and get them the following afternoon when it would be warmer. She drove us home and dropped us off at Dicky’s house. I was just going to crash there, but none of us were ready for the fury that awaited us. Dicky’s mom, Miss Tracy, was mostly angry about our arriving so late, but also because my mom had paid her a visit.
After she’d calmed down a bit, she said to me, “Michael, your mom said that if you showed up here to send you home no matter what time it is.”
I told everyone bye and walked to my house, which was just a few blocks away. As I suspected, the door was locked. I knocked and it was quickly answered, but not by my mom. Grant jerked the door open, his rage painted across his face. He stepped out and pushed me against the wall. His jaw was clenched, and his hard hands were balled into tight fists. He told me I had one week to get out. I wasn’t welcome under his roof, I wasn’t welcome around my mom, and I was expressly forbidden from talking to my sisters. On November 1, 1991, at 2 AM, he made sure I understood that if I didn’t leave, or if he found out that I’d talked to my mom or sisters, he’d kill me and cut me up into small pieces to use as bait for crawfish and gators. I knew what he was capable of, so I had no doubt that he meant it. I wasn’t going to wait a week. I raised my chin and on that cold November morning, turned around and walked away. I was headed for the bridge.
The Long-Allen Bridge is one of the oldest bridges in the state of Louisiana. It spans the Atchafalaya River, connecting the town of Berwick to Morgan City via Highway 182. Back when Huey P. Long was the governor of Louisiana, he commissioned the building of bridges and “modern” highways. People said he stole all the money to accomplish that endeavor, but he got it done. Before Long, Louisiana was a spider web of muddy trails, shell roads, and poorly built ferries. The Long-Allen Bridge had a flight of stairs to access the road above so that walkers and bike riders could get across. I only wanted to walk halfway across, to the bridge’s apex.
I was a mere 10 or 15 paces from the first step when Uncle George, my Aunt Donna’s husband, flashed the light bar on top of his police cruiser. I looked behind me and saw that it was him. Cold, depressed, and defeated, I weighed my options. I had no intention of making it to the other side of the bridge. Leaping from the top, falling the 10 or 15 stories to the river below, and landing spread-eagle would be enough to kill me. The churning water below would have been the same as landing on concrete. I looked up at the bridge, only a dark silhouette in the starry night sky, then back at the cop car. I walked over to George.
“Michael, your mama called Donna. Told her you got kicked out.”
I nodded, unable to look him in the eyes.
“Donna thinks you’re gonna go after them.”
“Go after who?” I asked, puzzled.
“Ya family.”
That statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I was walking away from my family to go somewhere to kill myself, not them! I shook my head in disbelief.
“Can I give you a ride somewhere?” he asked.
I hesitated for a few seconds, then looked at the obese cop behind the wheel. Only 10 feet separated us. I could just turn and run up the stairs, across the bridge, and make the leap. I pictured the whole thing playing out. I could end it. I knew I could run to that high point in a minute. No more than a minute and a half. I wasn’t good at many things, but boy, could I run! I looked down and mumbled the words, “Can you take me to the hospital?”
“Get in,” he answered without hesitation.
I climbed into the front seat on the passenger side, and he called in a code, then pulled ahead as we made our way to the onramp. The Interceptor transmission roared to life and whined as it shifted. We pulled up at Lakewood Hospital just minutes later and he walked me in. I was admitted immediately, and I remember someone seating me in a wheelchair. That was the last thing I remember about that night.
* * *
I awoke in a comfortable hospital bed; the same one I’d slept in just weeks earlier. When I awoke, I’d already been in the hospital for two days. But those days were hidden from me. I spent that time in a fugue state, going through the motions unawares. I’d already been to and participated in several groups, so I was dumbfounded as I stumbled through that “first” day. I didn’t remember conversations from the previous group, things I said in the smoking room, or walking into the wrong room — believing it was a shower. Someone’s comments on that “first” day led me to say, “Of course I know how long I’ve been here!” I laughed and added, “I was just fuckin’ witcha!”
“Watch your language, Michael,” Nurse Tiffany said, shaking her head. Nurse Tiffany was a blonde bombshell pinup girl. A heavy metal heroine who drove a Jaguar. After she finished making notes on my chart, she closed the folder and said, “You didn’t fill out your menu again last night. Don’t complain when you get your GM at lunch.”
A general meal meant that I’d receive a house special — a meat (like chicken breast), mixed veggies, a roll, and pudding. Some people live for the surprise, but I wasn’t one of them. Especially when there were wonderful things on the menu like cabbage rolls, pork roast, and crawfish fettuccini that I could choose from. I knew, however, that if I wasn’t satisfied with what I got on my tray I could raid the overstocked refrigerator. One could build a mean deli sub with what could be found in there. Apparently, I’d made a real stink about the meals I’d gotten for breakfast and lunch, and she was advising me to deal with it.
Before supper, I received word that I had a visitor coming up. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I assumed it was my mom. It wasn’t. It was Amy. I’m sure my mouth fell open when the magnetic doors popped, swung open, and revealed that beautiful friend of mine. My heart instantly warmed. Amy was wearing a pink and yellow color change shirt under coveralls only fastened on one side, the other strap hung freely behind her. The coveralls were the short-pants variety made by Guess and they were purple — my favorite color. Her flat ironed, platinum blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail and arranged like a fountain on top of her head. Two thin pieces fell in front of her face, accenting baby blue eyes covered by small, oval, tortoiseshell-and-gold Polo eyeglasses. Beautifully innocent tomboy librarian…
As a private hospital, visitation at Lakewood took place right there in the ward. We could request a more private room, but there was no need. We went into the snack lounge/kitchen where Amy retrieved a yogurt and a Dr. Pepper from the giant refrigerator. I snatched a Pepsi and a bag of Lay’s potato chips from the snack rack beside it then sat with my friend.
Amy opened a paper bag she was carrying and handed a carton of Marlboro Reds to me. She followed that with a teddy bear and card. She told me she saw the bear in the gift shop located in the lobby downstairs and “just had” to get it for me. The fuzzy bear had on a New Orleans Saints Jersey. The card was “To My Beloved Friend.” I lost the card somewhere along the way, but the bear remained with me for many years. I finally lost possession of it when my future ex-wife dismembered it and threw it out during a fit of jealous rage.
Amy and I talked and cried and hugged each other. I explained to her that I loved her, but not like a boyfriend would love her. I wanted her to understand that the love I felt was more than that. I apologized for making her cry and I held her (under the watchful eye of staff). She laid her head on my shoulder and left it there. “This is how I love you,” I whispered softly.
Ten minutes passed before she spoke. “I’m breaking up with Dicky.”
I begged her not to, but she cut me off. She assured me it had nothing to do with me, that Dicky was just not her type. I understood exactly what she meant.
When the time came for her to leave, Amy kissed me on the cheek and wrapped her arms around my neck as we stood. “I love you, Michael,” she whispered as she stared deeply into my eyes. “Don’t ever forget it.”
“I love you too,” I replied. Then Amy turned and walked away. When she got to the magnetic doors, they popped and swung open, and as she stepped through them, she looked back and flicked her fingertips at me. It’s the last image I have of her — the last time I saw her. I went through dozens of trials and tribulations after that, and Amy disappeared, going in her own direction. She graduated high school, married, and had babies. All while I jumped around from one institution to another, one toxic relationship to the next.
Nearly 18 years passed before I asked my sister, “Whatever became of Amy?” knowing that they had once been rather close.
“Oh, Bubba, Amy died!”
I could offer nothing but a blank stare. It felt as though my heart was being squeezed by an invisible hand that had reached up through my gut.
“Bubba, she had an aneurysm… Died instantly… happened right in front of her kids.”
The revelation sucked the breath from my lungs and served as a reminder: I lose all I love and love all I’ve lost.
A week after Amy’s visit, the hospital was notified that my father’s insurance wasn’t going to fork over another 50 grand for treatment. I couldn’t stay at Lakewood. His insurance would only pay for a small portion of any future mental health care and that would only be available if I was hospitalized by their “preferred” provider. I begged the administrator to just send me back to Greenwell Springs. He called my old facility and attempted to secure a bed for me. After a brief discussion, I was called into the office and joined in on the conference call. My old psychiatrist, Dr. Simon, was on the other end of the line. He was joined by Dr. Hayward, who was Penny’s doctor, and they were allowing me to talk to Penny. The doctors made it clear that the adolescent ward of Greenwell Springs would be unable to assist me — that I’d moved beyond that level of care. They did believe that I could help Penny by telling her goodbye, to help her move on.
Barely more than a whisper, Penny’s last words to me were, “Spring Love’s … a Bitch.” Then I heard her get up and leave the room.
Moments later, Dr. Simon said, “Thank you, Michael. It was important for you to do that.” After another pause, he said, “This is going to help Penny. You do understand that? Don’t you?”
“I understand, sir.”
The call ended and I went back to my room to pack while the administrator arranged for me to be moved to Parkland Hospital in Baton Rouge. As I put away the clothes that my mom had dropped off, I thought about Penny’s last words to me. They were a combination of two songs that meant something to us. Spring Love was made by an artist named Stevie B. The chorus began with, “Spring love — come back to me.” The other song, Love’s A Bitch, was by Quiet Riot. Her last statement told me just how much turmoil she was in. Caught between love and the pain of losing it, desperation mixed with loneliness is the glue that binds obsession.
Chapter 24
I Was Good at Something
The ambulance ride up to Parkland Hospital took over two hours. I guess they billed by the mile because they definitely took the long way there. And why they had me strapped down in five-point restraints I’ve no idea. Nevertheless, I had plenty of time to think. And what did I think about? Running.
I thought back to when I first saw Coach Swanson. It was over two years earlier, on the first day of my freshman year in high school — August of 1989. I was sitting in the field house, surrounded by athletes. Those guys were all in tip-top shape — muscular. By all appearances, they were jocks. Not the football variety. They were runners, and they looked the part. Vascular arms and legs, flat tummies, and dark tans acquired while running shirtless during summer break to prepare for the upcoming season. These boys could run 10 miles on any given day. And me? I’d never run a single mile in my life. Sure, I rode my BMX a lot, and skateboarding was my regular hobby, but running was different. I was scared to death — and that was even before Coach Swanson walked in.
Coach towered over every boy in the room. Six-and-a-half feet tall, close to 300 pounds, with a chest as wide as a doorway.
“Welcome back, vets!” His voice boomed as if his lungs were equipped with a megaphone. “An’ to the newcomers, welcome aboard!”
I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made a mistake. The person who’d convinced me to sign up for track was nowhere to be found. I didn’t know anyone there.
After Coach’s greeting, we stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the Gator creed: God, Family, Team. He said if we followed that creed, we could achieve, with hard work and dedication, whatever we put our minds to. Then he asked the group of 25 boys who planned on running cross country for St. Amant High. As the hands shot up, Coach nodded his approval. He called several boys by name, which made me feel a little more positive. These were the guys who’d been on last year’s team, some of them fourth-year seniors, and I could see that Coach held a deep admiration for them.
“Shane,” nod, “Shawn,” nod, “Chuck,” nod… “Ben! Don’t break your collarbone this year, boy!” He boomed. “Scooter, Wag, good to see y’all!” He continued scanning the room. Then, “Who the hell is this?”
I hadn’t realized that I’d even put my hand up. I was so taken by the moment, I responded to his invitation without even considering it. As Coach referred to his roster, I stammered, “Uh… Michael, sir.”
Again, his eyes ping-ponged between me and his roster. “Last name?”
“Oh, uh, Richardson.”
He was standing more than six feet away from me, but I still had to crane my neck to look at his face. “You ever run cross-country, son?”
“No, sir.”
“What’s your event then, boy?”
“Um,” I mumbled as I felt my brow furrow with confusion. “Event, sir?” That was immediately met with giggles and laughter from the other guys. My first day of track, hell, my first day of high school, was starting off on the wrong foot.
“What do you run, son?” He demanded. “Or do you throw a javelin? Can you jump, boy? What do you do for this team?”
I was utterly embarrassed. Everyone was laughing. Everyone but Coach and me. I felt like I was three inches tall. But my embarrassment and shame hardened and turned into anger and indignance. Finally, I responded.
“Sir, I never ran track before, or cross-country, or did any sport for a school team,” I said, pushing embarrassment aside. He opened his mouth to respond, but I cut him off. “But I ain’t gonna quit.”
Silence.
Every eye in the room was set on me. That last bit might have come out with a little spice, although that wasn’t my intention. So I added, “Sir.”
The stern look Coach was wearing seemed to soften a bit. The ice melted and he offered a slight smile and a gruff laugh. He turned to look over the group.
“Gentlemen, meet Pipsqueak! He’s joining his first team.”
Then he went to his office. I smiled, feeling a sense of belonging.
“Dress out!” Coach yelled from inside his office.
Everyone jumped up and filed out, on their way to the locker room. I hurried and tapped the nearest guy on the shoulder and introduced myself. He said his name was Chuck as he shook my hand. It felt like a good connection, so I asked him the only question still burning in my brain.
“What the hell’s cross-country?”
When Chuck was able to compose himself and stopped laughing, he looked into my eyes with a serious stare, grinned, and replied, “Fun!”
That first day ended up being a grueling test. There was no “taking it easy” or “getting acquainted.” It was mid-summer and even at 7 AM, the temp was approaching 85°. I did my best to mimic the stretches I saw others doing, and for the most part, succeeded. I was both excited and nervous. Every one of these guys was a seasoned runner and looked the part. I was by no means out of shape but looked nothing like them. I realized rather quickly that I was the only freshman on the 1989-90 cross-country team. I looked like a freshman too. I weighed about 135 pounds and only stood 5’6” tall. I was puny!
Coach came over and told Chuck to break me in for the first lap or two. I turned to the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy and shrugged my shoulders. I said, “I guess I’m with you!”
He looked at me, sizing me up, and asked, “You really never ran cross-country before?”
“Nope.”
“I’m assuming you least know HOW to run… right?”
With a coy smirk, I responded, “I’ve seen it done.”
Chuck tapped my arm and laughed. “Come on, fresh-meat. Follow me!” Then he bolted. Over his shoulder, he yelled, “And try to keep up!”
