The Darker Side (21 page)

“The answer is obvious: only the video camera records without alteration. What, then, is the difference between the man and the camera?” He pauses for a moment. “The difference is that the video camera has no filter of ‘self.’ It has no soul, no mind. One can then extrapolate that where errors in judgment occur, the soul and the mind are the sources of the flaw.

“But if God created all things, and He did, then we must acknowledge that He created the soul and the mind as well. God does not make mistakes. Therefore, the soul and the mind, at birth, are perfection, capable of perceiving exact and basic truth. One could argue that, at birth, no filter exists at all between the truth of the world and the self. What, then, is this ‘filter’? This thing that changes man over time, that makes his recollection less reliable than a video camera?”

Fade to black again, followed by those same white block letters proclaiming,
End Part One.

I turn to Alan. “This is fascinating—but what does it have to do with us?”

“Keep watching.”

He clicks on the next thumbnail and we go through the black screen, white letters, and return to the narrator.

“The filter is sin. The catalyst is power of choice. God gave man the ability to choose between heaven and hell. To choose between everlasting glory or eternal damnation. From the moment we’re dragged from the womb, we begin to make choices. The nature of our choices, over time, are what decide our fate when Death knocks.

“From the moment we choose sin, we create the filter. We pull a veil over our eyes, create a barrier between ourselves and the basic truth of things as God created them. Do you see? As we alter the basic truth of us, that truth that God created, we change, thus, our perception of all of the other truths and works of God. This is described in many places within the Bible, such as in the story of Saul.

“‘As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

“You see? Saul could not see Jesus even though Jesus was before him. And later:

“‘Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized; and he took food and was strengthened.’

“Saul repented his sins and came to Christ and was thereafter no longer blind. There are those, I know, who will see only the literal in this and no metaphor. I see it as a direct message, an example of the paradigm I have been discussing. Saul was a sinner, and thus, he was blind to God even when God was before him. Saul was filled with God, and his sight was restored. What could be more obvious, more basic, more true?

“And so I say to you, as someone who has worked all his life to be an observer of God’s truth, that your sins, your secrets, your lies, these are what prevent you from seeing the simplicity of the love in the world around you.

“Perhaps you hear this and you agree and you have decided, now I will live in truth. I will be honest, I will sin no more. I applaud and encourage you in this, but I must be honest and tell you—you will fail unless you come to understand this fact: truth is not a striving, it is an immediate arrival.

“What do I mean by this?

“It is explained in our next discussion: the nature of the truth that hides a lie, and the example of Lisa/Dexter Reid.”

Fade to black.

“Oh shit,” I say.

“It gets worse,” Alan replies, grim.

He clicks the next thumbnail. I watch and fight the unease that’s coming to a slow bubble inside my belly.

Again the hands. They haven’t moved once since we began watching.

“Lisa Reid was born Dexter Reid, son to Dillon and Rosario Reid. Dexter became unhappy with the body God had given him, and chose instead to alter that body in an attempt to become a woman.

“All can agree that this is an abomination against the Lord. But it is here, with this misguided soul, that we most vividly illustrate the phenomenon of the truth that hides a lie. The phenomenon goes as such: a person reveals a secret, a sin, a lie. It is not a small thing that they reveal. It requires courage to do so, and it garners them both relief and admiration. They receive praise for having ‘come clean.’ All of which would be well and good…except for the fact that they had a deeper, darker, as yet unrevealed secret.

“You see? By revealing one great sin, they remove all suspicion that there might be another. We watch them tell the truth, cry tears of relief along with them, and wish we had their strength of character, their newfound courage and virtue. Unbeknownst to us, something more terrible remains unseen.

“This is what I meant when I said that truth was not a striving, but an immediate arrival. One either comes to the truth all at once, or not at all. There is no halfway mark on the path to God. You are either with him or you are not.

“Dexter Reid became Lisa Reid. He came into the open, he revealed his secret—the desire to become a woman—to the world. He accepted all the disgust, chastisement, and blame that would accrue with this. He walked this path unflinching, refusing to be deterred by the disapproval of society. Some—many, even—saw this and admired him for it. Dexter’s life was difficult, even dangerous, but he did what he did because he felt he must, in spite of the obstacles. The definition of courage.”

Another pause. The hands move this time. One thumb comes free and rubs the beads of the rosary.

“But Dexter had another secret. He detailed it in his journal. I have those pages of the journal here, as I stole them after I killed him.”

Fade to black. The white letters
Continued in next clip
.

“Dammit!” I say.

“It’s a hard medium to get used to,” Alan allows.

Alan clicks on the next thumbnail. When the video begins, the screen is filled with a page of paper. I recognize Lisa’s handwriting. The narrator pulls the page away from the lens and holds it in his right hand so he can read it. The rosary remains draped in his left, and he moves the beads between thumb and forefinger with reverence, a motion I can tell is as natural to him as walking. He begins to read.

THE SIN
of
DEXTER REID

22

IT WAS A GREAT SUMMER DAY. GREAT. HOT AND NOT TOO
muggy and filled with the promise of everything
but
school.

Dexter stood on the porch of the house and surveyed his neighborhood. It was a good neighborhood, no doubt about that. Not the good that came of new homes, but the comfortable good of old homes kept up to snuff.

The sky was blue and visible in that way Mom called “Texas Sky.” Texas was flat and rolling and Austin was not all that fond of skyscrapers, so in many places you could see blue from horizon to horizon. It was all right.

