I never thought I could be loved by a man.

The first man in my life to teach me this lesson was my father. He never meant it to be that way. If you’d asked him if he loved his son, he would’ve given a solid nod as a quiet “of course I do” grumbled out from under his toothbrush bristle mustache decorating the shadow of stubble on his chin and cheeks, just gray enough to hide the smile lines but faint enough to show the aging ones. I knew this about my father, knew I was probably loved by him, probably cherished outside of my value as a shy boy with an extroverted middle finger who could work enough to bring in a few extra bucks for weekly groceries. Probably.

As a kid, my father bought me candles to stake in a hot honeyed beignet each year for my birthday, the ones that sparkled and fizzed a little bit before you blew out the flame. He kept my favorite pop around the house, the best our budget could cover, and he tied my shoes for me before I could figure out how, and even a little after that too.

As a boy, always spackled in sweat and freckled with grime, I grew into the mechanic mindset my father gifted me, a fix-it kind of man before I was even nine years old. He showed me how to knot a proper lure, the way he learned from his own father, and how to weigh the line for casting just right. He taught me how to know a fish from its bite alone, how to use a hammer without losing a fingernail, and how to answer questions with expressions over words. Being the fix-it boy I was, I learned all my manners, my “yes ma’am, I do know Jesus” and my “no sir, I don’t take charity." I was a sponge to the knowledge my father quietly graced me with, eager to soak up each scrap of a skill he could offer.

I wasn’t old before I picked up on my father’s knack for silence as well, another learned lesson from his seemingly infinite wisdom. I learned to keep all hues of emotions, the light and the dark, within the shade and confinement of myself, unspoken and unknown to the outside world. When I fell off my rickety skateboard and skinned my left knee and palm, when the burn of threatened tears seared my lids and nose, I practiced what I learned as a pupil and did not cry. When my first stray dog, permitted to stay only on the promise that I would remain solely responsible for him, ran off without a collar, I understood that tears would not bring him back. Even when I caught the biggest catfish I had ever seen on my own, even without the still eyes of my father around, I knew I ought not to even smile too big, too boastful, because God was watching, even if my earth-dwelling father wasn’t.

The only emotion exempt from this lesson was anger, which I dutifully learned from my father as well. Anger was meant to be seen, to be felt, to be acted upon and flung out of yourself as wildly as possible. I learned this many times in my boyhood, burned into my memory as if I had written the lecture notes directly onto my brain. Once, when I had given my father lip for something petty, another artful skill I learned from him, I saw the flame of rage light in his drowsy eyes a second too late before the back of his knuckles were branding the side of my baby face. My lip split and bled. Ouch.

This was the last lesson I learned from my father. He had lost all his wonder and mysticism by then, and whatever was left was slapped out of him one too many times. He was not the wise, strong man I once knew him to be. He was a slightly drunken, all-muscle yet beer-bellied, hunchback, calloused old man who couldn’t grow a beard worth anything more than a mustache. The old man's eyes scintillated sadness, a trait I always feared I would inherit, like the disappointment and sorrow my father faced could climb genetic ladders and blind me from any happiness in my own life, but I was just lucky enough to have my mother’s eyes—stormy slate blue, shrouded in lengthy bottom lashes, in need of some reading glasses, restlessly avoidant of other gazes, but still capable of taking in light. From my father, I inherited his sharp mouth and chin, always chiseled and square with pointed lips pink from wringing and wicked tongues scarred from biting. I knew my father saw me this way, half my mother from my hooked nose and up, half himself from my cupid’s bow and down. Perhaps this was why we never spoke, our mouths already alike enough to know that they were both incapable of forming any words worth saying or hearing.

In my late teens, during the last few years of my time spent under the thumb of my father, when I had already decided that if God were real, He wouldn’t let a place like Louisiana loiter throughout His creations, I re-learned the lesson of love and men.