I ran and caught up and stayed on his heels… for half a lap on the track. But then he missed the turn and left the track, running toward a wooded fence line.
“Hey!” I yelled, pointing behind us. “The track’s that way!”
Chuck turned around, running backward. His eyes were wide with adrenaline. Through a broad smile, he yelled back, “We ain’t runnin’ track, kid! We’re cross-country!”
Then he spun around and resumed his brisk pace. I was about five or six yards behind him and managed to keep up all the way around the campus. We followed the fence line. While running, Chuck hollered to explain what we were doing. He said if I followed the path he was showing me, one completed lap would equal one mile. He also said that Coach wasn’t so much concerned with how many laps we started with on that first day, it’s “how you finish that matters.” He said that was Coach’s philosophy about everything. “Always finish strong!”
I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of keeping up with Chuck. It wasn’t easy though. I was gasping for air, biting at it, never able to get enough. Yet I was right there with him! We eventually made it back to the spot where we’d originally left the track.
Chuck hollered over his shoulder, “Think you can handle a lap or two on your own?”
“Just… follow… the same… course… right?” I panted.
“Yep,” he responded casually. He sounded as if he were just strolling on the beach.
“I… can…do… that!”
“Good! I’ll see you in a lap or two!”
That six-yard gap jumped to 20. Then 50. Then he was turning the corner, running behind the main school complex, where he disappeared.
“Seriously?” I yelled.
How the hell was I going to keep up with that? I thought I might be dying. My lungs were on fire and my heart was thudding so violently within my chest that I imagined it exploding. I’d started smoking and drinking two summers prior, but I thought I was still in decent shape! I rode my bike and skateboarded all summer long. I even drug around a pile of 4x4 landscape timbers tied to chains. Our backyard used to be home to a large garden, and I leveled the old rows by tilling it all down and dragging the timbers to smooth it. Could running track, err, cross-country, really be this hard?
Not long after completing my second lap, I started walking. Mumbling to myself that I couldn’t do it. It was just too hard.
“Givin’ up aw’ready?” someone called from behind. It was Chuck. He was “seeing” me in a lap, just like he said he would.
Then, from clear across the field, a deep booming voice belted out, “That sure does look like a whole buttload o’ quittin’!” That reverberating echo could probably be heard by half the town. Coach was over 100 yards away, standing with his hands on his hips, staring at me.
“Better run!” Chuck laughed as he flew by me.
I shook my head no, but my body overruled my mind. I started into a steady jog, then a bit faster. My legs were on fire, every nerve arguing against continuing. Nevertheless, I kept running. Faster than before. I managed to get in four laps on the first day. Chuck nearly doubled my total. I was thankful when Coach finally yelled, “Time!”
I was covered in sweat and every inch of my body ached. My head was pounding too. I must’ve looked as miserable as I felt because Chuck handed me a Jolt cola he got out of the Coke machine. “Here, this will help, Pipsqueak.” The heavy dose of pure caffeine did indeed help.
I made my way to my locker. Everyone was stripping down, and most of the guys were heading to the showers. I did what they did. I had never showered with a group before. In fact, the only person I’d ever showered with was Cody back in Biloxi. I knew all about sex but was unable to see sex and nakedness as two different things. They were part of the same equation. Sex meant nakedness and vice versa. The room was filled with athletic, wet guys, lathering, and laughing, washing away the grime of practice. That first shower after practice was my last. I wasn’t like them. I didn’t only see camaraderie, a team innocently joking around and showering together. I saw sex. So I started bringing extra towels, deodorant, and cologne to keep in my gym locker. I never took another shower at school.
Chapter 25
Brief Encounter, Deep Impact
While I awaited processing, an orderly led me to one of Parkland’s outdoor smoking pavilions. They had an adult wing and a separate adolescent wing. I was told that if I stayed on the adult side, I’d be allowed to smoke but I’d be forced to relinquish my cigarettes if I chose to seek treatment on the other side.
I was sitting on a decorative woven metal bench when the glass door opened to allow a beautiful girl with long curly dark brown hair to pass through. Behind her was a handsome male orderly, his biceps and pectoral muscles pressed proudly against his undersized scrubs.
“Michael, do you mind if Stacy bums a cigarette from you?”
“I don’t mind,” I replied and handed her my pack. She didn’t make eye contact with me. She seemed bashful and timid as she slowly raised the cigarette to her waiting lips, almost too slowly. She held her hair back and leaned close to the lighter the orderly held, never looking up at him. He flicked the lighter and sparked a flame to life. Stacy pulled on the cigarette and released. A tiny curl of a smile raised at the corner of her mouth. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“You okay?” He asked her.
She nodded yes and said, “Mmm-hmmm.”
“‘Kay… I’ll be just inside if either of you need me.” Then he turned and walked back into the building.
Stacey watched him go and sat across from me on a cushioned lawn chair. We visited in silence and smoked that first cigarette. She was wearing a skirt, and I could see up her thighs, all the way to her peach-colored panties. One hand held the cigarette, the other was beneath her left thigh. She was sitting on it. After I lit another cigarette from the butt of the first one, I handed it to Stacy. For the first time during our encounter, she made eye contact with me. Then I heard the softest sweetest voice say, “Thank you.” I nodded and smiled at her then retrieved one for myself. “I’m not crazy,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“‘Kay…”
“I’m here ‘cause I do things I’m not s’posed to. And my parents are ashamed of me.”
I had no choice but to bite. “Why are they ashamed of you?”
Stacy’s dainty little red lips curled into a devious smile, she bit down on her bottom lip, then parted her lips and took a drag. She shifted her hips as she did so, catching my attention and causing me to look. Her legs were parted more now. I quickly returned my eyes to meet her gaze just as she raised her chin, revealing an elegant thin pale neck, crisscrossed with light blue veins beneath her skin. Stacy blew the smoke into the air, her eyes still locked on mine, then let her words float lazily on the air. “‘Cause I fuck all their friends.”
It was that sweet soft voice again, but this time it possessed an erotic pull. It was like a whisper that wasn’t a whisper. Then she broke eye contact and stared intently at the glowing orange cherry at the end of her cigarette and blew on it. Tiny yellow and orange fireflies flittered from the end. She bit her lip again and then looked at me. Stacy raised the cigarette to her mouth and pressed her lips to the orange filter of the Marlboro and pulled in a long, deep drag. I was fixated on her mouth. My own mouth hung loosely open. She was hypnotizing me — on purpose.
“How old are you?” I asked. Until then, I’d assumed she was at least 18 because she was on the adult side.
“Sixteen.”
“Why are you on this side? Shouldn’t you be on the other side?” Although I asked, I’d already assumed they’d given her the same option they gave me.
“‘Cause I can smoke over here. And ‘cause I was getting in too much trouble over there,” she giggled.
I bit again, “What kinda trouble?”
She took another drag and blew it out, then went back to chewing on her lip again. Stacy glanced quickly over her shoulder, checking on the orderly. He was talking to a petite nurse with strawberry-blonde hair. Satisfied that the orderly was sufficiently preoccupied, Stacy scooted to the edge of her chair and reached for me, placing her free hand (pre-warmed from sitting on it) onto my knee. Gently, she stroked back and forth. Then, in a voice that combined innocence and eroticism, she said, “I can show you what kind of trouble… if you stay.”
The vamp!
Unintentionally, I pulled away from her. Her eyes widened, surprised by the suddenness of my reaction. She seemed close to panic as she pulled back.
“Please don’t tell! I’m sorry, ‘kay?” She was nervous now. “They’ll put me back in isolation if you say anything!” Stacy was no longer the enticing young master enchantress. She’d reverted to being a shy innocent girl. The lips she’d only moments earlier chewed seductively were now pouty and trembling. She was a scared kid.
“No… no, I won’t say anything Stacy.” I felt bad for scaring her. I don’t know why, but I blurted out, “It’s just… it’s just… that I like boys!” That wasn’t a lie, I do like boys, but why I told her as much, I don’t know. I’d just gone all the way with girls a few months earlier, but it’s not like that “healed” me of my homosexual fixations! I was still very attracted to members of the same sex. All my new sexual interest in girls did was confuse me more.
Stacy’s jaw went slack. She sat in silence for a few seconds. Without breaking eye contact, she lifted the cigarette to her lips and offered no innuendos this time. After one last, long drag, she crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray beside her. “Well,” she began, “I guess we have something in common then!” She giggled like a little girl and all I could do was smile. I don’t believe I’d ever, until that night, admitted that out loud. Not in those words.
She stood up, turned, and walked away. I called out, “Hey Stacy.” She turned around and looked. I use the pointer finger on my right hand, motioning her to come here. I smiled and my eyes locked on hers. As she walked towards me, that eager, needful, glazed-over stare returned. She was a natural when it came to bedroom eyes. Maybe she thought I’d changed my mind. Stacy was seductively attractive, expertly provocative, and her voice was that of a siren — alluring. I battled through all of that and asked, “Did they call the cops? Ya know, on their friends?”
Her smile disappeared. The flame glowing behind her irises vanished, and the seductive voice that only moments earlier had caused my skin to tingle, stomach to flutter, and sex organ to swell, was now thick with sadness. Her face turned pink, and my heart started breaking at the sight of tears welling up in her eyes. Then, she answered my question. “No,” she swallowed. “After my second abortion,” her voice was shaky now, but she finished, “They sent the ‘little slut’ here.”
I felt the knife not only plunge into my heart but twist. Stacy turned again and disappeared through the glass doors, leaving me standing alone on the patio. This time I didn’t call out to her. I’d already done and said enough. My heart was aching — broken into a thousand tiny shards. I’d been kicked in the balls and was fighting for air.
Chapter 26
Coming to Fruition — Parkland Hospital, November 1991
If Greenwell Springs was based on the more “old school” psychology of Freud, then Parkland was stuck somewhere in a middle chapter of a book written by Dr. Spock. I wanted nothing more than to go back to Freud’s “everything at its sexual core” form of treatment. At Parkland it was all hugs and trust to fix everything. Within two days of admittance, I joined 30 boys and girls in a trust exercise that entailed falling from a platform into the waiting arms of my peers. This would supposedly build trust. There was no way I’d decided that I could conform to this. Hugs got me laid and trust got me burned by guys who just used me as a fuck-puppet! I needed help all right, but not the kind a nanny could give me. I didn’t need to learn how to tie my shoes dammit! I needed to be shown a new path altogether and I’d walk it barefooted if I needed to! I was convinced that I was in the wrong place!
My first night there proved it. My roommate was Theo, a preppy hot mulatto jock who was stuck up and full of himself. He acted like he was god’s gift to girls. All he talked about was girls. To be more precise, all he talked about was pussy. To Theo, the rest of the girl was just useless flesh! He was smart and articulate and a total chauvinist pig. “What a worthless piece of shit!” I thought. By the end of my third day, I hated the girls on the ward more. They were all foolish droolers whenever he came around! He talked down to all of them and that just caused them to work harder to garner his attention. Several of them had become his “conquests” as he called them, and they were proud of it! This is what girls want? An arrogant conceited egomaniacal chauvinist pig? These kids definitely came from a different world than I did.
The truth is that most of them came from very sheltered middle-class families. They were the rich kids who dabbled in dope and drink and when daddy dearest revoked their plastic, they learned how to acquire the substances and attention they desired through other means. Then daddy found out his little girl was being passed around the ghetto, so he sent her to Parkland for a six-week intervention. Maybe a little corrective therapy would do her some good. To my way of thinking, this was just a timeout for them. Boy was I wrong! Different addictions, illnesses, and disorders, but all the same. We were more alike than I first realized.
When it came out in group that I could hear voices and see things that others didn’t, they treated me like an outcast, the joke on the ward. They had never heard of such a thing “in real life.” Even in a psychiatric hospital, I felt like a leper. I figured that most of these kids were experimenters who got caught. I was stuck in a “behavioral health” unit and the patients there seemed to feed off each other’s negativity. They were like the mean kids at school. Attaching to one another, outdoing each other over and over again. When I look back on the situation, I can clearly see the problems we create for ourselves are usually the hardest to overcome. I didn’t see it then obviously. Back then, as I watched them interact with each other, seeing them pick and choose who was one of them and who wasn’t, I judged them. All of them. And I separated myself from “their” reality. I didn’t see them as living in the same world I live in, and I crawled back into my loneliness. Days later, I had a manic episode.
I realized staff members were watching me and it was getting to me. I started pacing back and forth in the community room. Eventually, a nurse approached me, and I snapped at her, yelling at her to leave me alone. That was, of course, her cue to not leave me alone. The nurse invited me to sit down and talk to her. I did. Next to the nurses’ station, there was a short administration hall with some chairs. She and I sat there, and I was asked what was going on. What was I feeling and thinking? I noticed three large male orderlies lurking precariously close, encroaching. My paranoia grew I kept glancing at them. Finally, the nurse asked me, “Michael, do you need a timeout?” That’s when I exploded.
“Are you fucking serious?” I yelled. Obnoxiously laughing, I screamed, “A god-damned-mother-fuckin’ timeout?”
“Calm down, Michael.”
“Calm down? You think a fuckin’ timeout fixes stuff? You people are insane!” I cried. I pointed at her, then at the big giants on the other side of me. “Y’all are the crazy ones!” And with that statement, I stood up. Huge mistake!
The orderlies tackled me in an instant and dragged me into an isolation cell. As soon as they relinquished their grip on me, they spun and quickly walked out, locking the door behind them. I started screaming and crying, yelling profanities at the top of my lungs, and forgetting to breathe. Lightheaded, I sat in a corner on the floor. Sobbing uncontrollably, all I wanted was to understand what was happening to me. I felt so lost and overwhelmed. Just like the night before I was admitted to Greenwell Springs. With a raspy, strained voice I screamed, “What the fuck is happening to me?”
“You’re a fuckin’ maggot! You’re a little bitch-boy!” I heard Bulinda say. She was right in my ear, but when I jerked my head to the left there was no one. “I should’ve drowned you!” her voice sounded hideous and demonic.
“Leave me alone!” I cried.
