Afterword

Peter never returns. We never know if he faces his demons later in life, or whether he remains a tormented soul forever. Peter (real name Kenny), I hope you have found peace.

Timmy's story continues, of course. In Timmy 01, Timmy slides all the way to the dark, dank bottom where he just begins to understand he must undertake the hard climb up to the sun he senses burning brightly somewhere overhead. In Timmy 02, which I am writing now, Timmy emerges sweaty, dirty, and victorious into the light of day.

I couldn't write a clear, succinct story with a beginning, middle, and end, because life isn't like that. Life is messy, and is filled with ambiguities. It makes for a nice read to have a blank character with a convenient history be hit with a challenge, rise to the occasion, and win full resolution, but it ain't real.

I wrote Timmy about my own life because #1, I still had issues I was trying to reach peace about concerning that time in my life (37 years ago), and #2, I knew that many others would find inspiration from my story, and maybe even be able to use the truths therein to help themselves through their own life problems. I wanted to present the story in my best writing, but I didn't care whether anyone else liked the way the story played out or not. About 80% of Timmy is on the nose true just as it happened and just as I experienced. Another 10% of events were true with minor changes (only dates, places, names changed). Perhaps 5% happened to other people but had a dramatic emotional impact on me and affected me enough to change me in some way, so were swept up into my story. The final 5% consists of complete fiction thrown in to pull the disparate facts into a smooth narrative. If any person recognizes themselves in these words, I will immediately assure them that they fall into that 5%. My own victimization ended a long time ago, and I am a suspicious bastard.

There is SO MUCH about that time period that did not make it into the story. I have chosen representative events to reflect the whole. How many drunken or drugged episodes do I need to tell before you and I understand their destruction? How many rapes or instances of coerced sex? It doesn't take many before the cruel interplay between predatory powerful adult and confused, vulnerable youth lays there stark and exposed before our eyes. We are given just enough to understand what caused the pain that became part of the spirit and soul, and which floods out in actions and behavior until responsibility for self is taken and the damage is healed.

I have begun to write Timmy 02, and am on Chapter 9. I have no idea how long it will be; the process will continue until I am finished. I will not post Timmy 02 until the whole is completed and edited. I suspect that will be sometime between six months and a year from now. Timmy 02 will cover the time period from the end of Timmy 01 until the end of the first chapter of "The Long Road To Being Alright." In a recent blog entry at SOL, I spoke of parallel story lines in my life, in which many different stories could be pulled out of the exact same time period. The first chapter of "The Long Road" runs concurrent with events that will play out in the last chapters of Timmy 02. No, the alignment between the two will not be exact, gender and orientation for me are fluid things, and events may appear to be out of sync. Since I didn't intend to write histories so much as analyses of events seen through the long lens of many passing years, perfectly tendered facts are unnecessary. Don't you agree that nearly all memoirs are incredibly boring? For the most part, who cares? Ah, but what the person did with what they learned, there's the rub. (P.S., the cheating part of "The Long Road" is 99% fictional – I set myself a challenge to write a cheating wife story, and "The Long Road" of a certain portion of my life is what emerged.)