BOHEMIAN RAPTURE: Part I
by Khalil Somadi 

How can one be both bohemian and domesticated at once?
I suppose I've always been a bit of the bohemian. Loving freely, smiling easily on the outside though terribly serious on the inside. And caught up in movement, all the time: eyes always watching, drinking life; mind always cutting deeply into any scenario life presented me until I saw what lay beneath. At the core.
My father taught me that, unintentionally.
He was a severe disciplinarian using sex to diminish my whimsical nature and reduce my unruly spirit until it became controllable.
But it could not be controlled.

The older I became, the more gifted at leaving my physical confinement by tapping into the unleashed reservoir of creativity wild in me. Words would come to me, in vivid colors, while i was awake and while I slept. Words that were outrageous in an environment tightly laced by secrecy and faux righteousness! I didn't care about keeping up appearances.  Was sick of it! My father's abuse of me lit in me a burning for truth. A craving for disclosure, and living life unretouched, raw and beautiful because of it.
Beauty.
Women had it.  So did the men.
I basked in the beauty of the women and men I met... breathing deeply the laughter we shared, dancing well into the night many nights with my lips pressed against their necks and the scent of their skin filling my nostrils with their captivating and effervescent spice. My heart was happy to join with theirs without hesitation, and to make love with them was to take of the very food that fed my soul!
I began writing love poems...about all the cities I wandered thru, and all the dawns I christened with champagne and chocolate covered strawberries traced up and down the naked spines of my lovers.
My life was completely mine.

Then one day my sweetened dawns were interrupted by the blunt violence of hate.
I found myself face to face with the reality that someone could actually despise me simply because I dared to love out loud, (apparently there were names and stigmas and repercussions for that!)



To be continued...