Wade, a taller, scrawnier boy in the grade above me, befriended me. He was veiny and ragged but broad in the shoulders that he hunched to hide himself. Wade and I went fishing together when our fathers shared a sweating can or eight of cheap beer. We didn’t always get along, our quiet getting the best of us, sharing whole evenings in silence and letting chirping crickets and cicadas talk us fresh out of words. We did not face one another on the docks. We did not touch.

Until one day, a mischievous mosquito on a mission for a quiet boy landed on my farmer’s-tanned arm unbeknownst to me. I was littered with bug bites and scabs, my dull and dusty nails unable to resist scratching them open over and over, so the nuisance of the new bite had not caught my attention. That was until Wade smacked my outfacing elbow.

I jumped to face him.

“Mosquito,” was all Wade said.

“Oh. Thanks,” was all I replied.

We turned away from each other once more, silence, save for the bugs, settling back over the docks. It was easier this way.

I didn’t really have friends. Dogs adored me for my observant nature and gentle hands, but the children at school were less attracted to that than the strays. My dad moved a lot for work, following the ups and downs of river banks to seek out any malfunctioning boat motors he could oil up and tinker with for a wad of cash. I was always the new kid, and beyond that, generally unlikable. I kept my head down at school, weathered passing nuggies, and let my hair grow past my eyes to cover my line of sight. I could be quick with a comeback, snappy with defensive reflexes, and incapable of growing out of my love for a mean middle finger. I was a social stray dog in every sense.

So when Wade slapped me, just hard enough to get a good thwack out of the skin of his hand and the tacky sweat of my arm colliding, when our darting eyes were locked still by the shocking attention of one another, I understood how dear Wade was. At least, I understood that he cared enough about me to save me from a bug bite, but that could be enough.

We continued to fish together after that, slowly opening up to one another as we skipped stones and dangled worms over the splintering docks of the Mississippi. After school, late into the night, we grew on each other like the thick mosses that hung from the ant-infested trees canopying the southern sunshine in the most delicate way. We laughed together and the noise of it sent ripples out into the water for all the fish and alligators to see, hear, and be jealous of. We became inseparable at school and even closer outside of it.

Though never physically, not since the first time, when Wade smacked the mosquito off of me on a whim. We did not touch, did not accidentally graze, did not high-five or fist-bump or sucker-punch each other, or whatever guys at our age did. We did not do it. It was unspoken but it was understood by both of us how unnatural, how forbidden it felt.

One night, after the sun had long set, when fireflies and river life reflecting dim moonbeams were the only sources of light nearby, when Wade and I sat side by side, legs dangling over the rotted dock, kicking at the water striders and gnats that nipped at our swinging legs, the glint of Wade’s eyes locked on mine. His eyes shuttered downward, a subtle request for permission as he moved forward with a short flinch. My eyes fell downward too, my dimples disappearing as I stilled, cold fear freezing my body with a stare conveying I did not know what was about to happen. I fully knew what was about to happen.

I sank backward as Wade swooped in, as he kissed my parted mouth, criminally disobeying all the laws of touch we abided by for so long. I receded further than the lowest of low tides, barricaded within the caverns of isolation in my mind. I wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. I had my father to thank for that.

Wade pulled back, his hot breath tickling the arches of my lips, both our faces flushed but only one actually warm. He waited a moment before leaning in again, just an inch, but I flinched backward, just an inch. It was enough to stir Wade into a flight of embarrassment, rejection pulling him up and away by the ear, wordlessly rushing to race from me, to escape the tangle of teenage desire and deep southern values that coiled and caged us together. He almost got away.

But I grabbed him, hard.

I grabbed him by his wrung-out collar and struck us together like lightning.

It was sudden, just as sudden and jerky and painful as the first time Wade touched me. It was a kiss made up of all tobacco-stained and stress-ground teeth that hit my mouth like a smack, all I had to compare the touch of my friend to. We were fistfuls of dirty, loose t-shirts and curly brown hair knotted in clammy palms. We welcomed the dock’s splinters, if only to stay close another moment as the copper flavor of lust lathered the kiss further.

