B.

When I was ten years old my father caught me messing around with another boy my age, and he beat the shit outta me. Later that same night I overheard ’em in the middle of a business call while indulging in his usual glass of late night brandy after berating my mother who lazily attempted to defend my actions, calling it “experimental” and that one day I’d “get over it”. He acted like neither event happened, just went on like it was every other night. The casualness of it, that bothered me more than anything.

My entire life was a buildup to that emotional disconnect I suddenly felt for both of ’em. My dad’s lack of empathy or remorse for his constant emotional and physical abuse, and my mom’s submissiveness and inherent misunderstanding of everything around her. And I guess thinking back on it, any lack of sexual maturity, abandonment issues, and built up hatred I’ve carried all these years can be traced to that exact moment, and is the root cause for how I’m in this situation now.

The fucking arrogant-ness of my father! He’s that conventional, typical, male business type who dines on red meat and drinks way too much, yet doesn’t understand why his suits keep shrinking. Always thinks he’s in the right. Overly opinionated about every. little. thing. And what fucking annoys me the most is he truly is an intelligent man, always touting that class ring. I’ve only ever been able to prove him wrong. Once. Ever. He’s the type of man whose son is gonna perform well in school, graduate at the top of his class, go to college, work for the man, marry a trophy wife who’ll inevitably max out all his credit cards, and have kids who hate him as much as he hates his own father. He was a man who made me feel like an outsider my entire life because of my interests, because of who I wanted to have sex with, what I thought about things, anything he could use as a weapon to put me down any chance he got!

When I was a kid I used to steal money from his wallet to buy science kits and pulp magazines. And when you’re a boy interested in those things you garner a pretty unique view of how the world works. I mean, the type of violence that exists and dark psychology in those crime stories makes you realize everyone has secrets, everyone has things they’re hiding and cloaked behind a facade they present to the rest of the public. The detectives are always finding hints to the lies and pointing out the tell-tale signs associated with shallow deception, and part of that, I know, had to leak into my subconscious to give me this ability I have in reading people.

It must have also taught me the tools I needed to hide my own demons, something I reverted to after the way other children treated me and reacted to me. I could never figure out why they never just existed as their true selves, always putting on an act. It was alienating. I felt like I had to feign interest during meaningless conversation before people would take notice of me, thus birthing this realization I had, that I should develop this skill into a more advanced form of manipulation.

Of course what followed was another emotional disconnect I had from — everyone.

Anytime I tried to share my real thoughts, or feelings, or interests — especially when it came to thoughts about my father or “homosexuality” — I was always met with hostility and ridicule, made fun of and ignored, which only pushes you further into the descent of isolation and escapism. I just continued to indulge in my books and found new hobbies, like maintaining and cultivating an ant farm, something I’ve always been very proud of! But nothing replaces this anger I felt growing and manifesting, and I guess it always came out by way of belittling others, I always had to prove how much smarter I am than everyone.

Listen to me. God. I’m acting just like my father…

But, you know what, I’m better than him. And if he represents the majority, that means I’m better than most people, because I accept other’s unique points of view of whatever their into!

I’m pro-liberal!

Fuck all the school board teachers I had that labeled me “difficult” because I was insubordinate and didn’t feed into the institutional bullshit! But I played their game, ’cause there’s only so much they would do to a student who’s performing at the top of their class. I knew punishment was lax to those with higher GPA’s. Except for those times in sports I might have gone a little too far, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy seeing the hurt on other players faces after I enacted some physical pain.

Jesus, maybe that’s why I liked the ant farm, it was this simplistic microcosm of society that I could rule over and control. I guess it made me feel powerful.

Man, how the adolescent development of such things continues and perpetuates into vastly more sophisticated means even into adulthood!

It wasn’t like I ever lost interest in the science experiments and pulp novels, it’s just — when you’re a teenager in high school — I just started to notice the lives of the people around me were becoming more sophisticated and entangled in interesting ways, watching the melodrama of obvious lies and deceit as the silly relationships for others came and went. Around that same time, I got bored with the predictable patterns of my ant colony, so I searched for an open area just outside the city and started a bee farm.

Watching them, working with them.

It was so much larger and more complex. Yeah, you fuck up with the bees, and you get stung. A generic, but good lesson that carries into what I do now.

