In honor of my returned DSL connection, Chapter Five of the Burlington Saga.

I have to admit that as I get closer and closer to relating some of the more interesting stuff here I am getting more and more resistant to telling it. We will see whether or not I succeed in conquering my resistance. These are things that I have never really told anyone. I mean, the real stuff, anyway. It's just me and the people who were there with me. And in the telling it will probably seem very very silly and adolescent, but I can't help that. In many ways, it was. But it was more than that in terms of my life and what I remember of it and how. At any rate we're not quite there yet in this chapter.

Once again, as we start back into the Saga, at the Fourth Installment, if you haven't, I suggest you go back and read Part I, Part II,Part III, and Part IV for the reasonably important background. Not to mention my incredibly fabulous descriptive prose. (yes, I admit it, I just copied this part from the last one. Sorry. Standard Saga Style.)

In order for this next chapter to make sense, I think I have to say a little bit more about me at the time and my relationship to both S. and D1.

I was a wreck, I've already mentioned that. I suppose it should be evident from the fact that I was spending most of my time with a couple of psychos in burlington, vermont getting seriously fucked up. But it was that summer that I seriously began to derail. It was a bit over a year since I had been in the mental ward, and after coming out of the mental ward I had somehow managed to convince myself that I was happy and solved and not depressed anymore. I think I partly did that because compared to the other kids in my ward I had the life of a princess. So in feeling (rather rightfully) guilty over my depression, I just stopped admitting it was there, rather than dealing with it. Over the course of the year, my first year in college, that started unwinding. By the time I got to the summer, I was a fairly delusional wreck. Delusional because I was still hanging onto the idea that I was okay. Behaviorally, anyone without a major head trauma could have seen that I was clearly not okay. I was constantly putting myself into really dangerous situations. I slept about 18 out of 24 hours. I couldn't get myself to do much of anything, other than get fucked up. I lived in a shithole, the scale of which is difficult to imagine. Pure squalor. I occupied myself with otc drugs and going out at night, walking the streets of boston. It was not good. Amusingly, some of the memories of that summer are what make me most nostalgic. But I believe that that had more to do with how close I was to the people in my life then.

Which is sort of strange. I don't entirely understand this. But as I got to be a more whole person over the years, my ability to be close to others has decreased. Almost a precise inverse ratio. I'm not exactly sure why this is, although I have a few ideas. For one thing, at the time, I was always trying to take care of other people. Not so anymore. Other people are other people's business. Not that I wouldn't lend somebody a hand if they needed it, I do that all the time. But I'm not trying to save people anymore. That is a good thing, especially since it's impossible to save people. For another thing, we were all fucked up together. We commiserated. We fed off of one another, and we supported one another. But now...hardly. I'm probably closest to my Boy out of anyone, which is fine, and it's good. But there's huge regions of me that I can't even get close to with him. I *feel* apart from him. This is probably quite healthy. It was probably terrifically unhealthy, the relationships I had in my adolescence. Co-dependent and all. But still. I'm not sure why healthy has equated to way more closed-up in my life. I mean, I'm open to people much more than others seem to be, in terms of being willing to talk about myself. Other people frequently mistake this for my trusting them, feeling as though it means I am confiding in them. This is not so, I am not confiding in them. It costs me nothing to relate the things I relate to the people in my life. Nothing at all. And if I listen to them, it's either because they are useful to me in some way, or because I feel obligated to for some reason. There are few exceptions. There are a few, but not many, and the more time goes by, the less I find myself wanting the company of others. Friends ask me to do things, want to get together. I am getting almost no enjoyment out of these encounters. This seems to me to be not right. I like spending time with my Boy. But everyone else...I don't know.

Well, that was a major tangent. Sorry. Back to Burlington. Anyway. S. was the one both me and D1 took care of, I've said that already. Reading the S. entry if you haven't is probably a good idea, it's in the archives. To get the picture, anyway. D1 and I took care of each other, but more him taking care of me. This was one of the reasons we were so close. I had a very hard time accepting help from others. And it is debatable that what D1 had was help. But the methods hardly mattered. Merely the fact that I was able to accept it from him, and that he wanted to give it was enough.

Christ. I so wish that I could make a movie out of the memory to show you all. Words are not doing this justice. Please allow me the luxury of description once more.

