Macabre Gentilhomme

I now live in a war torn country that is my mind. A year and a half ago I would've told you that everything was fine. I had a good job, a relationship with a gorgeous genius that resided in Dallas, and I was content with my physique, though there is always room for improvement for someone with classic body dysmorphic disorder from being gay. It had come time in the relationship for one of us to make the move and fate set its sights on me. The separation was becoming a great divide and hurting us rather than the absence making our hearts grow fonder. I had never left Kansas City, Missouri to live somewhere else. Sure, I had visited numerous places but the idea of leaving my stomping grounds was frightening and when it was put into action I took to the idea of it being a visceral, exhilarating, epic adventure to escape the dread brought about by going into the unknown. I was bound for Texas and a bright, shiny future with my then fiance awaited me.

Prior to leaving for Austin that July, I had some hang ups I had dealt with. You see, in 1987 at seven years of age I was diagnosed Manic Depressive. I had some catastrophic behavioral patterns starting at a young age. If the doctor had asked to get a BPS on my paternal side of the family he might have found a lot of answers there. Being that it was my father's side of the family they viewed themselves as so perfect that their imperfections were perfect. I never stayed on medications or in therapy very long because my single mother couldn't afford it. We weren't very educated on our, our being my sister and I, illnesses. It was always a recovery in a hospital for a month or two, a little bit of outpatient care, and then life would go on until there was another mental crisis. I lost faith in psychiatric medicine. I had ECT treatments, diagnosed bipolar type II, then borderline personality disorder, then clinically depressed, then a pathological liar with sociopathic tendencies. I got to a point where I could lie through a psych evaluation without batting an eyelash and getting away with it. By the age of 25 I had 20 suicide attempts. Most of them going unreported, like a failed overdose where you wake up in your piss and shit and vomit the next day and just clean yourself off thinking, "Fuck. I can't even do this right." There was always this great fear and pressure to not get hurt and getting hurt meant some sort of getting caught. I came to a screeching halt in my twenty-fifth year.

When I turned 25 I was around a few people that were enduring the same highs and lows that I was and not doing anything to help equalize them. I soon went inpatient after another failed attempt. I had been dosing myself with blow and alcohol to self- medicate my already wild and eccentric life with chemically induced zany behavior.
During this hospital stay my diagnosis changed from bipolar II to borderline personality disorder. I went from an Axis I diagnosis to an Axis II personality diagnosis. It simply meant that my illness was more of a programming than a chemical imbalance. Medication could treat the symptoms but dialectical behavioral therapy, DBT, would ultimately improve the quality of my life. I got all the strength I could muster and threw myself into it with holistic medication serving as an organic accoutrement. I religiously took my omega3 fish oil, 5htp, St. John's Wort, SAM-e, and nanotechnological vitamins. I started a grueling 2 hour work out six days a week and attended therapy twice a week while journaling every day. It did change my quality of life. I body was the best it had ever looked and I felt the best I had ever felt. I was learning how to cope with my symptoms with an easy to follow program.
After tragedy hit my life full speed with a failed relationship I soon found myself in another relationship. It was a little more comfortable. It budded from simple conversations over the net. Yes. The second healthiest place to find a mate to be chummy with outside of a bar. Right?
His name was Mr. A and he was just what I needed. I needed a passionate voice that was full of genuine care, support, wit, contagious laughter and intellectual ingenuity. To top the cake he was gorgeous. I would kiss the pads of his feet and did on many occasions. Some sort of a green eyed wonder mystified me. He was an addiction that I would gladly give myself over to anytime, day or night. He flew from Dallas and spent an incredible week with me after a year of correspondence. We knew it was time and that we wanted to share more than just a week or two with each other. I wanted, more than anything else, to be with him, wake him up with coffee ready every morning, satiate my sexual appetite, which he surprisingly did, and melt me into a pool with his warm, seductive, adorable presence. I thought I was born to be with him and he the same.
