I died with my virtues in tact. My beliefs, and ideals. Through out my life others have tried to form my beliefs for me. They have preached at me, they have yelled at me, they have scolded me, punished me, belittled me, and at the end they beat me. Through it all though I stayed true to who I was. We are all unique, individual, there is not one idea or mind set that fits us all. I have always been myself, been who I am and not tried to change to please others. I have never apologized for being me. I think that is what scared them the most. After all a cancer patient is sorry he has cancer, a cancer patient does not want their cancer and actively seeks a way to rid it from their life. My disease though, I embraced with my every fiber, with my very being. It wasn’t all there was to me, the same way a person is not solely defined through their hair color, or the way their voice sounds, I am not defined by this. I am enhanced by it, made all the better by it.
I do not remember how exactly everything happened. At first it was all fantastic, a rush. I accepted who I was and I started truly living my life for the first time. It was like my eyes had opened. I could stop going by their lie. Imagine if society forced you from the moment you were born to say you hated chocolate, and never allowed to you to taste it for fear of being shunned or worse. Then one day you realize you don’t care what society says, and you visit a chocolate store. That was how I felt. I was so happy I smiled for a month straight. Tom said that is what he noticed about me first. He was my first boyfriend, he helped me through those first few months when people rapidly entered and exited my life. My friends, family, a lot of people left without even a good bye. But a whole lot of new people came in. Tom was there for me through it all. I remember his lips were unlike any girls lips I had ever kissed. They were smooth much in the same way, and wet, but they tasted different, and fit into my lips differently. They fit perfectly in mine. Things moved fast with Tom. Within six months we were living together. Every Friday night we would walk down to this little ice cream parlor on the corner, sit in our corner booth and share a turtle sundae. I always let him have the cherry. When he left, I remember how upset and nervous I got. He was in the army reserve, and even though he had already gone once, they called him back to Iraq. The day I got the phone call that he had died though. I remember the phone slipping through my hands and landing on the hard wood floors. I didn’t hang it back up for two weeks. I was lost without Tom. A part of me had been taken away, and I would never be the same again. Little by little I began to put the pieces of my life back together. I was out with my friends at the circus of all places when I had met Jason. All eyes in the audience were locked onto the trapeze artist and clowns, I don’t think I looked away from Jason the entire time. I went up to him after the show and we began talking. A few months into our dating I eventually told him about Tom. He helped me more than any medication or therapist ever did.
Jason and I moved slowly. Holding hands in the movie theater, a kiss on the cheek, a long hug, and finally a kiss on the lips. We kissed at sunrise after talking the whole night. I didn’t think I would ever find anyone whose lips fit me as well as Tom’s, but Jason’s fit just as well. They tasted different than Tom’s, and I realized everyones lips taste different. I like to think that mine taste like cucumbers, watery with a tinge of sweetness…
The night it happened Jason had asked me to move in with him. When I said no, we got into a fight. I had left and went down to the bar. After drowning my sorrows in several shots of tequila I saw Chris. I had gone to school with him. I went over to say hello to him and his two friends. After only a little while they asked if they could drive me home, since I was apparently drunk. I thanked them and followed them to their car. I don’t remember when exactly I noticed that things were not quite right. But I do remember I started to see things were getting darker and darker, we were going away from the lights of the town. Chris threw the first punch and when they got far enough out into the field he told his friend to pull over. They dragged me from the car. I split my finger nail while trying to hold onto the car and stay inside of it, it started bleeding immediately.
They let me fall to the dirt. They circled around me and started kicking me and spitting on me. The wind from my lungs rushed out, and all at once I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t think. They laughed and it was such a cruel, piercing laugh. I had never heard the voice of the devil until that night. I never knew such pure, unadulterated, unprecedented hatred. Their eyes and voices filled with malice. No matter how much I pleaded or cried, my tears were lost to the dirt. The larger of the three asked me how I could like having things in my ass. The others laughed and Chris asked if my mother had killed herself yet, knowing her son was a sodomite. They grabbed a large branch, pulled my pants off me, and started shoving it up inside of me. The two held me down while Chris shoved it in. The bark scraped my insides as it went along, and I felt the warm blood flow down my thighs. They laughed and asked how much I enjoyed it. Chris pulled the branch out and started beating me with it. They kicked me, cut me, hit me, spit on me. Finally they tied me up to a fence post in the middle of that field. My hands out to my sides so I was exposed, naked, bleeding. The punched me each a few more times for good measure, breaking my nose, cutting my eyes. And then they drove away.
I remember I was conscious enough to see the sunrise. I heard the sound of the birds in the trees as the morning came, and the gentle breeze moved the grass. Before blacking out I tasted the blood in my mouth, I was missing several teeth, and I thought I could feel one lodged in my throat, but I cant know for sure. I hoped that my lips wouldn’t taste of blood in the after life, if there was one. I was choking on blood, and tears. My face was caked in the dried blood, my hair matted down to my face. As I slumped over, and cut the tether I had to this world I remember seeing Tom’s face. He smiled at me.
I will never understand how some people can do the things they do, or believe the things they believe, but I guess my humanity just got in the way. If there is an after life, I am going to spend it riding the morning breezes, listening to those same birds singing to me, and the sun warming my face. I don’t hate the people who did this to me, I pity them. They wont ever know what it is to truly live, because they are forever held back by their hatred. Hopefully it is only one part of them, and does not define who they are, in the same way my homosexuality did not define me. I was also an athlete, a son, an uncle, a brother, and from what I have heard, a great kisser.
