Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:28:52 +0100
From: Kitti Ivan <emo_smex@hotmail.com>
Subject: Kimberly: Chapter 1

Kimberly
By D.L Hudson


~ Chapter One ~
Kimberly with an "I"


Kimberly.
     It was my mother's choice. My name, I mean. I remember when she sat me
down and told me that all through the pregnancy she had thought that I was
going to be a girl and then when I finally did arrive both her and my father
were surprised to see a baby boy in space of their expectation.
     They'd wanted to call the girl Kymberly, with a "y". But seeing that I
was a non-expected boy they struggled to find a name for me and instead of
routing around like any normal parents, they decided that they'd just call
me that anyway, never minding my gender. And thus they swapped the ever so
significant "y" with an "i" and everybody was happy. Everybody except me of
course. You can probably imagine what the children in the playground used to
say. Kids can be so cruel sometimes . . .
     I've learnt to live with it now. The children on the asphalt that used
to sing my name to me everytime I passed have long gone. The girls under the
willow tree who used to giggle at me everytime I told them to call me "Kim"
have grown up and vanished. The elder boys that I wanted to play basketball
with and who sniggered and turned me away have been absent from the town for
years now.
     Unfortunately though not all the bad memories from my childhood have
faded away. I still have a scar across my bottom lip where three boys from
my class jumped me after school and kicked the shit out of me and I still
vow that if I ever see them again I'm going to seek my revenge and then spit
on their corpses. But putting that aside, I've grown used to it. The name
and the awkward looks that I recieve when telling it to somebody for the
first time. But like I said, children grow up . . . eventually.

* * *

I was seventeen at the beginning of the adventure that was going to change
my life forever, living in the very town that I had been born in, in the
very same house. No changing schools, no finding new friends, no wandering
around a new area and finding myself lost, just plain little Wikemsburg, day
after day, year after year. There was only one thing that had changed since
I was born and that was the fact that I now only lived with my mother. My
father had died the year before.

He was a good man. He loved his family to bits. Me and my mother were the
only ones that he would be prepared to do anything for. And when I say
"anything" I mean anything. He once traveled a hundred miles back to
Heddershaw from Wikemsburg in order to fetch the teddy bear that I had
accidently left behind in the train station, just because it was "special"
to me. My mother, of course, kept saying that they'd buy me a new one and I,
of course, kept on bawling my eyes out and screaming that I didn't want a
"new one" and that I wanted Mr Pookie. And my father, being the caring man
that he was, hopped on the very next train back to Heddershaw and brought
back my beloved bear.
     I was so happy that day that no other time has ever managed to match up
to it. Even getting back a reply from Wikemsburg College, stating that I'd
earned a place there, hadn't matched up to watching the front door open when
I was five years old and seeing my father stood there with Mr Pookie in his
arms and a great manic grin on his face.
     And then all of a sudden he wasn't there anymore. . .
     The man that used to scoop me up into his arms after he'd finished
work, the man that would sit on my bed and tell me scary stories and make me
too scared to go to sleep, the man that taught me how to punch without
hurting my knuckles, the man that locked me in my bedroom and wouldn't let
me out until I'd finally finished that droning piece of History coursework,
had vanished. And all that I had left of him were those aching memories that
had been etched into the surface of my mind with a blunt pencil. And
everyday it felt like somebody was there with an eraser, slowly rubbing away
at the scribbled drawings that I had created in his honour, until the faint
lines that remained there threatened to vanish too . . .

After my father's death, my mother turned to alcohol. I'd never seen her
drink so much before and it frightened me. I had dreams of her begging in
the streets for money whilst she held an almost empty bottle of Gin in one
hand and a burnt down cigarette in the other. But she promised me that she
wouldn't ever result to begging and I should at least be grateful that she
did keep her word. The one thing that she didn't promise that she wouldn't
ever result to however, was prostitution.
      I used to lay in bed at night and listen as she left the house, only
to return in the early hours of the morning with a pocket full of cash. What
else could she have been doing out there all night for money? But she
thought that I didn't know. She expected me to believe that the appearance
of the money was some strange miracle that seemed to happen every night when
I was asleep. I would have believed her too, if I had been ten years younger
. . .
       And I guess it was then, at seventeen years old, after watching my
mother sell herself for a quick alcohol fix and noting that nothing ever
changed in that small town that I had been born into, that I decided that I
was going to leave. I was going to turn my back on the town that had
engulfed me all my life. I was going to wave my sweet goodbyes to the
drunken mother of mine who wouldn't even notice that I was missing and find
a new life somewhere else.

I was a rebel. I was rebelling against everything I had ever known. I was
sticking my middle finger up at the world and I thought that I knew
everything. I was doing something that those kids that hung about on the
street corner with a bottle of Vodka in hand would only dream of. I was
going it alone and that great big city was there to welcome me in with open
arms.
     Of course I had doubts. I was scared of what might happen to me in a
huge city that I knew nothing about. I was petrified of having to sleep on
the streets like a begging tramp that I knew that I wasn't. I was also
frightened of what might happen to my mother while I was away. But I masked
those negative thoughts. I pulled a wide black curtain over them and blocked
them out so that only the good ones could flood me and man, did they flood
me . . .

* * *

So one night, with my mother away doing god-knows-what to god-knows-who, I
took the tasty sum of cash that I had been saving up to buy a car with the
coming year, and slipped away into the darkness of the quiet, suburban
streets - heading for the city.
      I did leave a note. On the kitchen table. Scrawled in inky black
writing. You could tell that I hadn't put any thought into it, it was
rushed, but I doubted that my mother would notice that. In fact I doubted
that she would notice it at all. It was only around seven sentences long. It
explained that life held more for me than Wikemsburg could give and that I
seeked thrill and adventure. I no longer wanted to be the boy living at home
with his mother and doing his coursework. I wanted to go out and do
something. Be somebody. Get noticed.
      But it wasn't all about me. I also told her in a brief manner, as
brief as I could get it, that I thanked her for bringing me into this world
and taking care of me. That I loved her and that I would miss her and that I
hoped that she would take good care of herself and maybe, in a few years, we
could meet up again and see how each other were getting along.

Unlike a lot of kids who write goodbye notes to their parents, I didn't
apologise for leaving home so suddenly. I didn't think that I should
apologise for no longer wanting to watch my mother drown herself away in
drink and give her body to any man that showed the slightest bit of
interest. I also didn't think that I should apologise for wanting to have a
better life. For wanting to seek out other rebellious teenagers that were
looking for the same thing as myself. You see, the truth of the entire
matter was that I, Kimberly Black, just didn't think at all . . .


Author's Note: Well this is my first submission here so I hope you don't go
too harsh on me. Unfortunately there's no sex as of yet. That comes in the
later chapters, as I'm the sort of writer that likes to build relationships
between the characters first. So err, yeah. It's going to fan out into gay
relationships, just so that you know.

Any comments, good or bad, feel free to let me know.