I’m your Huckleberry

I have always had some trouble with friendships. With other boys. And men. I
‘ve come to want them very badly but lose them, sometimes usually quite dramatically. Violently, more than once. That’s not important. I watched Tombstone over 100 times on video in the mid-nineties in my living room. The blinds were always set so that no light could get in anywhere throughout the house, my parents slept in separate beds and also did not speak to each other or me much either, if I had a brother I don’t remember. Turkey Creek asked Doc Holliday why he was out here fighting in the mud, getting shot at by Cowboys with the red sash, in fact what he said exactly was “what the hell you doing this for anyway?” and Doc said “because Wyatt Earp is my friend” and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson said “Hell, I’ve got lots of friends,” and Doc said:
I don’t. 
I cried right then there every time. I didn’t have lots {n}either. Neighborhood kids, well…John shot squirrels and killed them, skinned them, his mom cooked the meat, I was scared of guns and Andrew took me out to the woods, said “drop your bike here, we’ll walk the rest of the way,” and we walked the rest of the way and he dug a hole in the ground, stuck his penis in the hole and I watched him fuck the ground and cover up his seed when he’s done and he laughed and I didn’t and Steve punched me really very hard on the mouth, bloodied my lip, because I looked like I needed my ass kicked, he said and 
When Johnny Ringo said, “my fight’s not with you, Holliday” and Doc so pale, coughing up phlegm and blood says “I beg to differ, sir. We started a game we never got to finish Play for blood’ – remember” and oh my god Ringo’s face gets as pale as Doc’s about and just sheepishly says “Oh that. I was just foolin’ around.”
I wasn’t.
When I moved out of that house, I was sixteen I never went back. Some of those rooms bad things.
Say when.
We practiced what I could and
could not say to the doctor on the drive there every time.
Wyatt Earp looked out for Doc Holliday – he came in the saloon and said, “hitting it awful hard aren’t you?” and Doc said “Nonsense! I’ve not yet begun to defile myself” and I learned what that meant too.
I let a little green snake loose to live in my room hoped he’d grow to be a copperhead and bite his poison on my command. Wyatt has his brow furrowed-furled, expertly, with a masculine grace. 

Wyatt Earp:

What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?

Doc Holliday:

A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.

Wyatt Earp:

What does he want?

Doc Holliday:

Revenge.

Wyatt Earp:

For what?

Doc Holliday:

Bein’ born.

I still don’t either. Have a lot of friends. I’m writing a history of why they left or intend to besides. I envy Doc. Wyatt. The whole gang. I had friends once went West too. Some of them made it.
Writing is my revenge for bein’ born.  
There wasn’t grown people looking out, where I’m from.
I can’t think of anything else to tell you about Tombstone. I watched it a lot is all. During a certain time.
I sit alone and think about it sometimes. Think about sitting on the floor playing with Lincoln Logs until you hear the car pull in you got to find someplace to hide make yourself really small, oh I’m mixing up my memories again because some kinds of pain follow you around show up unannounced mid-day or first thing morning or squeamish night calls out to you, demands an encounter there was nothing but echoes all the way down the well. I’m hurt by it all, still, of course, who wouldn’t be, but I think about those friends that’ve left and I’m hurt by that too, figuring it’s me & there’s something wrong with me can’t be fixed but it’s also sort of ridiculous, kind of funny in a way, because

my fight’s not with them and I’ve not yet begun to defile myself.