Eighth Grade Limo

There were only about 20-something of us that graduated eighth grade together from our Catholic school. Less than half were boys. It was a day of expectation and celebration. I wanted some candy as a reward for making it through, so I walked to the drug store only a few blocks away.

As I walked home, a loud scream reached my ears, and I looked up from my Lick-A-Maid. An extended limousine passed by and hanging out of the windows hurling insults at me were all the other eighth grade boys. They secretly planned their celebration without me.

I ran home without looking behind me tears streaming down my face. My father forced the story out of me. He scoured the neighborhood for the limousine and boys and chewed them out for not even attempting to invite me. Their excuse: we were poor and probably couldn't've afforded it. Really, they all just hated the fag.

I still had to go to graduation that night. The pictures make me look happy, and I was somewhat happy. I was happy to finally be done with them. Only we weren't done. My father forced them to apologize.

Seeing his display of authority, I smiled. And the picture snapped.

Lightning Inside

  
Thunderstorms rolled in from all directions causing anticipation and hiding in basements. He wasn't scared. He loved electricity, so he dashed upstairs, out the back door, and into the lightning. He wanted to be struck. It would make him special. And anything to make the physical pain as real as the emotional pain was welcome.

Lightning didn't strike him. Instead, he was forced in doors.

Cream Cheese Puffs

We went to a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant that served cream cheese wontons for dinner. He stared at me from a table behind my parents the entire evening. I flirted back. He was in his 50s. I was 15.

Our meals ended at the same time, and we found ourselves at the cashier together. My father paid the bill as I excused myself to the bathroom after batting my lashes at the person the authorities would label a pedophile. He followed slowly behind me.

The bathroom door had a lock, which he swiftly locked behind him. Pants unzipped. Our cocks were hard and in each others' hands. Nerves caused gagging, and I left.

"You were in there quite a while," my dad said.

"I had to go number two."

"I hope you washed your hands."

I hadn't.

I masturbated to the lingering smell of old man cock on my hand until my mother forced me to shower a few days later.

Indulgences and Drag Queen Divinity

  
She went on a crusade when I was in the fourth of fifth grade to ban all the Halloween books from the library. They were my favorite books and included the How to Draw...Monsters book that I checked out and tucked in my drawer. They were as Satanic as Aerosmith, which she also banned me from listening to.

I was stuck with the Disney records and Alvin and the Chipmunks spinning round on the Playmobile record player. Those and anything Charlie Brown. They were wholesome and innocent and weren't tainted with sexuality of non-conformity. Monsters and Halloween were just too scary.

It confused me because all the years previous Halloween was a celebration. It was the time I could finally put on a costume and make-up. I think that's what did it: I enjoyed it.

The effort failed. The Halloween Party was a money maker (although a small one) for the church and that overruled Satan. It is kind of the same thing as indulgences: pay and the church will overlook or forgive anything (except homosexuality).

She moved on to R-rated movies, rock and roll, and anything sci-fi or horror related. So many things were Satanic: Buddhism, the bastards who made fun of me at school and sent me home in tears, not playing sports, cigarettes. Candy-coated, rose-colored innocence was the only thing I was allowed to experience. I was not that. And counter to all her protection, I still found 1-976 numbers, Playgirls, Hellraiser, much older men. No matter how many boundaries and borders were constructed, I found a way around and between them. Nothing worked.

Time passed. I came out. She turned progressive. Sin evolved. It was no longer the black and white of righteous childhood. It became the murky gray of Daedalian adulthood.

Now, she's working as an administrative assistant at an AIDS hospice in Minneapolis. Spirituality is more than Catholicism. Drag queens are divine. And her most recent concern was her costume for Sci Fi Bingo starring Miss Richfield 1981. (I suggested 1950s sci fi chic.)

Times and people change. I just hope we don't burn our new found wings.