Once upon a time...

There was a boy who grew up in America. He realized at a very young age that he was like other kids and different from other kids. He was like them. He looked like an ordinary all-American kid. He fell out of his treehouse and he read comic books and he was a youth-soccer superstar and he went swimming on Tuesday afternoons when school was out for the summer. He ate ice cream and caught fireflies in the deep twilight. He laughed and he cried. He lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary working-class neighborhood. He had lots of friends and he smiled a lot.

There was a boy who grew up in America. His ordinary house was filled with shrieks almost daily. He was hit with things. At a young age he was dropped off outside a relative's house one evening; the relative happened to be out of town, but the boy's mom didn't know that, or didn't care. The boy slept outside on this cold October night with no jacket and no blanket, under the indifferent gaze of the moon. Some years later, his mom threw a glass lamp at his head and missed by less than one inch; the lamp would probably have blinded or killed him, had it struck his face. He threw it back, and missed. He still looked like an ordinary all-American kid.

There was a boy who grew up in America. He was unafraid and he took risks. He was the first kid in his circle of friends to smoke a cigarette, when he was seven years old. He was the first kid to get drunk, when he was eight. He was the first kid to drive a car, at nine years old. He was the first kid to have sex, when he was ten. He was the first kid to run away from home, at age eleven. He was the first kid to spend the night in jail when he ran away again, at age thirteen.

There was a boy who grew up in America. He realized at a very young age that he was like other kids - and different from them. He was different from them. He liked physical pleasure. He discovered quite young that alcohol was one way to experience physical pleasure. He found that the pleasure was followed by pain. He figured out quite young that there was a special way he could tickle himself and that it was awesome. He had many friends and he was not shy, and so he began showing his friends - boys - how they, too, could experience this pleasure. He found some instructions in some books, and he learned early, well before puberty, that there were very specific things that he and his friends could do to make each other feel good. He was cute and the girls passed him notes with hearts all over them but he liked boys better, until he turned sixteen and turned his back on all that.

There was a boy who went to school in America. He was intelligent, and he was dyslexic, and he read slowly, and understood everything he read. He daydreamed in school and he came alive at recess. He brought home B's in English and D's in conduct. It was all the same to his mom. Later, on his swim team, he set a city middle-school record in the 100-yard freestyle. Nobody from his family saw it. He went to the conference championship on his high school soccer team and he scored the tying goal; when he got home that night, his mom asked why he hadn't been there to mop the kitchen. He scored in the top three percent nationally on his SAT's, despite two hours' sleep the night before, spent in the gym when no one came to pick him up at school. He understood everything he read, but he didn't understand everything that happened to him.

There was a boy. He was Prometheus, who brought the blessing of Fire to mankind; he was the Serpent, who brought the curse of the Fruit to the Garden. He was an angel of light and he was the coalescence of darkness. But really, all he was... all he was, was a curious boy. He shivered and he gave thanks. He drank and drank and he puked and puked and then he did it again, and he did it again. He loved his friends and he played pinball with them and he sucked them dry and he filled them up and they did the same to him, and afterwards they played, model trains and soccer and catching fireflies in the deep twilight; and when the sun went down and it was over, and when it was all over, it was over, and he cried himself to sleep.

There was a boy who, at a certain age, turned his back on all that was awesome and all that was terrible, that had gone before. He sold the majesty of experience for a package of Styrofoam. He "exchanged a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage." He let go of the rainbow, its steep hurtling climb and its frantic dizzying freefall, and grasped an array of grays instead.

Eventually that boy grew up in America. And as years slogged onward, the heavy iron manhole cover he had so deliberately laid across his psyche became ever more thoroughly rusted shut. The forge grew cold, the keyhole was clogged with the detritus of the slow-slide decades.

There is a boy, all grown up now, in America. I cannot tell you what he does next. I cannot end this story.

Sometimes, you go through a door, and you realize there's no knob on the other side. Just a mirror.