10 X 2002 - 23:40 - verba30

So, another Alchera assignment, which was done instead of a Latin essay for tomorrow. And now it's time to run and finish that Latin essay.

Thanks as usual to the people I forced at knifepoint to read this and tell me what was wrong with it.

Buzz Begins: Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Buzz Ends: Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Buzz Details: Begin your submission with the following sentence. Do not alter it in any way. Write this as a free-flow submission--make no edits whatsoever after your first written draft. If you would like to submit handwritten scans, you are more than welcome to do so (Note: an accompanying typed text might serve useful to those with slower connections, or if you have hard-to-read handwriting).

"I want to tell you a secret..."

I want to tell you a secret, but these days it seems as if I've none to give, and the only things I can tell you are the things that I've tried to hide for so long.

I am greedy, I am flawed, I am not practicing as much as I should be, the middle name of the boy I seem to have developed a crush on is Joseph, I don't respect my parents as much as I should. None of these statements are surprises to you, if you know me well -- but then, who really does? Certainly not I, and what have I to show for that appalling lack of self-knowledge?

Consider this: that the last time I had a secret that seemed earthshatteringly important, I was in seventh grade, and all I could do was write to my best friend in the library, "I've got something to tell you." We kept passing notes. The librarian didn't care; she liked us. We must have been the only students who visited the library on our own time, during recess and lunch. So we had our corner to ourselves, stuck in the balcony that made up the library's second floor, and I told my best friend (whom I had asked for a date in a process more farce than anything else) that I was gay. I took it harder than she did. No big deal.

But try as I might, I can't remember any great detail of that day, or the day after, when I finally said it to her and a few other friends, or any of the circles that rippled out from that first tremor in my life. I don't even remember having to talk to my parents in the Dean of Students' office two years ago. Everything's been wiped clean, a victim of the substance the brain exudes to help us forget. Too painful, it declares. There's no pain in the small details, however. I remember the freckles on that first friend's skin. The rustle of that cheap binder paper as we unfolded it -- useless secrecy for a nook where no one went and where we were separated by at most six feet. The poems she wrote me afterwards, telling me to cheer up. The gloom that seemed to descend over my life. Aha! - we've caught a greater building-block, a feeling, among the little fry.

Nothing in the middle remains. Only the very large and the very small survive, leaving me to extrapolate -- why I wrote notes even though we could have talked, for instance. I've always been more comfortable with the written word than with speaking. No one hears me when I speak.

I remember thinking for a while afterwards that I didn't deserve friends like the ones I had. I couldn't possibly have been that good, and certainly I'd have had to earn it. There wasn't any way I could have been born good. To a certain extent, I still believe this. I'm still trying to make up for something I did. Perhaps it's the sin of being born.

I still don't deserve friends like the ones I have. They're incredibly patient with my moods, probably because all of us are prone to our moods at certain times. What's more, they help me with my slipping memory. I try to remember entire days, days you'd think I'd remember. Coming out to my parents just a few days before my birthday, for one. No: what I do remember is the smell of the couch I fidgeted on, the way shame began to rise like sap up the center of my body, marking a straight course from my groin to my unhappy mouth. What I don't recall is choking, although surely with fire like that there must be some adverse reaction. Surely (although they share a source) it had nothing to do with sexual energy -- unless that energy and the shame of my revelations are twin.

The last time I told a secret was last week. Attraction has never really felt safe for me; as much as other boys attract me, they also scare me. I don't say anything until I'm ready to burst. This time, it took nearly five years.

Again, the revelation was made through written word -- this time email, instead of anything handwritten. I don't understand the mechanism of myself. All my reason tells me that when the intentions of a pair are so radically different, they are not a pair. Another voice says something else, and I began to write what that voice said.

Each time I begin to talk, it is a loss of control.

So I spoke of pale skin and red scarves and cornflower blue shirts that I have at once all and no claim to, and of the fear of remaining alone, and the desire to be reinforced, to be bound to the world by a memory that is not only words but is also the larger feelings, which I will remember -- feelings of taste and smell and touch and, most importantly, carnus, meat.

With every secret that forces its way out of me there is the fear of loss of control, but once it's out, once the pretense is gone, there is the joy of knowing that something intensely personal, something bound wholly to you, now lives and breathes in another's mind. That joy is itself a relaxation, a granter of the ability to commend yourself to someone else's care.

I want to tell you a secret: For me, everything becomes that desire.