FLUFFER71

“The Haunting of Damon Wallace” – By Damon Wallace

There is a legend about a song that travels in the air. It has circled Earth for generations and endured the most brutal storms and witnessed the rise of man. It was here before the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu and the might of the Terracotta Army. For all its travels, however, few men have ever hummed this song. Most men cannot hear it; they are tone-deaf to the notes. Only the most powerful of men, the gentlest among us, can decipher the chords. Only he can remember the lyrics and recite the words to other men.

The Braveheart

“We all end up dead. It’s just a matter of how and why.” – William Wallace

I never considered myself the haunting kind, but lately I’ve found myself revisiting some ghosts of birthdays past through old creative endeavors of mine. I watched videos and listened to music I’d recorded over the years, and reread old journal entries, poems, and essays I’d written. As if astral projecting through space and time, I found myself reliving those periods of my life and tapped into emotions long since felt. I saw my past looking back at me, the man of the future, and remembered dreams of being a writer left unfulfilled.

This uninvited time travel to ghosts of birthdays past was triggered in April, after completing my 50th lap around the sun. While I repeat to myself that age is just a number, there was something about this milestone that gave me a deep sense of pause that I hadn’t encountered before; it was like being suspended in time and being forced to open my eyes, to look back on my life so that I might take this more purposeful step forward.

Where many men have children and grandchildren at this juncture in time, I am untethered, a single gay man with no children to pass on my name. A truth that was only amplified six months ago when I watched my father pass away. While I abhor children, there was a sense of burden that came with my father’s passing, an acceptance that on the tree of life I was a branch that dead ends, the final chapter of a book that began in a garden lifetimes ago.

Call it a case of ancestral obligation, but I don’t want our story to end with the curtains drawing on a man slumped over a broken heart, mourning a life not lived to it’s potential. I am a Braveheart by name, after all, and today the mic beckons for me.

Standing alone on this open road that I traveled with many, I find myself wondering about the kind of the legacy I’ll leave behind with no one to tell my story. If it were written today, I’d likely be remembered as a kind and agreeable man, which are characteristics I proudly wear as a badge of honor, one that I don’t intend to surrender.

Over the past half century, I’ve encountered many bombastic men with fragile egos. And as I do with any child, I entertain their tantrums, their desperate need to be heard, because as a man I understand the primal need to be the loudest voice in the room. But of the many truths I’ve learned so far in this lifetime, it’s that being kind requires a dignified strength, discipline and restraint that is rarely celebrated. To be a gentleman, after all, you have to be willing to sacrifice a part of your ego; the part of me that has to be better than you, the part that doesn’t listen and makes assumptions, that has to be right to prove you wrong.

To truly be a man more brave, a man must first be honest with himself, which brings me to this moment of candor. In looking back on my life, I wish I’d been as gentle on myself as I’d been to others. While I was accommodating, lighthearted, and gracious with you, behind my agreeable smile there was a man at war. And as those closest to me may have likely surmised by the underlying sadness in my eyes, I was exhausted, a man losing the battle from within, the will to dream.

The Saboteur

“If the battles before us are fought arming men against women, blacks against whites, straights against gays, Christians against Muslims, Lady Gaga fans against Madonna fans, Democrats against Republicans, etc… We will all eventually lose in a game of mutually assured destruction. Before our looming day of judgement, we owe the almighty and each other this moment of candor. The battle before us – always has been, and forever will be – a battle fought between love and hate, the battle from within…” ~ “Revelations of an Idolater”, April 2012

To encapsulate my 50th birthday, I chose to spotlight my lifelong nemesis, my saboteur; that inner critic in me that has silently waged war on my dreams without mercy and interfered in my relationships my entire life. I can say with conviction, I’ve never met a man more cruel or malice. Like some bully policing my thoughts – shining a flashlight on my insecurities, kicking over sandcastles with his combat boots, tearing up my poems and photos in disgust – my saboteur, alone, has censored me for half a century.

Where my saboteur is concerned, no one wants to hear what I have to say. The very act of me writing these words is laughable. I’m foolish for misinterpreting the kindness of others. People laugh at me, and nobody wants to be with me. There’s a reason I’m single. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t deserve the affections of a kind and decent man, let alone one attractive…

Saboteur Summary: I am incapable of living, unworthy of love.

