Page 62 of Body Count

They often struggle with their identity and self-esteem.

We didn’t go out anymore, or when we did, I got so trashed I couldn’t remember it.Brother Gary and Red Alvin hauling me into an interview room at the sheriff’s station.Sitting in Peterson’s car, getting dressed down because I’d gotten caught sticking my dick in witnesses.The half-remembered night outside the Pretty Pretty, hot slashes of piss, a boot on my throat, the world shrinking smaller and smaller.Sunny pressing my face against the glass, the party spread out below us, and all it would have taken was for one person to have glanced up.Sweat broke out under my arms, across my chest.My face felt hot.

They may find themselves struggling with their role in their intimate relationships.

When was the last time Darnell and I had touched each other?When was the last time we had talked?Not those stupid couples’ cards.Not art therapy night.Not the simmering tension because he couldn’t bring himself to be openly angry with me.At one point, Darnell would have killed me just for cracking jokes about threesomes and foursomes and fucking around.And now, what happened when I went out and screwedaround?

I didn’t know.I had no idea.It turned out, I didn’t know anything.Didn’t even know where he was, or why he was lying, or why he didn’t care anymore.

Do you feel like any of that has been true for you?

My heartbeat hammered in my chest.The room was spinning, and I leaned forward, elbows on knees, taking deep breaths.

He’d fucked me right up against the window, all those people watching, and John-Henry had been there.And Rory and Jordan and—

What the fuck was wrong with me?

Something was wrong with me.

It was like déjà vu.It’s like déjà vuall over again, that’s what my dad had liked to say.

Something was really wrong with me, and I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t even been able to think about it.Glimpses, maybe.Hints.The way people looked at me sometimes.The way I knew, without wanting to put it into words, that I was avoiding thinking too closely about things.

I thought for a moment I was about to be sick.

My mom sitting at the little shitty vanity in her bedroom, looking at herself in that shitty little makeup mirror from Sears, covering up a bruise and saying,We want to look nice for daddy.

I am really fucked up.

That was it.That was as far as I could go on my own.

I am really, really fucked up.

“—send you a picture of it,” Darnell was saying, “so you can see what I’m talking about, but Gray has been doing really well—”

He’s not going tosave you, I thought.He can’t.

“I’m fucking a lot of strangers,” I said.

The words punched a hole in the air.Darnell’s face went blank with shock.Pauline’s watery blue eyes fixed on me.

I ran a hand through my hair.“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Pauline didn’t say anything.

Darnell’s shock was fading to tamped-down anger.“We agreed to try an open relationship—”

“No, we didn’t,” I said.“We didn’t agree.I said we were doing one.And you let me.”My hands felt greasy, and I dried them on my trousers—or tried to, anyway.“I fucked somebody today.He fucked me, I guess.Before the session.Someone I was supposed to be interviewing for a case.”Disbelief made my voice tight.“And it’s not even the first time.I mean, I know better.I know I’m fucking up this case.I know I need to keep my dick in my drawers.But I keep doing it.I keep—I keep fucking everything up, and it’s like part of me knows I’m doing it, and part of me likes it.”

It wasn’t until I said the words that I realized they were true.I hadn’t thought them before.Hadn’t even let myself consider them.But they were true nonetheless.Therewasa part of me that…relished this string of fuckups.A part of me that sat back and savored each and every time I blew up another part of my life.And that was so terrifying that I felt my lungs close, and I struggled to breathe as words continued spilling out of me.

“I drink way too much.I’m definitely abusing alcohol.I vape all the time.I—I freak out sometimes.My heart just starts racing, and I can’t think straight, and I feel like I’m going to die.For nothing.Absolutely no fucking reason, like a fucking nutcase.Iama nutcase.I can’t even touch a fucking light switch, so Darnell does it for me.Or doesn’t, when he’s pissed.Which is a lot of the time.And I know I…I deserve it, I guess.But we don’t talk about anything.We can’t talk about anything.I know that’s my fault.”

But I thought about art therapy night and about the couple’s cards and about all the questions Darnell chose to skip rather than let me try to answer, and I faltered.The flow of words felt like a dam had broken, and for a surreal moment, I found myself on the brink of saying more.He hit her.He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into their room and that fucking radio started playing.And shewantedit.She made him do it.But somehow, I fell back from the intensity of the memory.And then I couldn’t say anything.I dropped back against the sofa, trembling with the hoofbeats of my heart, and tried to focus on the floor so that the room would stop spinning.

For several long seconds, the only sound was Darnell’s harsh breathing, and the whisper of his whiskers as he scrubbed a hand across his face.

“Thank you for sharing that,” Pauline said.“It takes a lot of courage to put those feelings into words.It sounds like you have some behaviors and coping mechanisms that you’d like to change, or maybe to replace with some healthier options.Is that right?”

---