I did not dare open my mouth to speak, did not dare to utter a thing through the collision of teeth and lips. My father’s mouth was not welcome in this moment, so I kept it on Wade to keep it quiet. I did not dare open my eyes either, afraid that my mother’s irises would be unable to protect me from the darkness Wade and I found each other in, unable to see a single bright thing in the atmospheric abyss of that black night.

Neither of us saw the flashlights shining through the marsh, handled by Wade’s father coming from an impromptu evening with mine. We did not hear his footsteps crushing weeds and leaves before they had arrived.

“Oi, Wade!” his father called out from the path, flashlight beams scanning the docks.

“You still out there?”

Wade and I jumped apart, scrambling to put our hair back in place, to refasten belt buckles, to put as much space between us as possible. When his father reached us, we were already miles apart from each other on the six-foot wide dock, only charged air and dead bugs lingering between us.

“Your Pa is expecting you,” he suggested to me. “I came by to get Wade but I knew you’d be here too. I told him I’d send you his way. Best be heading back now.”

“Yes, sir,” was all I said as I stood up shakily. I wasn’t wearing a shirt any longer, which might’ve been normal for any other boy my age in this weather. I gathered my fishing box, my pliers and line, and my stained and crumpled tee as I slinked past, grateful to be out of the spotlight of his flashlights and back into the safety of night. I did not look back at Wade. I didn’t have to.

When I got home, I passed my dad without acknowledgement, tail between my legs.

“Where you been, boy?” my father called after me.

“Out on the docks with Wade,” I replied sheepishly, keeping my eyes down and my posture weak. There was no use in lying, but the guilt of omission creeped in anyways.

“What’s all over your face?”

My eyes leapt up in a moment of recognition as I snapped away and raced for privacy, calling “nothin’” over my shoulder as I sped down the hall and away from my father.

In the flickering light of the mirror, as the shower water ran behind me, I stared at Wade’s blood, dried and crusted to my chin, the sheerness of the scabs matching the exact hue of a half-formed hickey on my collarbone, a splotch on my mottled skin. My finger grazed the scab and bruise with a feather-like, curious touch before poking the tender skin, pressing into the rose on my chest with a wince. I stared for a long time. The shower water ran cold.

When I eventually stood under the icy spray, I scrubbed at my face with the same dirty fingernails and scarred palms that had just been on Wade. I went to bed in a tight-collared shirt with wet hair and wet eyes.

Wade wasn’t at school the next day. Or the following.

The next time I saw Wade was in the newspaper. He drowned himself. No one at school mentioned it. His father stopped coming around to see mine too, though he was only sad to have lost the drinking buddy.

I didn’t mention it either. I thought it was fitting for a boy named Wade to drown himself. I thought it was sad that it happened. I thought it was my fault, even years after his death.

I thought I could never be loved by a man. By anyone.

I left Louisiana with this mantra on my mind.

As an officer, you were taught how important it was to have loved ones counting on you. It keeps a man humble in his offenses, more rational and level-headed before steamrolling potential danger to know that he has a family, or a lover, waiting at home for his return, counting on his survival and longevity. For me, now a young adult on my own, longevity was seldom present in the decision-making arena of my adolescent brain, not because of my adolescence, but in spite of it. My mechanical mind, criminal quick thinking, and justice-thirsting tenderness all drove me to become a cop. For me, holding the gun was the uneasy part, unlike most of the hard-headed, dick-measuring, brawn-based men in my rank. My mind was as much a weapon as the loaded pistol on my belt pocket and the badge pinned to my breast. The smell of smoke at discharge was not unfamiliar, but the weight of such metallic power was overwhelming.

For once, I wasn’t the underdog, but a young man at the top of my class with an outstanding eidetic recall, the soft heart of a loyal hound, the sinew and scruff of a self-made man, and the father-like mouth of a mute. My name floated around classrooms and academy hallways as if I were a story and not a mere boy, as if I knew how to wield the gun I was freshly authorized to handle.

