After more than a full year, I'm finally writing again, a novel -- a very long novel, at that (we're talking in the nature of 800 pages, maybe), which I probably won't finish. But at least it feels like I'm doing something again.
In other news, I'm creating a picture log of injuries I've received at work (and, to a lesser extent, during my Krav Maga training).
It's hard to see, but there's a puncture gash wound on my rib cage and a diagonal bruise running down my shoulder blade.
This one was actually from Krav Maga, not work, for a change.
I think this looks like a three-eyed creature scowling
In other news, I'm creating a picture log of injuries I've received at work (and, to a lesser extent, during my Krav Maga training).
It's hard to see, but there's a puncture gash wound on my rib cage and a diagonal bruise running down my shoulder blade.
This one was actually from Krav Maga, not work, for a change.
I think this looks like a three-eyed creature scowling
So, the person with whom I've now had a two-night stand (with possibly a couple more to go, who really knows?) tells me I'm "very good at sex" (her words, after she had come three times last night). Considering she was the one who broke my two-year dry spell last week, during which time I was seriously growing to doubt many things about myself, I'm rather happy to receive that compliment 
Lightning out in the hill country is amazingly beautiful. Seeing an entire tree of lightning spokes stretch forth across the night sky is stunning. I actually pulled my car over on the side of the empty road and just got out and watched for a few minutes. I like city living, but moments like these are really something special.
I need to have sex. Not a straightforward one-night stand like I had the other night (the first time I had had sex at all in almost two and a half years), but kinky, bondage-laden sex. I haven't done that since I was with the girl I thought I was going to marry, more than three years ago. I could be the dom or the sub, I'm cool with both, I'm a switch 
I used to have major confidence issues, but I've actually gotten a lot better at that, mostly because I've made a conscious effort to improve my life over the past nine months, and I'm quite pleased with the results. Neverthelss, apparently not many women are interested in a 29 year-old who's in the best physical shape of his life (with six-pack abs and the abdominal "V"), who works with abused children, has an MFA, and takes Krav Maga, hah. (Seriously, if there's one thing the dating world has taught me, it's that I'm irresistible to gay men, 50 year-old homeless drug addicts I used to work with, and attractive women who are already in committed relationships who like to flirt with me and mention aloud to me "The things I would do to you if I didn't have someone waiting for me..." and hardly anyone else. Cest la vie, I suppose.)
This episode of JekyllAndHyde Street was brought to you by the letter StopBeingSoSelfPityingAndPostingOnTheInternet.
I used to have major confidence issues, but I've actually gotten a lot better at that, mostly because I've made a conscious effort to improve my life over the past nine months, and I'm quite pleased with the results. Neverthelss, apparently not many women are interested in a 29 year-old who's in the best physical shape of his life (with six-pack abs and the abdominal "V"), who works with abused children, has an MFA, and takes Krav Maga, hah. (Seriously, if there's one thing the dating world has taught me, it's that I'm irresistible to gay men, 50 year-old homeless drug addicts I used to work with, and attractive women who are already in committed relationships who like to flirt with me and mention aloud to me "The things I would do to you if I didn't have someone waiting for me..." and hardly anyone else. Cest la vie, I suppose.)
This episode of JekyllAndHyde Street was brought to you by the letter StopBeingSoSelfPityingAndPostingOnTheInternet.
There's a kid at work right now that I see a lot of my younger self in. Don't get me wrong, his situation is way more difficult than mine ever was; but when I see how difficult it is for him to fit in with the other boys (and girls), and see how awkward he is around them, and see all the genuine acts of kindness he does to try and help them when they need it and be liked by them, and when I see the ways the other kids usually respond to all that, I'm reminded all too much of my own early and mid teenage years.
The difference, of course, is that I was dealt an incredibly fortunate hand to be born into my family, whereas this kid spent his whole life thinking that his grandparents were actually his parents, and only learned the truth when his "mom" (grandmother) recently died and his "dad" told him that his real mother was a drug addict who never had anything to do with him. And now that his grandmother has died, his grandfather (remember, who had raised this kid to believe that he was his father) gave him a few hundred dollars and then told the judge at a recent court hearing that he no longer wanted to care for this kid.
To be bluntly honest, I have no idea how to process this. I'm doing my best for this kid, and I've taken a sort of special interest in him, but honestly, all I can feel when I think about him is sadness. And a bit of loneliness, too, though I can't quite identify why. When I think about the hurt this kid must be going through, on multiple levels, I almost can't take it. I never thought I would get to a point where I was faced with a situation I couldn't handle, but this one is getting close. Which of course makes me even more determined to find some way to help, but right now, I just don't know. I don't know.
So all I feel like I can do is talk about it on places like this one, because at least here (as opposed to my notebook), I'm not the only one who will ever read it. I think this one situation might be enough to make me try therapy again (assuming whatever therapist I end up choosing doesn't quit their practice entirely after meeting with me for a few months... again....)
