The Story of Sontlux (in progress)
I guess the place to start is my birth.
I was born the proud first child of Honey and Sont. My sister Baby followed 15 months later. Though we were both born in the U.S., we split the first 3 years between Thailand and the States. What made this possible is that my father was part of the nobility or something in Thailand. We had servants. My parents arranged a marriage for me, to an older woman (she was 3, I was 2).
All this changed sometime in my third year when my mom divorced my dad. The official reason was that my father was an alcoholic and she didn't want us growing up around that or something. I think it was actually because my mother was kinda... sold to Sont. My mom was always a very independent spirit, carefree, and I couldn't imagine her sitting prettily inside a cage for very long, no matter how fine. This makes sense to me cuz the official one does not. You'll see the irony later. *Update* My sister says I'm mixing the story of Sont with another guy prior to him. Oh well, doesn't really matter.
After my mom left my dad we came back to the States and bounced around a lot. Spent some time in each state between Texas and Canada. We had a home video at one point of us in the snow in Canada, but that thing is lost forever. I don't remember to much of this. I remember visiting some family in Oklahoma and some kid, a cousin I think, telling me if you pick the little red berries off the bush and throw them into water, eventually they will build up some kind of pressure and shoot straight up. They would then fly soooo high that they might hit the moon! I was skeptical, but the possibility of hitting to moon was to much to ignore. Took years before I was convinced that kid lied to me. I think my mom finished her degree at during this time too.
It was also during that period that I had my first uncomfortable encounter with sex. I was molested, forced to do things I can (thankfully?) barely remember by another cousin. We were staying with this couple who watched cops religiously and their son while my mom finished her schooling. My sister and I were both molested by this kid. I think that was the worst part of it, that it was my sister too. That there was nothing I could do to protect her. My mom didn't find out for at least 5-6 years. By that time, my memories had almost completely faded of this,. I don't think my sister remembers at all.
Eventually we ended our nomadic lifestyle and settled in Arlington, Tx. I had been to something around 8 different kindergartens that year. I don't know if moving around caused this, or if it was an innate part of my personality, but by this time I had already become a quiet, loner type. It was far funner for me to go exploring on my own (or with my little sister tagging along) than to try to make friends and play their games. To an extent. I did start making friends that year and had plenty of friends by first grade. It was just never... important for me, you know, to have friends. They were a nice... addition.
In the first grade we moved into a house because my mom married a Australian guy named David. I take the blame for this marriage because in a moment of weakness I had told my mom that I wanted a Daddy. And to compound that failing, I then later gave David my blessing to marry her. He seemed like a nice enough dude, though I never really liked him. Oh, hind sight. On the day they got married, I broke a few windows and tried to run away a little. Something in me didn’t like this. Don’t worry guys, it was never super bad.
So for the next 6 or 7 years I got to live in this nice 3.5 bedroom house with a big backyard that we turned into the most gorgeous garden ever. Most of my neighbors were old retired couples, but 4 houses down lived a kid named Thomas who was my age with his older brother David, and at the end of the street next to the park lived Arron, also my age, with his older brother Matt, around Davids age. David and Matt had a feud going on (they were both angry, messed up kids), so I had to choose between Arron and Thomas as my best friend. I chose Thomas. I wonder how life would have been different if I had chosen Arron instead? Oh well, Thomas was a good choice because he was a very sensitive kid, maybe even more than myself, which provoked me into being emotionally tougher.
Those were good years spent out of the house. During the early Summers especially my mother would force us out of the house and tell us not to come back until sundown. This was to keep us from getting underfoot while she tried to do Spring cleaning. I think. Really, I was a child, so who knows what was really going on, but I am thankful. This is why my favorite color is Green, from spending so much time in trees and with nature.
We had some pretty fun adventures in those days, Baby, Thomas, and I. For example, there was this local Sunday school church that our parents enrolled us in that we HATED. Loathed. I’ve never had much truck for religion. It always felt wrong. When my mother would ask us even at this age about our views on god, death, etc, I had deep fully fleshed ideas. This Sunday school church thing would try to come get us every Sunday morning at 7ish. So we would wake up even earlier and sneak out before their bus came by to pick us up. I’m not sure how we got the money, I suspect either my sister or I stole it, but we would then go the the Save-a-Lot, which we called Elrod’s, and buy a whole mess load of
Little Debbie snacks. We would then take them to the park and hide out, stuffing our faces with Little Debbies. We really thought we had to hide until Sunday School let out, so we would be very sneaky. As sneaky as 6 year olds could be.