Back and forth we went until I saw the dark shadow in the corner across from me. Had it been crouching there all along? It stood and took a step toward me as other shadow figures came around from behind the first. The big fat one in the lead had a face beginning to materialize. More faces started appearing on shadowy bodies. The big one had the brown putrefied face, but it was unmistakably Bulinda.
Over and over again I screamed, “Leave me alone!” All the while, Bulinda and her horde laughed and jeered, taunting me. I was still screaming when the door opened. I leaped to my feet and started toward the lit opening, wanting to escape, but stopped short. I stared at the doorway, then averted my eyes to the corner, and back to the door. The three big orderlies entered the room and there were more gathered behind them. I again shifted my eyes to Bulinda and her monsters then back to the men. One of them looked towards the corner with a puzzled expression, then back to me. The demons were no longer advancing but I could still hear them. “Don’t you see them?” I begged, once again turning my gaze to the evil lurking in the corner.
An overhead light came on, drowning the room in a yellow glow, whereas before it was lit by a small nightlight. Bulinda’s full devilish form was still there. “Leave me alone!” Heavy tears were falling, my voice broken, and I felt faint.
“Michael… Michael!” an orderly snapped. I looked at him and he asked, “What do you see? Who are you telling to leave you alone?” His voice portrayed genuine concern.
I looked to the corner, then again at the orderlies just as a nurse stepped out from behind them. She said, “Michael, you’re okay.” Her hands were out, palms open, non-threatening. “Talk to me. What do you see?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, looking again at the hovering, beastly beings in the corner. If they don’t see this in the room with them, then no one else will ever see it, I thought. The horrid visions belonged to me and me alone. As if by invisible cue, the orderlies all took a step toward me. Staring at them now, I braced myself in a side stance defensive position and yelled, “YOU leave me alone too! All of you! “
The nurse spoke softly but clearly, “It’s a go.”
The orderlies rushed me, and I started swinging for the fences. I was quickly overpowered. They grabbed my wrists and secured my arms, so I started kicking. My legs were subdued so I sought flesh to chew on and found purchase on a meaty wrist. I clamped my teeth together tightly and heard a loud “AHHH!” I noticed the metallic taste of blood. Someone pinched the sides of my neck, thumb on one side, fingers on the other of my spinal column just behind my ears. I cried out in pain and released my hold. They wrestled me over to a bed that was equipped with restraints. The orderlies fastened restraints to my wrists and ankles, then ran one across my waist along my lower back. I was face down in a five-point restraint system. My whole body ached, and I found it difficult to breathe. My entire body was tingling.
Someone tested my restraints. I closed my eyes when a cool, delicate very feminine hand was placed on my bare shoulder (my shirt had been ripped off in the scuffle). Her thin fingers swayed back and forth in a soothing manner. When she spoke, I knew it was Nurse Meadows. “It’s okay, Michael.” She sighed sympathetically. “You’re okay now. I’m going to give you something to help you rest.” Nurse Meadows lifted her hand from my shoulder and gently wiped away the tears on my cheek. It was a tender compassionate gesture.
“It’s never going to be okay,” I said in a hoarse, gloomy voice that sounded so distant.
She leaned forward, “What do you see Michael?” she whispered.
“I see her… and her demons,” I moaned, releasing more tears and unconstrained raw emotions.
“Who is she?” asked the nurse with the sweet voice, still stroking my cheek. I was quiet for a moment, then unclenched my eyes. Looking into the corner I saw Bulinda staring back at me. “She’s Death.”
I felt pressure on my left butt cheek and then a steely coldness beneath my skin. That was replaced only briefly by a dull burning sensation. I heard an outburst of demonic chatter and then, like a switch turned off, it was gone. Like magic I was floating just above the bed, the shackles fell away, and I relished the hovering sensation offered by the powerful dose of Haldol and Ativan. Within minutes, everything disappeared, and I succumbed to the darkness — the womblike embrace of sweet darkness.
* * *
When I awoke from the sedative-induced coma, sunlight was penetrating the thin shears covering the windows in my room. I was no longer tied to the bed in the panic room I was in the night before. My hands and feet felt very light — like they were filled with helium — but my legs and arms felt heavy. I was lying face down. I turned my head to look at the door. It was parted wide, allowing fluorescent light from the hall to illuminate the entryway to my room. The bluish light hurt my eyes and I felt like I had a hangover.
I was wearing the pants I’d worn the night before though the t-shirt ripped off during the scuffle had been replaced by another. I started to recall the events of the previous evening. As the memories trickled in through some crack in the back of my brain, I winced as I remembered the struggle. I’d bitten the big red-haired orderly — the one the other kids said was gay. I heard him cry out in pain again, although only in my mind. It was a horrible thing to do, and I felt bad for committing the act. That memory gave way to other, less forgiving memories. They drifted in through an open door the first one forgot to close. In floated the big brown demon Bulinda and her equally vile minions who stood in solidarity with her. That demon didn’t just look like Bulinda, it was her. She had followed me to Parkland. There was no safe haven from that monster. She wasn’t going away, so I’d just have to learn to fight her… on my own.
I mustered enough energy to get out of bed to use the toilet and wash my face. My hands and feet felt awkward. Feeling somewhat refreshed, I walked out into the hall and made my way down to the nurses’ station. Nervously approaching the desk, I asked where was everyone? A male nurse, Gerald, informed me that the ward was in group. I looked at the clock hanging behind the desk. It was 2:15. I’d been asleep for 18 hours.
Gerald pointed to a room behind me and told me I could just go in. I asked him if I could take a shower first, but he said I’d have to wait until the proper shower time. Sighing, I turned and walked toward the room he’d directed me to. The drab sign hanging on the doorknob read “In Session.” I could see the group and the therapist through the glass, so I knocked. Everyone turned and stared at me through blank unresponsive eyes. The therapist, Dr. VanBraun, motioned me in. I entered and she pointed to an empty chair. “Welcome back to the world, Mr. Richardson!” She sounded chipper.
I managed something that may or may not have resembled a partial smile. Some of the kids giggled while others appeared to regard me with great suspicion. “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious,” I told the boy I sat beside. The girl on the other side of me smiled at that. The fact of the matter was they didn’t understand me, so they labeled me just as I’d labeled them because I didn’t understand them. To me, it felt like they regarded me as a crazy person from a movie they’d seen.
Within two minutes of sitting down, my neck and shoulder started to spasm and tighten, contorting my upper body into a pretzel. It was painful, to say the least. It was because of the Haldol. I was clasped in the agonizing vice of a torturous side effect. Dr. VanBraun noticed it immediately and walked to the door to call for a nurse. When she came, I was given an injection of either Benadryl or Cogentin. My muscles were contracting, and it was debilitating. I needed assistance to make it back to my bed. The room remained silent until I reached the door when murmurs and whispers came to life behind me. This time it wasn’t the demons; it was those spoiled rotten kids that reminded me of the classmates from my past. That old fire of rancorous animus was rekindled. I despised these people!
On my bed, I began feeling a little at ease. My muscles were loosening, unclenching. The medication they’d injected me with was working and although my physical pain was easing, the mental anguish I was experiencing was intensifying. All I could think about was killing them. All of them. Maybe the demons would savor that sacrifice. Rage grew within me because I couldn’t break my focus away from those pathetic holier-than-thou shitbags! I was about to explode. I envisioned my hands tearing those snobby kids apart. As guilt and remorse came in to stop me, I fought them off and instead focused on my enemies’ demise. I told myself I’d enjoy it. Stop whining like a little bitch, Michael, and just kill someone!
“Yeah Michael! Embrace the kill!” That was a dark voice grumbling behind me, urging me — daring me! It was behind me but inside of me too. I could feel violence ascending from a pit somewhere deep within. I felt more wrathful animosity than ever before, and I wanted to express it! I —
* * *
The room was dark when I regained consciousness. My arms jerked as I instinctively grabbed at my chest. For some reason, I thought I was in five-point restraints again, but my arms were free as were my legs. I wasn’t strapped down and I was still in my own bed. I could hear someone snoring in the room in the bed next to mine. I closed my eyes and listened to the rhythmic sonance emanating from the bunk just four feet to my right. My whole body ached. My neck and shoulders were heavy and stiff, thighs and calves throbbed as they would the day after a marathon, and my ribs had the soreness of a week’s worth of flu-induced coughing. Nevertheless, I managed to sit upright, albeit accomplished by much groaning. Moving seem to take more effort than it should have, but I made my way to the restroom. I felt icky all over, so I took a bird bath in the sink before returning to my bed.
Leaving the restroom, I noticed movement in Theo’s bed. As I crawled back onto my bunk, I heard Theo ask, “Hey dude, you a’right?”
“Yeah, just sore.”
“Guess them drugs they shot-choo up wit really fucked you up, huh?”
“Yeah. I had a bad reaction to them. Made me lock up, all over my body.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, and I thought the conversation was over. Frankly, I was shocked by any conversation at all, especially with Theo. That was the most he’d spoken to me in the week and a half I’d been there. Then, “Dude, you talk in yo’ sleep. A lot!” I was looking at him now and saw he was shaking his head, kind of in a disbelieving manner. “Some o’ da shit-choo say is frikkin’ scary.”
“Sorry man. I don’t mean to freak you out, Theo.” I paused and then asked, “What’d I say?”
“Shit, you was tawkin’ ‘bout rippin’ out eyes and swimmin’ in blood.” He breathed in deep and blew it out through his teeth, making a low whistling sound. He followed that with, “Then you was cryin’… then laughin’… then… crazy shit yo’!”
I processed what he was saying and remembered how angry I was before succumbing to sleep. “Yeah, I get some fucked up thoughts sometimes, man. But that’s all it is, just thoughts,” I offered.
“Nah, it’s cool, man. I ain’t trippin’ or nuttin’,” he said. Then after another pause, as Theo appeared to be weighing his choice of words, he said, “You kept tawikin’ ‘bout some chick. Sounded like you said ‘Abigail.’“ It felt strange to hear her name come out of Theo’s mouth. “Her an’ another girl, Penny.”
“Just some old friends o’ mine,” I said. I was looking directly into his eyes now, trying to decipher his motive. He had swung his legs over the side of his bed. Still looking into his eyes, I finished my thoughts, “People I really care about.”
He nodded, “Sounded like it.” Another pause, his eyes drifted away as he analyzed the next thing he wanted to say. I waited and then, “Somebody you called Liam, too.” My eyes must’ve offered a reaction or maybe I flinched because his next question was direct. “You into dudes?” There it was, there was the motive. Now, it wasn’t an accusatory tone, more like a “tell me about it” kind of query.
I was caught off guard by it, but I swallowed my fear and stammered out an “almost” admission.
“Som’n like that,” I offered, then, “Why? What’d I say?”
He laughed softly, then answered, “It ain’t what-choo said… it’s what you was doin’.” He used his caramel-colored closed fist to make a back-and-forth motion in the air above his lap. My face grew instantly warm. I felt flushed and he was watching my face. I know he saw my discomfort. It was like he was looking into me. I’d never really been embarrassed about anything sexual before, so the distressed feelings welling up within me didn’t make sense. My reaction to Stacy’s rubbing my thigh on the night of my arrival was more about surprise and fear of getting caught than discomfort. If anything, I should have been aroused by the thought of Theo watching me in my sleep.
“Dude, I’m… uh,” I stuttered, “I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry —”
“Naw man, it’s cool!” he said in a low voice just above a whisper. “We all do it, right?” Theo was consoling me? After another lull, he said in a whisper, “It was, I’m just sayin’, it was even a little hot… maybe?”
I could sense his own embarrassment as soon as he pushed the words out. They came out like they’d been shaken loose like dust from a coat he’d found in a curious closet. A closet deep inside his own mind and tied to something tied to his heart. Although I saw Theo as being a hot preppy mulatto boy, I never imagined him as having those tendencies. He can’t be like me! Not at all! He was definitely only into girls! It was no secret, he’d had sex with several girls on the ward (including Stacy, I was told, which got her pushed over to the adult side). Theo was always trying to get into someone’s panties. Yet, in the dim light coming from the bathroom, I looked deeply into Theo’s hazel eyes and sensed a new heat rising within him. I instantly forgot about the hatred I’d felt earlier as he gazed into my muddy-green eyes. Suddenly I felt something entirely different. I was turning into one of Theo’s conquests… and I was powerless to fight it!
I saw a thin smile form on Theo’s lips as his alluring eyes wooed me, I felt no disgust — wasn’t repelled at all. And he wasn’t repulsed by me! He looked at me through eyes, I imagined, that saw someone he really liked. Someone he really wanted. I felt like an object, yes, but one of beauty. One of desire. And that didn’t feel like a bad thing. It felt good. I wanted to be wanted, and his own body was showing me how much he wanted me, too. As he sat on the edge of his bed, the sheet that covered his lap started to rise. The movement was steady as his organ filled with fiery blood. I could see it throbbing to the beat of his heart. Theo more than wanted me, and I needed him! At that very moment, I felt my own desire rising as my own body reacted. I wanted to get up and go to him. I wanted to be consumed by the fire that had risen between us, connecting us. I was swinging my own legs over the side of the bed when the bedroom door slowly opened wider. All the way open. As the bright blue-white light spilled in from the hallway, exposing us, Theo pulled his thick blanket over his lap, adequately covering his rather large erection. In the doorway, a chubby, ruddy, smiling face peeked at us.
“Everything all right boys?” He asked.
“Yes sir,” I answered.
“Yup,” Theo followed, his voice a little shaky as he added, “just tawkin’.”
“I went to the bathroom, and it woke Theo up,” I added nervously.
The big red-haired orderly stepped into the room and looked over the two of us. I winced when I noticed the bandage on his right wrist. I felt bad about the “good” job I did on him when I bit him. My eyes returned to his face when he spoke again, “Y’all sure everything’s okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” I started. “I’ve just been asleep for a few days, man. Can’t sleep anymore,” I laughed, giving out a little snort which caused the orderly to smile and Theo to chuckle.
“Ahh,” he nodded. His eyes shifted to Theo’s lap, and I saw his eyebrow arch. Then he smiled at me and asked, “Would you like me to see about getting you something to help you rest some more?”