Fuck! All this shit I’m into! The rain’s gonna come pourin’ down…

I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of those carpenter ants though, I built them a large formicarium I keep in my condo. I tried to apply this same principle of the ants and the bees to this study of the culture around me, trying to push things into a more complex circumstance. I went on a date with a girl I met at my school, but it was immediately clear to me I wasn’t attracted to her kind, instead I hooked up with a guy from the football team, and he’s who introduced me to the popular clubs in that area. There was this immediate attraction I felt to the punk aesthetic and crazy atmosphere ever present in the night life. There’s this dark underbelly I didn’t know I’d become such a big part of…

After two dates I dumped the football player, it was obvious I wasn’t attracted to anyone my age, boy or girl. I started goin’ to these clubs by myself. You had your usual frequenters of the common spots, but — this one guy — he always dressed in the most extravagant attire and had a girl on each arm with a posse followin’ close behind. A prime indicator of who bankrolled a lot of these places, or if he didn’t, he was instrumental in makin’ ’em happen and keepin’ the culture alive.

I got close enough one night to strike up a conversation, and he invited me to get involved with an illegal gambling circuit he put on. Probably thought I was an easy target, ’cause I was playin’ up the naivete. But I picked up everything pretty fast, and quickly made a lot of money for myself, and suddenly I was around the biggest players that operated in those circles.

Some nefarious fucking people who had a lot of money to spend, and a lot they wanted to earn back.

And man, hangin’ around them, I started to see the real life versions of the shit that was in those pulp magazines. I took these large earnings I was makin’ and invested into some illegal operations through these guys. But other than investing, I never partook in anything, I was never hands on! I spent a while just watching from a distance, tryin’ to learn how it all worked. Studying the people, places, things… I didn’t know yet what’d get me off, but I knew if I started anything premature, I’d be riskin’ a lot by way of incrimination. And once that began, there’d be no turning back from my involvement, the evidence would be there…

I had money before I started gambling though, in my daily life at a brokerage firm, my career was growing there which is what allowed me to be autonomous and financially stable before getting involved with anything else.

Jesus, I’m just now realizing how all these dots connect! Between this contempt for my parents, societal alienation, pent up hatred, need for control in this conveyance of superiority and ability to thrive in this new culture…

Yet, nothing has given me this feeling of — of catharsis and satisfaction more than what I just did to that poor —

I’m such a fuckin’ hypocrit! In how I judge others for the fake representation of themselves, while I sit here talkin’ about how I hide from what I do and can’t even say out loud what it is I just — I couldn’t even say out loud what my relationship was with that football player, always speakin’ in innuendos and motivating assumption, scared to say the real word of what I am!

The last time I openly spoke about it was when my father beat me in front of my friend, told us it was “wrong”, called me all the common derogatory names before I even knew what any of ’em meant. I mean, we were kids! When he told me at school he also liked boys — and he came for a sleepover, we planned to show each other our penises, I reached out to touch his, my dad came in, and… He sent my friend home, and me to my room, but I snuck out, and that’s when I heard him and my mother. Or more specifically, him hounding her about what kind of fucked up son they have, to the point of bringin’ her to tears.

Even now I don’t know if she was cryin’ from the fear, or because she’s just found out her son is gay…

Maybe she was cryin’ because she wanted to better defend me, but was too scared of the consequences of what he might do. Or maybe it was a complex mix of all the above, I don’t know… I do wish I could feel love for her though. But I can’t get over the resentment and abandonment I feel instead for the woman who brought me into this world while married to a man who’s kept her in a symbolic chokehold, and leaving me to fight all the battles.

The best thing I could wish upon her was a violent death by way of car crash, or cancer to cause a slow and painful one to finally put her out of her miserable existence. I want her to get out, but not without feeling some sort of hurt and pain as punishment… And there’s another dot in this string of circumstances, this impression of needing to act out dominance over others, no doubt me carrying out subconsciously this relationship of my parents.

Are they why I always associate sex with violence?

If my dad gave me anything it was this drive to show him how much better and smarter I am. That’s why I went into stockbroking, and worked for a competitive company. I wanted to put his brokerage outta business! Of course there’s other ways I coulda gotten back at ’em, but fuckin’ with his money I knew is one way he’d take notice…

I knew I couldn’t work the floor until I was 18, so I just put up with teenage life until “real life” could begin.

I mean, I was popular in school, mostly as a result of a personal sociological experiment to see what type of personality people liked. An interesting mix of quick wittedness, quality grades, and basic conversational tools exuding charisma caught most people’s attention. The more others claimed to like me, the less respect I had for their predictability and simple mindedness. Others claimed to find me serious and intimidating, which I always kinda liked the sound of.

