Easier

“Oh, mama, what have I gone and done
With all these years that I've been gone?
My life changed me way too fast
I don't know if I could last!”

I ran away two years ago. For two years, I’ve been looking for a better life and, even amidst the drugs and hooking, I’ve found it. Somehow, in this desecrated life, I’ve finally managed to find who I am, and at least the anonymous penises and breasts want me around, even need me around, to feel whole and satisfied.

My father was an army sergeant. He’d been in wars years before my brothers and I were born, a very successful military man with a multitude of medals and awards. That, of course, is what made him push us so hard, to make us renditions of himself. He wanted his boys to fight in the next wars, and the idea of having a child that simply wasn’t interested, never crossed his mind.

I was a small child and, for some inconceivable reason, more interested in reading than in combat. I’ve been an honor roll student since I’ve been in school, which only seemed to impress my mother.

My mother was the one who’d kept me going all those years. I remember, when I was a child, she would read to me and help me with my homework. She fought with Dad all the time, though, and I was always afraid he’d raise one of his terrifying weapons against her, and she’d be gone.

Than one day, she was.

My parents divorced when I was 7, and she left. She had visitation rights, but seemed afraid to ever take an interest in my life after. Every day, I’d come home from school to face my father, forced to undergo his physical training until I could barely stand. Then I would be allowed to do my homework. After that, there were chores and I went to bed. There was no social life to speak of, not for me. My brothers, they were naturals and received praise and freedom I could only dream of. Bill had mastered archaic weapons such as swords, and Jake was a death machine with nothing more than his fists. I had nothing. I still can’t hold a gun properly, or swing a fist, or even lift a sword.

In school, I was like a shadow. No one ever talked to me or took an interest in me except to ask for the answers to next week’s homework assignment. I wasn’t popular, but I wasn’t a loser either. That nothing place between acceptance and ridicule, and the constant pressure my father put on me, without even my mother to retreat to anymore, was far worse than anything I’ve run into here on the street.

In my first year of high school, one kid started talking to me. The first of my peers that ever took an interest in me, and it was positive! I couldn’t let myself believe it, but there it was! His name was Josh, and when he asked mine, I stared at him dumbly. He must have had the wrong person; surely he didn’t want to know my name…

Josh took me outside, to the smoking pit, during lunches. I kept him company while he had his cigarettes and talked to various people around the area, and now and then he’d wander off by himself, leaving me mixed in a group of people I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. But he always came back. He rescued me.

Oh, that’s what he was, a rescuer. I was ready to drop off into the numb world as another nobody, and he became something I went to school for. Suddenly, the hours of training were laughable! I had an honest-to-God friend and life was worth living!

I didn’t realize all that would take me where I am now.

Once, while outside with Josh, he offered me a cigarette. I froze up for a moment before taking it and carelessly lighting the end, taking a drag much too long for a first time. I coughed good and hard, but kept smoking; I wanted control over something. My father couldn’t reach me here, and even if he could, he’d never suspect anything. But I think I wanted to do something self-destructive, too. A part of me wanted to become what I am now, to become a new person.

This wasn’t me. Jack would never smoke.

Well, he does now.

That night, just a few hours later, I started to shake. I felt cold, but only my hands, which were jerking, and a heavy craving for another cigarette set in. I got panicky and I couldn’t even sleep. The second I saw Josh the next day, I asked for another cigarette, explained that I needed it. From then on, all I needed to do was give him ten dollars and he’d give me a pack.

I remember pushing open my window all the way, and sitting in the space left between the wall and the glass so I could smoke without leaving a smell. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to do it, I couldn’t even get through the night! “Imagine”, I’d think to myself, “Jack is smoking and his father doesn’t even know”.

It went the same when Josh pushed pot into an expecting hand. Then acid.

Numberless and nameless pills and powders and leaves were shoved into my awaiting hands, money exchanged for just a few hours worth of a calm and forgiving nothing, the sensation of floating into anonymous skies. I was taking Valium, acid, pot, and heroin regularly. I needed Valium just to give a one-minute presentation in school; I couldn’t live through a training session with my father unless I popped acid first. My life revolved around smoke and injections.

The deterioration in my schoolwork was fast and didn’t go unnoticed. Calls were made and my father punished me endlessly with more chores, less free time (not that I could ever even go out in the first place), until all I had left was that 45-minute lunch break to see Josh. My father wouldn’t allow me to take the bus anymore, even that was a freedom all used up.

So one morning, I threw out all my textbooks and papers and binders. I packed an extra change of clothes, my Discman, a few of my favorite books, journal, and a smaller pouch filled with my heaven. I walked from the car and into school… and never into that car again.

Josh and I took the bus to his house at lunch that day. He explained to me that I could only spend a few hours with him, after that I had to run, because they’d look for me there first. He shoved a few more drugs in my direction, let me keep the payment, and wished me luck as I was thrust into the gaping maw of the terrible streets.