The Dreamer

“Over the past few years, I’ve made it my mantra to honor the moment, which is to say – not harp on the past or worry about the future. What is done is done, and what will be will be. It’s one of the reasons I’ve come to appreciate working out, because when I am pushing my physical limits, I am painfully present and in the moment. It’s just Damon, doing his best to defy gravity.” ~ “Pushing Back”, August 2019

When I started working out 5 years ago, it was hard to focus on my trainer over the relentless heckling from within. My saboteur was at his worst back then, but to his credit he had plenty of ammunition. I’d proven countless times before, I didn’t have the stamina, fight, or discipline to do right by me. I should just spare myself the embarrassment at the gym and return to my couch, where I can dream of happier days and a better me from the comfort of my home, idolizing icons braver than me.

Perhaps I grew tone deaf to my saboteur’s jeers, but with more time, determination, and discipline at the gym, I started to notice something. My saboteur’s voice sounded more frail; his snarky conviction was rattled… I was intimidating him, proving him wrong. By pushing back in the physical realm, I’d done what I once thought impossible; I’d shoved the voice in my head into a corner. Turns out my saboteur had a weakness, after all, endorphins earned.

The Showdown – 2020 😱

“I am broken by the loneliness of this quarantine, but I will be a better man for having experienced it. I am no stranger to plagues nor the divisiveness and loneliness they invoke. I’ve been humbled by nature before, and I am comforted in knowing, like before, I will emerge from this house wiser, more appreciative, humble, kind and determined.”
~ “Broken”, August 2020

I will never stop pushing back where my saboteur is concerned. There were mornings where the need to hush his boos and hisses, alone, escorted me to the gym in the pre-dawn hours. I say this with confidence having just weathered 2020, having just endured a series of trials while alone in quarantine: a finalized divorce, getting sick from COVID-19 in March, the death of my 14 year-old dog in August, and watching my father die over FaceTime in November.

I paced my empty house a lot in 2020, haunted by footsteps no longer present, the paws no longer clacking at my side on the hardwood floors. For the last 3 months of his life, I carried my dog, Bruno, from his bed to the yard because he’d grown so weak with age. He was the last thing bridging me to my thirties, the one who’d remained at my side the longest, unconditionally. A week before putting him to sleep, I sobbed hysterically in my backyard late at night, while hunched over Bruno’s frail body, after he’d stumbled, collapsed, couldn’t get back up and, most painful of all, he didn’t have the heart to look me in the eye. With his passing, my life would be purged of all I had known and loved in my forties. Parting with Bruno was an especially difficult goodbye, but it would pale to the goodbye and heartbreak coming three months later with the passing of my dad.

While I was emotionally broken in 2020, I never stopped working out. I only increased my regimen. Instead of working out to escape my pain, I found myself working out to champion it. It’s because of my perseverance in hard times, I will most remember 2020 as the year I brought a crow bar to my saboteur’s party, the year the Dreamer came out on top, unicorn armor unscathed.

I know my saboteur will continue to reek havoc on my life. However momentary my victories may be, I’ve gained defenses my saboteur can’t defeat in the end, unless I surrender. I’ve got the respect of the gentleman in the mirror, and a new perspective in which I see the world with more color, appreciation and awareness.

Perhaps it’s this new perspective on life that triggered old emotions when I reached back beyond 2020. The contrast between then and now only grew more stark the further I reached back in time. While I was looking better physically, as I revisited my youth though old poems and essays, I realized that there were pieces of me still wounded, ghosts ensnared in traps set by my saboteur decades ago, needing to be acknowledged, memorialized, and freed.

Ghosts of Birthdays Past

While working out may be an act of bravery for some, it alone doesn’t make me a brave man. To have that kind of consideration, a man must also be willing to let his guard down. For a Braveheart, there is no act more honorable; vulnerability is the glue that binds the swords to his heart. Without it, the swords will attack, the heart will flee, and a man will be pulled back into the shadows by his saboteur.

As I traveled within to seek understanding about myself, I did so knowing that my introspection wouldn’t be productive unless I remained accountable for my past inactions. I needed to swap out my rose-tinted glasses for a magnifying glass and challenge myself to remove circumstances beyond my control from the equation, to not see myself as a victim of the times I lived in, finding all that’s wrong, bad, and unjust to validate my unfulfilled dreams.

