Being Diane Page 2

  Chapter 2

  My Dad always said I needed to be either a Police Officer or a gigolo, someone that can’t make it on their own, that was his way of saying that I was pretty much worthless in his opinion. He had a work ethic that was if you are awake then you need to be working and working hard at manual labor since paper labor was not work as he called it. Muscles didn't come to me in the genetic traits department, what I got were long full eyelashes, dark full hair, fragile arms and full hips. My mother’s friends were always commenting on how pretty I was and that I should be a girl and not a guy. I often wondered if that was the case and as I was starting toward puberty, I began to question whether or not that was true. I think that my Dad was truly disappointed in me and was not able to accept me as I was and he continually tried to change me or mold me into a MANLY MAN.

  The week after the reading of the will was tough for me. Every afternoon I would come home from school and find that Dad had already drank two or three beers and was starting to get surly. He was a mean drunk and he seemed to find the dirtiest most demanding jobs for me to do, like cleaning out the burning barrel by hand. Then pulling weeds from the hog pen while he and my brother Ralph would go and work on some project or another. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't lazy or anything but, we always carried the barrel to the dump pit and emptied it instead of scooping each piece of trash out and putting it into a wheelbarrow and carrying it to the pit. We also had not had any pigs in years and were not going to get any, any time soon.

  I did all of these jobs and waited knowing that in a few days he would leave and go back on the road. He was an over the road truck driver. I guess that they didn't make a lot of money since we never had a lot of money and Mom had to work a job in town. I was always getting yelled at for wasting one thing or another. I was also always getting smacked by both Mom and Dad for back talking and how I looked. My Dad could not stand my long hair, but I didn’t see wasting money on a haircut, so I just let it grow out. He would constantly comment on how I looked like a girl or a queer or a fag, whatever that was. The worst thing that he did was to make me stand in front of him while he was drunk and listen to how I would never amount to anything worthwhile. I eventually got to where I could tolerate that more than when he became maudlin and would grab me and hug me while asking over and over, “You know I love you don't you?” The whole time he would be slobbering and crying. To this day, I cannot stand drunks.

  The power of suggestion is a powerful thing or so I have been told and it must be because of what has happened to me. I would rather play with dolls or play teatime than football or baseball. I loved looking at the Barbie’s in the catalogs and the tea sets. I enjoyed cooking and cleaning house more than gardening or mowing the yard. I was living up to the expectations of the time. Little did I know but expectations had little to do with it.

  Dad got really drunk one night, knee walking toe dragging drunk and started arguing with Mom. Then I heard it, the sound of violence, the sound that no kid wants to hear, the sound of flesh striking flesh a powerful 'SLAP' that brought everyone in the house awake. Then my mother started crying and Dad started screaming. I didn’t know what to do, I heard him coming down the hall screaming about how he was going to find out why I got the farm instead of Ralph. I knew that he was going to beat me to death, so I jumped out the open window, ran and hid. I could hear him looking for me, but he didn't find me, luckily. I was hiding in the cotton fields behind the house. I managed to stay hidden long enough for him to get tired of looking and go back in the house and go to bed. I came back up to the house, grabbed some clothes out of the dirty clothes hamper in the washhouse and my tennis shoes, and hid in the wood lot at the back of the farm. The next day I went to school like always and did not say anything to anybody about what happened. Therefore, I just went to the bus stop, waited for it to come and did not go home. I hid in the bushes when Mom came to drop Ralph off at the stop and then came out and caught the bus and went to school. Ralph handed me my books and did not say a word.

  It seemed as though Dad and Mom were mad at me about something and I did not know what it was. Ralph on the other hand was treating me better than ever. He was not picking on me, like he had been and now he even seemed relieved and relaxed more than he had ever. On the bus, a couple of bullies began picking on some of us littler guys and Ralph stopped them. He wasn't anybody to fool with when he got mad, I saw him beat the crap out of two guys one day that tried to steal his lunch money. My brother was a bad ass. Things rocked on like that for a while.

  Then my life changed completely. This is how it happened. My Dad was on the road like usual and we were getting ready for school as usual.