I was hauling a secret load. In March of 2008 my cyclothymic symptoms started to rear their heads in a very acute way. Now not only was my "inner dialogue" violently self deprecating but I had picked up darker passengers that became maladies visible only through peripheral vision. My olfactory lobe seemed stronger. I was have total recall of things that I didn't remember or didn't want to remember only to find myself in strange positions, under my bed for example, after the vivid memories filmed for IMAX. For a minute there I thought my mind was going into some sort of degenerative state, a sort of cerebral atrophy. My emotions had never been so erratic. My symptoms never so paranormal like or as acute. I bucked up on the exercise and tried to incorporate all that I learned in DBT.
Things, emotional things, subsided when I ventured forth down to the lonestar state. The first morning we woke up next to each other I woke up still in a dream. Things weren't right. Phantoms, or supernatural vagrants, in full view told a tale of an unhappy ending for Mr. A and I. He would leave if he ever knew the TRUTH about me. I was scared to do wrong and I was ultra scared to be off and abandoned in a foreign place like Texas.
I'm a born and raised midwestern man. Anything south of the Mason-Dixon Line is suspect for oddities. I amalgamated myself to Mr. A. That just made our intimacy even more intense. The dance started out on the right foot. I found a job with a decent wage that I could do with my hands tide behind my back. Mr. A had a generous friend that let us stay in a guest bedroom until we found a decent flat. We were doing it. The next step was nuptials. I laxed on my fitness regimen and spiraled faster than some cyclones. Instead of sucking up, I became a microburst.
We moved to Austin, Texas, me from K.C. and him from Dallas, at the end of July of 2008. By the end of August my inner battles started to scorch the earth.
On a weekend at the end of August that year the microburst that seemed to rush the pressure down upon me was going to run screaming across the plains leveling anything that was in its way...Mr. A.
We had a less than mediocre dinner that was only made wonderful by the company we gave each other. Anything was susceptible for witty, sardonic banter. I loved everything that came out of his mouth, his finesse, and every pore . We meandered over to Austin's more preeminent sissy bar, Rain. After we tripped the light fantastic a couple of times Mr. A went to go get our last cocktails for evening before we went home and did what soon-to-be spouses did. I went to drain the lizard.
While in dispose the scent of dusty, old attics full of old crumpled, grey insulation and sweat. Tactile sensations of hands rough, liked they'd been soaking in battery acid, were going up my thighs and down my ass. That combined with the sudden raise in volume of static, chatter rattling off into a hum and then the disabling sounds of moans and whimpers from a boy sent me spinning. The stall was moving like an amusement park ride that spins and then the floor drops out. I braced myself with my hands pressed into the sides of the metal cubical. I thought it must be the drink. Never had I had this type of reaction. I turned and opened the door to lines that had formed for a free urinal or stall. Panic started to pulse through the veins in my eyes and coursed through my body in an over exaggerated pulse that pounded in my ears with each drop and up beat of the disco house blasting to a loud white noise. Out of their mouths came the moans. I other men in the restroom acted surprised and some were a bit disturbed by my behavior it seemed. I scrambled for the door and out into a busy Friday night club I seemed to glide like on tracks. I felt riddled with torpid appendixes ready deploy my body with vicious consternation. A. I had to find Mr. A. The phantoms ascended into positions. I was plowing through people drinking, laughing, yelling, smoking cigarettes. Life suddenly goes to IMAX. The room was running out of air but nobody was having a hard time breathing. I received strange looks. I was wandering through rooms. The dance music loud so my heartbeat matched the pulse of the disco. I wanted to faint as the looks perforated me expecting me to vomit.
The sound of the party was larger than the party. The clinking ice cubes in the glasses carried by drunken parishoners, the sizzle and small crackles of burning cigarette paper taking large tugs from lips around the filter, the cash register opening and shutting, the buzz of the discotheque lights. Life became amplified. There was some missing variable to explaining what exactly made me the catalyst, the mercury switch for this Chernobyl.
I saw him and quickly beelined to him. He saw the panic and tossed the drinks. We took on a brisk pace and walked down 5th St.
