In middle school, I would sneak out of my bedroom window, like in the movies. I would take the screen out to do it until the screen broke and then when it broke I had to hide it in the closet. I would go out onto the porch at night with my friends and sometimes the girls would come and they would not be from the neighborhood. And I would crush up a bottle of lorazepam and arrange the dust into lines and we would take turns snorting them together off of the glass table with the ashtray from when my great grandmother used to smoke cigarettes and drink tea with Kelly. We didn’t see Kelly anymore because I beat her son Hunter with a stick. Hunter was the one who taught me how to use a dandelion stem as a bandaid. You slit open the stem open with your thumbnail and wrap the wet inside around the wound and tie it gently like Christmas. But I hit Hunter with a stick. 

I took pictures of this (the lorazepam) because I took pictures of everything then. I would use my ID to divide the lines and I would see myself smiling like first snow. 

The bedroom I would sneak out of was a guest room before I came back and before that it was my great grandmother’s room because I would sleep with my great grandfather my Papa. I did not call him Papa when I was very young but as I got older I decided he needed a name and so he became Papa and my great grandmother remained Grandma. Papa had a big green mustache and a big belt buckle made of buffalo nickels. He smelled like fresh cut grass and gasoline. Papa died and I remember watching him go and I remember how the smell changed. Grandma smelled like lipstick and thermometers. And she would wash the shit stains out of Papa’s underwear even after the stroke, even when she couldn’t talk and even when he taunted her like a child with a bug. 

Papa died and I remember watching him lose his mind and I remember my dad was there to help take care of them with me and I remember when my dad was hiding in the bushes because the people were after him and he came into the house and pushed the big television over because the people were under the television. And Grandma was nearly killed by the falling television. 

That’s not my boy that’s not my boy Papa said and you could not see the tears but you could hear them in his throat. 

And I needed to sleep because I was going to start Summer PE the next day but I didn’t sleep and so I slept all day the next day and so I had to do weightlifting in the fall. 

My weightlifting partner was Josh and he would fall asleep standing up because he had to work on the farm after school. He had big cow eyes and he would wear his boots. When I was in Colorado at the airport that same year with Mr. Malia my teacher we went to look at boots in a boot store. They were cowboy boots and they were made of different animals from around the world like alligators and ostriches. 

This is when I would wear makeup and Mr. Malia wouldn’t understand it. He asked me which boots I liked and I pointed to the only black ones on the shelf. I don’t even think that I liked them very much but they were black and that was what I wore black. And it was funny because Papa said I wasn’t Black just tan in the summer and so I put it on for fun and became something else. And I would wear mom’s bras and say look at me I am more. Look at me. 

And he said what about these and he showed me the ostrich ones. They were like fuzzy caramel and I said no I do not like these ones. But they were my favorite boots in the store and I wish I could tell him this now. 

When the school made him cut his ponytail I was very angry and when they let me wear the makeup he was confused. Jeshua can you come here for a second yes be right back is anyone picking on you at all are you doing okay yes I’m doing fine Mr. P thank you no problems at all okay good let me know if you need anything okay I will walk walk walk sit down and Mr. Malia saying what did he want was it about lipsticky things no he wanted to make sure I was doing okay are you doing okay yes thank you. 

A long time before this I had a clubhouse in the basement of Papa’s regular house. It was a dirt basement with big stone walls and a dirt floor and it was under the entire house except under the bathroom because under the bathroom was where the dirt was up to your chest and you would have to crawl into it and that was where the spiders were. 

So in the part that did not have the spiders there was this green wooden door like an oversized cabinet door with a lock on it that went into it and there was a foyer area like a basement before the basement in case you wanted to take your shoes off or your coat off and live in the basement like dust. And I put plants in the foyer part from outside and also some pictures I found. 

The kids and I the other kid would go into empty houses and collect things and we would bring the things that we collected into the clubhouse to decorate. And we had folding tables and chairs and metal shelves where we would display our treasures. And I found a TV and a radio and we made the radio work but never the TV until we brought the Xbox but the Xbox could not stay down there in case it got wet but it never got wet. It was really a good basement usually the dirt ones will get wet. 

We would have meetings there because we were a society and a democracy. I kept a notebook with our names and lists of strengths, weaknesses, and general traits of each of us. And we would draw maps of the neighborhood and we would make long plans. And we would argue over what to call this place or this person or this part of our bodies. 

One day I found an aquarium in one of the houses and I brought it to the basement and put it on the top shelf of one of the metal shelves in the back of the room right in the middle so you could see it from the door. And I put leaves and sticks and grass and tiny yellow flowers inside of it. I went back outside to look for a creature of some kind to put into it. 

