The Boy With My Blood

My five year old self sat in the waiting room with my family wondering why everyone seemed so anxious. The doctor came out and didn't say anything to any of us, but handed me the most disgusting piece of candy I've ever tasted.

Eventually the doors burst open again and I saw the Boy With My Blood for the first time, but he had all these tubes and stuff sticking out of him. Everyone got even more nervous as the doctor and nurses rushed past us and took him to another room where they eventually got everything under control and he was okay. We both had rough entrances to the world.

After a short stay in the hospital, the Boy With My Blood and I started our lives together. He had the biggest cheeks I'd ever seen, so big he would have a hard time turning his head from side to side. I'd sit for hours and talk to him, fascinated by how small he was. Thinking back now it amazes me how much he responded to me after only being in the world a few days. There is a video where someone just mentions me and he starts smiling and trying to talk.

As he got a little older he got a little more rotten, and it was apparent that the Boy With My Blood and I were going to be quite different. I never got punished in my life, he got multiple spankings a day. I was embarrassed to take my shirt off, we had a hard time keeping any clothes on him at all. I never had more than a scraped knee, he had three broken arms, a blood disease, tubes in his ears, and his tonsils and adenoids removed.

I wasn't as nice as I am now, so the Boy With My Blood sometimes had to deal with my anger outbursts, like when I couldn't get past a specific level on a video game. I had it in my head that everyone else in the room was at fault and so he wouldn't be allowed to speak or make a sound until I'd passed the level.

As time went on it was the Boy With My Blood that became fascinated with me. He'd watch everything I did, learn from me, wanted to be just like me.

We didn't live in the same house together full time until I was in high school because he lived with the Woman Who Hurt Me up until then. In any way that she affected and hurt me, it was ten times worse for him. I always wanted to try and teach him not to expect anything from her, to protect him, but he had a different experience with her than I did and so always hoped he would get the woman back that he used to know.

Thankfully we both had the Woman Who Shaped Me. She always taught us that we should be there for each other because as time went on and friends became strangers, we'd still have each other.

When he found out I was gay he was hurt that I hadn't told him before then. When I found out he was gay I didn't know why he had been scared to tell me. #gayboyproblems

Once he was in high school and our interests started to be more closely related, our age gap didn't seem to be too much of an issue and I realized I'd had my lifelong best friend there beside me for years and never realized it.

Unlike other brothers (I'm assuming) we bonded over "The Simple Life," "Mean Girls," and making sure we weren't talking to the same guys on Grindr. He became my living diary, I divulge every detail of my life to him and he keeps all my secrets. We have millions of inside jokes or family quotes we recite, and we can turn each others' day around with a single text.

We recently had to say goodbye to the Woman Who Shaped Me, and it's been with each others' love and support that we've been able to get through it all.

Having a friend you have no doubt loves you unconditionally, would never judge you, and will never leave you (and vice versa) is the most amazing feeling, and I'm so thankful that the Boy With My Blood is the person God stuck me with.

The Boy With The Lips

I looked around my house and wondered how in the hell there were multiple, completely naked gay boys running around. Never mind the full size canoe that now sat in the middle of the dining room, or the fact that the sun was coming up and we were all still in full swing (literally and figuratively). And why in the hell is that naked Boy With The Lips kissing the naked boy that was there for me!?

My inner monologue was all, "WHORE! BITCH! ASSHOLE! Sneaky little bastard, I will hate you for all eternity!!"

As the sunlight returned, so did the sense of morality, thus clothes were put back on and the house was left empty for me to solve the mysteries of what in the hell had happened in the past five hours.

Jump ahead a few weeks to a normal party, aka everyone kept their pants on, and the Boy with the Lips had returned! I was shocked in my overly-dramatic drunk state that anyone could have invited him after what he'd done.

Rage! Betrayal! Passive aggressive and fake friendly conversation to see if he had slept with my guy!!

He had. I hated him even more and cried to my friends like someone had just stolen my first born.

Sidenote: Me drunk = Extremely happy, extremely sad, or extremely blacked out.

Somehow the Boy With The Lips made more appearances in my friend group, and through our mutual hatred of the boy who screwed us both over, we became friends! By week three we were locked in a three-way kiss in the backyard at some Halloween party and I was doing body shots off him on someone's kitchen table.

