And time stopped. Over the years, I fostered boys with HIV. I am glad (there could be perhaps some hope in it) that good people have good kids. Homo sapiens are not good it. We are the species of love and death. It is a fetish. All cultures have them. This is where I am supposed to use cliches. Boys-To-Men. The strong. The brave. The faithful. I pray for you. I prayed (I was 12) his side would win. If the bad guys who were last week the bad guys who were really the good guys, it would all drive him into a frenzy of incomprehensible violence, all of it directed at me. All of it exhausting. I tried running away. He found me. Selling my ass to men and boys could buy it, too. A blood-thirst I never thought I would live this long. To see. I have Big Girl diseases. I should fire my ass. Enough men paid by the hour to keep me in drugs. I should have assisted The Count of Monte Cristo’ on his way to the sublime. There is only one ideology I fervently believe in, You Can’t Have It Both Ways, Bitch. How about your children anyway.  I see how children are. Death’s tightrope wrapped around your neck, yes, you, too, are going to fall, everyone in my life that I might know has at one time or another fallen and there is no net. That is what I write about in a vain that is a vein. Alec. Alec. Alec. Walking home in the snow in South Dakota, your long hair frozen.

You are high the fly that hole in the can, Butterfly, Ma’am. I do not fear death. I welcome it. My old man is abusing me as I write this, pressing my brain like a twisted lemon he is the living, evil smell in my life. My head. My Father, Myself, but no, please no.

Like, I do not know that. I created a New Dad in Esquire who did not not exist. The guy who in my head is my head, but only with illusions whether I ascertain what the tools might be allowed to stay alive. Like guns. But his heart is heartless, and the contradictions get him into trouble.

I am not I Was My Own Father. I was his accomplice. He fucked me in front of people. I wanted to die just end it. On a book tour, people spit in my face. Just sign the fucking book and go home.

If he was home, he would beat me and break my bones and throw me through walls and I will never get or understand this bizarre thing, the naked whipping, I have the lead from a 12gauge wound still in me. No one thought twice about any of this. Most of the moms and dads in the community were alcoholics. Don’t touch me. I have been betrayed. By him. By Dirt Bike Town. The Alfa Wolf has left us entrapped. I require boys I teach to Learn To Learn. And don’t touch my scars. Something has to be just empty space. Let it go. It’s a lot like death. We are dead the minute we are born. There was always a hush hush modus operandi on the way to the whipping post. It was the begginnning. Not the end. He would strip me naked. And time. And time stopped.