I know the look of rejection. It is the back of my best friend’s head as he tells the laughing football team about what happened last night, when I trusted him just a bit too much, and said just a bit too much. It is the look in their eyes as they calculate their new advantage. Opportunities for street cred, for violence without consequence, for an option for when their girlfriend says “no.” It looks like “I would have been better off alone.”

I know the taste of a fist. It is of tractor grease and dust from the corncrib and mud from the hog lot. It tastes of the way I looked or something I said or something I didn’t need to say. It is the salt of my tears and the iron of my blood. It tastes of “I deserve it”.

I know the feeling of boot in my kidney. At least that’s where I think the kidney is. Maybe if I had been paying better attention during biology class. Maybe If most of the pages of the loaned textbook had not been stuck together with spits of chewing tobacco. Except for the parts about female reproductive anatomy, which were stuck together with something else. And whether you consent or not, that something else, you do not spit, or you feel a boot in your kidney. It feels like, “my first time should have been gentle.”

I know the smell of a party. It is tobacco and sweat and marijuana and alcohol. Whiskey on beer, never fear. It is the scent of a circle of men, with piercing eyes and curling fists. It is laughter and hatred and the inevitability of my blood. It makes me see my life flash fast forward from zero to zero. It smells of “why do I do this to myself?”

I know the feel of my name. On slurred lips and hops scented breath. The aerosol labiodental fricative, the aa, ee almost diphthong common to my hometown, the voiced velar plosive, the short i that is almost a Schwa, and the hard, liquid t, spit like he’s firing a nail gun at me. Faggit. Faggit is my name and it is a powerful name. And it makes me shake, deep inside. I will feel the power of using it as a weapon, too.

I know the sound of a threat. It comes in a deep voice that should be a big bear of a man, who would wrap me completely in his arms and tell me everything will be ok. Instead, it is an invitation to dance. “Come on boy. Just you and me. And my buddies. And my baseball bat. It’ll be the last dance of your life.” Every night, when the bars close, the phone rings and he repeats the invitation, and every night, I decline.

Until tonight.
“Bring it on, fucker. Let’s get this over with.”