What happy, blissful years. Sure, they were not perfect. Mom’s marriage to David was a bad idea. I think he got into Crack. She did too. For a time. They became pot heads and drank a lot. I became used to hearing my name called with the word “beer” after it. Still, we were never beat or anything, and David never molested us. He did shove me outside naked a few times. That was pretty traumatizing. Still can’t get naked in a public setting. My sister would have you believe I beat the hell out of here during these years. I might have a few times. I seem to recall hitting her almost every day, but it would only take once to get the effect I wanted. Boy, did that girl have a mouth on her and did she love to use it to push all your buttons.
Things started to change between the 5th grade and middle school.
First, Thomas moved away, to a place called North Richland Hills. Did I mention he was my best friend? I was pretty sure that this would be the end of our friendship, but was willing to fight to hang on to it. Again, I wonder if this is just part of being me, but it didn’t hurt to bad for him to leave. Just a nice addition to my life going away, even if I did see him as closer to me than a brother. I don’t remember being sad or mourning his loss, I just shifted to other friends. Am I a sociopath?
My next best friend was Jared, this black kid who lived even closer to me than Thomas. Wait! Side note! My sister is a friend stealer! Ok, anyways, we became good friends in the absence of Thomas, hanging out a lot and rough housing. I remember the first time I ever danced in front of people was at his birthday party. I did girl dances though. We were friends until Jared’s mom died. God that sucked. I didn’t know how to deal with it. It’s hurt to much, just to look at him. I couldn’t even deal with the concept of trying to understand his pain. To I walked away from our friendship. What a shitty friend. Jared is now in Prison, Death Row. Would that have been different if I was there for him? FML.
In the first grade or so I got to talk to my father, Sont, on the phone. I don’t remember this, but from that day on I became a much darker, angrier child. I had child protective services called on my mom because of the art I would draw in class. In the second grade, I went to a different school for some reason and spent much of my time with this babysitter woman who had to have been one of the ugliest people to have ever walked the face of the earth. I’m talking about her heart here, not her body, which was huge. I tried to commit childish suicide a few times in second grade. That year sucked.
In the 6th grade my best friend was Michael, who we called Hickeyman. Sister tried to steal this friend too, but failed. His sister and mine were the same age so we shoved them off on each other. My sister was a tomboy and she was a girly girl. What fun! Next year she would get me back by completely leaving me behind socially. She would start running with the “bad kids.” I think she wanted to be more popular than me. Failed at that too -^.^-
Sometime in Middle School my mom finally divorces David. And then came out to us that she was a lesbian. Introduced us to her new girlfriend. What was her name? Terry or something? Bah! Anyways, we didn’t much care. To my sister and I both, it made sense that a person should just love whoever their heart told them too, and nothing else mattered. Worse, though, was that we had to move from our house with the gorgeous backyard and into this ghetto ass apartment. You could smell the ghettoness. (did I mention we had dug mom a pond for her birthday a few years prior to this? Cuz we did and it had koi and toads and ferns and a water fall…)
*insert rant about ghetto* I fucking hate the ghetto. I don’t understand it. I grew up poor, very poor. I developed the habit of just going to sleep once I got to hungry, because there was nothing to eat. Ramen noodles were my shit! Electric would get turned off, etc. We were poor, but never ghetto. At the same time, I can understand. Once immersed in it, it’s easy to get lost in that mindset, that desperation. I’m not saying I hate ghetto people. I HATE THE GHETTO. /endrant
In Middle School I became very nerdy. Everyone became much more concerned about social status and I just didn’t care. So I started to gravitate to the kids who couldn’t figure out the social game either. The freaks and the nerds. I had my first girlfriend since first grade in the 7th grade. Her name was Jodie and she introduced me to RPG’s. I Final Fantasy 8 is one of my favorite games of all time because of her. After me, she became a lesbian, lol ^.^ I remember sitting in her room watching her play video games, wanting to touch her so bad, to kiss her, but never did.
8th grade I started to try to forge my own style. I gravitated towards black. Jinco jeans. Korn. I have no idea how I passed any of those grades. I never did my homework. Probably because I would get perfect scores after sleeping in class. I have always been crazy smart, and never destined to use it the way people thought I should.