I am familiar with weapons because I am familiar with pain, knowing the role of both the hammer and the nail in routine. Scars from weapons litter my skin, unhidden by sparse body hair and stripped layers of Virginia sweat-soaked clothes. I broke my nose once in training, almost lost a tooth on the job, nicked my elbow on a brick wall at its point, and was often seen with tissue-clotted scabs from shaving over the sharp angles of my jaw and neck. My body has always been a legible index, a detailed collection of distinct time-bound injuries that documented the wear and tear of my life, evidence that puckered outward and inward, white and pink and purple. But as with weapons, I learned that familiarity with pain did not warrant my handle on it.

I did not keep in contact with my father. I did not think of him, save for when the birthday cards he sent me, which usually arrived anywhere between three to ten days after the actual day passed, showed up in the mailbox of wherever I found himself living. I did not respond, let alone read the return address.

I did not think of my mother, besides when I twiddled my glasses, or washed my curly hair, or woke up scared in the middle of the night, or really when I did anything at all.

I did not think of Wade, pretending the heavy shadow of guilt I lugged around had no recognizable origin, no distinct spot at its center, no suck bruise at my throat.

I got through my days by passing these ancient terrors like ships in the night, denying them so much as a glance as I trudged along, the anchor of their pain tied like a noose at my neck as I ignored them and faced ahead.

If denial were a religion, I could be a saint.

The years continued to pass and as my five o’clock shadow came back sooner, I practiced, worshiped, and ritualized my devout denial, working nights so I could see the worst of the worst in the world because I thought I deserved it, thought I was part of it. I pursed black coffee through gritted teeth and pinched myself to stay up on slow nights, anything to pass the long hours of darkness. But slow nights were rare, as crime in the south bred like mosquitos, lusting over the hot, damp, and dark conditions to show itself.

I worked the graveyard hours as an officer until I got stabbed. I don’t remember much from it, or at least that’s what I tell people—but the moment of hesitation to fire my weapon, the weapon of my mind working on overdrive, overheating with relief as a blade punched through the soft spot between my ribs, remains ripe in my memory. I fell on my knees, aimlessly reaching backward for the feel of the knife’s handle, for anything, to grab on. I was a good student. I knew not to take the weapon out of the wound, anything to yield the risk of bleeding out, yet when I found the stiff handle, I yanked. I collapsed to the ground, exposing the stringy tissue of my core and back to the night air to spite the knowledge that I should be applying pressure to the vitals leaking down my shirt back and waistline. My face struck the earth with a thud and the pool of blood that bloomed around my torso and hips darkened. The smell of iron in my nose reminded me of home, of the people and ghosts who made it home, which wasn’t a comfort in the slightest, but at least it made picturing my chalk outline easier. Maybe I would die and all of this would end. Maybe.

But I lived. My body closed the wound and scarred itself like a sticker where the knife once protruded. It still ached from time to time, but so did everything else.

I got a job working as a teacher at the academy, the relic of my name keeping me tethered to the networks of federal duties even as I took months away from work to rehabilitate. Just lifting a spoon to eat cereal was hard in those early days.

Years passed and I bought a home. I filled it with dogs to keep the corners from getting too empty, letting their hairballs and chewed-up socks pile up and tease at occupancy.

I had girlfriends here and there to fill the space too. They always liked my dogs and thought my curls were handsome, thought my shyness was an endearing puzzle for them to touch, scramble, and solve. I opened doors for the women, bought them gifts, fucked them regularly, and cooked them the meals I knew how to make. I was agreeable and gentle, unlike their previous boyfriends who came before me. I was unlike them in every way, really, which was why the girls didn’t stick around long. Once they noticed how I barely showed up in photos and reflections, as if I were a half-transparent ghost of a man pretending to be their boyfriend, they jumped ship for someone with thicker, more saturated outlines. Someone who was made in a more vivid medium than Louisiana watercolor, my bleeding edges mixing foreground with background, present-day with memory, droplets of me brushed between both.

