His Melancholy Smile

“You are just like your Father.” Words that echoed through the cortex of the abandoned boy still cruelly tainted with that familiar face. The face of one that caused the blood of his beloved mother to run volatile and hark vocals that forced his earlobes to quiver. The funny thing is this face would become more like his estranged paternal donor as he got older, baring a smile that saluted his senior’s suaveness. This was not by choice in fact the young boy desired to escape the bonds of genes and generational curses seemingly bestowed upon him. So questioned he the love of his mother and by default that of his own validity, that mental milk churned greater with his own half sister’s resentment. Jealousy playing its part in that, refusing to be out done by the insecurity that had already achieved ascendance to the house’s throne. How to cultivate a good self image when your own sister’s love is denied, your mother’s anger’s always inflamed and the call of your father’s phallus bares greater importance than his son? Quest not for a hero you’ll find none; abuse begets abuse and this manifested back before I constituted earth. Incredible how perceptive children are yet remain unaware of the skewed social functions that have been normalised from birth. Such as my grandmother and grandfather living in the same house but my eyes never witnessing them in the same room or ever speak? Two strangers sharing a manger of feeding Pegasuses that bury their snouts in myths of memory unspoken by all.

All this championed by the nomadic journey of four different homes, four different primary schools, the eternal “new kid”; each departure stripping confidence from his back every time he’d make a friend and be forced to forsake them. I remember her face by the window, she waved but she didn’t smile. Our lives built upon tectonic plates that refused to remain static and when eventual stability was found he found no solace, the boy’s heart was now moulded in displacement and silently the clay had dried.

Teenage years distinctly stated that opening the alabaster box’s of our female peers virginity was the only task worthy of our meditation. What an adventure it could have been fondling the fountain of female pheromones except the crippling crux of startling truth; he was a virgin himself.  Repression deepened because even the thought of sexual encounters lay warped in the mind of a boy who’d been exposed to pornography at too delicate an age. That exposure mangling quickly into compulsion, being served diligently by the new frontier named the omnipresent Internet. Self esteem remaining as illusive as trying to catch warm air blown from cold cheeks.

Lost virginity and found faith were the parallels of my late teens into early twenties. Found by Jesus but religious tradition and indignation weren’t too far behind, following his trail they’d soon find me and condemn me with “righteous” rebuke. The only constant was her, from chronicles to current crescents a girl whose lips upon weary eyelids promised when all ambition is dissipated her love will sustain the heart. She found me broken and tried to fix me as is the self-appointed vocation of many a woman whose infatuation creates a kaleidoscope for them to see their partner’s flaws through. Failed was her attempt as was expected to those that sat on hindsight’s feathered peddle stool but she stood her ground by bending a knee and lifting me up to God’s benevolence.

Change is constant and now I find myself here in an ethereal recovery room for the 1988 womb escapees; millennial malpractice the constant diagnosis from the doctors. Always improving in constitution, so corralling the reefs of well-being with well written and letting my imagination swim. The ground bore my knee as it once did my love’s but now in honour as I asked her to make a covenant of the heart. The trinket of triumph delicately sliding on the fourth finger of her left hand and a chorus of tears worshipping behind it.

It’s a new age and a new chapter that I find myself, adjusting to an algorithm of sufficiency I at one time could only calculate from theory. So brief was this retelling of these events and peculiar negative hue, I almost regret ever committing them to word. Alas I roll the dice with the intentions only to splay indifference and touch on some familiarity beneath our ego’s that have been carved from sedimentary rock. No parachutes provided for pretence let it die on the moors of painted perfection that hides coarse sketches underneath. My task in this is to build opaque a model of the thought process borne by the one that’ll create the literature upon this blog. I hope I’ve engaged or better yet intrigued and if you never pass this way again, hello my name’s Nathaniel and it’s nice to meet you.

Written by Nathaniel Rochester.