Rape was not a fun drug.

It was dust it was death it was Delilah. Oh, no, Mister Tim. Not Delilah. The One And Only. Pussy for days this is how men talk. I stare directly at their dick. 

Women tell me, I don’t get it. I was 12. I was raped by a teacher. I had never heard the term: trauma. Submission. I didn’t know what trauma was. Or the teacher would tell my parents I was gay. At twelve, I had no experience at blackmail. In my house, this was traitorous. To be blackmailed (let me count the ways) was traitorous. To blackmail someone else was to hit them with a lawsuit before they left the house. I would be electrocuted in the basement. Or any number of juvenile facilities and foster homes run by god who was Satan. Satan was everywhere. Satan was a club. One of the I Am Not Allowed In There clubs. Suicide is not protected speech. But it is speech. I am not allowed inside this club, god, because, your Lordship hit the metal to the peddle a couple of months ago. Daddy, did you know anything about driving down dirt roads in the winter mud at the edges of Dirt Bike Down Town. But no. It’s okay if you walk the walk. It’s okay. You could always make some quickiebucks as an art model with a big dick. I did. Being raped will do that, and you will become paralyzed from the waist down and poured from some anonymous boat into the Hudson river. A thousand people will see the body first. Hit Instagram. Then, you will be bounced. And humiliated time and time again. It is still in the cards.

I was raped repeatedly. I get the humiliation. I get being bounced, and sometimes I want to punch that fuck in his face. I doubt Delilah would like, care. Do you know care or are you on mescaline.

“She’s going to hate you like, forever.”

“Bitch. Chill.” It is not at all unusual for rape to get into bed with power, Why do I get involved in these things. If you stumbled on a crosswalk and fell down screaming, yes, I would stand over you, your underpants look like yesterday. I am trying to place the screams.

“Hhhmmm, no.”

I get that when he was done, after he ejaculated inside of me, he would slap my face until I became totally disoriented. I am well-aware that articulating what goes in a rape cannot be printed in a family publication. The word ejaculation alone. There is a there there. No other word describes the loss of self, the disintegration. Shame. He kept telling me I was dirt. I wanted to be dirt. I wanted to be dead. I took a twelve gauge shotgun and blew out my guts. I survived (a miracle). A gun couldn’t do it, so I turned to drugs because I could not handle the noise, the boy camaraderie, but it was sports that pulled me inexorably in.

I would prove to the world that I could swim better, faster, I would win events. The word got out, I was not a wimp. This word, rape, was more loaded than the gun. My success in sports turned into a standing ovation when I accepted a trophy. Everyone could see. This challenged dark shadow rivers that ran through the boys who hated me. They wanted to fight. I started carrying a hunting knife. I would have used it.

No teacher ever intervened. “He has a knife.” The last time the teacher tried to rape me, I told him I have a weapon. And I Know Where You Live. I Followed You To Your Home. You Have Kids My Age. If You Ever Touch Me, I Will Kill You In Front Of Your Children. I get it. I came out and went back inside again and then, out again, and again I heard the not quite quiet silencer again because I had heard those before. Phhhhhht. And you are dead. We will always have Vegas. The night we parked the dirt bike in the dark. I have analytics off the dark web. Vegas all around the edges and traffic. Cops. Lots of cops.

I found them at the Airport Bar. There are suits. And then, there are suits.

One was working for himself. The other one was working for himself, too. Until that moment when Delilah would be all dance like Dance Fever, Beaver Cleaver killing almost all the dance tickets held by numbers rackets. I didn’t want to know. Mass murder. They just killed everyone in the place. I never did know why she did that she did that — for what — because “Hello Wally Come On In meant a lot of things. We are all working for ourselves, and then you have the disturbed writers club. We are very good for bars. It is the new trending. Tim Barrus said fuck you. I did not say fuck you. Yes, you did. You said fuck you. I have a video of it. Oh, get naked in the trees and scare all the geese away. Bad for the environment, bitch. Fuck you.

I came out by publishing books. How can a book be gay. My books were about people with a sexuality. They are not about a social movement. I do not understand social movements so I continue to write about human beings. Mystery cuts the slaughter houses cheap. No one wants to spend the night. Whores from the Tenderloin drift over with lighters like a click. Most are deeply flawed but most of them are survivors. Hard survivors and harder yet survivors.  Survival was it. It’sWhatTheyDo. I have no illusions about more than one Chinatown. There is always one more Chinatown locked down, shoved around, relegated to the bad place. What reality. Whose reality. What if I told you that I didn’t like your fucking reality. Everyone knew that. The sight of me rocking back and forth on some concrete steps in an alley, covering my ears because it was all too much. I play him. But I am not him. I am the him over here who is the new not him. My books have gay characters. Books do not have a sexuality. I give my friends copies of my books. It’s a writer thing. The friends and family I once had all made it very clear. I should kill myself, and I tried doing it many times.

I was dead to friends and family. Writing straight sex was okay. The rest of it (they meant me) was an abomination. Books could be explosive. Anyone could read them. Friends and family didn’t just pull away. Casting people out is the equivalent of hatred made more than real. It’s called shunning. It is more malevolent than cancel culture could ever be. The bad out with the bad. My friends hated my books, they hated who I was, and they maintained I was back home to recruit their children. Fear was a mantra of viciousness. I hid behind my books. If I had to go through that experience again, I would take my family’s advice. Use a noose because it’s faster. I was alone. I am still alone. I have not had a single friend in thirty years. I cannot connect. I’ve tried. The word indifference sits one notch above the word hate. Gay men read my books. More revulsion. I was accused of creating ugly characters, and it would be bad for men coming out of the closet to read about the ugliness of humanity. I was politically incorrect. I would not come out today. I am a person. I am not a cause. If I came out today – I would kill myself – I live in Appalachia. Have you ever seen snakes in a southern church. The people who handle them so cavalierly to prove to us how the power of prayer works. No snake will kill us. So they say. It is politically correct to communicate the story of the boy who was told that his life would get better with time. This goes to endurance. “It gets better.” Until it doesn’t. If you work hard at it (working hard is always in my face because writing is not work) you find that it can get worse. Much worse. Religious snake handlers die all the time from bites and so do we.