The difference, of course, is that I was dealt an incredibly fortunate hand to be born into my family, whereas this kid spent his whole life thinking that his grandparents were actually his parents, and only learned the truth when his "mom" (grandmother) recently died and his "dad" told him that his real mother was a drug addict who never had anything to do with him. And now that his grandmother has died, his grandfather (remember, who had raised this kid to believe that he was his father) gave him a few hundred dollars and then told the judge at a recent court hearing that he no longer wanted to care for this kid.
To be bluntly honest, I have no idea how to process this. I'm doing my best for this kid, and I've taken a sort of special interest in him, but honestly, all I can feel when I think about him is sadness. And a bit of loneliness, too, though I can't quite identify why. When I think about the hurt this kid must be going through, on multiple levels, I almost can't take it. I never thought I would get to a point where I was faced with a situation I couldn't handle, but this one is getting close. Which of course makes me even more determined to find some way to help, but right now, I just don't know. I don't know.
So all I feel like I can do is talk about it on places like this one, because at least here (as opposed to my notebook), I'm not the only one who will ever read it. I think this one situation might be enough to make me try therapy again (assuming whatever therapist I end up choosing doesn't quit their practice entirely after meeting with me for a few months... again....)
Today I helped keep a good kid who deserves to stay at the shelter where I work out of juvenile lockup, despite the judge assigned to his case being notoriously hard on juvenile offenders. Days like this, I love my job.
Also, thanks to some intense workouts recently, the abdominal "V" now explicitly compliments my six-pack abs. Boo yah.
Also, two weeks ago, this all happened in the same night: I changed a baby's diaper for the first time in my entire life, and also bathed, fed, burped, and put to bed one as well. Then a teenage boy cut his wrist and I dragged him into one of the company vans and ran every red light to get him to the hospital on time (he's fine now). The story of that night was told by my shirt: baby food stains on the collar and blood stains on the side. That shirt that night is the best metaphor for my job that I could ever come up with.
Also, thanks to some intense workouts recently, the abdominal "V" now explicitly compliments my six-pack abs. Boo yah.
Also, two weeks ago, this all happened in the same night: I changed a baby's diaper for the first time in my entire life, and also bathed, fed, burped, and put to bed one as well. Then a teenage boy cut his wrist and I dragged him into one of the company vans and ran every red light to get him to the hospital on time (he's fine now). The story of that night was told by my shirt: baby food stains on the collar and blood stains on the side. That shirt that night is the best metaphor for my job that I could ever come up with.
Nights like these are emotionally draining. There are the extreme highs and the extreme lows. The high is that I'm really fucking good at my job -- I found out how to get a very withdrawn teen to open up to me, as long as we were sort of talking in code and not specifically referencing him or his life, when NO OTHER staff member had been able to do so. The low is what he revealed, when I read between the lines. You know those movies where you can tell about halfway through that it won't end well, and you find yourself begging the characters to not do certain things and just foolishly hoping that circumstances will turn out differently, even though you know they won't? That's exactly how I feel watching this kid. Only it isn't a movie.
Nights like these plant a kernel of anger in me that will never go away. There's a relatively new kid in the boys' cottage at work, a 16 year-old who's been pretty withdrawn but is slowly getting better. He has a history of gang involvement, but every time I've spoken to him he's seemed pretty shy and easygoing. I learned tonight that he really doesn't want to be part of the gang culture, but his mother, who's on parole, is constantly pushing him into it. She's big on the gang life, apparently, and uses this kid's younger siblings to guilt him into it because it supposedly brings in money.
This is a good kid, from what I can tell, and he wants to stay on a positive path in his life, but his mother is constantly dragging him back to a negative path. And being at my shelter has actually helped him -- his parole officer swung by today and said he's been doing really well in school since he started here, and that he smiles more (whereas getting even one smile out of him per day used to be a great accomplishment). And yet of all people, his mother is the one that's fucking up his life, and she isn't going away any time soon. She's just like Namond's mother in Season 4 of "The Wire." Also, apparently the gang she pushed him into is a bad one -- the type that won't let you leave once you're in.
Like I said: stories like this one get to me. And they make me mad -- and all the more so because they also remind me just how little influence I really have in certain situations, especially those about which I care the most.
This is a good kid, from what I can tell, and he wants to stay on a positive path in his life, but his mother is constantly dragging him back to a negative path. And being at my shelter has actually helped him -- his parole officer swung by today and said he's been doing really well in school since he started here, and that he smiles more (whereas getting even one smile out of him per day used to be a great accomplishment). And yet of all people, his mother is the one that's fucking up his life, and she isn't going away any time soon. She's just like Namond's mother in Season 4 of "The Wire." Also, apparently the gang she pushed him into is a bad one -- the type that won't let you leave once you're in.
Like I said: stories like this one get to me. And they make me mad -- and all the more so because they also remind me just how little influence I really have in certain situations, especially those about which I care the most.
These teens at the shelter where I work can curse me out, ignore me, and do all manner of untoward things, but there's one thing they STILL can't do: beat me in basketball.