“Oh, no sir,” I countered. “I’ve already slept way too much! I’m fine, really.”
His gaze softened. “Indeed, you are, Michael.” He stepped backward and as he reached for the doorknob, he whispered, “Well, y’all just keep it to a whisper, okay? Don’t get me in any trouble.” Then he pulled the door closed and left Theo and me alone. I don’t remember the door opening again at all that night. It didn’t matter though. As soon as he left, I laid down, rolled over, and faced away from Theo. He tried to talk to me again, but I feigned sleep. I wanted him to come over and take me, to make love to me, but he didn’t. I could hear him relieving his pent-up sexual energy alone in his bed. If he’d been as bold as he claimed to be, all he had to do was come over to me and I’d have allowed him inside of me. I’d have made him happy. But Theo wanted his lovers to come to him. I heard when he finished. He climbed out of his bed and went to the bathroom to clean up, and through my squinting eyelids, I saw his huge, hanging, caramel-colored member, and my desire returned. I smiled as the door closed.
Chapter 27
A Proud, Running Fool — Fall 1989
The first time I exited the bus at Highland Road Park in September of 1989, I stepped into a shockwave. I was part of a team. This wasn’t me seeking aloneness, living as a hermit, or being the lone wolf. When my feet touched the gravel, I mumbled, “Here we go,” and walked into a world of competitive sports that I’d only ever imagined. On that day I also realized how serious the sport of cross-country really is. I stood still for a few moments, breathing in the clean air, soaking up the atmosphere, and shaking out the butterflies. The butterflies were stubborn.
I was dressed in my black sweatsuit with bright gold lettering. “St. Amant High School” and “Gators” were emblazoned across the front. I wore it proudly. My black and white Nike running shoes were tied together and draped across my shoulders. Looking around, I saw hundreds of other young adults proudly wearing their own school colors. I felt like a rival, but I also felt like I was part of a community. And that wasn’t bad. Cross-country and track are a culture, and they accepted me.
I walked with Chuck and another senior named Joseph. They explained the course to me. I was a freshman junior varsity runner, so I’d be running the two-mile route. It started out on a flat expanse of ground, but they warned I’d quickly encounter “Mount Motherfucker.” I laughed at the name, but neither of the veteran runners joined in. Joseph admonished me. He explained that because it had rained the previous night, “The Motherfucker” was going to be a bitch to climb. Chuck added that I’d be descending the same hill at the end of the race. So, up the muddy hill at the beginning and down the even muddier, freshly churned hill at the end? Got it! I stopped laughing.
Chuck’s advice to me was to watch for the tennis courts. About three-quarters of the race would be over at that point. He counseled me to pick up the pace when I got to them. He said it was a good place to gain some ground because of the several zigzags there. A lot of new runners got nervous about overtaxing themselves and tiring out, so they tend to ease up on the jets. That’s when I should press the gas and drain the tanks. I took in all the info, nodding my recognition rather than laughing. Still, I don’t think either of them had much hope in reserve for me. Somehow, I knew they’d be the first to chide me if I fell on my face and do a nose grind all the way down Mount Motherfucker.
We made our way to our school’s staging area and joined the rest of the team. There were a dozen or so boys and about the same number of girls, as well as support staff and coaches. When not running a race, we were all expected to line the route somewhere and cheer on our teammates and hand out cups of water if needed. Our little island of black and gold was just one of a dozen others, all dressed in their own school colors. The energy was barely containable. It was ecstatic. Life was electrified.
We were all stretching and warming up when the coaches walked over. Coach Swanson’s bullhorn voice got everyone’s attention. “Thanks for coming out today to represent Gator Pride!” he began. “We’re cross-country; we’re runners! That’s what we do! That means DON’T STOP! Start pumpin’ them legs at the pistol and don’t stop ‘til you cross the finish line!”
He allowed that last piece to sink in, allowed it to linger, as he watched our faces. I felt a growing determination inside of me. Then Coach addressed his veteran runners individually. Some were sophomores and juniors, but the majority were seniors. Chuck, Sean, Jason, Joseph, Scooter, Bart, and Shawn were the seniors that anchored the team. He encouraged them to just do what they do. He did the same with the rest of the varsity team. Then he turned his attention to his JV team. Me… singular.
“Richardson! You ready for this, son?”
“Yessir!”
“Look here, just ‘cause you’re JV don’t mean you don’t matter! You represent St. Amant High, and that matters!”
Looking back on that Saturday morning, I don’t know if Coach really had faith I’d even finish the race. I was the only freshman on the boys’ team, and I’d never competed athletically for a school team. I’d played one game of basketball for the local youth basketball association, but that was in fourth grade. Then I tried out for the varsity eighth-grade basketball team and made it but quit the team on the same day the roster was posted. Both times were due to Bulinda refusing to allow me to play. So, looking up at Coach, with his military-like persona, I didn’t want to let him (or myself) down. Aside from that, I didn’t even want to think about what it would be like to be on his shit list! The coaches finished their speeches and we all gathered in a circle.
Coach Swanson bellowed the cadence, “One — Two — Three!”
“Gator Pride!” 30 energetic voices thundered.
The announcement for JV boys came from a man speaking into a bullhorn. My teammates ushered me to the starting line where I saw huge puddles of mud less than 10 yards in front of it. We weren’t wearing spikes for this race, so I had to depend on my regular running shoes. Quickly making my way to the line, I tried to pick a spot aligned with the least amount of muddy goop. I found one that appeared to have a bit of high ground before the mud. I figured I could use it as a launchpad to help me leap over the puddle. Taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm the butterflies in my stomach felt nice. In through the nose, out through the mouth… letting go of the anxiety that pressed down on my shoulders with deep exhalations. I could sense the tremendous level of anticipation pulsing around me, as runners from Capital, Catholic, Denham Springs, Walker, East Ascension, Tara, Southern Lab, and other area high schools eagerly awaited the pistol.
I’d removed my sweats after stretching, so I was wearing black shorts with gold lettering and a white T-shirt. It was the only white shirt in the crowded line. The other shirts in the sea were orange, black, baby blue, red, yellow, and green. Most of the other schools had multiple junior varsity representatives. I looked down at my shirt, at the black outline of Mercury’s winged shoe emblazoned upon my chest. I told myself I was a representative of the crafty and speedy messenger of the gods. Continuing to concentrate on my breathing — deep and steady — I focused on taking in pure, positive, and invigorating oxygen, while expelling dirty, negative, energy-thwarting impurities. Relinquishing weakness and harnessing strength, I closed my eyes and envisioned the race. I saw myself running, passing a blue shirt, then a red, and two oranges. “Remember to breathe,” I reminded myself. I saw the tennis courts, felt a burst of energy as I passed them, and I knew that only half a mile remained. I was passing more bodies of tired, panting boys. I… didn’t even hear the starting gun! BANG!
My eyes were still closed when my legs started pumping. I was flowing with energy. Although I didn’t hear the pistol, I felt the energy swell and pulse forward, pulling me ahead. I had to stay with it! Couldn’t allow it to cast me off. My eyes opened just as my right foot splashed down in the mud puddle I had hoped to avoid. It squished into the goop beneath the water’s surface. I pushed off as hard as I could, leaped, and managed to keep my left foot from meeting the same fate. Free of the hungry puddle monster, I bolted! I was NOT going to bring up the rear of this powerful wave, so I settled in with the first third of the runners just in time to be urged by course guides to turn right. Within 10 strides of that turn, I hit the incline — a 45-degree hill standing like a mountain in my path. Up I went.
The slope might as well have been a wall. I closed my eyes and dug in, grunting, legs pumping, with my hands out in front of me to keep me from falling. “Open your eyes, Michael!”
Mount Motherfucker! It was exactly as it had been described by Chuck and Joseph. Spot on! I kept pumping and using my hands out in front of me to steady myself. I remember thinking that if not for the slick mud I’d have a chance. What felt like minutes was actually only seconds. When I reached the top, I followed the markers and turned right. Clingy mud shook loose from my shoes and fingers as I ran through a patch of green grass. My shoes were beginning to gain traction and I was running fast again. I worried about the pace I was keeping, but I felt strong. When I turned right at a stand of oaks, I didn’t see any other runners. “This is bad,” I thought, feeling as though I’d fallen way behind. I had to keep breathing, keep running, and focus! Then a runner in an orange shirt passed me by.
His shirt identified him as a member of the Catholic High cross-country team. Baton Rouge Catholic High churned out high-quality athletes in all of the major sports. They were habitual championship winners, especially in track and field. I tried to pace him, but then another runner passed both of us. That runner wore a yellow shirt with blue writing — East Ascension High, Saint Amant’s archrival. Blue, orange, then white. How could I be the last in the field of 30? My legs were burning and the air I was gulping felt like invisible flames funneling into my chest.
We passed the soccer fields, another shady stand of live oaks, and dozens of cheering onlookers. I ran by swings, slides, and then some picnic tables to the right. More minutes passed. Keeping up with the grueling pace was beginning to take its toll on me mentally. I wanted the race to be over. Then, as we came upon a straightaway, I heard the unmistakable “schmock” and “plop” of tennis balls being volleyed. “Schmock” as the ball was struck by taut rackets and “plop” when the ball bounced on the clay court, causing my heart to flutter with excitement! I instantly demanded more of my body and my body didn’t protest. I ran faster and passed both runners I’d been pacing, determined to NOT be last. Not much further, dammit!
I followed the course markers and human guides positioned along the route. There were student-athletes all along the path and I was pleased to see white St. Amant track T-shirts on both sides of the path ahead of me. My female teammates were cheering!
“S.T.A! S.T.A! S.T.A!” they chanted for the only runner wearing an S.T.A shirt. (S.T.A. is short for Saint Amant.)
Chuck and Bart were there also, and like the girls, they were cheering exuberantly.
“Michael! Run hard!” a girl yelled.
“Don’t stop! All in ‘til the end!” Chuck encouraged me.
“Don’t forget Mount Motherfucker!” I heard another girl holler. That voice, I would soon learn, belonged to Laura.
I passed my cheer squad and wove through some more turns. I was in the zigzags! So I worked my legs with more desperation, but my fuel tanks were getting precariously low. After a left turn, the ground suddenly disappeared over what looked like a cliff. I was about to descend the mountain that was responsible for my falling behind. I hesitated, just a bit, to keep from falling and sliding down the hill, but it was enough. Enough to allow the runner in yellow and blue to pass me by. I was angry, telling myself I wouldn’t finish last. I might not beat East Ascension, but I’d be damned if Catholic beats me too! I surged forward and down the hill I went. Three seconds later I was on flat soggy ground. A course guide directed me to turn left onto a straightaway. It was then that I realized Mount Motherfucker was nothing more than a molehill, and I was now on a straight shot to the finish line. My legs were grinding as my arms chugged wildly and I felt like I was running on fumes. I was sucking in air, having long forgotten how to breathe in through nose and out through mouth. Every breath felt thick and nearly chewable, and I was exhausted — on the verge of tears. I remember thinking that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a competitive runner, but I charged on with tunnel vision.
I didn’t catch the boy in yellow and blue. I was close enough to him that mud kicked out by his feet was hitting me in the face, but I just didn’t have enough left in the tank to overtake him. However, orange didn’t pass me! “Not last,” I breathed out as I crossed the finish line. A cheering crowd lined both sides of the chute and I felt immense relief as I stopped running and walked out the back of it. I heard Coach yell, “Keep walkin’ Pipsqueak!” I did. He didn’t want my muscles to cramp. I walked towards him.
“I’m… sorry… Coach,” I managed to spit out. “I… tried —” I stopped talking and downed a cup of water someone had handed me. I crumpled the little paper cup and motioned for more.
Coach slapped me on the back, nearly knocking me to the ground, and boomed, “Sorry hell! A second-place finish! I’ll take that any day!” His bass drum laugh startled everyone around us.
“Second?” I said as I looked up at the giant.
“Second!” he yelled.
An event organizer walked up and handed me a second-place ribbon. Coach slapped my back again and said proudly, “Damned good job, Son!”
The whole time I’d thought I was at the back of the pack when I was actually helping to lead it. It never dawned on me to look back. I possessed so little confidence in myself that I couldn’t focus on finishing first, I only saw not finishing last as the best possible outcome. However, not only did I beat Mount Motherfucker that Saturday morning in September, but I also beat nearly 30 other runners. That made losing to one not feel like a loss at all.
I was high as a kite. Dopamine and adrenaline pounded the receptors in my brain, and I was riding the lightning! I felt like I’d won the Boston Marathon, not just a two-mile cross-country dash. Something else felt new and good that day as well. Laura was clinging to my arm as I walked back to the staging area. I collapsed on the grass, and she dropped down next to me.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she inquired directly.
“No.”
“Wanna take me to Sadie Hawkins?”
“Sure!”
“Awesome! Here’s my number. Call me tonight, ‘k?”
Just then the man with the bullhorn called for the girls to line up. Laura stood, then leaned down to kiss my sweaty forehead.
“My turn,” she said as she tugged at a wedgie then turned and trotted to the starting line.
“Laura!” I hollered. I stood and started after. “Laura!” I called a second time. She heard me and turned around smiling. “What’s Sadie Hawkins?” I asked.
“Ha!” she exclaimed. “Just call me tonight.” She giggled and went to the line.
I did call her, and she did become my girlfriend that night. And I really had no idea what Sadie Hawkins was. Laura was my first girlfriend in high school. As far as girlfriends went, I’d only had two in junior high, and neither could be considered serious in any way. I could honestly say that I had no idea what to expect when it came to having a girlfriend. My relationship “experience” rested solely upon a summer fling with Cody and an 18-hour make-out session with Tammy. Girls, cross-country, track, new friends, and a broader sense of freedom felt really good. But sometimes the greatest sensation one can feel is when standing at the edge of a cliff.
