His name was Leo Steelex. Fourteen-years-old, curious, and somewhat playful expressive green eyes and shoulder-length blond hair, Leo was something of a high school freshman punk. He was the one who taught me to skateboard, and he was the one who had more time out in the Real World than the others more than half the time.
AT first, I thought Leo was just the more masculine side of me emerging, I mean, really emerging. I’d always had that side since I was a child but never really looked deep into it. IT was just there. But when this side over the summer of 2004 began to find a literal voice of its own, answering my thoughts independently, I knew it was no gender issue. I was a nineteen-year-old female with a macho, girl-crushing fourteen-year-old boy inside me, forming his own self. I became open to him, finding Leo comforting during my continuous weeks of unconscious physical abuse. I began to talk to Leo and learned of his background; of his neighborhood he sent mental images of to me.
He never did know what state or town he was from. I only remember the neighborhood he was from, with many trees and very clean-looking. Leo’s house was a robin-egg blue, two-story house, with a paved driveway and the typical basketball hoop on the garage. Leo admitted he never really cared for sports much, just skateboarding. IN fact, his father who’d put the hoop up didn’t give a crap about Leo or his older brother, Isaac. Leo’s father was an alcoholic, an abuser of it. I learned Leo was close to his mother, and at times Leo would miss his mom. She was very pretty, with the same green eyes as Leo and blond hair. Leo showed her to me.
IT was awkward to have your sister’s best friend come over and having Leo crushing her inside my head. Leo knew the girl he liked couldn’t see him, but he always fantasized she’d love him if she could ever see him. That was a big issue, in fact, with my inner people. IT was the fact no one on the outside could see them for what they really looked and sounded like inside of me. They only saw me behind the persona and only a few believed the truth about Leo and the others who came along later.
Through Leo, I’ve learned that society shapes gender roles. Leo was one of those kids who just had to be macho, talk rough, think about girls and get gritty on the pavement with skating in order to fit in. Later I realized Leo didn’t have to be that way but he felt forced, I feel, by how his father wasn’t there as a model to help him out. Who Leo hung out with as far as friends went back at his home I never knew and how he turned out relatively good-natured was a mystery to me. I know his mother divorced and moved with Leo, and then Isaac ran away.
I think moving with his mom really shaped Leo better. His dad never had a chance to really cut into Leo, unlike his brother, who was ruined for life.
Leo was never a real violent type. When he was angry, he mostly just swore a lot and played his rock music loud. His favorite group was Vertical Horizon.
He didn’t have much of a sense of humor. If he did, it was hard to find. Mostly he was just a carefree kind of kid who my best friend really liked.
I remember one day with Leo around he ended up going through my jewelry box and throwing out most of my good necklaces in place of his heavy punk chains. I was pretty upset when I found this out a few days later and wanted to dress up nice for someplace and didn’t find my necklaces. MY best friend had to tell me that Leo threw them out in his frustration over having too many girlie things around. He found them uncomfortable and embarrassing, so much so, he had me hide my jewelry box in a drawer for no one to see.
Skateboarding was Leo’s passion above all. I remember for my birthday I let Leo buy our very first skateboard at the sports store. Leo was so proud of it and even to this day I get a thrill just watching other skaters riding around town. Leo was dedicated to skating. He practiced in the cold basement during the winter to get down the olly, b but he never did. He had me out in the eighty-five degree heat in July in the road pulling of off tailstalls—involving you to stop using the back end of your board which scrapes the ground in order to stop. I bled, rode against thirty MPH winds in November, and was nearly hit by a car a few times over Leo.
I have to admit, it did good for my overall physical health. I grew stronger in the legs, gained incredible balance and had a lot of fun that I hadn’t had in a long time. Perhaps that’s what I loved about Leo. ; His motivation.
AS for interacting with other people, Leo was pretty good at that. For my inner people, he was pretty cooperative and not too serious half the time. That job was left up to his brother, who became the protector within our organized system.
The most strangest and unforgettable memory I have of Leo, was nearly a year later while he was skating in the parking lot of a diner. He’d been skating for an hour or so and was pretty lonely. That was one thing about my situation was that Leo had no skating buddies in the Real World. IT got boring being all by himself. So, he was skating around when suddenly another person I never knew before came into my head.
Her name was Jeana Star, a perfect match for Leo. A real punk at heart, Jeana had dark hair in a ponytail dyed blue (I believe it was blue anyway), and wore a lot of chains and things. She skated, too, and in my body I felt like my mind could expand as it made room for both Leo and her to have control of my body. I’d heard of walk-ins before—that is, temporary people or spirits just coming into the body but never thought it’d happen to me. This was very new and I was happy for Leo, because after he and Jeana had gotten to know one another, I knew they were a match. Leo had made his first real girlfriend, this one who could see him on an inner level no one in the Real World, the physical world, could ever. She saw his boyish smile, laughed at his corny jokes, played with his hair. She loved him.
That whole week that followed, Leo was able to actually contact Jeana somehow (don’t ask me how in the mindscape you’d do that), and told the rest in my mind how they’d talked together. I never had Jeana return to my body like she had the first time. IT was all messages relayed through Leo’s excited chattering and his memories of buying her this punky bracelet for her birthday and things.
It was a sad truth but it eventually happened. IN early August of 2005 Leo and the rest completely vanished away over the barrier of my subconscious, leaving me clueless to whom I really was. Only later would I realize Leo and the others—but especially Leo—had become integrated in me. But it’d take at least two more years to really find traces of them as I went on my first, most intense internal journey to find myself again.