Our house was so large, we all had a wing to ourselves so I could go months without seeing my parents. I would just ignore them or I’d greet them with a nice “fuck you” on the way upstairs. My mom mostly lived in the east wing, reading fashion magazines while day drinking red wine and crafting shitty art projects. My dad stayed in the east study living his dull existence of sports watching, non-fiction reading, and business calls. He would sleep in his shirt and tie after getting so drunk he couldn’t make it to the pull out couch. I mostly just did homework, tended to my ant farm, jerk off…

Yeah…

You know, I got the best orgasms watching snuff films, I get ’em free for my endorsement, one of the business ventures I invest in…

During that time I was only home a few nights of the week anyway, mostly spent my nights at clubs. I’d tried drugs a few times, but I don’t like things messin’ with my mind. I like to remain sharp.

On weekends I stayed at this abandoned cabin I found near my bee farm. I got into hunting while I was there, squirrels and rabbits, mostly small prey. I liked the isolation in the woods, it was a nice dichotomy from the energy of clubs in the city. There it was just me, a gun, my knife, and the dead animals. I’d sit on the porch in the dark, thinking, stirring… There was this one fuckin’ weekend I found a group of kids from my high school there, meaning I couldn’t have the place to myself like usual. I had my rifle with me. I thought about shooting ‘em… I would’ve fuckin’ loved it too… I decided it wouldn’t provide anything but trouble down the line though. Murderin’ people like that just — isn’t in my M.O… I went home that weekend instead, tried listening to some vinyl. Thought something classical might calm me down, Beethoven or some shit, I don’t know, it all sounds like Beethoven to me. I was bored outta my fuckin’ mind.

Even now I don’t allow music like that in my office building, puts me to sleep.

I waited a while to get into the position I’m at now to make decisions like that. It’s cliche, but I started in the mailroom when I was 16, got promoted to the floor on my 18th birthday. I progressed fast. Brokering’s all about aggression, readin’ the situation, and the mind games of the people around you. All the same shit I was already doin’ in high school, except now I was earnin’ money for it instead of just popularity points. With my superiors, I introduced them to some of the “nefarious folk” I already knew to show ’em a good time, that didn’t hurt in gettin’ me promoted either.

Even then I still wasn’t participating. Just observing, listening, investing, learning.

All my relationships I mentally categorize in terms of value of use, and the useful ones I utilize as a means to an end. Like servers at the night clubs, get ’em on your side and you can persuade them to let you in anywhere. Or like how they helped me with my bosses, hookin’ ’em up with quality coke at quality places with quality girls. Some of these products my money is helpin’ pay to get imported anyway! I try to get in good with at least one server every place I go, show my superiors I got all the connections.

But, I also figured it’d help to have certain friends for if I ever needed an escape, get out of the country, get away from something — horrible.

Although I understand, you wear out your favors or overstay your welcome and people make sure to lose your contact, and no amount of money will buy them back. I’ve seen it happen to others, time and again…

But I don’t think I’m there yet! This is the first time I’ll need something like this! But I have to watch what I do in the other countries, or — or if I fuck up and can’t get someone to help me get back, or get out of wherever, I’ll be stuck there!… Oh, God. I have a feeling it’s gonna happen, I’ll get caught, go to a foreign prison, and I’m gonna die in there around someone who can’t even understand what I’m saying!

You would think my career advancement, earning so much money, the excitement of illegal trades, my bees, the ants, the hunting, would all give me some sort of life gratification, but instead my life has started to become so repetitive and left me with this feeling of an empty existence. Even the illegal shit has started to feel more like a safe, second job. At this point I know so many powerful people and I have so much money I can throw at any problem it all seems so low risk. There’s so little danger to any of it anymore! At least one of the things I had to keep workin’ toward was putting my father’s company outta commission, so I could go rub it in his fucking face… I hadn’t seen or talked to him since I was 18, since I left home. I mean, occasionally my mother would send an email, the most intimate of communication methods. And even that was kept surface level and vague. More like it was an obligation or courtesy than actual caring! I often had my assistant draft a reply, stave off the generic parental questions… At least until three days ago, when I decided to go see them for the first time in 14 years.

I FUCKING HATE the idea my father thinks he gets the credit for my skills and my successes.