Chapter 28
The Edge of the Cliff — Spring 1990
Ninth grade got off to a wild start. Cross-country was by far the hardest thing I’d ever been a part of. It was exactly what the name implied. We ran at least three miles before first period, and then three or four more miles during first period. Then we ran for another hour after school. Within the first two or three weeks of my freshman year, I was running 10 miles a day, five days a week, when before that I’d never intentionally run a single mile. I became accustomed to waking up in pain, with shin splints and swollen joints, but sleeping all night felt amazing. I went to bed at nine and was soundly asleep by 9:30. My head hitting the pillow was a sweet relief, whereas previously it had been a burden. Physically I was toning up and gaining lean muscle, and my energy level was through the roof. I couldn’t wait to finish my toast and coffee — the breakfast of champions — so I could get to school and run.
My dad dropped me off at school in the morning until Chuck started picking me up. He arrived in my driveway at 6:00 AM, and I was warmed up and running by 6:15. Upon completion of the after-school practice, Chuck brought me home, and before long he started picking me up to go hang out with him and his friend Jordan.
I was cruising the strip as a high school jock now, following none of my previous interests and bad habits. Gallivanting through the woods, wandering illegally through people’s homes, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, and even porn was of little interest to me. My trapper camps fell into disrepair, reclaimed by the forest. My new addiction was running.
I felt like I’d turned a corner. I was happy. There was a sense of normalcy in my life, an order to things. My alarm roused me at 5:15 AM when I stumbled to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. I opened the door to let Munchkin out to go potty, and by the time the aroma of freshly brewed Community-brand dark roast coffee filled the house, she was bouncing on the porch like Tigger to come inside. The racket caused by her jumping would wake Daddy up. I’d let her back inside and watch her proudly traipse over to Grandma Howard’s glider rocker to set down the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate she’d retrieved from the end of the driveway. It was a trick she’d picked up on her own. She snatched it up every morning after doing her business and she was rewarded with a bowl of food. But first, she got a healthy dose of “lovin’s-n-rubbin’s.”
Then I was off to my morning shower. I’d recently taken to dragging a razor over my top lip and chin in an effort to get something other than pimples to grow there. By the end of ninth grade, I would achieve something a little thicker than peach fuzz. I styled my hair and wore cologne and took a little pride in the way I dressed. Checking myself out in the mirror wasn’t so bad because fewer daemonic shadowy figures were taunting me. Sometimes none at all. There was also no Abigail and Walter.
Done with my shower, I’d find Dad in the kitchen, sitting at the table, drinking coffee. I’d drop three slices of bread into the four-bay toaster then pour a cup for myself. Daddy flipped through the paper while I nibbled on buttered toast. There are few experiences from my youth that I can count as “our” time, and that was one of them. (Many years later, just days before his sudden death in 2006, we reminisced about those mornings and other fond memories we shared. My father, through his tears, offered me a very heartfelt apology that led to a tearful embrace and forgiveness on both of our parts. Reconciliation at last.
I ran my ass off those first few months of high school, and I was a hard competitor. I ran cross-country as my high school’s only JV male participant, and occasionally I ran against varsity runners in the three-mile race. I competed extremely well in both events.
As for my social life, I did indeed take Laura to the Sadie Hawkins dance, but she broke up with me before we even got to the ticket taker. I had a minor alcoholic setback that lasted about three or four days after she dumped me, but I pulled through and regained my focus.
Unfortunately, I’d been devoting so much of my time to running and hanging out with my new friends that I hadn’t devoted any of it to doing homework or studying. Report cards came out in late October, and I landed on academic probation. Bulinda wanted me removed from the team and my dad was on the verge of agreeing, but Coach went to bat for me. He told them to give me a little time to whip me into shape. I think if it had been anyone else, they’d have said no, but Coach Swanson could be a very convincing man. I was given another chance, thanks to him.
I trained just as hard as I did before I was put on academic probation. My two-mile time dropped to low 11s, then under 11, then snuck up on 10 minutes. I still needed more endurance, so I focused on that. I could run a mile cross-country in under five minutes, but I lost a minute or more on the second mile. The same for my three-mile time. The first mile was five or fewer, but my total was hovering around 17. So I trained and trained harder. Coach said I wasn’t a natural. He said I would have to rely on my drive. Ambition, not athleticism, was my natural ability. As much pain as I felt throughout my body, I knew he must be right. I wanted to give up often, but I kept pushing. I’d been crying my whole life believing I was a loser in everyone’s eyes, especially my own, but now I was a part of something. When I lined up on race day, wearing my St. Amant black and gold, I was part of a machine that relied on me. It made me happy — made me strong.
My grades didn’t progress as much as my running did, however, and I remained on probation. By then I wasn’t allowed to compete at all, and I’d allowed old habits to creep up on me. I started sneaking off into the woods again. Then, not satisfied with being alone, I recommitted to drinking alcohol. It wasn’t a daily thing, but it was often. I was, in retrospect, living my life in two extremes. The first was wanting (and working hard) to be an all-star athlete, and the other was answering the call to be a hermit — to disassociate myself from the world entirely. To wallow in misery because self-pity felt good. Depression and self-pity spin into a downward spiral, uncontrollable if left undiagnosed or untreated, even when positivity is present. That downward spiral foments self-destruction.
Cross-country wrapped up and I immediately started focusing on the oval, training for both the mile and two-mile races. My times were good and getting better, dropping a second or two every week. After months spent running and exercising, my body was conditioned inside and out. My athleticism quickly caught up to my ambition. Although still on academic probation and therefore unable to compete at meets, I still trained every day with the team. My unofficial time for the mile was down below five minutes and my two-mile was coming in consistently under 11 minutes. My hard work was paying off. I managed to get my GPA up and over the threshold which meant I’d be able to compete. Finally! There was an invitational in two weeks, and I would be running the mile. I was excited, to say the least.
The weekend before the invitational coincided with the Great River Road Run — a 10K event in downtown Baton Rouge. The course winds through downtown, in front of, then around the state capitol building, the governor’s mansion, the shopping district, and finally down River Road where it terminates near the USS Kidd World War II Memorial. It would be the biggest and longest event I’d ever participate in.
There were half a dozen boys from St. Amant track and field running, and about the same number of girls. It was one of the girls’ coaches who actually paid the $15 cover for me to sign up. She also gave me a ride to the race. Those were the only two excuses I had for not participating and she solved the problems before I could protest. The race was hosted on an idyllic Louisiana springtime Saturday morning. The day was about as perfect as it could be, tainted only by my own embarrassment when Coach Griffin picked me up. Before that day, the only person on the track team that knew where I lived was Chuck. Now others would see the squalid old trailer I lived in, and I was ashamed. I think I was always aware of how poor my family was, but when the two vehicles carrying seven of my teammates — who all lived in nice middle-class neighborhoods — pulled up, I was mortified. I sat in silence during the ride to Baton Rouge, sandwiched between two wonderful athletes. Davin, a foreign exchange student from Denmark who was a triathlon/endurance athlete, and Alice, who was our best distance runner on the girls’ team, were my backseat companions.
Downtown was packed! Thousands of runners and spectators were congregated not just at the start, but all along the route. The morning was clear and a bit cool by south Louisiana standards. The sweet scent of fresh grass clippings was robust and mingled amorously with early blooming magnolias and gardenias. I imagined the aromatic blends mildly wafting by, permeating into my pores and lungs, feeling me with peaceful energy. I was given a number that I pinned to the front of my St. Amant Track T-shirt. Then, an event assistant used a black permanent marker to write the number on the back of my left hand. Afterward, I proceeded to the starting area. It was marked off according to time, so I found the section that was occupied by other runners in my time range. Two days before the race, I ran a 6.2-mile route near my house and finished the course in 45 minutes. Since my goal for the day was to finish in 45 minutes or less, I lined up in the 6:30-to-7-minute-per-mile zone. I was among professional distance runners who treated the GRRR as a practice, high school kids pushing their limits, elderly competitors enjoying life, and Special Olympians fulfilling their potential.
I was still stretching when Alice approached me. She offered me encouragement in the form of a positive affirmation and a warm hug. “You’re awesome!” she said, and then gave me a pep talk. That hug and her voice gave me renewed strength. She was almost a stranger to me but one who planted a seed that would someday sprout and grow alongside other seedlings of hope, self-worth, and purpose.
“No matter what happens,” she said, “always finish strong!”
I finished that 10K race in 41 minutes and 31 seconds. My official placement was 151st overall out of 2100 competitors. I also finished first out of all the runners representing my school and fourth overall for my age group. All those accomplishments felt great! I was on a high cloud looking down at the past. I felt like I was ready to take hold of the reins and ride the horses into charge. But just like so many times before (and subsequent times to come), bad choices due to compulsive behavior would cause that cloud to dissipate.
The weekend following the Great River Road Run was the first track meet I’d be allowed to participate in. My excitement level was pegged out and I was still under a spell cast by the previous weekend’s accomplishments. Coach even bumped me up to the two-mile run because he said I had “way too much left in the tank” at the end of the 10K GRRR. He said if I don’t hold back I might even place.
I was stretching on the infield with Bart, Alice, and Paige when I heard a voice I’d never heard at any of my cross country meets. I certainly didn’t expect to hear it that day. I lifted my head in shock, spun around, and searched for the owner of the voice. My heart sank to an abyss when I saw the expression on his face.
My dad was standing beside a uniformed police officer. And behind them, just to the left, I noticed two men wearing suits and ties, both with gold badges clipped on their belts. My father was livid. “Come here, boy!” he hollered. His voice gave away his indignation.
I thought about bolting. I knew I could outrun them, but where would I go? All sorts of scenarios flashed across a screen in my head. I wondered how I could kill myself right then and there. Maybe I could make it to the highway and leap into traffic? I felt dizzy. I trembled as I approached my father, whose eyes portrayed rage tinged with shame. Although it sounded as if I were underwater, I heard one of the detectives reading my Miranda rights while the uniformed officer handcuffed me. I suddenly felt bitter and resentful. My anger masked the sadness and shame swelling inside me when I looked over my shoulder and saw my teammates, my coaches, my friends, as well as athletes from seven other schools and hundreds of spectators watching as the boy in the St. Amant Track T-shirt was placed in the back of an unmarked Crown Victoria.
* * *
The ride to the police department took a little over 30 minutes but it felt like an eternity. All I could do was think. Deep down inside I knew my path had been drastically altered. I knew that all the dirty deeds I’d been doing since I was five years old had caught up with me and I felt like there was no turning back. I was only 15 years old, but I knew that my life was indeed finally over. I’m not saying I knew I’d turn to a permanent life of crime but looking back now on my thoughts while in the back of the cop car, that’s where the “I don’t give a fuck” foundation was laid. It’s when I decided that whatever happens, happens. I knew exactly why the cops arrested me.
One Saturday morning, just a few weeks before that track meet, Chuck and Joseph picked me up. Chuck was going to a store in town, one that catered to car stereo enthusiasts, to purchase a new stereo for his car. The business was located in a big warehouse that held three separate businesses. There was a car stereo store, a video rental place, and I think the other business was some sort of furniture rental business. On that morning, only one employee was working in the entire building, a girl that Chuck knew from school. She had graduated the previous year. We noticed that the lights in the stereo section were off. The counter girl told us we could go over and look around, but the owner wasn’t expected in at all that day. So we walked over to browse. It was fairly dark, but we managed to find our way around and eventually wandered into the demo booth. The little acoustical room was completely dark except for the little square buttons that glowed red next to various components and a stereo head unit. As we tried various setups, my eyes started to adjust to the dark and I could see boxes of various sizes stacked against the wall. After a very brief discussion, I swiped two of the smallest boxes and walked out of the store without being noticed. Chuck and Joseph joined me outside after saying goodbye to their friend.
I honestly do not know why I stole the boxes. I just acted on the impulse. Inside each of the boxes were matching speakers. Two $60 West Coast Audio competition door speakers. I stashed them at Joseph’s house in his bedroom closet. I didn’t even own a car! A few days later as I was cutting grass after school, I looked up to see Chuck pulling up in my driveway. The look on his face as he approached told me that something was seriously wrong. And wrong it was. Joseph’s mom found the stolen speakers and Joseph was taking the rap (and the heat) for the deed. I knew instantly that I couldn’t allow that to happen, so I asked Chuck to bring me to Joseph’s house, which he did.
Miss Kathy thanked me for “fessing up” and asked what I thought we should do. I recommended returning them. After all, they were still in the box. I hadn’t even taken the pleasure to pop the bubble wrap yet. She smiled and said it was a wonderful idea. We left immediately and drove to the store. When we walked in my stomach was in knots. The man behind the counter greeted us warmly and asked what he could do to help us.
Miss Kathy addressed him first. She pulled the boxes out of a plastic shopping bag and said, “My son’s friend here,” she said as she placed her hand on my shoulder, “would like to return these.”
The man looked at me and smiled. “Ah! No problem, I’ll be happy to help.” He reached for the boxes obviously thinking this was a sales return. She gave me a little nudge and I knew it was time to fess up.
“Sir,” I started slowly, “I came in here Saturday when no one was here…” I looked up and saw that he was staring at me not as friendly as before. “Um… I stole ‘em,” I finished as I again stared at the sales counter.
“Oh. I see,” he responded.
Jason’s mom intervened at that point and explained how I’d confessed to the crime although her son had claimed responsibility. She asked if maybe I could come in and work off the misdeed. He smiled and said that would be “more than acceptable.” He took down my number and said he’d give me a call in a week or two. Needless to say, I left the store in a much better mood than when I’d entered. I started thinking that if I did a good job, sweeping up and stocking shelves, then maybe it would lead to a real job! My first!
He didn’t call that first weekend, which was good because I participated in and did well in the Great River Road Run. He didn’t call during the next week either, which is fine also because I was going to race at my first track meet. Other than that impulsive slip-up, I was doing well. I pledged again to quit drinking. I was already done with smoking. I picked my grades up and was eligible to compete. So if I was going to be a track star and maybe even get a scholarship then I needed to buckle down and walk the line. I considered joining the military. Several seniors on the team had already enlisted early in the Marines. Chuck hadn’t ruled it out either. I thought about joining the Navy and sailing around the world. It wasn’t too late to chase a dream and make my father proud! And I’d be proving Bulinda wrong at the same time. I wasn’t a little bitch-boy, and I could make something of myself.