Papa’s house was on a steep hill, and the backyard sloped downward toward a steeper hill that was covered in trees and I thought that if you tripped and fell at the boundary you would tumble and then drop straight down into the other backyards below because the houses down there faced the other way because houses need to face the road so you can see who’s coming and so you don’t have to go around. But lots of people go around anyways because they will make a back door or a side door the front door and you will be walking into the kitchen. 

I would have nightmares about the hills. I still do. 

In the dreams I am rolling down the street in front of Papa’s house like when a small rock is kicked up by car tired and bounces down the hill, skipping up into the air at the cracks, hanging in trepidation for an instant, pause eternal, tumbling. Sometimes I would sit in the middle of the road and hold my palm against it to feel. When the rumble would come it would feel. And I would lay with my ear to the ground. And that was my power. 

So I was digging around in the brush at the boundary and I found two snails together on a big teardrop shaped leaf next to a bug shaped like a tiny camel. I took the snails into the basement and dropped them into the aquarium. It was really a terrarium but I didn’t know that word then. Later when I wore the black I would play Terraria with Seth, and his family was rich. They lived alone in a villa with a big gate. Now Seth is in art school in Chicago and the girls say he is toxic and I say it is because his dad never loved him he never did not when he said daddy I want to go to art school daddy I want to kiss a boy.

Two weeks later I found the snails bloated and dead. 

~

Jasmine was like a small mouse with a pointed nose and these big eyes that say please but with fingers like dead knotty branches. We would have sex and I would write songs and she would say Is This One About Me and I would yes so that the sex would come. 

Sometimes at the parties we would take turns with Jasmine. And in between she would clean herself and she would cover her skin and her hair in cocoa butter, even her face, slippery and gleaming, her pointy nose and huge eyes glistening eagerly. She wanted us to be happy. We were. 

My last year of high school, I was living in my mom’s basement that was concrete but would still get wet and had still had spiders but different ones. Jasmine called and said I have an emergency, Shelby and me went to the big store with the baby chicks and we took one and we don’t know what to do with it now. And she was giggling because it was funny still when you didn’t know what to do with it. I was a father then and I thought this is how I feel as a father. 

This was not the Shelby with the heavy eyes and acne, who was older and would come downstairs with the towel on when you were at Jake’s house in summer. This was Shelby P. Shelby P would brag about her mom working at the Buckle and how she would get these shiny clothes from the Buckle where her mom worked. She would wear these dark blue jeans with rhinestones on the ass and with artificial wean-up and down the front. And she would wear these shirts with a kind of acid wash and big jewelry. She smelled like cinnamon and sweat, and her eyes were hooded apathetically.

I said come pick me up and they came and picked me up and we went back into the farm store. 

I was selling then and so I had money. So I bought a metal enclosure with a plastic base and bedding and food and another chicken because we looked it up and apparently chickens get lonely so you need to get two. The first one was tiny and yellow and the second one was black with a white belly like a finch. We named them Reggie after the brickweed and Gambino after the rapper who we did not know was named after the gangster. 

I put the enclosure together in the basement by myself and I put the chickens into it. And when I would have company (because we were still trying to have the parties even though we couldn’t have the parties anymore without the big windows and the anonymity) the chickens would join us. Mom was depressed then and so she would sleep in her room in the dark among the clothespiles. And she would come out when we smoked. Let me get one. I can get more. Call Destiny. Destiny. Gun on the table. Brick weed in a paper towel wrapper. Destiny. With the fat ass. Your son is sexy. Let me get one. Porn on TV. Quarter pound of brick weed. Son. 

I would sit on the couch with my friends from the parties and with one of the chickens on my shoulder and the other would run around small and quick and free. 

What will you do, said my friend, when the chickens get big. 

I don’t know. Do you want them? No. 

I will release them. Side of the road. Field. 

That night, I hung a dark brown blanket over the enclosure. And I moved upstairs. 

I had to move onto the back porch because my brother had the bedroom and I had left before, and so I had lost the right. I had big windows again but the neighbors could see me, and the neighbors saw everything. They wanted to help and they wanted to judge. Like Jesus. I decorated the back porch with all the things I had saved from the basement which, was all of the things I had saved from the apartment that did not get wet in the basement. 

There was a little closet and there was my bed and there was a shelf and a table and a lamp and a chair and that was all I needed. I had my own door and that was all I needed. That was where I met Victoria, who believed in me. And that was where I recorded songs with my computer on the little shelf and with a microphone that went with a video game about music where you pretend to be in a band. And that was basically what I was doing. But Victoria believed in me. 

So, Victoria would take pictures of me in her clothes and the neighbors would watch. And we would get high and the neighbors would watch. 

And then I got fleas, and it was me and the fleas and Victoria in our wood and glass terrarium.