AN OPEN BOOK.......JUDGE AWAY

                     I was the kid you passed around your little circle of friends. I would get a new pair of Calvins or a leather jacket with a few hundred bucks in the pockets....it was the 80's so sex was a stigma that carried a death sentence. I didn't care about that cash in the pocket and would give it back numerous times to the dismay of some and to others they saw how I truly felt. I was the boy you brought home when the lover was gone or the wife away with family. I was alone....my family was torn apart by alcoholism and my rage....I wanted to hear the words"I Love you".......what I got was the years of being used as the boy toy who eventually feel in love with a baggie of coke,a bottle of Stoli and degradation. I spent so long in the shadows of an alley or the dank hallways of decrepit bathhouse's, coming home in the mornings while the city came alive for the average workday. I would be the one on the subway car who smelled of liquor or the crystal meth wafting from his skin. I could stare right through you and you at me.....it was that stare you gave me that would cement my fate of hopelessness. How could I let you use me like that. I was good enough to pull into a cramp cubicle for a few dollars in quarters while you had me do things you would never tell your friends.....and a few hours later I would be the type of filth you despised as you talked to your friends  you hissed my name as I would pass in the club or bar. I was an open book who made no qualms of where he was and where I was going. I lost that pride somewhere in my youth when it was torn from me physically for the sake of a quick fuck.
I don't know why now after years of struggling do I have to prove to others that I am worthy to sit at their table. I have walked away from beautiful friendships because I know their friends look at me with their own disgust....I have fought to be where I am today. I lost my youth to the relentless pursuit of that one think I lacked ......love. It was not love that I needed but the self esteem others seemed more than happy to take away with their vicious words. It was a wall of iron I built around myself that rose far above the clouds to turn my soul icy from the lack of sun. It was the death of the woman who when I told her I loved her......her reply was "Me too"....Mom's death left me with courage to get back what was rightfully mine and take this world on with a mother-fucking vengeance . Self Esteem is what has given me the courage to go out their an pursue my college degree and a Master's in Psychology, it gave me the guts to tell a stranger how I felt only to be rebuffed.....but you know what I did it and I never would of if it wasn't for this thing called esteem.
So now I find myself being judged for someone I was five years ago and what's funny in a program that is all about forgiveness and by people who have time.....Hypocrisy can be blissful at times and other times like this downright pathetic. In the immortal words of Faye Dunaway as the Pepsi toting aging diva Joan Crawford "DON'T FUCK WITH ME FELLAS".......I'll just leave it at that.