In the back of that cop car, I looked back and saw my dad driving the family car. Beside him sat Bulinda. She wore dark sunglasses, her lips were pursed, and I knew she was relishing every second of my shame. I wasn’t going to make something of myself, and I would always be her little bitch. I felt like maybe it was time to admit it, I was a waste.
The Monday after the arrest, my school locker was searched – in front of my classmates. Then my gym locker was searched – in front of my teammates. Everyone witnessed it except for Coach Swanson. He stayed in his office. When the cops were done, I was allowed to return to class. I went to Coach’s office and knocked on the door. He was sitting in his roller chair, hands teepeed in front of his chin. His eyes shifted to me when I tapped on the glass and that gaze hurt me. His eyes were filled with many emotions I don’t think I can honestly define, but the disappointment was there. Looking at him, I knew I’d betrayed him and let my team down as well as my school and my family. No words were said that day. I knew. I was off the team. I went home that afternoon, rode my bike to Triple S Convenience Store, stole a bottle of Mad Dog, and bought a pack of Marlboro Reds.
I was going to have to go to court. My dad, as mad as he was, went to discuss the case with an attorney. Mr. Gutierrez listened as my dad told him that he was done with me. I’d embarrassed him and caused him more grief than he could handle. I was everything he wasn’t. Bulinda told the attorney about how bad I’ve been my entire life, how malefic and manipulative I was, and how I was never going to amount to anything anyway. When they finished, the man turned to me. Mr. Gutierrez explained to us that the owner of the store, the very man I returned the speakers to, had filed an insurance claim for thousands of dollars which is what led to the police report and the subsequent complaint being filed. The crime I was charged with was not shoplifting or simple theft. I’d been charged with burglary and theft of over $10,000 worth of car stereo equipment. Those were felonies that could send me away for juvenile life. That meant incarceration at the Louisiana Training Institute for Boys until I was 21 years old. I was 15. (The seriousness of the charges was the only reason my dad considered hiring an attorney.) He said that if I were to return the rest of the merchandise, the court might show leniency. I told him there wasn’t any more merchandise. There really wasn’t.
Bulinda told the lawyer that if all I was facing was juvenile life then she didn’t see any reason to hire an attorney. She said she was perfectly fine with that. My dad, however, really did not want me going to prison. My cousin Dale had recently gotten out of prison for a sex abuse case and Daddy said he saw how messed up his godson was now because of it. Bulinda got angry and left the room but not before screaming, “Do whatever you fuckin’ want, Ronald! I am so done!”
Mr. Gutierrez seemed greatly perturbed by Bulinda’s belligerence. Her animosity towards me unsettled him greatly. He turned to my dad. “Mr. Richardson, I don’t think you should just let the system have Michael. He’s obviously not a bad kid, but something is definitely going on up there,” he said and pointed to my head. “I think he definitely needs help, but if you turn him over to the system, they will mess him up. I don’t just mean the other boys, but the guards too. Hell, the system itself!”
After a rather long awkward silence, my father’s contemplation came to fruition. “Well, the only thing I can see then –” he broke off as if to make sure these were the words he wanted to say, then, “What if I send him to live with his mama?” He looked up at the lawyer and I looked over at my father. I was in shock. It was the last thing I would’ve expected him to say. In my peripheral vision, I saw Mr. Gutierrez’s posture straighten while my dad turned his attention to me. “If she’ll even take you.”
“Yes, yes! This might be good,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “Sometimes the court might see this kind of change in the child’s setting, you know, starting over, as a good thing.”
I perked up immediately. My mom? I was 15 years old, and I hadn’t lived with my mother since I was barely more than a year old. Over the course of 14 years, I’d only spent a total of a few months with her. In fact, while sitting in the office, I tried to think back to just how long it had been since the last time I’d seen her. It’d been over three years. We wrote letters to each other several times a year, but I hadn’t received any letters from her in over a year. (A later discovery revealed Bulinda had intercepted more letters and cards than I actually received.)
“Yessir. I’d like to live with my mom,” I said.
I was asked to sit in the lobby while they talked. Bulinda rejoined them and judging by her body language she was fit to be tied. I could read her lips a little and it was clear to me that she saw the possible move as a reward for being a piece-o-shit. She wanted me to be locked away. I moved to a seat next to the door to see if I could make out what was being said. I got there in time to hear Bulinda say my mom wasn’t ever a mother. So why should she get another chance anyway? She said I would be basically getting off the hook and Ailene “wins.” She was screaming. Her face was red, and her arms were trembling. Mr. Gutierrez stood up, planted his hands on his desk, and said something that I could neither hear nor visually discern. Then he sat down and Bulinda walked out, slamming the door before brushing past me on her way out to the car.
In the end, my mom did agree to take me, and the attorney was able to make everything work with the judge. I received six months’ probation, and my dad transferred his custody to my mom. She drove up from the little town of Berwick, Louisiana to sign the change of custody papers and when my dad handed her her copy, he told her he was done with me. He made a motion like he was dusting off his hands and told her, “I wash my hands. He’s your problem now.” Bulinda smirked and told me to go to the car while they discussed the logistics of the transfer. I exited the courthouse and cried as I walked across the parking lot. I was soon to be freed from Bulinda’s death grip. The air on that particular day tasted and smelled and felt better than ever before.
The move itself would not be until later in the summer, on June 26, 1990, to be exact. I had a few more weeks of school left, and, besides that, my mom needed a little time to get situated before the move. As for me, I would finish school and go spend a few weeks in Biloxi with Aunt Carol and Uncle Joe. They requested that I visit. They were footing the bill so I would get one last “hoo-rah” on the beach. I was looking forward to it and secretly hoped I’d get to see Cody again.
Coach Swanson threw a pool party for the entire track team on the first weekend after school ended. I was surprised, but I got an invitation too. At the party, Coach handed out various certificates and awards. He presented me with an award and certificate for Outstanding Freshman Performance in Cross-Country. It meant a lot to me even if I was the only freshman on the cross-country team. Coach pulled me to the side and gave me a real fatherly talk. It was very heartfelt, and it meant a lot to me. I could still see the hurt in his eyes. He told me to get it together and remember, “It’s not how you start, Son, it’s how you finish.” He encouraged me to come back the following year and try again. I didn’t have the balls to tell him I was moving. That was the last time I ever saw Coach. I never ran track again. In so many ways, I’d given up.
After my arrest, I lost my ambition. I failed my civics class, got an incomplete in algebra, and should’ve gotten an F in English but Mrs. Landry gave me an extra-credit project and I completed it. She gave me the lowest D possible. I had completely quit turning in assignments. I turned in my written exams without so much as my name on the paper. I lived inside my head, tangled in a web of voices and believing I was the victim of a poltergeist. Mirrors were once again crowded with demons, and Walter and Abigail were always around. Somewhere along the way I’d begun to suspect that inanimate objects were moving on their own. Certain people appeared translucent, and my thoughts about society were tenebrous. Things in my home were coming up missing. I researched the strange occurrences and read about a strange phenomenon called poltergeist. I decided I must be a victim of some malevolent noisy ghosts. The books I read about peculiar happenings said that poltergeists tend to manifest around emotionally charged and psychologically unstable youth. I figured I met both criteria. I began to suspect that Abigail and Walter might be those types of spirits. I asked them and they laughed. Abigail teased, “We’re not noisy!”
I read some articles about a CIA experiment called MK-ULTRA and started worrying that I was unwittingly involved in a clandestine experiment. So I stepped up my “training” in the woods in case I needed to evade capture by government handlers. I checked for bugs and cameras everywhere I went and worried that “they” were going to sneak up on me. I began to avoid Munchkin so that the cameras in her eyes couldn’t record me. Even if I didn’t know who “they” were.
Chapter 29
Song, Satan, and Subjective Morality
It was during my short stay at Parkland Hospital, in the fall of 1991, that I began to realize just how much of a role music played in my life. There was a big screen TV in the day room that was tuned to MTV for the better part of every day. As the images flashed across the screen, and the music flooded out of the speakers, my thoughts about the past and present came together like a jigsaw puzzle. I could see my life through the music. At the risk of sounding even more saturnine, deciphering the music was like peeling off pieces of a scab and laying them out to fit the wounds in my soul. Music, for me at least, does three things that scabs and scars are known for: it brings the pain to the surface, helps wounds heal, and leaves me with a constant reminder. I don’t mean that music is limited to these three characteristics because it truly is so much more than the sum of these three. The reciprocal of piecing out the painful parts is stumbling across the remnants of joy that had been tucked away and temporarily hidden. Like little revitalizing antibodies.
Some songs reminded me of various relationships with boys, girls, men, and women. Some of which were sexual, others platonic. Some recollections were good, some bad, and others indifferent. Some of the scabs I peeled uncovered cherished friendships; others revealed friendships even more deeply profound — a level of profundity I hadn’t noticed sooner because I was afraid. Recently a friend helped me to better understand that even joyous memories can arise from the ashes of pain. Those particular remembrances can be the hardest to accept. It’s hard, impossible really, to lose joy and succumb to sadness unless you’ve known what joy was as well as the other emotions it inspired. It’s rather easy to smile at emotional pain and pretend it doesn’t hurt — to avoid rejection, shame, and anguish — but, when you can smile at old pain and remember a bloom of happiness that either preceded it or replaced it, then healing begins. It’s a healing that came from the pulled scab, which covered an ulcerous wound that was hurting, leaving a scar to remind me that I made it through something. That is what music is to me.
On the night I overdosed on my psychotropic medications I was listening to a ballad by a rock group named Kix. The title of the song was Don’t Close Your Eyes — a song about suicide. It wasn’t the song that led me to attempt suicide, it was the sadness I was already feeling. In the song, the singer is actually imploring the suicidal person to not kill herself. He was singing to me. Likewise, the song that prevented me from pulling the trigger the night before my admission to Greenwell Springs Hospital was War Pigs by Black Sabbath. It was Ozzy who saved my life and three others that night.
A wide range of music helped me through the emotional roller coaster of inpatient life at Greenwell Springs. I listened to Harvester of Sorrow by Metallica and Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd when I was twisted with confusion and bound by loneliness. Spring Love by Stevie B both fed and aided the mourning of a very painful lost love. Love’s a Bitch by Quiet Riot did so as well. The song that brings Cody back to me is It Must Have Been Love by Debbie Gibson, while Without You by Mötley Crüe returns Mandi to my arms. Music and memory are two opposing sides of Velcro, that’s for certain.
Sitting in the day room at Parkland, reading the Satanic Bible and writing in my composition book, I was comforted by the music. Metallica’s The Unforgiven and Guns ‘N Roses song Don’t Cry were in heavy rotation on MTV. One had a positive effect on me, the other not so much. But Satanism, LeVey’s brand of Satanism at least, was the religion I latched onto. A positive or negative outcome didn’t matter at the time. It was the perfect religion for a rebellious teen who wanted to set himself apart from other rebellious teens. Mixing Satanism with the proper music to stimulate a suitable mentality — a mental state that had already been shaped by years of emotional assault — was a recipe for an even bigger disaster. It was a religion based on human beings’ primal need to embrace natural desires. It was about satisfying urges and satiating hunger. It was that religion that led me down a clear path of existentialism, and it was the Satanic Bible that would lead me to an early discharge (against medical advice) from Parkland. I was deemed unsafe for the treatment environment and the only way I would be able to continue to seek help was if I would agree to move over to the adult side. I felt as though “fate” had given me an out, so I took it.
My father picked me up one cold and rainy November morning just after Thanksgiving and dropped me off in Berwick. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to go home with him. Instead, he dropped me off at my mom’s house where Grant kicked me out again just a few days later. This time I wasn’t afraid. I was acrimoniously cold and distant, off my medications, and armed with a new religious philosophy. If it feels good, do it. There are no excuses, just consequences. Take what I want, not what I deserve. There is no such thing as perversion or taboo, because right and wrong do not actually exist. What gives anyone the right to determine my right and my wrong? Morality, like truth, is subjective… right?
I left my mom’s house in the projects on November 30, 1991, with a backpack full of clothes and a few personal items. My friend Dicky accompanied me across the bridge to Morgan City. We rode our bikes to a section of town known as Wyandot, where Ronnie lived part-time with his mom and sister. It was on the second story of an old building that may have once been a barn. It was a small affair, but we pretty much had it to ourselves because Ronnie’s mom spent most of her time at her boyfriend’s house and his sister was a prostitute. So Dicky and I had a place to hide out.
We shoplifted our food from a Winn-Dixie that was near the apartment. There was also a Circle K just a few blocks away that provided us the opportunity to steal Mad Dog 20/20 and pocket cigarettes from the display case. We spent a lot of time at Kegler Lanes. The bowling alley was only two blocks from our hideout, so it became hangout number one when we weren’t at the hideout.
Oftentimes I would go off on my own. I was too interested in seeing how deep I could dig my grave. There were lots of kids that hung out at the bowling alley every night. Several Vietnamese and Laotian girls who did not mind sneaking off with a rebel white boy garnered my attention. They were all right around my age at the time, 16, but I felt a peculiar difference between them and the girls I’d been around previously. Their curiosity and sexual submissiveness were appealing. I envied them. They were beautiful, feminine, and vivacious. I wanted to be them. I wanted to be desired by the boys that desired them. Boys like me. I was conflicted and confused still, so I did what I had always done. I compulsively chased depravity, living my life in the pursuit of sex, drugs, alcohol, thievery, and prostitution. There were truckers and other individuals at truck stops, parks, and even at the bowling alley who’d pay me to have sex with them. But no one wanted to love me. So I’d spent the money on cocaine, weed, and LSD instead of food and other necessities. Then I shared the drugs with the kids I hung with. They at least pretended to love me. Sexual liaisons with the girls from the bowling alley (and two boys) became a ritual of sorts. Part of the promise I made to Satan was to defile God’s precious creation. It’s not that I believed in God or even Satan for that matter. I did it as an affront to Christianity. I was 16, on my own, loaded with acid, and the bowling alley girls took great interest in the smorgasbord religion I was following. Even if the philosophies were just a hodgepodge of borrowed beliefs, it felt like power. And because others were drawn to it — drawn to me — I felt “loved.” I just had to create a scenario where others would love me, and I did. You see, it wasn’t the power that compelled me, it was the attention. I was the center of it.
