Someone says baboons have musical prowess. Someone says humans are ridiculous. I am somewhere in between, in the space of doubt and self-recognition that could be called confusion – or perhaps maturation, depending on the circumstances of definition. I’m riding a ferris wheel in the middle of January and I’m surprised I’m not frozen to bits quite yet. I’m riding a ferris wheel and it feels like February, but January presses beyond me, into the person I haven’t yet become, into a silhouette dawning tomorrow, when February breezes by.

He loomed before me with calculated candor.

A movie star, maybe, or he wants to be. This is LA, after all. This is a skeazy hotel, after all. The white gleaming linoleum from the ‘70s matches his overcoat, white, Jacksonian. Maybe he’s Michael J. after all. I wouldn’t recognize any stars.

Forty-five degrees, now moving counter-clockwise – silver. I lie still. The silhouette with its trench coat is Elvis and energy, something my vision can’t fixate on. He keeps moving. I must be moving.

My story begins on the 25th of April, 1992; it is not an exact account nor does it have a specific purpose. My aim is simply to tell - not to teach, preach, or bore. I am not simply a messenger. I was actually there. This actually happened to me. But, so as to preserve my fading pride and attempt to learn more about my own experience and therefore myself, I will do my best to remain at the sideline. I will speak as a messenger, though I am, in actuality, the star of the story.

The Kavalarys almost never locked their windows. The one exception was Halloween. Tonight wasn't the eve of any hallow, but Michael was positive he felt a draft. In truth, his room was on the bottom floor, and every so often he'd feel movement that wasn't really coming from the outside - parents making trips to the bathroom, sisters indulging in midnight sweets, cats being cats - and after a few moments of paranoia he'd roll over and go back to sleep. The thing was, this wasn't movement. No one was awake or creeping around; the closet door was shut.