thequeergothic

[thequeergothic]

Let Me Light My Cigarette First.

I was hated when I left my mother's womb. Hell, I was hated before I was a fetus. When my mother told my aunt that she was pregnant she responded by saying 'You little shit'. I always wondered by why I was so hated. I can say that I'm not being a narcissistic, I truly believe I'm not, but you wouldn't believe that. Still, I wonder. I have my theories. The aunt that called my mother a little shit lost a child months before my mother was pregnant. I remember asking my mother about my cousin. There was a beautiful photo frame with a picture of a toddler with curly blond hair wearing a cowboy. He was beaming at the camera. A moment of time captured in happiness. She told me that it was my little brother a few times. I thought it was my brother because the boy in the photo looked so much like him. Finally, when I was still in my single digits, my mother told 'That is your cousin, he passed away before you were born.' That was it for the longest time. Death was a taboo subject in my house for the longest time. It's ironic. When you grow up the way I did, you would think death would be an open subject. It wasn't. It never was. I could tell you my life story. About where I started, where I end up, or where I will be. At the least, I can provide context. If you have lasted this long you may want something better than the death of a cousin I never knew. It's how so many stories start: I grew up in a small town. When I look back on it, it seems so dark. If southern Gothic was vogue, my town would be the front cover. It was like looking into a dark room. It barely has some light peaking through the shades. You can make out shapes of furniture, and it looks like everything is in place. Then you pull the shades. You see every crack in the wall, the black mold on the ceiling, the corners gathering filth. That's how my town was. A friend of mine told me a story a long time ago about how a police officer threatened someone with murder. The supposed potential murder victim was abusing his wife if I remember correctly. The police officer paid a visit. He told the individual 'we know places where your body will never be found'. As dramatic as this sounds, he wasn't fucking wrong. I feel the need to give supporting examples to my thought process. I had a cousin accidentally murdered in a heated argument. His body was dumped in the river. What was left of him was found months later. A friend of mine lost his grandmother. She was murdered by proxy. I can't remember if she died before or after the train ran her over. A sheriff tried to cover up a met lab after it exploded. Someone's daughter ended up in pieces, and was dumped in a big cooler. I understand that these details are gruesome. There is something that needs to be understand however. You can't say I didn't warn you. My story is fucked up. My environment was fucked up. I don't think I had an unique childhood, but it was far from typical. There were glimpses of happiness. Maybe you will see a couple of them. That town could have been the inspiration for a slasher franchise. It ate people alive.

I feel uncomfortable when people make eye contact. Not in the traditional sense because I can lock eyes with someone for a long time. Paintings, TV, movies, pictures, you name it. I can't do it. I hate it. I used to turn pictures around if I undressed in my own room. Pictures feel so intimate to me. It was a moment in time. The moment that will never be the same, just like every other moment. Yet, it's a moment that will happen every second of the day. Pictures hold a duality in my mind. It's too much for me to handle, and if it's overwhelming queue my existential crisis. My grandmother had VHS tapes stacked like a tower beside a TV awkwardly situated in her dining room. She would direct my brother and I in the TV's direction when we would visit. She didn't want to be interrupted during her soap operas. My grandmother was cheap. The VHS tapes were rip-offs of the good stuff. Cartoons that were made quickly to chase the coat tails of a major studio production. My grandmother bought this media at discount stores. There was a series about bible stories. 4-5 tapes that detailed a children's version of Moses and David. The one I want to direct your attention to was the creation story VHS. The snake animated in this show was red and white, and more ghoul than snake. It would stare directly at you when it spoke. I have no idea if this was meant to be scary. I do know that I couldn't handle it. I blame my mother's psychological warfare. Her love language. How I didn't develop a eating disorder I will never know. It was beat into me to look someone in the eye though. Looking back on it, I find it perplexing that my father would command me to look at someone in the eyes when they were speaking to you. Considering what I was assigned at birth, I'm sure you will figure out what that was, and the expectations placed onto my little shoulders. Maybe souls are trapped in pictures. That makes more sense to me than a very specific traumatic memory that I have. Now that I think about it, locking eyes with someone has caused more trouble than it was worth. What a simple yet destructive concept. I'm sure there is a science behind it, and many papers have been written about it. Eye contact has made me look more confident than I really am. I was a lamb ready for the slaughter in reality. Premarital moments in my life have been prolonged by eye contact. Moments that just end up so horrendous. I feel the need to give another example. Maybe something more expansive that the few sentences of gory details previously mentioned.