After revisiting the battlegrounds of my past and examining the shackles that bound me for decades, I reached a somber conclusion. I am the creator of this post-apocalyptic horror show. I gave life to monsters that did not exist, and worst of all – I emboldened them and chose not to cross them. In effect, I chose not to save myself.

But why?

The Poem & The Stalker – 1985

“The wind on my face blows so cold, I dedicate this poem to a man 40 years old. One day, this man will write about a teenager and his courageous fight. He’ll look at me, smile and say – We made it kid. Time to Play.” – Time to Play, 1985

This isn’t my first birthday time capsule. That distinction goes to the poem above that I wrote when I was 14, which I then dedicated to the man I’d be at 40.

When I wrote “Time To Play”, I chose 40 because I feared I wouldn’t live to see such a ripe old age as a gay man. I was part of the first generation of gay teenage boys to sexually awaken in a world with AIDS in it, and I was terrified. Being raised Catholic, the emerging plague seemed more biblical in nature, like something out of Sodom and Gomorrah turning all the gay men to dust. To compensate for my fear of AIDS, I wrote a lot poetry, poems about evading my stalker, who I was convinced I’d one day succumb to if I lived life as a gay man.

Should I live to see 2011, on the other hand, I was a survivor, and I hoped the poem would find me courageous and brave, strong enough to transcend time and lift a frightened teenager from his angst by telling his tale. Despite my fear of AIDS at 14 and the likely discrimination I’d face, being gay ultimately felt more honorable and brave. The alternative lifestyle involved me lying to everyone I know and love, pretending to be husband to a woman that would never have all of me and being haunted by the reflection of myself in my children’s eyes.

In retrospect, the question before me was one many teenage boys are left to ponder in the dark – Was I willing to die young for freedom?

Return to Sender – 2011

The well intended poem was not well received. 2011 found me unemployed, overweight and depressed. The poem of yesteryear solidified what I’d already been struggling with at the time; while alive, I was lost in life, certainly not a man worthy of tribute or aspirations.

Given my open schedule, however, I heeded my young advice and took some time to play while seeking employment. I got off the couch, turned off the news, learned some new software programs and recorded a track in response to the poem I’d written 26 years prior. I made a video to mark the looming day, which consisted of me dancing to my track in front of a camera. However awkward and uncomfortable, the process of creating music and a video for a younger version of me ended up being cathartic; it went on to spawn another creative endeavor of mine, cellardoors.me, which I used as an incubator to bring a short story of mine, “The Ambassador”, to life.

Despite the outburst of creativity, it was my saboteur who claimed victory in the end. While I may have responded in heart and created a video tribute to younger me, I did so while blurring myself out in the video, because I couldn’t stand the image of me; I didn’t want the kid to see the fat oaf I’d become. For similar reasons, shortly after turning 40, I retired Cellar Doors. In addition to being embarrassed of my weight, the process of sharing my work was nothing short of torture, which my saboteur reveled in.

This time capsule is both my reckoning and an exorcism. While younger versions of me loved being expressive and wanted to be heard, the flickering lights of their imagination never escaped beyond the cellar doors; each questioned their voice and misunderstood their purpose, refused to find a way out of their scary circumstances. They lacked the conviction to dream out loud, thought it more heroic to carry their burdens in silence. As a result, they – along with a dyslexic 20 year-old majoring in fiction writing, who questioned his ability to express a point – gave up. They shrank into their shadows and surrendered to the times in which they lived, hoping instead to be saved by someone else on another day under better conditions.

The greatest gift bestowed upon me at 50 was the realization that it’s not my saboteur I need to fear but my dreams themselves. While not as outwardly cruel as my saboteur, dreams are far more dubious and sinister without action, nothing more than wilted illusions we carry to the grave, blinded by a brilliance that radiated for you alone.

The Destined Waltz – 2001

There is another ghost I’ve yet to set free, the one most deserving of liberation, who has kept me anchored in darkness for the last 20 years. He lurks in that void in time that I don’t speak about, a period of my life that my decades orbit in silence like a black hole. Releasing this ghost is me at my most vulnerable, a fusing of swords to my heart. He is, simply put, the most wounded part of me, the part I was ashamed of, the ghost I turned my back on that needed me most, a man I refused to acknowledge let alone take time to heal. As far as I was concerned back then, this man made his bed. He is weak, nothing more than a promise fulfilled.

