CAUGHT OFF GAURD

CAUGHT OFF GUARD: CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

MAIN CHARACTER 👆🏾

KHALIL💕

What's the use in keeping it going?

I stare into the memories of all the pain and all the joy. My mind adds them up and calculates the value, finding pain to be the clear and present winner. The qualities of joy are intense, but temporary. Pain has a lasting quality. You can always count on it. It doesn't leave. Joy will mask the pain, momentarily, but pain's A REAL BITCH and it always finds a way to move to the front of the good moments soon enough to remind me that joy is temporary, delicate-- not really worth the effort it takes to create, or to experience it.

What is my love for Cole? What is my love? People say that youth cannot experience true love. Most people consider first love a harmless delusion we blind ourselves with for all the wrong reasons, mostly hornyness.

If that's true Then why does it physically hurt to have my heart broken? Why does it render me nonfunctional? Why does it make me feel like I'd rather die than feel this way? How can anybody say this isn't real? How can anybody say this isn't important, or that it has less value than it would if I were older?

I feel this in every cell of my body, in every niche of my mind and every aspect of my soul.

And it's NOT just sex. Yes my physical need is ever present in my thoughts-- I acknowledge that I am a horny teenager-- but it goes much deeper than that. Much, much deeper. Cole and I have-- had-- a deep connection. I know that connection was love, because it was so overwhelming, so intense; more profound than I would ever have dreamed it could be. Love and happiness came so fast, and were gone even faster-- well the happiness is gone, but the love remains within me, one-sided. Does my youth, or the rapid-fire nature of this milestone in my life make it less real or worthy?

"Time to get ready for school, Khalil." Mom said through the door Tuesday morning.

"Ok." I moaned.

"You feelin' better today?" Dad stuck his head in the door as I was standing up, forcing me to quickly attempt to cover up my morning wood.

"No."

He hesitated, "Well, when ya get goin', you'll get with it," he smiled. I didn't respond. He closed the door and finished getting ready for work.

I knew I couldn't get away with trying to say I was sick again, so I went ahead and got ready for school. I knew the timing of both parents, so I waited 'til Dad was gone, and went to the bus stop. I hid in a long row of students as the bus came and went. Within fifteen minutes I saw Mom's car turn the corner in the other direction. I went back home.

Back to my self-pity.

I told Cole that day that the world doesn't want people like me to be happy. Did I choose to love a man? No. How could anybody think that I would 'choose' to live like this? How could anybody think I would choose to be rejected by the entire world?

I remember so vividly, running terrified as fast as I could, the larger boys in groups of three to five catching me, then the blows to my stomach, my face, my head. When I collapsed, kicks to my ribs, back and groin. I remember shrinking from their taunts, telling me how sick I was, what a disgusting faggot I was-- things that hurt far worse than the physical blows. I remember the fear in my mind, of the brutality that I couldn't understand-- because I didn't even know that I WAS this sick, less than human 'thing' they were calling me. I remember being oh so careful not to let my parents see the bruises all over my body, and trying to make up a story of how the black eyes and facial bruises was just a "routine" teenage fights.

I remember the years after that, when I was thirteen and it began to dawn on me that I WAS INDEED the horribly sick and twisted thing they'd called me. I remember getting nauseous the night it really hit me, and crying and cursing God for making me this way.

I tried to make it not so! Oh God how I tried! I tried to deny it. I tried to think heterosexual. I tried to think of girls. I tried not to think of boys. I tried many diversions. I tried to be A-sexual, and just not think about sex at all. I tried to bury myself in academics, in non-sexual fantasy, in books, in activities, music-- but no matter what I tried, the sight of a good-looking guy taking his shirt off in the afternoon sun while mowing the grass would make me tingle, make my cock twitch and my mouth water.

I didn't choose this. 

I didn't choose this life.

 I didn't choose any of it-- and I don't even have to stay for it.

Tuesday evening, as I left my room to go to the bathroom, I overheard a fragment of my parents conversation: "Well, if that's the case, I don't know what to do..." my dad was saying.

"I don't either, but we've got to try and be ready for it if it turns out I'm right. It may be what his problem is. This whole thing is..."

I pushed on the bathroom door and they heard it squeak and stopped talking. I knew at the time that they were talking about me, and would normally have been on 'high alert' and listened through the door for the rest of their conversation; but I could have cared less at that moment. My focus was so completely trained on Cole and my misery, that I could have overheard them discussing smothering me in my sleep and it wouldn't have made me change focus. Smothering me, in fact, would have been welcomed.

Wednesday morning I repeated the maneuver from Tuesday, and stayed home again. I couldn't possibly go to school in this state of mind, but trying to stay home 'legally' would involve way too much dealing with my parents. I had no idea if I would get caught or not, but I would handle that when and if it happened.

Well, it's down to the wire. All my little reasoning has brought me to this: Do I want to continue living this lonely, painful existence or just go ahead and.... end it ?

All I need to think of is Cole's face when he said "I don't love you." It was too easy for him. Is that how it goes? Is it just that easy for one person to crush another? Why should I stick around for more of that? Along with everything else about me, I think it's time to end it TO END IT ALL."