To live as a wisp of yourself for so long wears on a man. I knew I was so faint because of the stain, darker than ink, that muddied into the softest parts of my soul. It was a blemish so heavy, wet, and hot that it seeped out and latched onto every thread of the stitches that held me together. The stain revealed itself to me at the sight of blood and the summoning of desire, growing in perimeter like a tick on a dog. It steeped and soaked and putrefied my heart in a brine of inky lust. If I were made of string, held together by a soft twine that laced my organs to the fabric of my body, my soul a tangled bundle of cotton and muscle, I knew I was all but soiled and knotted. I could feel the baggage of my sopping heart as it pickled in the darkness. I could feel it in the knots all over my body, in my sore muscles and nervous gut. I fantasized about taking a seam-ripper to my skin and wrenching. I considered it more seriously than I’ll ever admit.

So I found other ways to hollow myself out, to blot at the violent blemish that grew within me every day. I became vacant, living so far outside of myself that no one was home to turn on the lights anymore. To put a reason or name to the pain I boarded up would be an injustice to the magnitude of it, the smothering weight of fear and self-loathing, both learned and taught, that I lugged around. It was as if I heaved a body with me everywhere I went, a carcass of unacted-upon intention, paralyzing fear, and violent delight. I used all of my strength to get out of bed each day as my body pulled minerals, vitamins, and will out of everything essential within itself to keep the rest pumping. My eyes shone gray. I always had good hygiene as I outgrew the dirt-speckled boy I once was, but my breath turned sour from the cheap, tar-laden cigarettes I drank, a habit I picked up but had never put down. I got skinnier, if that was even possible. The deepening puddle of stagnant darkness inside of me, the infested cavity that it eroded, began to rot from the inside out, the stench of sadness and neglect wreaking from my tearless eyes and cotton-dry mouth.

Nights remained a spotlit stage for all horrors, despite my early retirement from police work, as nightmares flogged me from midnight to dawn. I dreamt of my shame and all of the ways it coalesced, adding to the discoloration of the darkness I harbored. It came in dreams of my mother, abandoning me in the cold bathtub as a babe before the drain opened up to swallow me whole. I dreamt of my father pushing me off a boat for a gator to snatch up and death-roll beneath the depths of the swamp. I dreamt of holding Wade under the water as he thrashed and scratched canyons into my arms, keeping him there until bubbles stopped surfacing. The dreams lapped at me every night, startling me awake in a sweat I could only attribute to the nightmares leaking into reality. I stopped sleeping to keep dry, though with the amount of liquor I drank, I would hardly consider myself that.

I stuck around for the dogs, but not much else. Who would put up with their lippy disposition and nervous licking save for me? Obligation usually outweighed desire when it came time to make these decisions.

A new case at work made this clear to me. Despite my worsening dark circles and clammier nights, the constant prodding and poking from my boss reminded me that I had an obligation to see through, a job to get done. This is what work had always been for me, a towering fulcrum of power imbalances, just a routine of scrutiny to answer to. Though my coworkers would pose their curious questions for me with gentle hands reaching to pet the feral dog of a man I was, I saw their questions as bait on a hook, as if I were the prey and not the pound. My father taught me to be a good fisherman. It was not a skill I could easily override. I was closed off to others, mean like a dog, loyal to my sweet southern manners but never afraid to bear my teeth to the right person.

A man named Shae was this person for many reasons. The introduction and addition of him to our case didn’t help either, though another set of eyes checking up on my neuroses did keep me somewhat in line. The surveillance reminded me to stock Aspirin in my slack pockets and keep my sleeves rolled down. Especially because he came across as pompous and vain, sleek and styled to the loftiest of ego heights. I tried not to resent the wealthy but it was a vein of anger my father opened in me when I was just a boy. It was apparent in our first few interactions that Shae had arteries that pumped gold, veins that bled coins and cash. Rich ran in his genetics the same way sadness ran in mine. He was charming and devilish, manicured to perfection and smart as ever. Shae was proud. The threat he posed to me was his perception. We were both in this career because of our gifted sense of perception, our unique ability to hear what was unsaid and see what was unseen. For me, this was my greatest fear. For him, his greatest weapon.

