And thus began the beguine.

Time was of the essence as soon as I was popped out breach in a birth that required a crash cart for my mother.  It was the proper entrance really.
"Here's your new baby boy.  Now hand me the external defibrillator. CLEAR!"
I was God's version of an improvised explosive device.  The pregnancy was far from planned and I sure as shit went BOOM!  The family that received me was a thin Norman Rockwell skin over the top and a whole lot of bedlam underneath.  Father was a Doctor of Theology, Dr. Larry Kennedy.  He was also a closeted homosexual that kept old Casey Donovan, Al Parker, and Jack Wrangler mags in the same briefcase he kept his sermons in.  My mother turned a blind eye convinced that she was called to be a preacher's wife and Florence Nightingale.  I have an older brother, Lee, six years my senior.  My sister, Renee, is just fifteen months older than me.  There was one miscarriage of twins before my sister was born.  Growing up, I thought that they were the lucky ones.  In some ways I still do. 
All, and I mean all three, of us kids turned out to be gay though my sister and I were pretty obvious.  I had all the Rainbow Brite dolls and a Care Bear Big Wheel and could be seen on the front lawn practicing my Care Bear Stare.  My sister got the Tonka toys and the G.I. Joe figurines, though I stole The Baroness doll because she was so statuesque.  My brother was a tougher nut to crack.  So my sister and I were two peas in a pod.  I was brought home from the hospital and she wouldn't leave my side and alternated pacifiers with me consistently.  We had each other and suffered the same trips of terror with our father.  He was a deeply troubled, gay man trapped in a marriage behind a pulpit.  He had a violent streak that kept life in the Kennedy household on constant alert.  Everyday we were on code Orange.  My sister received beatings that are now linked to her being developmentally disabled by the age of two.  I was dropped from a grain silo in an attempt to sort of complete the sacrifice of Isaac.  My brother was beat with log chains.  Father could ignite at any moment and God knows what could detonate him.  I remember always being in fear and finding hiding spots all over the Cape Cod I spent the first few years of my life in.
Mother had started working for a podiatrist in the early eighties.  Her hours got longer and longer.  She also joined the ranks of the fitness craze and flowered into a figure-conscious, Capezio lily.  She stocked herself with a new found confidence.  She had never been so svelte in her life.  I can't recall anytime my mother has been happier ever since.  She was also falling in love with her employer, a well-educated, eloquent black man.  When first introduced to the first black man I ever met I set a tone of discomfort that would last until he left my life.
"I simply adooooore Denise Huxtable."
I was four, my favorite song was "Burning Up", and tangerine was my favorite Crayola.

Madonna - Burning Up
Uploaded by jpdc11. - Watch more music videos, in HD!