The unseen part III #52essays2017 week 4

Confusion and uncertainty was what I came to know as I tried to juggle and process these feelings I had with my innate ability to see the unseen and interact to some degree in what seemed like a one way street. I saw them, the others from the invisible realm they controlled everything else. I had no power, I had no way to escape or manipulate the situations in which we seemed to meet and clash. I knew that I had been told my faith would see me through any tough situation and since I went to church three times a week and I prayed often, attended several modes of bible study as well as went door to door to preach the "good news" or even woke up two hours earlier on school days and preached at the local Brentwood train station. I knew that had to account for something, I mean God was the reader of hearts was he not? I must have been defective, something was wrong with me. I was not good enough. This is what I learned.

The unseen encounters did not go away. It was a part of who I was. My friends had come to know this about me and most ignored it while others were intrigued by it. I was simply trying to get by being normal as possible.
My mother often reminded me that she too was hip to the notion of the unseen world and that which became visible at times in this one. Let me delve into the sensitive subject of my spiritual gifts and their parallel with my sexuality.

Part of my understanding of myself extended into other areas of my life, that shaded augmented understanding that included the awareness of my "differences". I was still living at home in my late teens and I was not comfortable to discuss my sexuality with anyone I lived with. My parents were severely homo phobic. Puerto Ricans of a certain age and time where gays were seen as problematic as drug dealers, prostitutes and other stigmatized groups. I played the game, I was friends with the most beautiful of girls, I made out with a few, I had sex with some when their straight boyfriends left for the night. I connected to women intimately, they were always holders of safe space for me to just be and likewise I provided the same safe haven for them. Even if that was physically it was an honor to be allowed into the safest place they could offer, their body. However, I always felt off ... I couldn't put my finger on it but something was always missing in the sexual exchange. Sure we both got off, sure we both had inflated egos as we got each other to climax. Something never felt right, it was sexual and highly charged but it was plutonic at most. I might as well gave just made them a sandwhich and enjoyed the notion of them enjoying its consumption. I longed to explore my sexuality, to kiss the boy to perhaps interact intimately the way I was with my lady friends. This will however be discussed in another essay.

When I was 17 years old (or so) I had started volunteering at a local LGBT community Center in Bay Shore. I met this whit boy named Michael. He was Italian, he was short, he had thick ass glasses but decent frames, he was cocky in the weirdest way that blended with a street edge that both annoyed me and attracted be thoroughly. One night after my volunteer shift was over he asked to hang out with me. After cleaning up the youth center we had went to the local diner, and spent time walking the main street of Bay Shore. Some where in our play fighting banter he leaned in real close and kissed me. It was my first kiss with a boy. His lips were much softer than I thought they would be he acted like it was no big thing. Something he needed to do and get off his chest or out of his system. For me I was mesmerized and elated, someone wanted to kiss me. ME? I remembered everything about that moment, what cars were parked, what color his shirt was, what he smelled like.. This I lived on, a brief memory of something wonderful I shared with a boy I thought was attractive and actually found me attractive. For once I wasn't the fat kid who was chill to hang out with and laugh, I was actually attractive to some one. This was semi short lived as I got home that evening and my mother was up in her vata (house coat). She was sitting in the kitchen sipping tea and reading something. When I walked through the door, she looked at me shrewdly and put down her reading material. She said to me, " David you need to be careful in these streets late at night. I had a 'dream' that some white boy was all up in your face. He had thick glasses a red shirt and you were out in the street and I couldn't tell if he was up in your face to fight you or something else.."
MY jaw dropped! I stammered briefly but laughed her off and told her she was crazy and funny, that I knew how to take care of my self if I needed to. I walked up to my room to be paranoid. My mother was in East Brentwood I was all the way in central Bayshore and no way she would be out the house spying on me or anything, especially since she didn't drive. This was another one of her clear and concise visions, she either saw what me and Michael were actually doing or it was not as clear as she admitted to receiving the vision.

