Have you tried staying over at someone's house? It's pretty awkward if you don't set up a routine for yourself. Have you ever had someone else stay over at your house? Awkward same. You go, "Dum dee dum dee dum... so... there's not much to do." It's just that when you're by yourself in your own house, you don't notice it. And you feel stupid about those dumb things you do at home without even noticing it.

Anyway, he went home.

"I opened the cheese wrong and my dad started swinging at me."

--

I know that as a twenty-something man, in a fight you can give at least as much as you take. Yet something in me quick to burn feels this betrayal sunken deep. Sons are ageless; that's your boy you hit.

I think I should be angry, and I am, but many other things too. When you think about, you know, someone who hits their kid, you probably think of a big drunken redneck guy, right? but I've met his dad and I know he's not like that. I remember him coming in and cracking jokes when we were roleplaying, and the cozy, tidy kitchen with the smell of dirt from the garden on the wind through the window. The small, domestic-ish glass ornaments and those sentimental angel posters said things like, "God Bless This House." I thought, "It would be nice to have parents I could actually crack jokes with like that." It makes me feel ill how wrong I am.

So Chris went to his house to find them brawling and his mom screaming about calling the cops, and Chris fled shaken with him. No names.. people who know will know. For people who don't, it would be wrong that the first thing they learn about This Person is his troubled family. People are more than the sum of their problems. Once you learn something about someone, it attaches to their name forever.

--

You can all rot. That mournful way you look at me, your hellhole desk in your hellhole office. Try to "fix" me, cure the sick me, solve my problems, save me from my sins. I'm not human. I'm a problem, I'm a patient, I'm a "troubled youth" to file with the statistics of the people you have rectified. Well fuck that, who the fuck do you think you are to think you know me? I'm not sick, I'm not troubled, I'm not "special." Don't you dare drug me. To hell with you!

--

We spent the night at Marc's place playing Vampire, tearing innocent people to shreds, Sabbat style, laughing while This Person put ice on his hand. Awkwardly, I volunteered Jeremy's place for him to stay the night, and so he went home with us, and we talked about Linux and Exalted and tried on pirate hats and everything was hysterically funny all night and I was afraid to leave him alone in the dark.

-

Something in me quick to pain and sunken deep feels this: you may be keen to laugh in daylight, but night is a different animal when you have no one for whom to maintain your smile. No-family, no-house, no-job, absence of the ticking-tocking-turning winding of days. If you were to disappear into the streetlamps shining palely on the fog, what would they write for your eulogy? "No one from nowhere, survived by none"? What do you have for yourself but your name, and even then, what does it mean if no one knows it? Even if you were to be a monk, would you have wanted this?

I feel that I should make sure his pillows are soft enough, that he has enough blankets, that he has enough to eat that's to his liking, that the bathroom isn't gross, that he isn't bored to death in the daytime. Are those flies? I feel shame; I should keep the house cleaner. Does he want any drinks? 'Cuz we have drinks. They're tasty and cold. Ice for his hand? Bunny pillow?

"No," he says, "I'm fine."
--

He said, "Maybe I'll move in with ______."

And, can you believe it, I was jealous. There's only supposed to be one girl that does all this.

She had better give him backrubs and feed him grapes and wine from a golden cup...or you'll be hearing from me, young missy!

--

Boys are so stiff and alien to me. Boys don't cry. Boys don't hug. Boys don't ask anyone if they "want to talk." Boys laugh. Boys play roleplaying games. Boys ask for another Pepsi. Maybe he likes it better that way. He's been in the same group of friends since middle school. Chris still has the first monster he ever drew for their roleplaying campaign from when he was like, twelve. We were talking about it, and he just pulled it out of his notes binder, saying, "Oh, this?" like there was absolutely no reason for it not to be there. In their way which they deny, they love each other.

--

I am anxious. I need to rush home. I need to rush home to make sure he's still there.

--

Certain acts of bravery commend themselves, those that show full measure of devotion. On Sunday, Chris and John went to his house to face his parents and to get belongings from his room. Who are you, when all your worldly posessions fit in the trunk of a car? For all they knew, his parents could've hurled chairs and beer bottles at them upon arrival. They could've just called the cops. They didn't have to do it. They didn't have to face some person's parents' anger. They didn't have to deal with someone else's domestic problems. They didn't have to have that awkward moment when they show up at the door and say, "So.. we're here for...." But they did, and it seemed to make a universe of difference.

From the New Yorker:

"Like the Freeman brothers, McGruder was born on the South Side of Chicago, though he didn’t stay there long. The McGruders—Aaron, his parents, and an older brother, Dedric, who is now a part-time political cartoonist—shuffled around some before settling, when Aaron was six, in the middle-class suburb of Columbia, Maryland.

So the suburb of Woodcrest in the Boondocks is inspired by Jeremy's (unincorporated) city of residence. ... Mortifying. I didn't think we were that white.

Like Frank Cho, who draws Liberty Meadows, Aaron McGruder went to UMCP and first debuted in the campus paper. As you may know, the Boondocks is a radical leftist comic strip about two angry black kids who move from inner city Chicago to the whitey 'burbs. Liberty Meadows is about a shelter for animals with psychological illness. Matt comments: "Maryland fucks people up."