Life Begins (6 page)

That was not something that Jack
would have done before his father's death. It was something that
his father would have done. It was like Jack became his
father.

The old Jack still remains. I
catch glimpses of him with some of his humor. It is like he lets
his guard down at those moments. His sense of humor changed a
little after his father's death. Sometimes he acts parental with
me. He needs to have sex to lighten up.

Mostly I see the old Jack when we
are alone at night. He seems relaxed and at peace. I like those
times. He gives me a look or a touch. I know that it is the old
Jack that I first fell in love with. I don't mind the post death
Jack. I just like the old Jack. It is the real Jack to
me.

~~~

I didn't change after my father's death. My
responsibilities changed. I had to accept this. I'm sorry that I
could not stay a 12 year-old boy forever. I mean, I can shave some
areas for her if it helps me look like a twelve year old again.
That’s about the best that I can do now. I can’t reverse the aging
process. And I would think she would have liked for me to have
grown a little since then. Do you know that I have grown four
inches in the past year and haven’t gotten any taller?

I admit the incident with Lee's parents was
something that my father would do. It was also the right thing to
do. I know that a lot of victims would not agree with that. It is
not human nature to do what I did. I know that. It was what God
would have wanted done. I also spent time with Lee and his family.
I found it was the greatest way to find closure.

Lee did a stupid thing. If he could turn back
time, he would change things. He was young and thought he was
unstoppable. He didn't think his actions would have any
repercussions. Most people think this way. His actions ended in my
father's death. He is still spending time in jail for his
actions.

Lee's was the greater tragedy. I lost my
father. Lee has been in jail. His parents have missed out on him
getting married and having kids. He has to live with the fact that
he killed a man.

Being angry or wanting revenge will not bring
my father back. It will not add years to my life or add to the
quality of my life. And it is more natural that I should lose my
father.

In a way, I didn't lose my father immediately
after his death. He used to come to me at night in dreams. We would
talk. It was like the talks we had right after the sex
talk.

Thinking back on it, I think he knew that he
was going to be dying soon. There was something in those talks
before his death that strikes me now as if he knew something and
was preparing for it. He said something about parents living
forever in their children. I was too young to fully understand it
then. I'm not sure that I understand it now. Maybe I won't ever
understand it until I have children of my own.

There was something else in his talks, too. It
was about the love of a parent. He said that I may not always agree
with what he would do, but that he would do all that was necessary
to do what was best for me. A parent was willing to sacrifice
everything, even their life, for their children.

There is a part of me that thinks I should
have died that night. If I wasn't about to have had sex with
Christine, he would still be alive today. I feel like he made a
bargain with God. He exchanged his life for mine.

I know that it is illogical. I still feel like
it, though. Maybe it is just guilt. I know that me about to have
sex and his death has caused me to not want to have sex with
Christine until I am ready. It is like I need to outsmart God to
enjoy carnal knowledge. How do I follow the Law while trying to
break it?

My father no longer comes to me in dreams.
Maybe I have learned everything that he wanted to teach me. Maybe I
have fallen too far, and he can no longer reach me. I hope it is
the first. I don't think he ever thought that anybody was beyond
reaching.

When Christine and I were fifteen, we started
to spend the night together. We didn't have sex. We just slept
together on the weekends. It was the only time that I was able to
sleep peacefully. I can't sleep without her.

After my father's death, a lot changed around
our houses. Christine became the head of her household. I became
the head of mine. Her parents were never involved. After the
divorce, they became a babysitter. They took turns watching
Christine and the house. My mom just kind of let me run the house.
She doesn't ask what I do or where I am going.

None of our parents have ever objected to us
sleeping together on the weekends. Christine's parents don't care.
Well, I think her father did at first. Then Christine called him
out on the fact that he was cheating on her mom when they were
married and brings home girls on the weekends. What does age have
to do with morality?

I have always liked it when Christine has
smarted off to elders. I know that I shouldn't. There is just
something sexy about a strong woman. What makes it even better is
that she can go from that to a little sex kitten in the blink of an
eye. Both are her way of making it in the world. One for defense.
The other to get what she wants.

Christine and I are not capable of the choices
that we have been making. It is like we have been left alone in
this world. All we have are each other and the lessons of my
father.

I wonder what my father would think of me
today. Would he approve of the decisions I have made? Would he
approve of me and Christine? That is probably the biggest question
I have in life.

~~~

I wonder why Jack has this
constant morality issue. When we are alone in bed, we just work as
a couple. Nothing else matters. We just click.

There is nothing wrong with Jack
spending the night with me. He seems to be so at peace when he is
in bed. And I don’t think his father would object to it, either.
His mom doesn’t have a problem with it. After we spent our first
night together, she bought him a box of condoms. A big waste of
money, if you ask me. I keep telling him that he needs to use them
before they expire.

I still remember the first time
that we slept together. He had just gotten into a fight. He was all
beaten up and bruised. His lips were a mess. There was no way he
could kiss me.

I don’t think we meant to spend
the night together. A kind of dramatic thing happened in our lives.
I was kind of in the middle of breaking up with a boyfriend. I
hadn’t exactly broken up with him yet.

That is kind of how Jack got in
the fight in the first place. He was protecting my honor. I didn’t
think it was worth starting a fight over, but Jack had a look of
determination about him. I’ve learned not to disagree with him at
those times.