The ghost I’m referring to is me at 30, having a cigarette on the balcony of my penthouse at 2:00 AM, taking in the haloed flicker of the San Francisco skyline through my tears. I took time that night to reflect on the good times had in the 90’s and the meteoric rise of a career that landed me in 2001. While it was a year when many kingdoms came crumbling to the ground, my downfall began in April of that year, when I found myself alone on a rooftop, sharing a cigarette with my childhood stalker. It was a meeting written in the stars, a waltz 16 years in the making. Getting AIDS was the one childhood promise I saw through, my saboteur saw to that back in the summer of ‘94, when I first got infected with HIV.

My Childhood Companion – 1970’s

“To all the good Christians spewing condemnation and hate, I challenge you to be more Christlike: forgive the sinners, care for the poor, and embrace your lepers. But get your bible out of my face. Don’t hide behind words and tell me you’re a good Christian. Prove it. Be more like Jesus and strive to make the world a better place. Choose love over hate, starting with yourself.” ~ “The Good Christian”, September 2008

I’ll let you in on a childhood secret, Jesus Christ was my first superhero. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to the man on the cross. When other boys dreamed of being astronauts, athletes, cowboys and G.I. Joes, I wanted to be a priest. It wasn’t so much of a stretch; I was raised Roman Catholic, and the family was always singing Jesus’s praises. Best of all, should I work really hard at being a priest, while I might not be known for my might like other boys, I’d have superpowers, mainly the ability to commune with God. What the astronauts, athletes, cowboys and G.I. Joes failed to realize was, after conquering the moon, defeating enemies, and winning battles, I’d be the one leading them home.

When I hit adolescence, my relationship with the almighty grew strained. Before coming out gay to anyone, I came out to God. I asked him to forgive my sinful thoughts and give me the strength to overcome my urges. My efforts proved to be futile, however. With time, my desires only grew stronger and confiding in Jesus became increasingly awkward. Around him, I felt defeated and perverse, undeserving of his friendship and attention.

I drifted away from my childhood companion over time, convinced it was best for us both. I had some deep emotions to reconcile at a young age. It was the point in my life when I chose to follow the beat of my heart over the words of other men written, spoken, and sung, however loud and convincing.

After getting diagnosed with full blown AIDS in 2001, I threw in the white flag and surrendered to my saboteur, effectively handing over the keys to my life and embarking on an undiagnosed depression that would last well over a decade and contribute to my waistline and the relationships that find me alone at 50.

Getting AIDS at 30 only reinforced the narrative looping in my head for over 15 years, which I heard reinforced in the news, my church, and adult conversations as a teenager. I deserved to be sick. I understood my place in the world where others were concerned, those seeds were planted at the onset of AIDS. Gay men are deviants, sinners worthy of the plague. There was no confusion. AIDS was my cross the bear, my burden to carry and lesson to learn.

The Revelation

You are capable at life, deserving of love, and have no one’s expectations to exceed but your own. What I would give for younger me to comprehend the very sentiments I write today. To put into perspective the depth of my shame, my father died 6 months ago from COVID-19 never knowing that I was HIV+. He’ll never know of my struggles, the time in my life that almost broke me as a man. He’ll never read these words to know that I regret not being a son more forthright.

I only told my mother about my diagnosis of 20 years last week. I explained that I didn’t tell her back then because I didn’t want to worry her. While true, there was another unspoken reason I didn’t speak up over the past 20 years – shame, fear of the embarrassing my family, blemishing the Wallace name. Instead, I thought it better to be less truthful, to carry my heartache for 2 decades and deny myself the healing only a mother can provide.

After disclosing my condition to my mother, something occurred to me. I once worried that if I pretended to be a straight man, living a lie would haunt me. Turns out, the road less traveled wasn’t so different after all. I may not have had lie to a wife, but I was still living a lie as if I was ashamed nonetheless. While I didn’t have children to contend with, I found the haunted reflection of myself in my parent’s eyes instead, and it rattled me. It proved with a finality that life is ultimately about perspective, and to date I’d chosen the wrong one, one of a victim.

The devil is in the details. While astral projecting and revisiting the youngest of me, I learned, perhaps, the most valuable lesson so far on my 50 laps around the sun. I realize now, when I parted ways with my childhood companion was the very moment that I was introduced to the one who would wage a holy war on my psyche in the decades ahead – my saboteur.