The apartment in the handicapped condo. First floor, of course. The front door ledt into a very tiny foyer where we put trash and things. That led into the kitchen, which was bright and formica and linoleum and all things very cheap. A front window over the sink. Bags for recycling and things under the counter. I spent little time in there. Through the kitchen door was the living room, which went the whole rest of the length of the apartment. At the end was the back door, sliding glass. It was different at the end than when I first saw it. There was an L-shaped ugly couch on one's left through the door. It was a sort of slate blue/grey with slashes of colors on it. It was cheap, and it was extremely comfortable. It was almost impossible not to fall asleep on. We used to joke that it was the Valium couch. Straight ahead of that couch was yet another wall of milk crates. We made many walls of milk crates, with the crates we stole from Price Chopper and cable ties (zippy things). On the other side of that was a crappy desk with a computer and the stuff CJ used to make his bad wax sculptures. Across from the couch was the doorless doorway to the hall and bedrooms. Straight through that was the bathroom, which was very cool because it was made for a person in a wheelchair which meant that basically the whole bathroom practically was a shower, with a curtain we could move around. A drain in the middle of the floor. Our towels were the size of blankets. Then there was S. and D1's bedroom on one side, and CJ's on the other. It was nearly always dark when I was awake. The place was always filled with a grey smoke haze, and we had dim lamps we used instead of overhead lights. Everywhere was crap. The toys we got from the supermarket quarter machines. Books. Stupid bar signs.

I don't know why exactly it felt important to me to describe that. Maybe because one of the persistent pictures in my memory is of me sitting on the couch and D1 leaning up against the doorframe to the bathroom bedroom area, talking to me. Wearing black jeans tucked into his jackboots. A black t-shirt. Green, newly shoulder-length hair. I had cut his hair which went to his waist when he got out of jail. Thumb hooked into one pocket. Bells on one boot. Grinning at me, in that head-down eyes up through the eyebrows sort of way. One leg cocked so the foot rested on the toe. Both of us in the process of going up on dex, having swallowed the vile crap. S. would have been in the bedroom, in bed.

The time I meant to talk about here, anyway. Usually she came with us. At some point in the night's walk I would almost always start getting sick to my stomach. D1 taught me somehow to stop from getting sick; to chant to myself, barely audibly, 'disassociation of mind and body' which is oddly hypnotic when recited over and over. But it always worked, I never got sick. It doesn't work anymore, or maybe just because I'm sober now. There was another picture I remember sitting on the ground with S., both of us cross-legged, laughing. Me working not to get sick, and simultaneously to keep her laughing, happy, because when she stopped she would spiral down. Get scared. Remember things she didn't want to. I would have been wearing my jester hat and my jeans shorts that were many, many sizes too large -- I could see my feet looking down through them -- held up by a piece of rope tied to make suspenders, or my proper suspenders, which all of us had, I don't remember why. She would have her entirely too long velvet cap, and shorts and tights and jackboots too. Tights with stripes, probably, which made her look even more infant-shaped then she already did. Hair some color. The grin. The grin that I believe will be burned into my visual memory forever if the past eight years or so have been any indication.

So. This night. This night the point of the night was to rebirth me. I know that doesn't make any sense. But D1 had gotten it into his head that the only way to fix me would be to have me live my life over again, from birth onwards. While dexing, of course. Which was the only way to do it, since it would have been terrifically hard to convince me that I was a small child otherwise. Not that it worked really on dex, either, but I got close enough to have an enormous amount of fun.

We had to walk a long long way to the Beach, which was apparently where my birth would be taking place. The shore, again, of Lake Champlain, which never ever gets warmer than about 30 degrees, and this was September, so it was so very cold. D1 made me take all my clothes off, and I was complaining because I had my period and it was embarrassing. But I did, and we went in the lake. I remember quite well saying to him "You are not going to put me in that lake. Please tell me I am not going in that lake." Oh. and I forgot this. He had me on the ground before this but after I was naked, in the sand, and I believe his coat over me or something and he was saying to me that I had to trust him and made me promise not to ask him any questions. So I was trying very hard not to ask why why are you making me go in this lake.

Well, we went in the lake. I think he must have been naked too since otherwise he would have been all wet. We got out to about waist-high in unbelievably cold water and he pushed me under. I was being baptized.

And so began again my life.

I know this must sound extremely silly, and I suppose it was. But nevermind that. If I let myself get all embarrassed I will never be able to tell anything.

I was walking along. I felt my mouth teething, it hurt. We went to a playground and I was asking D1 why I did not fit on or in anything. He told me I was big for my age. Much of it I do not remember now. I remember feeling unashamed to play. I remember feeling very young.

I remember sobbing, sobbing uncontrollably, for a long, long time. D1 holding me. So maybe that night did do something. Maybe it did let something out. I remember feeling the fear that I had not let myself feel in a very long time. I let him hold me. I wanted to be held, I wanted to be cared for, even if only for one night. And only that night when S. was not there could I. That was why. We all knew that if she was there I would be busy taking care of her, I would never have let myself regress or whatever it was I was doing.

So there is an Event. I may still have indulged myself with lots of description, but I don't care, it's my story and I'll tell it however I want.

We have not come to the magic parts yet. This is a baby step. I will tell more when I can, when I feel I can.

onehanded