Jack got the crap kicked out of
him. He’s a lover, not a fighter. Lovers shouldn’t try to fight. It
will only hurt the body parts that make them great lovers. I’m just
glad that Jack still has a great pair of lips. My honor is not
worth damaging those.

We kind of just fell asleep on my
bed. He was so beautiful. He doesn’t know it, but I was playing
with his hair all night. I was seeing how he would look with it
parted different ways.

I remember he rolled over one
time. His arm pit was right in my face. He smelled so good. It was
before he started wearing body sprays. He just had that scent of
deodorant and a little sweat from the fight. It was very sexy.
There’s something about a man who is a little sweaty. I can’t say
that it is really sexy, but it does something for me.

When he rolled back over, I still
kind of wanted to smell him. He was asleep. It was the only time I
could touch him and not have him know about it. So I put my head on
his chest and just rested on him.

That is my favorite position to be
in with him. It is the only time that I get to hold him. His guard
is down enough that I can hold him.

Jack is good at holding me, but he
doesn’t like to be held. I don’t know why.

Sleeping with him also brings me
closer to him. I don’t want to say that he is emotionally distant.
He’s not. He just doesn’t express what he is feeling publicly. He
lets loose at night when we are alone. Well, he doesn’t let loose.
He just… You know. It’s nice.

There are times I regret not
knowing I was mildly autistic when I was younger. The majority of
these times involve moments with Christine.

It seems autistics can often
appear to be emotionally distant as if they don’t have emotions. We
also have strange sensory behaviors that we like to engage in to
help calm us down during stressful times.

I felt a great many things the
night my father died. I just couldn’t express them. And when I feel
like this, I find it helps to think through everything and to do
the unexplainable behavior I find comforting. For me that is
holding Christine. The warmth of her body next to mine, the smell
of her hair, the softness of her skin, the feel of her body as I
caress her, and the sensation of her touching me brings me the
greatest comfort I have ever known.

There are parts of me that wonder
what could have been between me and Christine if we had known about
my autism. Instead I feel like we wasted five years of our life
because we were interpreting each other’s actions
differently.

I was confused about everything
that happened in the tree house between me and Christine. I was
hurting from my father’s death. I wanted to be alone and to find
things that weren’t related to my personal life. I started to
escape more and more into comedy and writing.

I didn’t realize it at the time,
but I was shutting Christine out by doing the comedy. She had no
interest in it, even when I tried to share it with her. She didn’t
understand my fascination with it. I started spending more time
with Melinda because she was interested in it. That drove a little
wedge between me and Christine. I had the feeling she was becoming
jealous of Melinda, which I considered a good thing. If Christine
was jealous, then it meant that she still cared about me in a
romantic way. I didn’t know how to deal with this jealousy, but it
still seemed logical that it should be a good thing, even if I
couldn’t sense of it.

Since being diagnosed with autism,
I have learned a lot from the fictional characters that would
probably be diagnosed with Asperger’s, too. Among these are
Batman/Bruce Wayne. I had gotten into Batman before my father died.
After he died, I developed my rules for living a life that my
father would be proud of. I didn’t write down these rules or even
mentally acknowledge that they existed, but I spent the rest of my
teenage years living by these rules.

There were rules about how far I
would go with Christine. I think Christine knew it and my mother
knew it. My mother allowed me to spend the night at Christine’s
house because she knew I wasn’t going to violate my own rules, even
though my mother probably thought having sex would be good for me
and Christine. And Christine knew she would have to outthink me and
push me to the very brink with what I wanted to do, even it
violated my own rules.

There is a part of me that would
regret some of those years of my life. It took me away from a
relationship with Christine. On the other hand, I spent my time
alone in my own personal Batcave and became the man I am today. I
took all of my confusion, hurt, and anger and turned it into the
career I have today.

A Strange Interlude

Arthur Hodgekins has been one of
my best friends since kindergarten. I have told that man things
that only guys tell other guys. I would trust him with my life. I
think it is only fair that he should write a part of my
autobiography. I had to pay him to do so. I made him read
everything else that everybody else wrote and write his version of
it. If this seems out of order, that’s the reason. So here it
is…

Jack and I have been friends since
kindergarten. The man is neurotic and messed up in ways that you
would not believe. He was messed up long before his father ever
died. He is also probably the greatest human being I have ever
met.

Since he is paying me to write my feelings on
his life and has told me not to hold back, I will start off by
saying that I have never liked Christine. I have never understood
what he a saw in her. I mean, she is attractive. But she is that
kind of attractive where the girl knows that she is attractive.
It’s not a natural beauty. And her attitude ruins anything that
might make her physically attractive. I even thought she was a
bitch when we were kids. Jack jokes that I thought she was a bitch
before I knew that there was a term for women like her.

I never understood why he kept coming back to
her. The way that she treated him has always been terrible. And he
didn’t love her as a child. He had a crush on her. She treated him
like a doormat. She was a princess. He was her manservant. Even
back then, she was screwing with his mind. I don’t agree with
anything that was written in chapter two. Well, I do agree that
Jack was a bit stalkerish. I think he still is. Their relationship
is not healthy. It never has been. Jack just usually gets what he
wants. He wanted Christine. He got her.