My childhood companion never left me; that beat I felt tugging in my heart was divinity itself, illuminating the opening road before me. Where I went wrong in my first 50 years was fearing the path before me, thinking God didn’t love me because I was gay. It was a deep seeded realization. I haven’t step foot inside of a church in years, but my identity then became the foundation in which my other decades were constructed. Like many gay people, I was guilty of allowing others to paint my world in their colors. I allowed dogma to influence my identity and self worth, which only emboldened my saboteur to define my most intimate relationship of all, my relationship with God.

I am an adult, capable of critical thinking. I don’t need to be controlled by anyone but me, least of all organized religions and media empires that tell me what to think and who to hate, institutions that ultimately profit off people being addicted to fear.

I am not a religious man, but I believe in the sun, moon, and the stars. I believe in divinity, that there are angels guiding all of us, lighting the path with celestial signs we can either engage or ignore. I believe, like that song that travels through the air seeking people to hear, we need to fight the urge to be the loudest voice in the room and take more time to listen to each other. As a gentleman reserved and introspective, I can assure you, it’s a lot easier to listen than talk.

Over the past 50 years, I’ve listened with an open mind and heart to others that have accompanied me on this journey. It’s because of them, I understand the world to be far more kind and forgiving than we give it credit, which is understandable given all the static being pumped into the air by corrupt men, reminding us all to fear life and beware of each other.

Should you find yourself taken aback by my saboteur’s reign of destruction and influence, then I reserve a parting truth for you. As cruel and destructive as my saboteur was to me, behind every agreeable smile you encounter may very well be someone at war with themselves. While my saboteur was hellbent on holding me hostage, leading me astray, and sabotaging my relationships, I only skimmed the parameters of my darkness. Rest assured, deep in that forest that haunts us, there are monsters more sinister, conniving and insidious than mine, feeding on dreams silently from within. Or, as William Wallace himself put it, “Everyone dies, but not everyone lives.”

Dawn at Dusk

When I sent my mother the video I made for this time capsule, she responded, “I hope you were drunk when you sent this. I deleted it and suggest you do the same.”

I was hurt by the text and it derailed my writing by a day. I recognized I’d put my mom through a lot with my disclosure the week prior and shared a draft of this essay with her alone before finalizing. And perhaps, where I may be used to seeing men in harnesses, my mother was not. Regardless, we were seeing the video from two different perspectives. She saw a man shaming himself, where I saw a man liberating himself.

I made the video for this time capsule a couple of weeks ago, and it ended up becoming the trigger that led to weeks of introspection and this essay. I originally recorded the track “Awakening” in 2011, when I also recorded “Time to Play”. The making of the video now was my way of doing right by me at 40, when I lacked confidence and blurred out my image because I didn’t like the image of myself. It was my way of reaching back in time, to be the 50 year-old man I know, unequivocally, would make this 14-year old man proud.

My mom went on to say that while she doesn’t approve of the video, she approves of me, but not before slipping in a “You should think about others more.” While it doesn’t bring me pleasure to say my mother’s wrong, she was. Thinking of others was all I’ve ever done, herself included, to the point of paralysis and at the cost of me being more creative and expressive. Worrying about other people’s opinions was something my saboteur made me do. If I didn’t include the minute long video with the time capsule, it would discredit this essay and cost me my Braveheart badge. I own my sins; the days of shame are over. This is my time capsule, after all, the gospel according to Damon. And I am but a sinner in a garden of serpents seeking salvation.

The sun appears most brilliant when it breaks through the clouds, when our eyes first adjust to the brightness. This is me waking up alone at 50, opening my eyes to dawn at dusk, taking steps down a road I have traveled with many, shadow behind me. Some will call it a mid-life crisis, the kids may call it a glow up, but I prefer to see it as the day a kind and agreeable man decided to add bold to his portfolio, the moment a gentleman upgraded his self-worth to the status of Braveheart.

No one is going to tell my story if I don’t. I’m not a victim of the times I live in. I’m the gentleman warrior; I survived not one, but two plagues. This is me being liberated of my ghosts and my saboteur to find the road illuminated with angels, nudging me onward to the beginning of the end, the final chapter in a story that began in a garden of serpents lifetimes ago.

I’m reclaiming my ego, all of it. This is me proving me wrong.