I am Gideon: Chapter #3

Life Catches Up With Me.

So, I thought, that is what love means.  And I went back, because I got food, and a bath, and attention, and sex was the price I paid because that was the currency I had.  After a while it seemed normal to me – having absolutely no idea what normal really meant.  Brother Darwin taught me things.  We would go to the museum and he would talk to me about history.  He taught me a bit about reading and writing – more than I thought, actually – but mostly he was an oral sort of a fellow, in oh, so many ways. 

I cannot describe the dichotomy of emptiness, despair and hope that filled me in those years. I pretended, I guess, that my life didn’t exist, and I got just enough of a glimpse of what was “out there,” that I dared hope one day I’d be out there, too, among real people, like the ones I saw at the Museum of Transportation, and on the buses and the street, and I imagined what their lives were like, knowing nothing about real world despair.  I only knew my own.  Every night I slept behind the couch with my rag of a blanket, when I was allowed to sleep at all.  Because I was tall for my age, I was easier to drag out, and because I was older, I was expected to follow instructions, which I did, because that’s what I was.  The days and weeks and years rolled into one another, a grey mass broken only by occasional trips to see Brother Darwin, and foraging trips with my mother.  When I was eight or so she began to let clients take me with them, and I saw bars and back rooms and even houses once in a while, and in a sick sort of way, it broadened my point of view. 

I began having pain when I urinated, and I had rashes which were largely hidden by my clothing, and my joints ached, and one day when I was eleven or twelve, Brother Darwin told me not to come anymore.  He was angry and I had no idea why.  I soon found out.  An equally angry and very frightening man, accompanied by a tall, blonde woman came knocking on my mother’s door.  Apparently someone had filed a complaint against me, stating that I was diseased and unclean.  My mother stood there, drunk and bleary-eyed, trying to make sense of what was being said, and when they dragged me off by one arm, she shouted, “You can’t take him!  I need him.” 

But they did take me.  They put me in the back of a transport and drove for a long time to a long, tall off-white building with bushes and close-clipped grass.  They never said one word to me, just marched me up the walk, in the front door, and up to a high desk with a solid front.  There was a woman dressed in white behind it. They pushed me out in front of them and said, “He’s dirty.  Had a complaint filed.”

“Did you check him?” the woman asked.

“Shit no,” said the man. “That’s your job.”

I just stood there, scared half to death, uncomprehending, looking from one face to another. 

The woman came around the desk and looked down at me.  Then she jerked my pants down, and using a pencil off her desk she moved my genitals around and gave a little shudder. 

“Pull up your pants,” she said, throwing the pencil in the garbage can beside the desk.  Then she looked me in the eye and said, “Why did you let people do this to you?  You should be ashamed.”