Speaking With Tongues

Chapter Three

Chapter Three, Everything Is So Damn Inappropriate


As a young child, I had immense attraction for many of my older brothers’ friends. I never had a crush on anyone who was in the appropriate age range. Maybe that was because I was, and still am, rather sexless. All it boils down to, when concerning my attraction to certain people, is the desire for affection.

Most of these boys were about ten years older than me, some even older. One in particular, Joyce, my brother Liam’s friend from his small group, had my heart by its throat. After his first visit to my house, for the next three weeks my 8-year old mind was smothered with fantasies of living on a deserted island with him or sailing endless seas with our luxurious yacht or even, when my fantastical imagination compromised with my realistic mind, living with him in a house conveniently next door to my family’s and cooking his food, mending his clothes, and having him tuck me in at night after a peck on my forehead. One day, the fantasy which was more of a compromise came nearest to coming true as I had ever dared hope it would.

I was home from school for a while, on account of being afflicted with the chicken pox. Joyce came over one morning to pick up Liam and ride with him to their weekly bible study with a few other members at some coffee shop. Liam had overslept and was getting ready in a rush, making Joyce wait, but Joyce told him not to worry (he was always very relaxed about everything) and came in my room to entertain himself. I’m pretty sure he knew exactly how I felt about him, because whenever he came around, I ran in another room, and thus, had never exchanged one word with him. I was half sitting up in my bed, watching morning cartoons, when he sauntered in and plopped himself on the edge of my bed. From behind his "I'm-invincible" smile, he told me how when he had the chicken pox, his mom blah blah blah blah. I was mute. Deaf. Reverant. The heavens shone down on me. Until his large palm gripped my thigh, and the other gently swept my eye-lids closed. Now I was blind too.

"You ought to rest your eyes and sleep."

Was this love? I wasn't sure.

He squeezed my thigh, his manly man hand going up and down the short length of it.

My fantasy began mingling with what was really happening, and I kept my eyes closed and violently hoped that I would fall asleep to a peck on my forehead. A peck on my fucking hairline! Oh the sultry fantasies I ocassionally indulged in. 

But alas, the fantastical gesture never materialized, because Liam’s loud “I’m ready!” boomed from the hall and Joyce jerked his hand off me and left hastily, without even saying goodbye. That disruption unknowingly planted a seed of resentment in the soil of mine and Liam’s pseudorelationship, which inevitably stunted the possibility of any healthy fruits. Is this memory shit what Rufus was talking about?

My junior year of high school, shortly before I had an actual personality, I developed my first appropriate age range crush for Aidan, a boy just one year older than me. Aidan was the pastor’s son. He was the new guy: I always liked the new guy. It was only when I liked him that I first realized I had an abnormal previous crush record, and so I was sort of proud of myself and decided to take this crush really seriously. It hurt like hell, so it must have been deep and real and all that. But of course, looking back, I can’t imagine what actually was deep about it- I mean, mutually. Also, looking back- what the flying fuck was I thinking?

Aidan wasn’t exactly the sporty type, and he looked real idiotic when he’d try sports (and in general), and he shopped at second-hand stores and he smelled funny all the time. I could never quite place it. If I were to try my hardest, I’d say he generally smelled like shrubbery burning in a fireplace. But from far away.

At the church we attended, I’m not gonna lie, a lot of guys craved me. The church was pretty big, just under a thousand members, and it practiced Pentecostal Christianity. It was very fire-and-brimstone type stuff. So, just try to imagine the explosive level of pubescent suppression I was up against. It was a minefield. And I didn't even know it.