Dexter had awoken this Saturday to do his usual routine. It was precious to him, and growing more so as he got older and began to get the hint that times were changing. He was eleven, and already he could see the lines between the sexes—once so blurred—being forced into focus. Guys only a year older were talking about things like “pussy” a lot more and with a genuine interest and hunger. It was disconcerting.

Dexter had been able to wake up at 5:30 A.M. on Saturday mornings with no alarm since he was six years old. He’d discovered that some of the best cartoons, the old black and whites that you never saw anywhere else anymore, were on in those early hours.

He’d get up and head down to the kitchen and treat himself to homemade cinnamon toast. His version included huge hunks of butter, unhealthy helpings of sugar, and just enough cinnamon to give it all a little bit of bite. In it went to the toaster oven, out it came with the butter bubbling. He’d watch it cook, stare at the heating coils turned orange by their temperature.

He loved these mornings, loved that no one else was awake, that he had the house to himself, at least in illusion. It was a feeling of freedom and safety, not so much as if nothing bad would ever happen—but the certainty that nothing bad would happen now, at this moment. The times between 5:30 and 8:00 A.M. were an armistice in Dexter’s heart.

He’d grab the toast once it had cooled enough (but not too much) and put it on some paper towels and head into the living room where the TV was. He’d switch on the set and put it to the right channel and plop down on his beanbag. Mom hated the beanbag, and Dad wasn’t all that excited about it—he called it a seventies throwback—but Dexter had stood firm on keeping it. It was a talisman, a part of the ritual.

Sometimes they’d still play “Inky and the Mynah Bird” in Texas in those early morning hours, but most of the time, it was “Huckleberry Hound” or some old unclassifiable cartoons. These turned into “Tom and Jerry” and from there to the “Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show.” He’d watch them all, and make mental lists during the commercials of the cool new toys to bug Mom and Dad about.

The first part of the magic ended at about 8:00, as Mom and Dad got up. He loved them both, but the ritual was all about solitude; their presence broke the spell. He’d hit the shower and get dressed as they stumbled through their first coffees. A kiss on Mom’s cheek and a mumbled good morning from Dad and he was out the door by 8:30.

Now here he was, cartoons and cinnamon toast behind him, the whole day before him. What to do? He had a few bucks in his pocket, the result of lawn-mowing industry. He could head to the Circle K and buy some comics. He could grab his bike and ride to the pool. Heck, he could do anything he wanted!

He opted to walk, an unusual choice, but the day was just so great and he wanted to feel the ground underneath his tennis shoes. He headed down to the junction, which is what he called the top of the T where his street met another at a stop sign. Right took you to the park and the pool, left took you to Rambling Oaks, what the kids called the “woods.”

It was not exactly a “woods,” more like a copse gone wild. It was the edge of development, dirt not yet turned by tractors in preparation for new home construction.

Most times he didn’t like to go to the woods alone, but today was different. Dexter was a social boy, but he didn’t feel like company right now. So he turned left and not right. It was a simple decision that would change his life forever, which is the way it usually goes.

The street dead-ended in dirt. The dirt ended at the trees. Walk through the trees a little and you came out to grass, which then led to more pavement and new homes. The woods were a kind of last stand and all sorts of things happened there.

First cigarettes had been smoked in the woods by more kids than could be counted. First kisses had been tasted, and of course there were the rumors of first blow jobs and such, though Dexter wasn’t sure about that. He wasn’t brilliant or anything, but he had a little more wisdom than most of his peers, and he had the sneaking suspicion that getting a girl from this neighborhood to suck on your Johnson involved better surrounds than a place like the woods. A car, at least.

Dirty mags had been read here, and Dexter had seen a few in the last year, though his reactions were ambiguous in a way that didn’t seem to match up with his friends’. So he’d leered and joked with the rest of them, tossing off verbal gems like “hairy clam” and “furburger” with snickering confidence and aplomb. None of it made sense to Dexter, as the girls in the pictures he saw were hairless down there, and what did a burger have to do with it, anyway?

People had wept in these woods too, Dexter was aware. Nice neighborhood or no, kids still got beat, from time to time. Abuse existed, though it wasn’t talked about much. The woods had been a sanctuary, a haven, a place for the simple, the illicit, the groping, and the sad. Even at eleven, Dexter understood that the woods was going to be one of those places he’d never forget. It would always have power, even if just in memory.

He took his time walking down the street. Enjoying the sunshine and the sounds. No one was crazy enough to be out mowing this early, but two people were out washing their cars, which Dexter thought was a fine idea. He stuck his hands in his pockets and found a white stone in one of the gutters to kick. It was going to be a hell of a day!

The pavement ended and he hit the dirt. There were two kinds of Texas dirt. There was the dark, dry, clumpy sod, the kind that grass grew in and came out in chunks. Then there was the tan, almost granular kind, that soaked up the sun and was generally filled with detritus, stones and such. This was the second kind.

The trees weren’t too far off, and Dexter decided that he would really make a morning out of his walk. He’d head through the woods, out the other side, and into the neighborhood next door. He’d circle around and be back at home in time for some bologna or peanut butter and jelly and probably some Kool-Aid. Then maybe a trip to the comic store and the pool.

Why not? The day was his.

He quickened his pace toward the trees, excited by all the prospects unfolding before him.

That’s when he heard them.

“Kiss it, you fucking retard,” the voice said.

Dexter recognized this voice. Any kid in the neighborhood would. It belonged to Mark Phillips, bully and all around evil individual. Mark’s story was as unoriginal as the Texas dirt under Dexter’s tennis shoes: he grew fast, he grew tall, he grew wide, and he liked the power this gave him over others.