The Story of You

THEN 1984 When Mama got sick, Father crumbled with her. It was as if they depended on each other to be a whole person. I like to tell Oliver that Father placed him in my arms when they got home from the hospital, but in truth, he was an afterthought. Oliver didn’t have parents, he had me, his fifteen-year-old brother who had never held a baby before let alone looked after one. Watching Mama wither should have been the worst of it, but what came after that shadowed her death like a cold mountainside. I was never the same.

NOW 2009...

THEN 1984 When Mama got sick, Father crumbled with her. It was as if they depended on each other to be a whole person. I like to tell Oliver that Father placed him in my arms when they got home from the hospital, but in truth, he was an afterthought. Oliver didn’t have parents, he had me, his fifteen-year-old brother who had never held a baby before let alone looked after one. Watching Mama wither should have been the worst of it, but what came after that shadowed her death like a cold mountainside. I was never the same.

NOW 2009 It’s natural for Oliver to be curious about our past, but watching him cry as he flips through the pages of my journal triggers all my protective instincts and I want to stuff him in my ’73 Monte Carlo and head for Canada. It stirs the punishing emotions I wanted to keep long buried. Butterfly. Butterfly. Butterfly. I had to leave with Oliver. Leaving was the only way to save him. “Nothing will ever hurt you again, Eaglet. I’m not much, but I’ll become something for you.” But I left something behind. Something so forbidden, all it’s done is burn me from the inside for twenty-one years. I have been running from this moment ever since. It has found me. More accurately, it has always been watching me.

This is a dark story with dark themes. There is horror and terror and very, very, bad things. Also forbidden things. There is love within the pages, but this is NOT a romance story. There is also a beautiful found family of men. Beautiful gay husbands and boyfriends. Brotherly fortitude. And as always, the caretaking dynamic Mock (S. Legend) is known best for.