“Just keep it professional,” I snapped at him across the hallway. Shae was trying to get close, trying to play friendly and test my reactivity. He stopped me after lecture twice already this week, caught me by my cuff in the wake of students flooding the hall. It was unwelcome.

“Or we could be friendly like adults,” Shae replied, the nod of his head signaling that my thorny exterior hadn’t pricked him yet. It was almost a shame that I had to stamp him out, but no one was allowed through the heavily manned iron gates of my personhood. The heights were barbed and the locks were welded. I was a fortress, a calloused skeleton with skin so miserably thick it was closer to a shell. All the stone and metal in the world could not crack the careful exterior, the barrier that kept the world from getting in, but more importantly, kept me from getting out. My festering heart, the pulpy bind of putrid sorrow and string, was a prisoner to my body, locked away in a chamber of shame the light of day would never reach. It was kind of Shae to try, but just like the girls who came and went, just like my coworkers, my neighbors, my father, my mother, my Wade—they were denied entry and struck down on sight. Shae was only unlucky enough to be next.

“I don’t like you.” 

I waited a beat for the wound of my words to show, to watch as Shae took the blow of my not-so-subtle hint and retreated from his inquisitions, bruised and quiet. But with a charge of defiance and a conviction of truth, Shae only replied with, “You will,” as if it were a command, an oath more than an ask.

I felt like I had just been let in on a secret, like I was just given a glimpse ahead into the future in the strange promise of his words. Shae had this dangerous effect, manipulating the nuances of power under his thumb to persuade others that he was in control. Whether it was intentional or not, he often used this to his advantage, seeming that he was predicting the future, when in fact others were just too intimidated to question his dictations, resulting in them becoming unchallenged and true. What a head rush it must be to play God in that way, for your words to be taken as scripture when they were just sense, sometimes more sinister than that.

But Shae was not God. I learned this through careful monitoring over the long years since our first interactions, once because I was searching for weaknesses to weaponize against him, though now I can’t say the same. Whenever my annoyance turned into adoration, when my observation transformed into obsession, I cannot speak to. I only know that it came after years of ungracefully practiced softness, after the sting of time became an echo of itself down the line.

I noticed it when I started taking note of how Shae liked a sugar cube in his tea despite despising any sweetener in his coffee. I noticed it as I discovered Shae’s peculiar habit of whistling when he thought I wasn’t listening. It came after I learned how he folded his laundry and laced his shoes. How he shaved his face, practiced an instrument, turned a page, or picked the best tomatoes at the market. After I understood why he bit his nails and cracked his knuckles, why he fussed over puppy piles on the countertops, and the shoes sitting out of alignment in the entryway, why he hated winter because it reminded him of his dead sister. It came after he learned why I hated summer because it reminded me of my dead mother.

The lesson was finally learned in the quiet of the night, when the dogs were curled up on each other and snoring, when the moon was high and the stars were low, as Shae dutifully scrubbed at a dish after supper and I picked at my guitar.

As I plucked, I could only seem to remember the same four chords my father taught me, a minor progression that hurt from the heart of a man with palms so peeled and nails so chipped he could barely strum the strings. I played it and hummed occasionally. My ears were pink and my hair was salted. Throughout these years, my resistance to knowing Shae eroded into permission, allowing the stain at my core to saturate the textile of my tissue until I had the bold outlines I always desired, made and molded in a medium of inky indulgence and vibrancy. The color came back to my weathered blue eyes, but I did not think of my missing mother. My lips were bitten in concentration as I stretched my fingers over the frets but I did not think of my father’s mouth. The windows were open and I could hear the crickets chirping the name of a boy I had long set free from haunting me, so I did not turn my head.

All I thought about at that moment was how Shae was in fact not God or even the Devil—he was a man. A man who loved me. A man who was loved by me.