When I was a child I dreamed sometimes about being an acrobat in the circus. There was something special to me about being so completely confident in one's own ability to hone perfectly both their body and a routine, to learn something so spectacular that you could seem to do things like defy nature and gravity itself. I'd look up at the groups of people, often tight knit families, trusting and tossing each other above the crowd and both desire to be in that kind of control, but also to have those kinds of relationships with the people around me. That I could be flung from the hands of one person at the right moment knowing I would catch something.

I realize now, that the desire I had to balance, to be in total control of myself, was a cry to be in a place other than the one I was, where I was completely out of control. Beaten, often randomly, sodomized often nightly, humiliated and degraded; living like a pet rather than a son. I saw these people on the other side of the world, where complete mastery of control meant an outcome that was…otherworldly. It has both shaped my need to walk my own tightrope, without a net, and also reach out to catch those that are tossed. It made me smile as I thought about it….that had been the missing piece all along.

I light a cigarette, leaning lightly back on a busted bench on campus. Sprawled out like a king snake in the sun. Fuck, I was juggling as much as I was anything else right? I mean, a little smile here, a little pat on the back there, a lure and bait here. I gotta find those right ones, I gotta find those lambs, the ones that follow my tune. Like a pied piper humming my tune and seeing who picks it up, so when I play a full song, they come a’runnin’. Of course I don’t need to tell you that do I? You understand it, its why you are here. And I know we’ve known each other for a long time and you might not understand why I’ve changed, shit, I could see the look as you wandered over, right? I mean you looked at me and didn’t see the guy you knew before. I get that…I really do, but frankly…you don’t know shit.

But I also had this need to balance that with this vicarious need to see them protected from the shit in this City, the same shit that killed my daughter, my ex-lover. I had this fucking pull to make this a good experience for these kids, and sometimes, I couldn’t fucking believe the things I did, the self sacrifices I made. It was a good lesson in control, I had a tendency to be a big fucking bon fire, draw the moths in and watch ‘em pop and light like the snappers you gave the lil kids at the Fourth of July parties. Shit, now even the way I talked was tempered, it was a smoldering flame, it was a warm blanket you could crawl into, and that was the point. When I am on the grift its easy to maintain patience because the outcome is often far away. You gotta get the parents to believe you have the drugs before they’ll give you the money that was to save their kid, you gotta earn the trust of a drug dealer who thinks you have a designer product before he shows up to buy your case full of Arm & Hammer. With this, it was hard. It was personal, and it was right there. I could draw it out, a snake charmer pulling the beast from inside its casket, and make it dance, even in a few minutes of talking. The young ones with their guilt and pain written all over them, it was easy to snap my fingers and get attention, and yeah, that’s what I fucking wanted, I wanted to consume them all, I wanted to drench myself in their sweat and their fucking cum. That make you hard to hear? Make you want to run this game like we used to one-two punch the country club wives for the money their husbands were holding out? Those were good times weren’t they…but, man, you just don’t get it…
I had to fight it, constantly, every fucking day, like a junkie who needed a god damn fix. The long term goal was true to me, real to me. You had to build that trust, just like a good grift only this time, it wasn’t taking, it was giving. And once that bait was taken, there was no going back. In my life I’d run from every situation I created, this was the first one that I wanted so fucking badly, to be right in the middle of. To lay in. I needed the flock, I needed it to make those fucking scum bags of Hathian pay, the shit cops, the dimwitted gang punks, the psycho assholes, all the reflection on the bad shit in my mind, and if I cleansed it all out , I could be free too. I needed the strength of the flock. I needed them to believe I was right, to believe in me.

If things had gotten less hard boiled in the past few months, to those who might look at me and say “Darkness is gone and all you are is Anjel” had no idea that Darkness was preparing for the war, the great sacrifice, the long journey. Darkness lied in wait. That bastard of a child, wanting to slit the throat, raged and angrily, of every fucking asshole parent in Hathian who reminded him of his. I saw all the fucking asshole gang members with their kids right on the edge of being destroyed. These were the kids I was cleaning up now, who harbored their own pain and anger, and rather than do what I did, and join the cycle, we were going to break the fucking cycle. I wasn’t going to let these children live in a world where you were damned by birth. Judgement day would come. And what, you think I sound like a psycho, well fuck you. You’ve known me too not know I mean this shit, that I am going to make this happen. I am going to bring them all down. No, I will not relax, not ever. Not…ever.

And yeah, it gets my blood fucking boiling, it gets me riled up, and it makes it hard, in that moment to have perspective. That every dark flower that walks into my office on campus or stops me for a conversation, I can feel them and know I can reach them, heal them, I see the faces of the children of the bastards that huddle in front of Rader or the Grind, who try and murder each other under Lous. And every time I fix one, it makes me want to push harder, to push farther… so don’t try and give me that bullshit that I’d gone soft, asshole. There is a better way, a clear fucking way man, you just have to believe in it. You have to believe that there is harmony in this moment. You live on the edge as long as you can, and then you jump. I know they’ll catch me. I know they will….