I’d gone to see ’em ’cause I’d just been made general manager of my own branch, a branch they built just for me, with my own staff and my own team, and I’m in charge of all of it! Like my ant farm has grown to include real people to control and manipulate! And now anywhere I go, and anything I do with meeting new people it can be played as a business transaction. My company, my business, it’s the perfect front for everything! For all of it! And no, not only that, but now with this new branch that means more clients can be acquired and more accounts can be handled. And if we’re taking more clients and handling more accounts that means we’re takin’ ’em from the leading competitive company, my father’s company. And if we continue with this kind of trajectory, he’ll be out of business within a year!

I mean, you’d think all this success I’ve had at such a young age would give me a feeling of accomplishment, but nothing meant as much to me as letting my father know who took his method of income away and ran his life’s work into the ground.

And I went to see my father to tell him just that, and that I was the root cause of it.

And this motherfucker, instead of being outwardly mad, or openly hateful, he was proud. He said he was proud of himself for prepping me for this kind of success. For giving me an avenue, and a drive, and a career direction. Fuck him! He said he didn’t care if I hated him, that even if hatred was my motivation, either way you look at it, he’s responsible.

I FUCKING HATE the idea he’s takin’ credit for my success…

But the real icing on the cake was when he had his back to me pouring us both a glass of his bullshit brandy, and in this blase attitude told me my mom died two years ago from pancreatic cancer… And I guess he didn’t even think to send an email to let me know… Honestly, I thought I’d be happy to find out she was finally given a way out of her shitty marriage. Instead I felt angry, and frustrated this is how I learn about it! And how my dad doesn’t even seem to give a shit that his wife of 30 plus years has died from one of the most painful forms of cancer! So, when he turned around to hand me my drink I punched him in the face. And the motherfucker said he was even proud of that! Sayin’ I acted like a man for the first time instead of an introverted sociopath. Lyin’ on the floor with blood spurting out of his mouth.

I guess I coulda taken my class ring off beforehand, but it’s not like he ever took his off before hitting me. Only fitting I hit him back with the same one, having stolen it from his office last time I was there…

And if I were to intellectualize the whole thing, in hindsight, you’d think I might’ve felt a complex mix of superiority and inferiority. I’m superior because of my place in life and my career status, but inferior because of this place I’m at with my father. Superior in showing him I’m better at his own profession, but inferior because he won’t even let me claim it as my own. I always thought a moment like this would give me gratification, or a sense of release. And actually, what I felt was — nothing.

In that moment of watching him fall to the floor, my emotions just went away.

Another disconnect between us.

And I left…

Later, though, I was dying for a new kind of distraction to get my mind off it, something that wasn’t my bees, ants, hunting, or any of the products I invest in the club basements. I just needed something different!

I ended up accepting last minute an invitation to the 10th birthday party for one of my employee’s friend’s kid. I not only thought it’d be a good way to get away from everything, but I figure it’d play well as a professional courtesy. Show them I’m a boss who “cares”. This associate of my associate who was throwing the party I think said he was in commercial real estate, but I got dragged into the conversation because he expressed interest in wanting to invest capital in some commercial stock. After a long while of pretending to be interested in everyone there with menial small talk, I got a glass of red wine and wandered off to be by myself. I wanted to mull on where I was and why I was there… And I guess it all makes sense. How he made himself available, where it was headed, the dominance, my sense of entitlement, this pent up aggression I didn’t know was still there! My lack of sexual maturity and inexperience, sexual repression from my father and society, the emotion of my mom dying coming out in this new way!… And I thought the people I help traffic to and from different countries, and the child porn that turns me on… What I just experienced made more sense than anything else I’ve done in my entire life. It was surreal, almost too perfect, like I was imagining the whole thing. For those few moments, I ruled the world!… Until someone walked in on us and — and threatened to call the police. And I ran away! I just have to stay hidden long enough to call someone I know, to — to help get me outta the country! ’Cause If they catch me, I’m gonna be in for a lotta dark stuff, you understand what I mean?

I know it doesn’t make a lotta sense, but I have this fear of them giving me to those type of creepy men in white coats who inject shit into your brain!

Experimentation on me or some shit! Because I just beat and raped a 10 year old boy at his birthday party!

But it’s really his fault, you know!? I — I wasn’t in the right state of mind, ’cause learning about my mom’s death, and the fight with my father! I — I tried to get away, and — and — and just be on my own, at his house, and have a drink and… and he came onto me! Right? I mean, what is that about!?… And however his life turns out, it — it can’t just be my fault! Can it? Maybe some things are reminders, but — but — his problems sound mostly genetic to me! I heard someone say his mom’s bipolar! And he had a rocky upbringing! So whose fault is that!? And… and from what I can only guess, he mostly just couldn’t handle the fact he’s gay!