Ah, forgiveness.

I found the Boy With The Lips and I actually had a lot in common and so opened up to him more and showed him I was a gay to be trusted. 

After months of conquering the social scene with the Boy With The Wigs, the Boy With The Lips and I had became best friends and were constantly together. To help both of us out financially, he eventually moved in to my place where we shared a room and became a weird hybrid of best friends/brothers/married couple where we'd be like, "I'm mad at you today, so leave me alone, but let's go to Sonic first."

We'd do anything for each other. I'd become furious when someone hurt him, and he held me the day the Woman Who Shaped Me died. He stood beside me and the Boy With My Blood as family and strangers lined up to hug us at the funeral, all of them assuming he was my boyfriend.

The Boy With The Lips taught me to always give someone another chance because you never know if they could end up being one of the closest friends you've ever had, and we now have a bond that I believe will outlast the majority of the relationships I develop in my life. 

Explaining My Blog

Blogging has been one of my favorite things to do since high school. At some point it became kind of uncool, or I felt silly about the things I was putting on the Internet, or I became too wrapped up in stalking people and their photos on Facebook.

But now I don't care about any of those things (except maybe Facebook stalking), so here I am again, starting a new blog. This post is going to serve as a sort of introduction (even though I already did my first post) as to what you can expect from me on here, and hopefully will pique your interest enough to return and see what else I have to say. And really you should be interested because this blog is going to be all about you, not me, and who doesn't want to read what someone else thinks about them?

Okay, fine, some of it will be about me, let's be realistic here.

But really it is just going to be about the important people in my life and maybe how I met them, or memories of our times together, or how it is that they affected my life. Some of it will be purely factual, while some of it will be purely exaggerated. I'll let you decide what's what. And no actual names will ever be used either, so no getting offended or a big ego because how do you know it's about you? Conceited.

Alas, I must now go work on writing these magnificent pieces that will entertain you for hours, but I leave you with the titles of some upcoming posts, see if you can guess which one is about you.

• The Boy With The Shoes
• The Boy With The Lips
• The Man With The Sperm
• The Girl With The Laugh
• The Woman Who Shaped Me
• The Girl On The Bus
• The Boy With My Blood
• The Girls With The Horses
• The Woman Who Hurt Me
• The Boy With The Wigs
• The Girl I Corrupted
• The Boy With My Name
• The Boy From The Club
• The Woman With The Smile
• The Boy With My Heart
• The Girl I Wanted To Be A Boy

See? Doesn't that all sound interesting? If not, I'll at least have fun writing them all.

Oh, and those posts won't necessarily be in that order.

As Aunts Go

I'd sit in awe each morning as she applied her makeup, shocked she could make herself even prettier than she already was. Or maybe it was that I just loved trying to chew on the mascara stick.

I remember getting to walk her to catch the school bus some mornings, or getting to go along to school events and be with her and her friends. Even at such a young age I felt cool.

She'd be there to save me from the fashion disasters of suspenders or a head to toe cowboy outfit. Or she would rush in to turn my school projects into something people envied rather than something I was embarrassed by. 

She was the one who was angry when someone told me there was no Santa, and was adamant (and successful) in convincing me that he was real.

I'd come home to find scavenger hunts she had meticulously laid out for me throughout the house, always with a present at the end. She'd sit with me for hours and help me make art pieces out of pasta shells.

She opened up my world outside that of Southeastern Oklahoma, giving me the chance to go visit her in many different states where she would show me museums and amusement parks I didn't even know existed. If I couldn't visit then I'd get letters and pictures to show me where she was and what she was doing. The times she would be coming to visit us then I would post myself at a window for hours, waiting to see her car come rolling down the driveway. 

She was there to help me with prom, fix my hair, take the pictures, say the embarrassing comments. She taught me about God, took me to church, got me involved. 

For some reason I have always looked more like her than anyone else in my family (which I don't mind), and we've always had a sort of understanding between the two of us about how we MUST have been adopted to end up in the midst of our crazy family. 

She's wiped my tears, held me tight, taught me love, and played a major role in shaping me into the man I am today, and I'm pretty sure my brother can say the same.

She is the big sister I always wanted, the mother I needed, and the Aunt everyone deserves to have.