Busted by the Fuzz

Daydreaming about saviors helps me get through the days of confinement, the years with my father and step-mother, of my mother existing only as an unattainable panacea.

Back to the summer when I am nine, when I find that, as I have fantasized, Mom is only mine and not my brothers' (if you joined the blog late in the game, go back to the beginning to learn about it all).

The magic of the Oedipal Revelation is the engine that drives all my dreams, even as I know my father will still make me live with him. But life isn't supposed to happen this way. You aren't meant to wish for something as primal as full ownership of your mother and get it. Even my shrink thinks it's wacky. The knowledge makes me giddy and reckless, giving me an unreasonable feeling of power over my brothers and potentially over my father.

The summer of the Revelation is almost over. I play the moment of Knowledge over and over in my mind at night, unable to sleep, trying to understand how this information that changes everything might affect my actual day-to-day existence. It means everything to me and nothing to my father, who still expects me, us, to return to live with him at the end of August. I decide to force his hand. In my own screwy way I think tactically and figure he must be made to see how serious my unhappiness is.

So I run away and get arrested.

Well, in all fairness to the Travis County Sheriff's Department, my brother Aaron and I are only made to hang around the station for the afternoon. We aren't actually fingerprinted and booked, or put on a chain gang or anything like that, which is surprising, Texas justice being what it is. I want to call Aaron my co-conspirator in running away but I can't since I am the instigator. We ditch Gary, telling him someone has to stay behind and deliver our demands. My now-half-brothers are twelve and thirteen. I am nine. Maybe they let me play fearless leader because they know I'm playing for keeps.