I was a little idiot like most children. I had a dangerous method to my own madness. Self awareness in a child is a scary situation. We really should stop underestimating children but I digress. My first time using eye contact was in my single digit years. As I previously stated, I was a fucking little idiot. I made eye contact with a girl my age for too long. Silence crashed between us. We froze. I spoke up first. My excuse for kissing her was for pretend. I was the knight, she was the princess. My mother saw. She immediately took me inside. I knew it was frowned upon, but I didn't think anyone was looking, and I wanted to know what a kiss was like. Children don't learn how important personal boundaries are. I can still feel her hand around my arm. It was a tight grip. That's how I was able to gauge how much trouble I was in. If she shook me, that meant I was about to die. 'You can't do that. Why did you do that?!'

She kept shaking me.

'We-we were just pl-aying pretend.'

I'm an idiot for not understanding that I was attracted to girls. I feel that this isn't the best example, but we had to start off small before we get to the highlights of what my life was. As I listen to my music, I'm realizing how old I am. Most of the music I listened to growing up as turned 20 this year. It brings back so many memories. I typically leave this music locked behind the dusty bolted door in the back of my head. Memories and emotions are linked to these songs. As I listen there are so damn good lines that I have forgotten.

'You are second-hand smoke'

What an apt description of myself, or the people that have left a scar. Depends on the story.

I'm getting off topic.

As I grew older, I understood more and more that my eye contact could help persuade people that I was brave, confident, secure. I was quite the opposite, but they didn't fucking know that. One boyfriend was someone I locked eyes with for way too long. I did it on purpose. I felt powerful. I felt that if I put my energy into it, I could bend fate. There was a show at a community center near where I lived. I would have to beg my mother to take me. She would bitch about the price of gas, and how much of a brat I was the entire time. In this little town, one of the poorest in the state, had an interesting music scene. It was a weird time for music. The internet wasn't as popular as word of mouth at the time. There was a new wave of music that was more emotional and messier than previous trends. Teenagers connected with it intensely. Fuck, I wish I was in my 20s during this time. I always felt I was born a decade too late. It was music full of screaming and screeching sounds. It was a slap in the face compared to my parents music. I kind of miss the days of discovering countercultures. In a physical space I mean. Countercultures are discovered through social media platforms these days. If someone asked me what it was like growing up, I'm not sure how I would describe it. So much was happening, but not for me. Stuck in a rural area with only the slow bandwidth of the family computer was not ideal. Especially, when your bedroom door was removed because you were caught with Good Charlotte CD. I remember my first show. I was 14, and after that night, I knew I found my people. I was met with an energy I wasn't allowed to be a part of at home. I felt as close to myself as I could be. After a couple of shows, I felt like I was hot shit. I locked eyes with a guy who had jet black hair that flew into his eyes. He had perfect lips. I thought I was mystique. Like I was the main character of my own film moire. I would tease just enough for him to chase me. One of my first make out sessions. Oh, what simple times. Please, take some time to process what you have read so far. Make your judgments. I live in a world with hardly any criticism so pointed thoughts about my life are welcome. I'll sip my tea in the meantime. I'll ponder what I'm even telling this story in the mean time. Since I'm the only one that can share their thoughts on this page, I'll ponder out loud. I wonder if this is a vanity project. I wonder if it's a way to scream back. Or it's just a journal about the horrors of my life; some self-afflicted, some aren't. I feel the need to do this like someone trying to find their high school ex on social media. Never underestimate someone's will to find an ex 15 years removed. In the words of Chiodos, 'if your stomach feels weak, then my work here is done.'