“Sexpect the Unsuspected” — an unfinished short story
Author’s note: This was originally written and compiled from scattered realizations the author had during 2019. It was originally submitted, as seen here, for the UCF Cypress Dome’s consideration in their 31st anthology.
The following story is not exactly a story, so much as it is a sequence of organically-occurring stories, an anthology of the rather anthemic voices of loved ones and dialogues I used to fear would be lost. Now that I have seemingly come of age, I thought I would share with you, dear reader, how I have come about in this age, the age of the lamented “Me” generation, throughout the 2010s decade.
In 2010, I was in the 7th grade and most certainly not in the 7th Heaven. Stark, raving, and constantly mad at my 13-year old self, I made my motions through the ‘gifted’ classes I grew up assigned to and an expanding social scene. Every week, seemingly, a new insult got thrown, a new tap dance shown to avoid the greatest hits I myself produced. Every hit to the head rang true to the troubling disconnected image I presented. Navigating in and out of my little world, my first psychiatrist and psychologist misdiagnosed a couple conditions, taking me further into the broken recordings contained within my neurodivergent obsessions and compulsions.
Only a handful of my classmates, living somewhat high in the nearby hills, would have ever thought I lived surrounded by the isolating trash of the trailer park I was raised in all through the previous decade. But looking back and looking through the growling shrieks of low-income couples and the buzzing drones of slow traffic, I immersed myself in the “cool kid” status I was rewarded by the older pre-teens. God’s newest album of moments was being composed at a different tempo than was permissible. Half of me was a wild child hippy and half of me possessed Satan in chains. Though those I surrounded myself with at school went as far to say I could save the world, I learned I couldn’t save my own, or possess what I desired most — love from somebody outside my family.
Euphorically, in the first four months of 2010, the same Mickey I went through Kindergarten with couldn’t contain his exclusive affections in his passioned-turned-internalized-contempt for me. We went through elementary school, algebra & physical education grouped together by teachers who inadvertently exposed us to sweetness shrouded in the sinister veil of the status quo. When Mickey started stroking the girl who would be his first amongst my blind-for-love eyes, and entirely over my head, he collapsed my frame of mind back into the scarred land that was my body. So OUT, I cried, with my soul not unknowingly sold, from a California king bed and (almost) out from a Massachusetts window.
When I returned from a month-long vacation in Lynn, Massachusetts, that Victorian city of sin, I thought of all the California gurls with their bad romances; but more than even them, with their increasingly defined features, I remained straightened up, California wishing on stars. All day & all night long, even when I almost successfully jumped out of the sticker-covered window my relatives left open, I longed to look at Mickey eye-to-eye, cheek-to-cheek. Popular problematic me now started dressing like a pop star, but still acting like anyone but. “Finally, more San Diego surf”, I probably exclaimed in relief upon returning home on an early late-July morning. The outcome of this trip marked the start of the 8th grade experience and the real start of my decade.
But in 2011, this turf got more tough, and apparently, so did I. With rejuvenated purpose also came rejuvenated dilemmas. “If God makes no mistakes, then I really was born this way”, I eventually concluded. After seeing Lady Gaga strip from her infamous meat dress to nude flesh-colored horns, my fortunate surroundings (and unfortunate, Heaven-seeking mind) couldn’t remain compact in the middle school or the trailer park I was set to graduate from. Despite absorbing myself in replenishing sun-kissed waves, I brought this lurking frustration to the surface, upon my not-quite understanding family, and interfered in the molding of my public image by signing up to engage in (anti-)social media. When I entered that constantly continuous stream of culture, I sought release and clarity on what my friends — and what J.P, the blonde surf-seeking infatuation of a Hollywood star following my Mickey infatuation — thought of me. Expressing myself as “no Hollister or Hot Topic teen”, I certainly became a hot topic, caught in the midst of wanting to be followed on the cyber realm. No time for dating Jessie over the summer, when she genuinely wanted to share intimate company, nor for the otherwise patient J.P. who grew tired of my reproachable approach to what I now know is called ‘homosocial bonding’. I was now a junior lifeguard, drowning in my own currents, calling for the top lifeguard, Jesus Christ, to rescue me.
However, I didn’t expect to be followed on the physical realm either. In 2012, my family and I made a mini-exodus from our subprime mobile home neighborhood to another 1000 square-foot cubic lot. Still, we couldn’t yet move away from our longtime lingering neighbors, who continued extracting some sort of legal servicing from us. To this day, my mind can clearly picture the soaked bathtub I played in, just across my old room, where I scribbled multiple F-bombs on my squeaky bookshelf. Moving on to high school, though — my, what a low point that was. Why I lost more than a few folks, only to gain some more followers aligned with my cultural vision, is reasoned by Jesus — both my savior and my satyr-like friend — by the simple truth that there is no ‘normal’. I lost the main stream of acceptability among my peers when I swam deeper into that main stream.
As I continue inquiring what sort of karmic harvest I accrued, at least I could sort of fall back on the Genesis of my second sexual awakening — the new song of an apocalyptic December dance. She took me out to see re-released versions of The Lion King and Titanic earlier in the year, and performed with me and the other flautists in the marching band, before I marched to the beat of my own drum, an exodus away from the cheers and jeers. Then, with her by my side, we wound up kissing two others (and each other) at the previously forbidden places — including, one night, a church parking lot beside an old graveyard.
Following the apocalyptic December dance that I would prefer not to fully give, the year ended with the world not actually ending. For some time, my sweet sixteen did not end either; it took place, and continued asserting its place, into 2013, when I entered my sophomore year. From Oceanside to Ocean Township, I took a ride akin to Kerouac and Kesey and the ride of Lana Del Rey; it was fueled by family instead of pharmaceuticals. That summer, following her unconventional gift of a cross-country road trip, my sister’s quinceñeara birthed an experimental project for the culture of trepidation. Her gift was as divergent in its format as she (like me) is neurologically: for three days, we drove to see my aunt in Florida, who would then take us on trips to Walt Disney World for an entire week. The results of this trip cautiously came out negative in Central Park, following us going up the country to see more relatives on the border of New Jersey & New York. Standing on a rock beside the Shakespearian theatre, I was the most self-centered and the least self-controlled I ever was. You could very well say that I walked on the wild side and got hit with another medicated dose of reality, when I crossed the apartment complex John Lennon was murdered outside of, my voice screaming at a passing bus of schoolchildren, my sister wishing she had the chance to pick a chambelan to dance with. Sorry Genesis and J.P and Jesus and Isaiah and Mickey! This beckoning applause I keep hearing is taking me towards a bigger closet.
In 2014, I began to see that each move I make can produce a butterfly effect or an inanimate sensation. It’s the latter more strongly permeating my five senses when I start this year off from being drunk in love. Really, I was drunk with love almost nonstop this entire decade. All the while, I couldn’t even properly stomach any “love” for myself. What is pride if it lacks mention of where I’ve lied? The truth of these matters would mean slowly growing up from my little monster scales. 11th grade saw me starting to come to my senses, in all their perceived glamour and cruelty, my heart keeping time to the melody of miraculously soothing medicine that worked. I became a community college-going city boy, more easily growing into independence as I began to gradually stop beating myself with bricks and strings. Just as I dropped my deliberate attendance of church youth groups, Isaiah among them in his own curated collaborators, a cyber-friend told me the biggest truth of my life: “The meaning of our lives is to give our lives meaning”. And it was in that proverb that I really began to control expressing myself in vogue with my world.