It wasn’t long before the employees at all the local stores and the bowling alley started watching me and Dicky more closely. We didn’t know it of course, but we had become suspects in a rampant shoplifting spree affecting a six-block radius. I didn’t need confirmation anyway as I already believed that people were watching me. I knew I had to be more careful than most people because the CIA was doing their best to record my every move. On several occasions, I even asked Dicky if he was recording me. If the government could help Bulinda put cameras in my dog’s eyes, then what would stop them from implanting surveillance devices inside of my unsuspecting friends? I also believed I could read minds and that made me fearful that others might be reading mine.
One cold December night right around Christmas Day, Dicky and I walked out of Circle K and suddenly found we were surrounded by police cruisers. I immediately started to think about government experiments being performed on me. The truth however was much less sinister. The store owner had called the cops to report us for stealing Mad Dog 20/20 out of his beer and wine cooler. The cashiers had been watching us every day and on that particular day, they called the police. The irony is when they searched us, they didn’t find any alcohol (or any other stolen item) on us. The plan had been for me to distract the cashier while I was purchasing cigarettes, and Dicky would snag us a bottle or two of Mad Dog and hide it in his waistband. At the last minute (which I believed was either due to intuition or premonition) he put the liquor back. Although the cops found nothing, they still brought us to the police station.
Dicky’s mom had reported him as a runaway and she told the cops he’d probably be found with a boy named Michael. While Dicky was easy to identify, the cops used a photograph of him provided by his mom, I had given them the pseudonym Jamie Kidd. The cops detained us for violating curfew. At the station, a cop phoned Dicky’s mom and I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be found out, so I confessed my real name and gave the officer my mom’s phone number. He called her and explained why I’d been detained. He also told her I wasn’t being arrested but she would need to come to Morgan City and sign for me. I’d already told the cop that I didn’t run away, I’d been kicked out. When he told her she would have to bring me home, Grant spoke into the receiver, informing the cop that no one was going down to sign for me and under no circumstance was I returning to his home. After tongue-lashing the cop for several minutes, Grant disconnected the call.
The cop let the receiver hang for a moment as he looked me over. Then he pressed the button to renew the line and dialed the house line again. Grant answered with an obvious attitude. The cop ordered him to “shut up and listen” and then explained to Grant that my mom was going to come down and sign for me, take me home, and that was that. He said if she wanted me to be removed from the home, then she would have to do it through the family court system. Then the cop made himself even more clear. “If I have to remove you [Grant] from the house to get this 16-year-old boy home, then so be it. It’s your call!”
An hour later I was stretched out on my own bed in my old bedroom, listening to Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil coming through my stereo speakers. Hearing the doorknob being turned, I looked up. It was my baby sister, Karli. My heart. She had covered my butt on many occasions, and I’d done the same for her. She would lie to defend me, knowing it could cause trouble for herself. She was 11 at the time.
Karli told me that she was happy I was home and that she’d missed me so much. She came and sat on my bed and gave me a hug. Just as she buried her face in my chest and I reached up to run my fingers through her blonde locks, Grant burst into the room. He forbade me to have any contact with my mom and sisters. He said if “Aileen wanna talk to you that’s her goddamned problem,” but “I’ll kill you if I catch you talkin’ to da girls!” Then he ushered Karli out of the room and slammed my door.
Grant had verbally barred my sisters and my mom from my life. I had already dropped out of school, and little did I know, I had about three weeks to go before my own self-destruction would come full circle. A choice that I would make on January 22, 1992, would alter my future, more than any delusion-driven, impulsively careless act I’d done up to that point. It was a choice that would be the foundation for my future. The ground had been prepared by Mark, Dale, and Leonard, and my mother’s abandonment. The piles had been driven deep, set firmly by Bulinda. The concrete was on its way, and I was driving the truck.
Chapter 30
The Road... Traveled
Before moving in with my mom during the summer of 1990, I spent two weeks in Biloxi with my Aunt Carol and Uncle Joe. I loved Biloxi. Everything about it was appealing: walking on the beach and cast netting, watching the C-130s taking off and landing at Keesler Air Force Base, and the company I kept, among other things. Although I never saw Cody again after that first summer, I did have other interactions with people that left lasting impressions on me. Memories I will always cherish.
Aunt Carol tried again to get me to stay with them in Biloxi, at least till I finished high school. Carol told me all about Bulinda’s true nature, as if I didn’t already know. It was impossible for me to not know how evil her sister was. I told Aunt Carol even more about the life I had been living under Bulinda’s iron fist and she was the first family member that I confessed my complex and confusing sexuality to. She pointed out that if I moved in with my mom I would be moving in with a stranger. Carol was offering me an opportunity to start over in Biloxi with people I did know. As much as Biloxi appealed to me, because I was very much beach-oriented, I declined the invitation. I’d waited my entire life to have a relationship with my mother and now I would have the chance to do it. I wouldn’t pass it up.
Uncle Joe offered a gentle warning. He advised me to not set my hopes too high. He said that neither of us, my mom and I, really knew each other and the relationship may be a little rocky. It is so strange to look back on the various turning points that presented themselves to me. I often wondered where I would be today had I just taken one of those alternative paths I’d been offered. What disasters might I have avoided? What pain could have been averted? It always seems to be about the what-ifs, and that is the paradox. What if I’d taken the other path? I still could not have avoided disasters. My inability to make good choices would have inevitably led to more of them, I’m sure. I know in Robert Frost’s poem he took the road less traveled, but nowhere in that verse does he say it was the right path.
When I returned from Biloxi, I spent the last few weeks before the move with Ben, Travis, and my cousin Tony. We skated and rode bikes and spent every day together. I was still infatuated with Ben, but I never let on and he was never to know how I felt about him. I avoided Bulinda and my dad offered me little in the way of recognition. When the big day finally came, he helped me load my things into the back of Grant’s little GMC Sonoma pickup truck. I took my dresser and about half of my clothes as well as my encyclopedias, my Grand Prix stereo/cassette/record player, and my bike. Everything fit into the bed of the truck. Grandma Howard called me into her bedroom and wished me luck. Then she reached into the pocket of her house coat and retrieved some money that was folded up neatly. It was a fifty, two twenties, and a ten. I tried to give it back, but she wasn’t having it. I still had over a thousand dollars that I’d stolen from the kind woman who was now giving me a hundred bucks. On my way out the door, I grabbed my backpack which was filled with my composition books, pens, and art supplies. It also held the stolen money.
We set off from St. Amant, the home I’d known for all of my first 15 years. As we passed my old elementary school, I sensed that I was leaving behind the broken boy I’d been (and the accompanying demons) and I was setting off to accomplish what I first tried three years earlier — when I rode my bike in the middle of the night in search of a mountain of my own. I didn’t realize it then, but I’d been climbing mountains since I was five years old.
We passed Chuck’s house and then Joseph’s as we drove through the town of Sorrento. When we crossed over Airline Highway, I felt another piece of my painful past begin to twitch. The hooks were buried deeply. Then we turned on Highway 70 and made our way to the Sunshine Bridge. As we crossed the high-rise bridge, I looked down and saw the spot where a good memory was tarnished by two bad ones. When I was about 10 years old, Daddy and me and Bulinda used to fish on a big sandbar not far from the bridge. I could see the place where the sandbar had been replaced by limestone bulwarks. It was a bitter and sweet memory. I wanted, truly wanted a family. Me and Daddy and Mom. Bulinda never materialized as a mother, just a demon. The other memory I have of that old sandbar was when I accidentally killed a seagull. I just wanted to hold it. I didn’t know it was injured, and when I lunged at it, I crushed it. It flailed and flopped and then lay still. Only one of its wings was gently slapping the ground and I started crying. Looking out the window I remembered it clear as day and felt my eyes get warm.
We drove on and passed through the old Cajun villages of Pierre Parte and Belle River. Between the two is a long stretch of highway that appears to be built on top of a low levy with swamp on both sides. It’s all water and reeds and lilies. Huge bald cypress trees draped in Spanish moss along with tupelo and water oak dominate the skyline. Wood ducks rested on branches while blue heron and white egrets walked slowly through the shallow water hunting little fishes and crawfish. Alligators and turtles sunned themselves on fallen half-sunken logs. Wildflowers were being tended by swarms of butterflies. Highway 70 cuts through a perfect spot in the Atchafalaya spillway, a vast floodplain in South Louisiana that had been logged and hunted until nearly barren wasteland in the early twentieth century.
After Belle River, the highway slants south and westward. A tall earthen levee topped with a steel partition helps to keep the spillway contained. That’s what’s on the right all the way to Morgan City. On the left is more swamp. Dry patches of high ground, although few, are occupied by homes as well as hunting and fishing camps. Every tree displays velvety moss hanging in long flows, nearly touching the ground in some places. Weeping willows and red maples were abundant as well. I’d seen all of this before. It’s vintage south Louisiana. But this particular journey somehow felt different. There was excitement and enthusiasm, joy and wonder, but also anxiety. I worried that my ghosts, demons, and troubles would follow. In my head, I begged the demons off. I even willed Abigail and Walter to stay behind to hold the demons at bay.
We passed by another tiny fishing village named Stevensville. It’s where Grant was raised. After another large cypress swamp, the highway brushes the shore of Lake Palourde. A heavy chill ran through my body as soon as I saw it. It’s the lake where Davis tried to drown me. Davis was my mom’s ex-boyfriend. She had been with him the last time I saw her nearly four years earlier. He was an old Native American who spoke French and wore a big brown cowboy hat that was adorned with dozens of buttons and pins he had collected. His face was pockmarked, and his teeth were yellowed. He smoked those long brown Moore brand cigarettes as well as Swisher Sweets cigarillos. Not only did he try to drown me, but he was also one of the men who molested and raped my sisters. I didn’t learn about that until after I’d moved in with them. My sisters had only recently been returned to our mother’s custody. Now Grant was raising them.
I think I was 12 when Davis tried to kill me, just before the summer of 1987. The year is foggy, but the incident is crystal clear. It was a Saturday morning. I know that because my sisters and I were sitting on the sofa watching Saturday morning cartoons. We started tickling and pinching one another in a very playful frolicky way. Davis walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. I thought the look on his face was an expression of anger, like we were making too much noise. But now I know it was something altogether different. It was paranoia, suspicion. He recognized that my sisters were being very affectionate towards me, and I believe he worried they might tell me what he’d been doing to them. He was afraid his secrets were about to get away from him. How can I know that you might ask? Because I know that same fear, that level of paranoia.
So he took me fishing that day, alone. He hitched the boat and drove us to the lake. The water was too choppy to put in — other people were actually taking their boats out of the water when we got there — so he parked the truck and we walked to the water’s edge. It was bordered by a steel bulwark topped with creosote beams. Davis asked me if I knew how to swim, and I replied that I didn’t. I had never been in water above my waist. Even when splashing around in the bayou behind my house or along the sandbars on the Mississippi River, I always stayed within a few feet of shore. (I hadn’t yet gone to Biloxi with my aunt and uncle and swam in the Gulf of Mexico.)
Davis told me to take off my shirt and shoes; he was going to teach me how to swim. I looked at the choppy water and asked if it was deep. He said it wasn’t. There were a few people down by the boat ramp and a couple that were sitting together about 50 feet away. The prospect of learning how to swim was exciting, so I pulled off my shirt and shoes. As I lowered myself down into the water, he squatted on the bulwark. I was hanging on to the beam and I realized it was deep. My feet did not touch the bottom and I panicked. (The water at that spot was actually eight to ten feet deep.) He told me to hold onto his hands and kick my legs. I did what I was told. He switched his grip to my wrists and the more I kicked, the harder he pushed against me. But he was pushing down on me! I began swallowing water and I panicked even more. Then in one quick motion, he pushed me away from him and let go of my wrists. I sank like a rock, not feeling bottom, yet unable to get to the surface. I remember thinking I needed to get my feet planted, to stand up. My lungs were on fire and my sinuses were stinging because of the water I had snorted. Suddenly I was grabbed by two hands. They jerked at me, and I felt my body being pulled through the water. Then I saw light and felt cool air on my wet skin. The first pair of hands had me by the waist and a second set grabbed my arms and lifted me out of the water.
I started coughing up water as a woman started slapping me on the back. My chest was hurting as the water came up and out and I was really dizzy. I recognized the couple that had been sitting together. The lady stopped hitting my back and spun me around, then held my face in her hands. She asked if I was OK. I was shivering and scared, but I nodded yes. The man had gotten out of the water and retrieved a towel from where they’d been sitting. He wrapped it around my shoulders. I turned and looked toward the truck and Davis was walking casually up to us.
The man yelled at Davis, “Are you fuckin’ crazy, man? The kid almost drowned!”
Davis blew out a cloud of smoke and replied, “Boy’s fine. Won’t learn to swim ‘less he tries.”
The couple just shook their heads and walked away. I called out to them and held out the towel. The lady came to take it and she squatted in front of me. “Are you sure you’re OK?” After she asked, her eyes shifted up to Davis and then back to me. I nodded yes.
It didn’t occur to me until years later what had really happened. Although it still haunts me today, I can’t imagine how painful life must have been for my sisters. As my mom, Grant, and I passed the spot where that had happened, I shivered until the memory passed.
The lake was choppy on that day too. We followed the shore, then passed the Brownell Homes Housing Project and Lakewood Hospital. Then we drove through downtown Morgan City. We crossed the old Long-Allen Bridge to Berwick and three minutes later pulled into my new home. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Standing outside the little two-bedroom fourplex, I hugged both of my sisters. We cried and rejoiced to finally be united. Age-wise, we were all spaced a little over two years apart. I was 15, Rae was about to turn 13, and Karli was 10 going on 11. Two of my cousins were there as well. Selena was a year younger than me; Sonny was two years younger. I actually felt like I was part of a family. It was what I’d wanted since I was a small boy. The feeling reminded me of back when Daddy and I used to go with Maw-maw and Paw-paw to my Aunt Lottie and Uncle Leon’s house for the Christmas Eve party.