I spent the next week sleeping in the unclaimed corners of downtown. I thought I had it all figured out, but then I ran out of drugs and money to buy them with. All of a sudden, Josh had become a wall. Nothing would be free, but he would help me make money if I dealed for him.

Armed with a little of everything Josh had, I went into the streets once more, but found out something that made it quite a bit more difficult.

You have to talk to people to sell them something.

So slowly, I took the drugs I was supposed to sell. Josh was mad, and he screamed at me for being so stupid as to put myself into even more debt. He wasn’t going to give me anything now, I had to find another way to make money. Clueless, I set about hitching a ride to a group home I’d spent a night in a few weeks ago; I didn’t want to be outside tonight.

It’s difficult, skipping around like this. The great mass of Social Services threatens to swallow you whole, and I get asked questions everywhere I go. I can’t have a permanent home unless I tell them my name, my reasons for leaving home, but I can’t! They never ever realize, I can’t live at home; I don’t want to be rescued! Usually, for just one night, I can manage to convince them to let me stay.

A man in his mid-forties picked me up. He told me how his wife had divorced him and there was a terrible custody battle over the kids, but what he missed most was the intimacy. Then he turned away from the street I wanted. I looked over at him, and tried to correct his course, but he stopped the car on a side street and loomed over me, threatening, an incarnation of my father. He demanded sexual favours, threatened me, asked me how much money I wanted to give him a blow job, a hand job, a fucking kiss.

Disgusted, I reached for the handle desperately. I was scared of this sweating, desperate man, and before I could even grasp the door, he’d gotten both my hands. He held me down, kissed my neck tenderly and told me he’d love me, if only I let him! If only I gave into this repulsive figure, he would pay me anything, anything at all!

I finally managed to convince him, begging and pleading and crying, to let me go. He handed me a 10, saying I should seriously look into it (‘Look into what?’ I thought) and let me go.

I ran out into the streets, the ten dollars in my hand and his words ringing painfully in my ears. I had felt dirty before; I could feel him all over me now! His crawling hands, his sick words, begging me to love him the way his wife no longer did. All I wanted was a shower, that’s all! I showed up at the group home an hour later, having walked the entire way, asking if I could please just do that and I would be gone right away.

While in the shower, washing off the shame and terror, I thought about what he’d said. I should think about what? Loving him? But no, I realized as I washed a part of me that was no longer mine, that didn’t even exist.

I should think about prostitution.

In my naïve, protected, soaking womb, I wondered, “Do they have male prostitutes?” and the answer was obvious. Of course men hooked, too. But did I want to do that? That man hadn’t even gone under my clothes and I had stopped thinking. I had been straight, too, I wasn’t on anything, but it felt like I was going through hell.

I took my ten bucks to Josh and managed to convince him to give me a hit of Acid and just one sweet shot of heroin for a blow job. For the next few weeks, I did him those sort of favors for my drugs until, finally, I took a Valium I had gained from our deal and went down to the dreaded 3rd Avenue. I looked around, spotting mostly women, before finding a small area populated with men. Some of them didn’t even look like their gender, done up even better than the girls were, but some were like me. I found a nice, secluded corner and became perplexed as I stood there. Was this it? Was this all I had to do?

After ten minutes, a car slowed and finally came to a stop before me. I climbed in wordlessly, silent as the man drove on again. He introduced himself as Chris. Well, hello, Chris. Do you fancy a fuck from a 16-year-old?

Chris was a writer. He’d been writing poems and short stories for fifteen years, but no one wanted his work and he was on welfare because that was his only job. He said no one ever wanted to date a writer, and so he’d come to these streets often to find women, but tonight he had been looking for a change, hoping it might turn his luck around. He said I looked the least hardened, the least intimidating, among the men on the street. Well, Chris, that’s because I’m a boy.

We got down to business. He wanted a hand job and he was willing to give me twenty bucks. I said yes, and we climbed into the back seat of his car where he pulled down his pants and I jerked him off.

He later remarked that I had given the best hand job he’d ever had. Said I beat all the girls he’d ever met on 3rd, and asked if he could pick me up again.

Chris became one of my regulars. I started giving him blowjobs after a while, and he gave me 30 dollars for them.

Hooking became easier the more I did it. Today, I don’t even need to take Valium beforehand, it comes naturally now. I’ve taken up drug dealing again, and I just sell that to my regulars and people that know me by reputation as a dealer. I actually make a fair amount of money, enough to get by.

I’d be happy if I could keep any food down. If I could go a day without vomiting out the contents of my stomach. I’d be happy if I had any friends, or anyone that even cared without just walking away. Everyone always walks away, just like my mother did and just like Josh did 8 years later. I would even be happy if I could go back to school, and get my high school education and get a real job. I could stop hooking. As easy as it is, it’s still degrading and it’s a shame that I’ve completely denied my own sexual existence because of it. I could stop selling drugs, maybe even stop taking them! Well, except heroin, which is my lifeblood.

But blowjobs are easier.