"Where were you? I was looking all over for you. I couldn't find you."
"I was getting our drinks. What's the matter?"
"I asked you to never leave me!" I exclaimed through my teeth.
The conversation was consisted of minced words because physcial contact was soon to follow. We were outside and the world began to slow down a bit. I couldn't make sense of this and I couldn't possibly have anyone else carry my crazy. What wasn't working? The drink surely didn't help but keep me from breathing or pushing towards a scary form of syncope. This wasn't a soft malaise. I felt out of control of every single thing that had to do with me. And that smell, the dust, I couldn't get rid of it. I would inhale and almost become incontinent on the spot. Just fear struck through me like that of a caught rabbit.
"He was feeling on me again."
"Who? What the fuck is the matter with you?"
I answered with a lie. Stating that I was molested in the bathroom by the latino man that was all over me on the dancefloor.
"I told you to never fucking leave me. And then this."
"Will you calm the fuck down?!"
I couldn't explain what I was going through. I couldn't differentiate much. The words delusional and abandonment came quickly into my head which struck a chord of fear and more panic.
I pushed him. He flew back down on the sidewalk onto his ass. He got up and started to walk away.
"You're fuckin' crazy!" he exclaimed.
I pushed him again. He hit the pavement, bracing himself by skinning his palms and forearms. I start to calm down, noticing what I was doing. Mr. A. stood up and began to walk away with a look of terror on his face. I caught up to him at the car. With reluctance and trepidation he let me into the vehicle and frantically drove off. A yelling match ensued in the car. I was trying to express what I was going through and it was coming out it what was received as crazy talk. So floodgates opened and the sobs and tears came out. Mr. A. had no idea what I was going through. How could he? I opened my door on a bridge.
"Yeah. There ya go. Kill yourself."
My right shoe hit asphalt as I was swiftly evulsed out of the moving air back to the passenger seat.
"Get the hell in here." he howled.
The door slammed shut. More of my incoherent ranting and raving continued. When our bedroom door shut daggers flew from his mouth and heavy rocks were lightly thrown. He didn't understand. I had barely a grasp on it myself. The situation kept escalating. Trying to win an argument with an Italian is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Soon I spat in his face. He tries to leave but I wouldn't get out of the way. The heat goes from spunky simmer to seething in seconds. The next thing I knew Mr. A.'s friend was prying us apart and separating us. A. took off and, smartly, would not answer his phone. I didn't talk to him until morning but endured the sounds and scents and repelling urges through the night. That night was my first attempt in Austin. I tried the old loop the belt through the buckle, put your head through the hole, toss the slack over the top of the door to the garage, stand on a stool, then knock it out. Well, tragically/comically, the old leather ripped in half on the slack and I went smack down on my tailbone on the concrete floor of the garage.
Now not only did I feel like a degenerate freak, but a fat degenerate. The idea of being alone with all that was happening and I didn't feel I could talk about frightened me. I was never in the closet when it came to being gay. At seven I coined the phrase "Closets are for clothes." But this? I didn't know which side was up. The morning came with a phone call and me reeling myself back in from a pool of drool around my face on the dirty, oiled stained cement on the garage floor.
"The only way I'll continue is if you find us a therapist."
I agreed and found and LGBT affiliated counseling center and set an appointment. I was frightened about what I was experiencing, Mr. A finding out, and if he'd stick around if I were ill like my sister, my father, my father's mother, and so on. I always told myself that it was not something that could happen to me. I show too much promise for a life full of piece and quiet. I could lie to a therapist and deflect it all to some trivial behavior caused by seeing as my move as a sacrifice and resenting Mr. A. for me making my own choices. Sure he twisted my arm by saying that the relationship would be over if I didn't make the move. All-in-all I had the where-with-all to make my own adult choices.
That's what I did. I deflected. I lied. There had to be more herbs or I could start more lifting and less cardio. Something had to give. With so much shit piling up all over the place there had to be a pony near by. I will not be my father. It was too late though. My father fought to accept what he was to where he fabricated his life to suit his taste.