I am was or is neither or both or someone that wasn't either - they were rich - lived on the other side of town in a trailer park - the kind with no shrubs and pickup trucks - I always wanted to be them or him or her - and she wanted to be him and he or her - especially during sex when we were all the same - but that was later when they moved away from our hometown - a place I never knew - I knew them only from a distance - they were my neighbors - we shared a room - my parents would leave and each time they returned they would say I have a new brother - or sister and brother - or one of them died but I never knew - then my parents were taken away - I never knew my parents - I grew up in a foster home and then was moved to different foster homes and then to another foster home - it was a big house - my family had lived there for generations - my grandmother or father - they looked the same - lived in the room next to me - they always wore the same clothes - a mother or father of someone else would always get angry when my grandfather or mother drank too much - it was mostly about my father who was drunk all the time - especially after my mother or father left - the one I never knew - I was too young to know - that's how I got to know him or her - we were both in the same burn unit - I was trying to quit smoking - they were still on methadone, but wanted a better life - that's why they got married - or that's what they told me when I got older - by then they were dead and I only had a few pictures left of him or her - at their wedding - his first beer - her first car - the first time I caught a fish as big as a pike - really a small sunfish - I learned to sail - the three of us would go out alone on long adventures - playing pirate, president, first lady and the tramp - I was the whore - the one begging for mercy after she or he was taken away by the police - I was right there - again with a bad report card - my father or mother would slap me around - by the time I was older and had enough money to buy a car - the first thing I did was ask him out - she came along - all the time I was driving my hand was on my leg - the three of us where smoking pot and drinking light beers - after our first child -dressed in spandex - getting ready to enter my first marathon - I knew she or he would be my arch enemy - I would have to face them eye-to-eye - what could I say - I was young I didn't know any better - I got caught up in the moment and besides I was drafted - I didn't have some rich mommy or daddy - at first I felt a little guilty - but what the fuck, being at yale, getting a fulbright - I was at the last march with her or him - really - all I wanted was to be fucked by her or him - or him as her or her as him - or be fucked as a him by her or her by him for her - but that was after I left my first wife, husband, domestic partner - terrorist on the run since 1967 or 1697 - 1980's - the 1980's was when m.a.s.h. went off the air - I could so identify with one of the characters - or all of them - since I had served in korea - but that was different - that was the big one - we use the big one on those japs - and even after I was in england or france - to return to the same old whites only - until color TV started to come into vogue - the three of us would gather to watch disney on parade - which I loved especially when my parents were fighting - I would be alone and every once in awhile someone like elvis or the beatles - I just loved john - or something mick - would be on the cover of the post I would buy along with the national geographic - I mean I didn't know what got into me - it was the first time I had seen someone else's penis or breast - so we all sat around and jerked-off and fondled each other - when I was done I looked around to make sure no one was looking - they deserved it wearing those clothes - short skirts, tight pants - school quarterbacks with those firm breast - that's what he or she or my mother or father said they liked best - a vanilla sunday everytime after - or good cigarette or the movies - especially on fridays - anything to get away - after work I would get in free - that's why I worked at the theater - I could live on popcorn, candy and juju beans - every halloween they called me the juju beans popcorn lady killer - it was kind of a joke - to leave juju beans behind - the popcorn was a mistake, but since it was there - it was the signature he kept doing - I knew sooner later she would be the next class president - why not he, he was my sister - and as my parents said - to be alone in foster care is the best of all holidays except for water when it's really hot.