The Outsiders - Feel

They always look at me the same way. “Look at that punk kid. He’ll never make it. He’ll never be anything.” I can always hear it. They never say it. It radiates from their eyes like sunlight. It’s always the same damn thing. After awhile, I stopped caring. I started going numb.

I used to feel, once upon a time. I used to know joy, somewhat, but most of the time, I was crying. Don’t start calling me a wuss or nothin’ either. When you’ve grown up where I’ve grown up, you begin to understand. It was hard not to break down every night back then. Every day a friend of mine or someone else close to me would end up on the news, dead. That’s pretty hard to take at nine years old. I’d come home, cold and sick from breathin’ death and look for something to make me feel better. I’d beg my father for comfort and he’d just tell me to shut up; go back to his true love of the day, be it beer or cocaine or some floozy off the street.

That’s why. That’s why I got tough. I always knew it was smart. I got sick of being hurt all the time. I got out. I ran off to Oklahoma, and I became a grease. It was different, being able to trust some guys that I’d actually see the next day, and not at some cheap funeral. It was weird; I saw a little bit of me in all of them. That was wasn’t the worst of it either. I didn’t want to see me in them at all…

The scariest part was that I started to feel again, only a little, but enough. I sympathized with the kid with my eyes, the same face I carried in my youth. That boy overwhelmed me with hurt. The pain had always been there, of course, but I locked it away, dammed it up in a cold, stony place, letting it build and build, feeding off my denial. I wanted to feel, to actually crack a smile or laugh, but I didn’t want to hurt at all. Call me picky if you want, but that’s who I am. So the moment it broke through, the pain that struck me, the moment the kid faded away, I lost my mind.

So here I am, with an unloaded gun in my hand, lit up like a fallen angel in an old, orange streetlight, and for the first time in a long time, I’m smiling. “I’m comin’, Johnnycake,” I think to myself. “I’m comin’…” I’m looking the police in the face, their eyes on me like cold, Socs’ eyes saying, “Look at that punk kid. He’ll never make it. He’ll never be anything.” And they’re right. I won’t. I don ‘t want to. That’s what it’s like when you feel. A pain blasts through my body, piercing through years of hardened skin, and I relish in it. The physical pain’s never that bad. Hell, I didn’t even feel my arm until now. It doesn’t matter anymore. This is more than I’ve ever felt, and it’s like a drug. Maybe I’m not smart after all…

But I always get what I want.

END