The joy was short-lived. By that first Christmas, there would already be tension between me and Grant, my mom and Grant, me and Mom, me and Raechel, and Raechel and Mom. Karli and I were the only ones that didn’t have a strained relationship. The dysfunction would eventually lead all of us down dark roads, shaping our lives differently, but no less negatively. In the end, it was my choices that destroyed any bond we might have built. My sins have had the longest, most devastating effects. Not only on me but on all my family.
Chapter 31
The Pressure Cooker Pops
“Davis Fucker!” I yelled.
“Bulinda Lover!” Rae hissed back.
“Slut!”
“Bastard!”
“Bitch!”
“Bitch-Boy!”
Then I pushed her.
We were exchanging vicious insults that we knew would cut the other to the bone. The argument began in the kitchen. She was at the stove boiling ramen noodles, and I was beside her cooking grilled cheese sandwiches. Extra cheese and extra butter, just the way we liked them.
We were laughing and joking, and it felt as though we were going to have a nice evening watching a movie together. Mom was out with Grant at a pool tournament that he was participating in. Karli was spending the night at Carissa's house. So it was just the two of us.
Then we began arguing and calling each other terrible names, hurling insults to out-hurt the other.
My next memory is of me straddling her on the sofa, holding her shoulders and shaking her. I remember her laughing, then crying. At some point I climbed off her and looked around, trying to get my bearings. I didn't know how or when we'd left the kitchen and gone to the sofa in the living room.
She stood and said, “You are so fucked!”
I watched her go to her room where she retrieved her flip-flops. She looked terrified, when only moments before she'd been laughing. What had I done? She said, “I’m sorry, Bubba,” but I didn’t know for what.
“What’s wrong with me?” I yelled.
Rae went to Aunt Donna’s, which was only two duplexes down from ours in the housing projects on Fourth Street in Berwick. A few minutes later I heard the phone ring. It startled me. I picked up the receiver and said hello. It was Aunt Donna.
“You really fucked up now, you sorry piece o’ shit!” she screamed through the receiver. I remained silent as she ranted viciously and called me names. Finally she said, “George is on his way!” That’s when I hung up.
I could already see blue lights flashing through the curtains. The police cruiser came to a sliding stop in the front yard. After closing and locking the front door, I went to my room, closed and locked the door, then pulled the blinds down. Then I went to my stereo and placed an album onto the turntable and moved the setting to “repeat song,” then lifted and set the arm onto the spinning disk. The speakers let out a series of crackles and pops. Then the music began.
I saw the gun in the closet.
I reached for it, grabbing it by the barrel. The steel was cold. The weapon was a .410 pump action shotgun that my father had bought for me when I was five years old. He used to take me out behind the old shed to shoot milk jugs that he filled with water. Of course, I was much too young to shoot the gun on my own, so he'd kneel with me in front and brace the gun against his shoulder. We'd aim it together and when he was ready, he'd tell me to gently squeeze the trigger. There was a loud boom, occasionally a jug would explode, and I'd squeal with giddiness. It was the same gun I used on my first squirrel hunt when I was 12, also with my father.
Engaging the pump, I saw the breach was empty. Rather than load it with the small game #6 shot shells in my dresser drawer, I reached for my hunting vest instead. In one of its ammo straps I would find slugs. I chambered one, then finished loading the shotgun...
March 13, 1990
I climbed down from my favorite branch in the old graveyard oak and walked alone to my bus stop. Still wearing clothes from the previous day, unshowered and unkempt, I felt displaced from my body. It was like walking beside myself, like my body and my shadow had switched places.
I made it to school and sat quietly in homeroom, feeling lost and lonesome. The world around me seemed to be veiled in an ethereal, dreary fog. Sitting there in the shadowy mist of hopelessness, I remember wondering, “Why am I even here?”
I was called to the guidance office before the bell sounded for first period. Her questioning was uncomfortable, so I attempted to ignore her. It was clear that she was aware of the events of the previous evening. I sat in silence, staring at a small unicorn figurine on her desk while she told me what she saw in me: a scared, distraught, and utterly confused young man trying hard to stay angry all the time. I thought, “If you only knew...”
Within an hour I found myself sitting across from Miss Page at Fairview Hospital in Bayou Vista, Louisiana. She was a kind and supportive, soft-spoken therapist with sympathy-laden blue eyes. Her empathy was palpable, and it brought me to tears, and once that faucet opened, I couldn't turn it off. Everything poured out and by the time it was over, my cheeks were raw from the salty, abrasive tears that had leaked out of me. I was hoarse and barely audible at all. She reminded me of another concerned and caring counselor from years earlier. She allowed me to bare my scars and the vicious pain that was the glue binding me to the past and promising me no future. When I was done, she smiled gently and reached for both of my hands. I reached back.
Softly, she held them and said, “You can't continue this journey on your own, Michael.”
I looked for something in the office, anything to focus on, but only returned to her warm and comforting gaze.
“You need help,” she whispered.
“Help?” I queried. “What good is help now?” I asked as I released from her touch and buried my face in trembling hands.
* * *
Later that same afternoon I signed those voluntary admission papers and entered Greenwell Springs Hospital as a patient. It was the culmination of an entire childhood wasted to mental anguish caused by physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. I was offered “help.” Bulinda and my fear of her had prevented me from getting help for so long. In one way or another I'd spent nearly a decade crying out – screaming! – for help.
The spring of my youth had been tainted, poisoned and stigmatized and in the spring of 1991, on March 13th, help smelled like a mental hospital.
Afterword
February 27, 2015
“I love you too, baby girl,” I responded to my daughter. “I’ll see you after school,” I said as she closed the car door. She waved, smiled, then joined her friends. It would be the second-to-last time I’d ever see her.
I drove home, being careful on the brake pedal. There was a thin layer of ice on the road, and I was still uncomfortable driving in icy conditions. This was only my second winter in Colorado.
When I pulled onto my driveway, I put the Accord in park, then texted my supervisor to remind him that I was available and ready to go. I’d been working on a “casing crew” running pipe down freshly drilled oil-exploration holes. The oilfield was slow at the time due to very low gas prices. I’d gone from working 100 hours a week to less than 100 hours a month.
“Nothing yet,” came the reply text.
I sighed and exited the warmth of the car.
As I approached the front door, I could hear Charlie’s toenails anxiously tap-tapping on the hardwood floor on the other side. I made a mental note to clip his nails later.
I turned the key and knob, then pushed the door open. “S’up Chuck!” I called out in that silly voice we all used to talk to our pets. He rolled over onto his back as I squatted, and as I began to rub his belly, his body went limp with pleasure.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the thick paisley quilt in the corner. It was moving. Rikki Two Sox was arduously at work trying to untangle herself from beneath the blanket. Moments later, she was pressed against me, nuzzling my neck with her warm snout. Unlike Charlie, who had been plucked from a litter of puppies in a box from a Walmart parking lot, Rikki was just starting to show her true heart. She was a pound puppy I had adopted the previous spring. I didn’t know much about her history other than her age (two years). I could tell she’d had a rough life. For starters, fireworks and thunderstorms sent her into an uncontrollable frenzy, even if they were miles away. My daughter dropped a saucer once, and as soon as it hit the floor, Rikki Two Sox bolted and panicked, shattered a window, and it took us several hours to track her down across town. She was my special dog and my best friend. And I think for the first time in her life, she might be considering a human to be hers.
I texted my fiancée, Courtney, to let her know I was going to the gym. I really lucked out with her. She was good to me, and I knew she’d be a great mom. Six months into her pregnancy, we were soon to have my first, and probably only, son. I was 40 years old and already a grandpa. My eldest daughter’s son would be one year old in May.
I cooked and ate breakfast: four eggs over easy, three slices of toast, a quarter of a cantaloupe, and a glass of milk. As I rinsed my plate and glass, I noticed movement outside the kitchen window. I watched as two men walked briskly toward my driveway. Their badges glistened in the morning sun.
Curious, I dried my hands as I walked to the front door and stepped onto the porch. One of the men wore a red shirt and he addressed me as he crossed the driveway.
“Hey, is this your car?” he asked and pointed to the green Honda.
“Yessir. Is everything all right?” I asked as I felt my anxiety rising.
“Sure, sure,” Red Shirt replied. And as the two men stepped onto the porch, he said, “Could I get you to turn around Mr. Richardson?”
My mouth was instantly dry, and my ears began to ring. There was a strong metallic taste in my mouth and my tongue was tingling. I felt his hand on my arm, and I was spun around and frisked.
“Who else is inside?” asked Red Shirt’s partner.
“No one sir, just my dogs.”
Then Red Shirt raised his hand and gave the “let’s go” signal. That’s when my world turned black and green.
Two men and a woman, all dressed in black and carrying compact assault weapons, came from around the corner of my house. The letters “FBI” were emblazoned on their chests. Then four men dressed in green military garb came from the other side of my house with four machine guns pointed directly at me. “US Marshall” was stenciled on their vests. Black SUVs swarmed and more people dressed like soldiers emerged.
Red Shirt identified himself as the chief of police and informed me that he was the local liaison on behalf of the FBI. My door was pushed open, and I was thrust inside. Agents from Homeland Security, US Marshall Service, FBI, IRS, and BATFE had already entered my home through the back door. One of the Homeland Security agents had a long gun aimed at Rikki Two Sox who was curled into a frightened ball on the floor in front of him.
“Please! Please don’t hurt her!” I begged. The barrel inched closer to Rikki’s head, and I knew that her anxiety level would cause her to bolt at any moment. “Please,” I begged him.
Another officer asked, “Does she bite?”
“No sir,” I assured him. “She’s just scared.”
“Can she go to the backyard?”
“Yessir.”
He touched the other man’s arm, and I breathed a sigh of relief as he moved the muzzle away from her head. Shakily, I said, “Rikki, let’s go outside.”
After a quick glance of acknowledgment, she got up and trotted to the back door. She was once again that sad, scared pup that touched my heart in the shelter.
A second or two later Charlie bolted from my daughter’s bedroom and raced for the back door. The agents all reacted tensely and took up defensive postures, but Charlie slinked his way past them and shot through the open door. It was the last I would see of the fur-babies.
An FBI agent approached me and introduced himself. He told me that he had a search warrant and then ordered me to remove all my clothes so that I could be photographed. With a dozen or more armed men and women facing me in my living room, I disrobed. The photographer snapped photos of my entire body and I was allowed to put my clothes back on.
When I asked to see the warrant, I was told I’d see it “soon enough.” I asked if I was under arrest. I was told, “You are not under arrest at this time, Mr. Richardson.” He must have predicted my next question because he added, “But you are not allowed to leave.”
By then everything was beginning to blur. I looked around my living room and watched as various agents moved in and out of the house. Through the open front door, I saw several neighbors staring in disbelief at the spectacle occurring on our normally quiet, middle-class street.
I was cuffed and led to an SUV and whisked away from the best home I’d ever known. My world was shattered, and I would no longer know liberty.
I deserved every bit of it...
I was arrested and charged later that day with various child exploitation charges – commonly referred to as child pornography. A few weeks later I was arraigned and met my attorney. After introductions, I quickly and firmly advised her that this case would not be going to trial. Either they’d give me a plea deal, or I’d commit suicide. She asked why. I told her that I’ve caused enough pain to not only strangers but also to the people I love. The cycle of abuse, my cycle of abuse, needed to end. A healing process needed to begin. For everyone.
It took nearly two years, but the government finally approached me with the plea agreement, and I signed it. I pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison. I presumed my life to be over. I assumed there was no purpose in my future. I figured I would just settle into a sedentary “eat, sleep, try not to be murdered” inmate kind of life.
But then... Someone reminded me that my crimes are what I did, not who I am. I am not the worst thing I’ve ever done. Not even cumulatively. And it’s up to me to find and plant and grow the good. At the same time, by telling my stories, I’m also weeding out the bad.
What began as a personal exploration of “what went wrong” has grown into a deep and hopefully meaningful dive into dysfunctional family life, juvenile mental illness, adolescent drug and alcohol abuse, as well as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as well as the effects thereof.
I didn’t write “Poison” in a way as to seek sympathy and it’s definitely not intended to downplay my actions. In fact, I made sure to include the critical and even embarrassing elements of my criminal activity as a child. I truly want discussions to be full and open. I seek meaningful answers to difficult questions.
Is there a place in our society for restorative justice, or is vindictive punishment for people convicted of certain crimes the only way? What role does mental health play in our criminal justice system? Should being abused as a child be considered and even lead to alternative sentencing guidelines? Do I hold fast to the idea that “lots of kids are abused and they don’t grow up to be murderers and rapists and drug dealers,” or do I push to understand why some kids endure abuse and grow up to commit offenses and find ways to not discard them into a multibillion-dollar carceral system?
What I do ask for is empathy. I ask for you to attempt to feel what I felt. What I feel. Feel the physical abuse I endured at the hands of a violent stepmother. Try to understand why as a five-year-old, I saw myself as a “toy” to be used for my cousin’s sexual pleasure. Delve into my confusion considering sexual identity, promiscuity at an early age, and battles to define the difference between love and lust. Abuse is a cycle. Every form of abuse. The more I write about it, the more it might be discussed.
Make no mistake about this, there is a high probability that a child you know is living through some form of abuse. And it might be an adult you know that is perpetrating it. That cycle will likely continue unless we work together to identify and break it.
My story isn’t pretty, but it is important. There is a recognizable stigma when it comes to stories like mine. I’ve no doubt “There’s Poison in the Spring” will elicit negative judgments, but I hope it will invite conversation and maybe compassion (at least on some level). Child abuse isn’t “someone else’s problem,” and of this, I am certain, society will not be able to incarcerate its way out of this problem.
At age five I was a sexual abuse victim. At seven I was being programmed to accept physical and emotional abuse. At 10, suicidal — 12 a runaway — 14 an alcoholic — 16 a mental patient — 18 an accused rapist — and at 40 a convicted child abuser. That is the cycle.
My story is one of tragedy on so many levels, and it has been very difficult to tell. But the door has been ripped off the hinges, the drapes pulled from the windows, and all the lights are on. There’s nowhere for a monster to hide.
The story isn’t over yet...
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