Bodies

What do you need, she’ll ask. Repeatedly. What does Charlie need? Shrug. A short embarrassed laugh. It sounds more like a snort. He doesn’t know. Nails digging into palms. Leaving angry red marks, half-moon shapes glaring back at him. Same as before. Nothing’s changed. The room is too familiar, like a feeling stuck in his throat.

 

The anger is still there. It’s still there. Visible in every step and movement. Always present in his dancing. Mr. Suarez recognizes something in him. There’s comfort in his unspoken understanding. Never loses his patience, never raises his voice. He was an angry young man, too. The world is full of them. Dance it out, sweat out the pain like an exorcism. I see you. Your presence makes everything okay. It's never been said, but we both know.

 

You look so much like your father.

Doesn’t he? It’s just like seeing Simon at that age.

Bitch. You’re dead. He nods instead. Thanks, I guess.

 

Trying to accept. Learning to appreciate the beauty of his own body and everything that it’s capable of. Its surprising strength. It catches him off guard at times. An instrument of self-expression. Tracing the lines with his fingertips. Adult shapes, foreign and threatening. Hardness worn like armor. Something to protect him from their stares. I’m in control now. Never the object. Never again. Wanting it, craving attention at the same time. Who wouldn’t. He’s still so young. Everything is about stealing glances and private fantasies. About being seen, about having it all. Those straight boys and their bragging. They made it clear from day one. We’re not like you. So much easier to become one of the girls. Less risk of getting hurt. On bad days all he sees is the language of violence, crudely written on his skin, forever marked and singled out. Staring at his naked image in the mirror. Does his father know? This way, he’ll never leave.

 

I dance because I ran out of words.

Anger

Afterwards, when everything was out in the open, I sensed that the grownups around me were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. They would say things like “don’t be afraid of your anger” and “expressing anger is healthy, just let it out”. It’s almost like they were expecting me to go off or explode at any second, that’s what a normal boy my age would do. You get mad, scream, maybe break a few things (or even better, you get into a fight at school and it’s ALL because of what happened to you) and then it’s over with and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief and move on. They made it sound so simple, so easy. But this “anger” they were talking about, it simply didn’t exist. I felt sad, scared, confused and very alone, but I didn’t feel angry at my parents or anyone else. Everyone’s talking about my anger, like they own it. Just ‘cause I’m a boy I’m supposed to direct the anger at other people and get in fights, not harm myself. Loud voices in class made me shrink in my seat, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I didn’t want to be noticed at all. No feelings, no thoughts, no sound. I wanted peace and quiet, I wanted everything to be clean, spotless like those blinding white sheets you see in the ads on TV. I wanted to sleep through everything like a small hibernating animal, wake up and all of a sudden winter has long passed and it’s spring. I wanted order, perfection and I wanted to be in control, I just didn’t know how. My body felt strange and unfamiliar to me, like it didn’t belong to me and I didn’t belong in it. It became a shell, my armour, a wall between me and the outside. You can punch and kick that wall all you want, try to tear it down, but you’ll never succeed. You’ll never find the person hiding on the inside. Grownups were hoping for this huge explosion of words and angry tears, when all I longed for, all I really needed, was the silence afterwards.