I'm So Dirty Babe

Knack for Violence

I can remember the very first time I felt my blood boiling, my fists clenching, un-clenching. My face dripping with beads of sweat until my mother brought me to the hospital. "He's perfectly normal, Mrs. Way." Said the nurse. She pissed me off.

It was at a childhood family Christmas gathering. On Christmas Eve, for as long as I could remember, the entire Way family would gather at my Aunt Cassidee's, exchanging gifts. Except for the parents gifts to their own children, those were to be opened among the Santa presents the next morning. Even at 4, I knew Santa was a fluke.

I was sitting on the floor with my little brother Mikey perched in my lap. He had just taken his first steps the week before, "a real fast learner," Mom said. I didn't learn how to walk until I was nearly two years old. Mikey kept sticking his stupid little thumb in his dumb little mouth, sucking away at the germs he'd picked up from the ground, the wrapping paper tossed about. I cringed, "I hope you get sick," I silently told him in my mind.

But none of this is what made me itch. Made my skin bubble and deflate over and over, like a pot of boiling water sat under the surface of myself. I had been going up the stairs to use the toilet, "the potty down stairs is broken," said Aunt Cassidee, speaking to me like I was an incompetent baby. In my family's eyes, I still was. No way would they ever see the complex words spinning behind my hazel eyes.

I passed my older cousin, Jessika's room, Cassidee's daughter. She was kissing her boyfriend, I think his name was Louis, something dumb and French like that. Only, something was wrong. Even as a 4 year old booger ridden maggot, I knew that. Jessika's hands were trying to push Louis off her. He would pull her closer and she'd make a distressed whimper. I felt bad for Jessika, I was angry with Louis. Especially once she finally got away, he smacked her right on the face. It turned red, she fell to the ground and cried. She was 15 years old.

My blood and skin bubbled, it begged me to act on the urge to hurt Louis because he deserved it, he was a BAD person. How could someone get mad with ME, if Louis was the bad one? So I ran in the room and punched him as hard as my little fists would let me, right where the sun don't shine. When he leaned over in pain, I dropped to the ground and bit his ankle, hard, drawing blood. Jessika looked shocked and scared.

At 4, I mistook it for thank full, then I went to the bathroom.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

"GERARD WAY! Get over her this instant!" My father boomed, standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me standing at the top. I'd gone pee after biting Louis; when I returned, the whole family looked disgusted with my presence. Louis and Jessika were gone, as was my Aunt Cassidee. Something about bringing Louis and Jessika to somewhere called the E.R because Louis needed stitches to his ankle where I chomped down.

If I thought my blood was boiling before, I sure got a wake up call when my father hit me square across the face, once, like with Jessika, and then again. My female relatives squeaked in protest, my uncles and grandpas shushed them. "A man punishing his son, damn good he hit the boy!" Said my grandpa on my mothers side.

That chilled me. I didn't deserve to be smacked! Just like Jessika! I looked up at my father, holding my left cheek in pain. A single tear fell from right the, and then the sweat began to drop down my temples. Anger raged in my stomach as my father and I held a staring battle in front of the family. On Christmas Eve, what irony.

My mother broke it up, feeling my soaked by sweat forehead and looking at my family with sympathy. For the way I acted, or for me, I would never know. She brought me to hospital where I saw Jessika and Aunt Cassidee sitting side by side. I was here because my mother thought I had a bad fever, I should have been there for a whole other reason, though. They call it the crazy's. My mother would never know about my crazy's. She'd be dead by the time I was 16. They ruled it a suicide, the imbeciles.