Today has been a day of reflection unlike any I've had in recent memory. We celebrated Easter with the typical trappings of baskets and fake green grass that has been the tradition for every year I've been alive.

A lot of time has passed since 1996. Krista, Aric, Aunt Karin, Uncle Mark, Mom, Dad and I were reminded of it as we watched old movies of bygone holidays. We've grown up so much, we're so different, we're a million other cliches, but we're also very human; and thus, we're susceptible to a million more.

I taped over a part of Easter '97, which took place in Ohio, at some point. I'm an asshole. How was one episode of a stupid soap opera more important than my family's history? I guess I wanted to replace those years so badly that I not only removed the entries from my mind, I was cavalier about erasing them on tape, too. I didn't even think about who's feelings and memories it could hurt.

Such an asshole.

No grudges were held for my indiscretion with a tape. So little fear of retribution from my kin, in fact, that Krista was trusted with putting a hole in my body. A second cartilage piercing to match hers. Krista did it with a needle and an orange... my first new piercing since Trev, Matt, and I went and got my nipple pierced in July or August of 2001.

The hole in my nipple is still open, but no ring resides in it. I lost the metallic memory marker in a boy named Sebastian's apartment this summer. I met him in a dimly lit hotel party where a drag queen named Simone held court, and the party goers reveled, tweaked, and made complete asses of themselves, myself included. I swirled, passed out, and was taken care of by Sebastian at that gathering, one of the few times I needed Mike-sitting at a party. He kept the drag queen away from me, I reckon claiming me as his own in some sort of sick drug addict ritualistic way. I hadn't slept in 5 days.

We had hit it off earlier, I was taken by the glint his eyes displayed, though they were nearly covered by an angora kangol hat. He was the type of boy you weren't sure whether to hire to paint your fence or invite inside to paint the town, the kind who might use his knife for your defense or for worse. It didn't hardly much matter which you desired more, there was no short end to his stick. There's little question to those that know me why I was drawn in; He was a cup game, quick figure eights and tempestuous transition, daring your eyes to blink.

No, I should have known. I liked that he wrapped my mind up in wit, tied it up, and held it dear. I liked how the shadows ended before his lips began, leaving me with the anticipation of each well formed word. I wanted to listen, I wanted to taste.

He wanted me, too. My time in Sebastian's company in any capacity was around two months, and he led me to the social pools in which I nearly drowned. He himself proved to a horrible floatation device, one who preferred to sit at the bottom rather than rise to the top. He was a drug addict, with a far more ferocious addiction than my own.

He was also missing pieces of his soul that I could never repair; parents, best friends, a traitorous nature, and tina.

He left my life easily enough, an amputation necessary and grotesque for all the ways a mind can quiver and become weak for a drug that was flesh and blood.

I saw him online today. His bio said "4 Rnt."

There were rumors that got back to me almost as soon as I started speaking about him to others. All signs pointed to the fact that Sebastian had escorted previously. I checked my facts. They all pointed to prostitution, but I wanted to believe him when he told me they were untrue.

I can't make light of my own allowed delusions... I did, actually, believe him. I let myself be lied to. I let him meet my mother. I let him sleep in my bed, and told him he had a place to go if he needed to clean up. I wanted to believe I could help wash away the filth of addiction as easily as one wipes oil from the bridge of their nose. I wanted to believe that I wasn't feeling deep emotions for a liar and a whore.

I couldn't care less if he sold his body for money. I wish he hadn't sold his integrity. I wish he hadn't sold me out. I wish he hadn't lied to me.

I wish that holes in my body weren't reminders of holes in my soul. Holes in my own integrity. Holes in my own honesty.

I might have a thousand wishes, but I'll be damned if I'll rub a thousand lamps. Let him do that.

I can't tape over last year any more than I can erase myself. Let the sty in my third eye see skewed versions of myself, they can't be any worse than lies I believed or the lies I told myself and then repeated to others. Fuck Sebastian. I hope everytime he blows someone, he remembers blowing out the candles in my room before climbing to bed, remembers what my face looked like as I went down on Justin, and I hope he feels in his sleep, when he does sleep, what my lips felt like on his.

I hope he waits in anticipation for the taste of me. Let my only vengeance be my very lack of it.

Hit play.