Mysterious
André and I watched Mysterious Skin yesterday. (We just can't get enough of that Joseph Gordon-Levitt.) I'm kind of indifferent to some of Gregg Araki's other films but this was an extremely strong and well crafted film. I liked it a lot but it also skeeved me out- partly because of my innocent 'daddy' fetish, but also this film reminds me a lot of D, who I was friends with when I was a child. D and I engaged in sex play for a number of years during sleepovers- which we arranged to have a lot of. I think it started when I was 8 or so. This is a common and normal thing for kids to do and I often look back with some amusement over the innocence of it all- I was so into playing doctor with this kid and yet I had absolutely no sense that anything I was doing was "Gay". It was just fun, but at the same time the sort of fun you knew you didn't want your mom to know about. This isn't where the disturbing memories come from; those come from D himself.
It's a combination of things really. The sort of thing that a kid wouldn't be able to put together especially given that D was a strange kid (I was too, so why judge?). D had a tendency towards lying, usually to try and get out of the frequent trouble we caused, or to make himself seem more important, other times for no discernible reason. It's strange that I liked D so much as a friend because he was very unpredictable: at times fawning, then others cold and distant, occasionally furious. Often his mood changed with the wind. When bored D liked to hurt animals- which usually made me very uncomfortable, although I can think of one notable exception to that. D was very controlling and very manipulative and for the most part always got his way. Also important in any description of D would be his father who was only ever spoken of in a "we don't talk about him anymore" kind of way. Finally there was the only creepy thing about our sleepover shenanigans; how craftily D drew me into the idea. "Let's practice for when we have girlfriends." sounded perfectly reasonable to my eight year old mind, but it didn't occur to me that it wasn't the sort of phrase that an eight year old would think up on his own.
You can sort of fill in the blanks from here; I did years ago.
When I was ten or eleven I became a pariah at school and lost contact with all the friends I had on my street including D. I recall him having troubles in our school, transferring to another school, having even more troubles there and then finally his family left town or something like that. I've never heard of him again. Whenever I try to imagine how he turned out as an adult I picture jail or something worse. I hope for better though.
It's a combination of things really. The sort of thing that a kid wouldn't be able to put together especially given that D was a strange kid (I was too, so why judge?). D had a tendency towards lying, usually to try and get out of the frequent trouble we caused, or to make himself seem more important, other times for no discernible reason. It's strange that I liked D so much as a friend because he was very unpredictable: at times fawning, then others cold and distant, occasionally furious. Often his mood changed with the wind. When bored D liked to hurt animals- which usually made me very uncomfortable, although I can think of one notable exception to that. D was very controlling and very manipulative and for the most part always got his way. Also important in any description of D would be his father who was only ever spoken of in a "we don't talk about him anymore" kind of way. Finally there was the only creepy thing about our sleepover shenanigans; how craftily D drew me into the idea. "Let's practice for when we have girlfriends." sounded perfectly reasonable to my eight year old mind, but it didn't occur to me that it wasn't the sort of phrase that an eight year old would think up on his own.
You can sort of fill in the blanks from here; I did years ago.
When I was ten or eleven I became a pariah at school and lost contact with all the friends I had on my street including D. I recall him having troubles in our school, transferring to another school, having even more troubles there and then finally his family left town or something like that. I've never heard of him again. Whenever I try to imagine how he turned out as an adult I picture jail or something worse. I hope for better though.