Thinking About Angel Face Sneaking Out Late At Night When His Parents Are Fast Asleep. Maybe They Said

Thinking about Angel Face sneaking out late at night when his parents are fast asleep. Maybe they said goodnight to him, or even tucked him in, maybe they just ignored him. Ignored. That's how he felt, how he's felt for months, for his entire life, ever since he'd learned what being a man was. To be big, to be tough, to hit and be hit, to drink and watch TV and laugh and lust after women with men. But he wasn't a man, wasn't big or tough, or made from marble like he saw on the television set in his living room. He wasn't a man, was he?

He walked, walked through the night streets, past groups of grown men, drunk off of their asses, shoving against eachother, and not caring how disgusting it was to behave that way- those were men, that was a group of men, just like TV, just like everyone older than him at school. Big and tough and hairy.

Eventually, maybe he walked past a group of men, who were leaving some closed bar, some hoisting others up off the ground, holding them steady as they walked. But unlike the other groups, it wasn't because they were drunk. No, it was because they had been beaten, had hurt eachother, fought and won and lost and bruised and broken. It was real, not some movie, a real group of men, men just like he wanted to be. And, last in the group, a man stumbled out, dressed in a mismatched outfit, and colored sunglasses, dried blood crusted to his mouth and lips, ruining his shirt.

That was it. That's all that the boy had needed to see. Men, talking and laughing together, coming out of a bar after hurting eachother. He mapped out the final man permanently in his mind's eye, taking it all in, imagined himself beside him, just as beaten and ruined and somehow better than he was now. It was perfect.

He had to get a fake ID for next week, he thought to himself, had to be there, join in. He had to become a man, no matter what it did to him.