Oh man, puberty. It never hit be quite like it did other kids. Probably because I was a very sexually aware kid. Got my first porn mag in the 3rd grade. I would consistently steal my mom’s lingerie catalogs. Games with girls would often turn sexual in nature, explorative. I would have loved if it was just pure childish curiosity, but it never was. I always felt sick, wrong, when I would play these sexual games, but it would also give me a thrill. That has caused me quite a bit of suffering through the years. It might have been better if I were a ugly or repulsive kid, but I never was. There were always girls, usually younger, who were drawn to me. I felt, I feel, like a predator. I hope I never made them feel like what we did was wrong, I’d hate for them to have been infected with the same shit I got. So when puberty hit, it wasn’t that much of a change. Except… there was that constant desire to stick my dick in something. Dog’s like peanut butter.
9th grade was weird. There was that freshman fear of all those big kids, of freshman hazing, but I never got any of it. If someone did try to fuck with me, I was oblivious to it. I joined the golf team cuz I had enjoyed playing golf with David and hitting balls at the range with Carl, Thomas’s dad. What a nerd J I took a Happy Gilmore swing at the ball on day with a 6 iron and I swear I hit that ball over 300 yards, because the ball hit this oak that was well past the 300 mark, right on the trunk. I hung out at lunch with my nerdy friends, playing Magic the Gathering and shit. I was in all Honors Classes, which was good, cuz I would have lost my damned mind if I would have stayed in regular classes, what with how they are taught specifically to pass these benchmark tests called TASS. I didn’t stay in honors English to long though because they wanted you to read these boring books (I had better tastes) and do homework and shit. Fuck that. I started becoming a Goth kid in 9th grade, started growing my hair out, wore all black, etc.
My second 9th grade was much better for me. I found theater. I joined theater because I had noticed that when I was supposed to talk in front of the class, my whole body would lock up. It must have really scared me. I didn’t want to just let the fear have its way with me, so I decided to join theater to get used to being in front of people. In theater I found a group of weird kids who accepted me. It was beautiful. I was relatively popular with these kids. Especially after my 16th birthday party when my mom let me buy a bunch of alcohol and have a party. I invited my nerd friends and my theater friends. My nerd friends hid in my room. My theater friends got drunk and partied. Crazy fun. We eventually ended up at Josh Green’s house where there was more alcohol. I got blackout drunk (which I’m wont to do). Apparently there was a video made with a penis size contest involved. It haunted me for years that I might have participated. I got a job at Chicken Express too. And a girlfriend. Cassie. Boy did we have a lot of sex. So much so that I lost my job cuz I wouldn’t stop having sex with her. By then end of that year I had my hair in long dred-lock esq braids. I miss that hair style, but it took hours. THANK YOU BABY! Maybe one day I’ll find a chick that loves me enough to do that for me again.
(note to self- tell story of conflict between sister and mom)
10th grade was more of the same, girlfriend, theater, being a nerd, never doing homework, etc. At one point I was sleeping in a regular geography class while the rest of the class was studying for the test. The teacher kept coming by, waking me up and telling me to study. I ignored her, and she kept getting more and more upset. I think I bet her at one point I would get a perfect score (which I did) and that just upset her more. She threatened to call my mom if I didn’t study. I said, “I don’t fucking care about her.” What I meant was, why should she matter to me studying or not? So she called my mom and in response my mom kicked me out of the house. She let me come back home 3 days later. But because of this incident Julie, Thomas's mother, offered to let me stay with them until I finished high school.
I guess this is as good a place to tell you this, but Thomas's moving away didn't end our friendship. During the school year we barely talked. This was before Facebook and the like. But during the Summers, one of us would always be at the others house, spending weeks at a time together. I loved those Summers. I love Thomas.
And now for another Asshole move. At the end of the 10th grade, without warning, I broke up with Cassie and moved. I told no one. Mom thought I was bluffing when I asked to go live with Thomas, and after she said yes, I didn't bother the point. So I abandoned my life, just up and left. I can be really cold, when I feel like I need to be. I'm glad I did this, for me, but I'm sorry for the suffering I left behind. I left my sister alone at home, in that chaos, in the ghetto. We had already become pretty estranged by this point, but still, I abandoned my little sister. I'll never live this down.