The False Boyhood; The Blank Page

The page lay open and plain-white like pressed t-shirts hanging on the line when his mother used to wash his clothes as a boy. Except that was thrilling, running through the sheets, the laundry, the wind. Innocence was always on his lips and turmoil at his back, the way he shaped the tall grass with his feet as he ran past.

But those days, those engorged and fattened memories, were gone.

Many of them never even existed; they were only figments of his imagination, taken out of context or expanded like a hot-air balloon from a line in a book, twisted like ribbon to fit the path he wished his life had taken. In hindsight, he always remembered his house as being small - like a cottage - with shutters and laundry hanging outside on the line. The stark, harsh reality was that he lived in a rundown, one-room shack with single-pane windows that leaked when it rained and, if his mother ever did the laundry, the shirts and things hung inside so that they wouldn't catch the scent of burning trash.

So he found himself in front of a white, blank page again. Except now, it was white like the lies he told himself so that he could sleep more easily, dream like men should, finding ways to comfort himself with little, twisted ribbons.

Except now, like always, those lies paid the rent and he was running shy on gasoline to go from the Painful truth to the Pleasurable little ribbon. So he began to type and, instead of lying, he found the truth a cold, sharp blade against his wrists that welcomed him home with open arms.