Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [41]
Nancy, Wesley, and Bobby are here in my bedroom. We’re listening to Kim Carnes’s song “Bette Davis Eyes.” Bobby’s presently looking for work. He says his choice of life is on and off from day to day. He went over to Berkeley last night to watch Alice in Wonderland. He got home around 12. He left at 6:30 to 7 wearing his Hayward Bowling shirt, a light turquoise with his name on it, Bob. He got it at the thrifty Salvation Army Store in Pleasant Hill along with his skinny, skinny black tie, his faded Levi’s and Nike’s.
Bobby’s life seems to be coming along fine. When I remember to say my prayers he is ALWAYS in the top 10. Bobby’s a good guy, just a little confused and possibly off the Lord’s path. And when he starts talking with his friends they all have him believing we’re bent, narrow-minded. Bullshit.
This was a month before Bobby’s eighteenth birthday. His own entries during that period make it clear that he was not coming along fine at all. They reflect the emotional state of someone without a compass. He had a keen mind; he was intelligent enough to grasp the irony of his dilemma and to assert every ounce of his will to navigate his way out. But his determination and drive were sabotaged by overwhelming feelings of guilt, sinfulness, and self-contempt. These factors combined to keep him in a depressed state far more intense than his mother or anyone else perceived. This is the way it went for Bobby shortly before his eighteenth birthday and during the first half of his nineteenth year:
May 1, you really know how to make yourself unhappy, did you know that? Half of you despises the world and the other half tries so hard to be a part of that world…. You must feel a need to punish yourself. Is that why you do the things you do? Ask yourself this, Do I really deserve to be punished? And the worst part of it is that you know exactly how to punish yourself…. What will it take to satisfy you? Why don’t you just kill yourself and get it over with? That’s exactly what you’re doing. Only you’re doing it slowly and painfully.
May 5. I have to get up at 6:30 and here I am watching some Ethel Merman movie, eating crackers and drinking Pepsi. God, what a combo. It’s 1:30, always around this time of night I get very philosophic. I was just wondering if man would be better off if he had no sex drive. Babies would be grown in greenhouses as though they were tulips; some with blue eyes, some green, some hazel. Men wouldn’t kill each other over women and women wouldn’t kill each other over men. Oh, and vice versa, if you get my drift.
People would like each other for their inner beauty and admirable qualities such as honesty and loyalty…. Why couldn’t God have thought up a much more simple way for man to reproduce?
July 23. I think I only write when I’m depressed. Right now I just want to the, just die…. I sit here groveling and wonder who in the fuck is up there watching. Is there anyone? I really doubt it. Sometimes I get so mad I feel like I could just scream loud enough for God to hear me: “What in the fuck do you think you’re doing sitting on your ass just watching the damn mess you created down here?” But I guess it just echoes around, bouncing from cloud to cloud unheard by anyone.
September 27. Last nite I attended a tea party in Berkeley. Everything was going wonderfully until this little queen started making moves on me. God! I never know how to react…. Anyway, as usual I couldn’t say no, and the rest isn’t history…. I guess at the time my rationale was that he really wanted me. I mean he wouldn’t give up, so I figured, “Give him a piece” and maybe he’ll leave you alone. Oh, God, he was gross, and the worst thing about it is that boys can’t fake it quite as well as girls!
September 27. Ed is unhappy with my situation. Oh, he tries to hide it but I can tell it tears him up inside to know about my “carnal” wheeling and dealing. But what can I do? I don’t know.
September 29. 7 didn’t go to work today because of my sore throat. I read in a book that you can get gonorrhea of the