In my sexual exploration I had hid many things, sex toys, detailed notes some may have wrote me and I kept... my mother would find these things and be upset because I was harboring "immoral things" under their roof. What she did not realize in her anger was something she admitted to while lost in emotion, "THEY kept telling me.." and then the sentence would end in "To look in your third draw behind your underwear" or "in your closet behind the shoes you keep in the back". Whoever "THEY" were, they were mighty talkative and nosey as hell. I knew better than to question her in these moments and most times I could not or did not want to bring up whatever incurred her wrath.

Once I was in Mount Vernon hanging out with a fellow band mate and friends, and it was late. Hours where parents slept and their semi grown children tip toed quietly getting dressed or allowing guest in to use the bathroom as we made our way out to hang. My friends and I went to his cousins house and we waited in the dark entry way of what would have been the living room. The light shone from his room which was several feet away and only slightly illuminated the room in which we stood. My friend excused himself to use the restroom, I was left alone waiting in the living room while the cousin was changing in his room. That is when this old lady short in stature, with white cropped hair, red wool knit cardigan and blue jeans walked through the living room past me and into the lit hall way. In mid stride she turned her head my way making eye contact with me but never said a word to me. When my friend and his cousin had come back to the living room I turned to the cousin and said, " Yo, I think we woke your moms or someone." He looked puzzled. With a face that showed confusion he responded, "What moms? What are you talking about?" I was now battling my own confusion, I know what I saw. So I said, "Yo, the short old lady in the red sweater and blur jeans that just walked through here a few minutes before and walked into that room next to yours. I think we woke her or something." He visibly blanched a bit. He turned on the living room light and said, " No woman lives here other than my folks." He grabbed a pic that rested in the corner and handed it to me, it was a picture of a little white old woman that was wearing that red cardigan and smiling. Justified and satisfied I looked at him and said, "Yes this is her. She just walked through here and gave me this look. What you mean she don't live here and you giving me her pic." He took back the pic and placed it back, and looked at me a bit haunted when he responded, "That was my grandmother she used to live here, but she died a few months back." That was enough for all of us we decided to leave the apartment that now felt spooky. We never talked about it again.

My mother and I was very close. I mean I was the baby, I was left home more with my mother than my siblings who were so higher up in age that they were hardly around if they even lived with us. In several moments in which we talked very little about the paranormal we would breeze by some interesting conversations. She would tell me about the world she came from which was riddled with spiritualism and Santeria. She has run ins with spirits and the people that worked with them. She would get upset and fearful all at once when mentioning them. She would continue to tell me how the Devil and his demons would often come and bother people who were right with God. The more right you are with God the more these things bother you was the advice I was often given. I would try to pry as to why she had dreams and why she could predict so many things so accurately and she would dodge alluding to the fact these things still bothered her up until this day and told her things every now and then. So that what she thought "THEY" were... demons bothering her with information she would or should not have been privy to. The best example of this I could share in which we both experienced things together. We had got invited to a funeral by a cousin of mine. He was her brothers son and he had lost his wife/Girlfriend. My mother, father and myself stepped into the funeral home for the wake and instantaneously the room felt foggy and heavy. I can only describe it as atmospherically thick, dense where it took effort to just breathe let alone walk through the midst of it. Our heads were both light and we were dizzy and at one point reached out and grabbed each others hands at the same time. She looked at me and me at her and I asked, "Do you feel that?" She nodded and she tried to shake it off both mentally and physically. It did not let up until we got outside shortly afterwards and left. Asking her about it while waiting outside as my dad brought the car around, she just hushed me and told me something bad was there and those who could sense it were effected by it.

Between being gay and being able to see, feel or interact with these things my perception of anything remotely spiritual or my relationship with God all I knew was that I was plagued. Different. Bothered. I could not quite figure it out but all my senses and flags flared up. This could not be right. On one hand it didn't feel right but on some level it sounded like it could be correct. This was all the start to soul searching that was much needed. Who were these "THey" for me? Why was I being plagued? If going to church all these times and the name of God being muttered around me didn't clear the air then perhaps these weren't the demonic forces my mother said they were. Perhaps there was more to this story. It was time to consider differently.