Page 40 of Johnny

I started doing that young. Very young. Probably when Joey came to live with us.

I mean, where the hell do you file ‘new baby brother?’ There was a folder for Jesse. But Joey…

Joey wasn’t like Jesse. He didn’t look like Jesse. He didn’t live inside my mother for nine months and

then pop out one day and come home bundled up in her arms. He just appeared that night, his sleeping

head resting on her shoulder while she screamed and raged at my father.

None of that fit into the Jesse folder so I just made a new one and went on with my three-year-old

life of toys, and TV, and finger foods.

But while I was in the middle of that one visit with that anonymous therapist in Chicago I realized

something. I remembered the first time I consciously did this. I was twenty-two years old and my

uncle had just died.

Died. That’s a nice way to put it. Proof that I had the filing system down. I never thought about it

again until my father… died… eight years later.

And by the time I was thirty, there was no other way to operate. Just stuff that shit into a folder with

a neat little label and file it away. Just one more thing for my brain to forget about.

It’s served me well over the years but I’m not sure that makes me well-adjusted, or hell, even

normal. I don’t think about the weird shit show my life has become anymore. I’m pretty sure there’s a

term for that.

Detachment syndrome?

Disassociation?

Sociopath?

Take your pick. I’m pretty sure there’s a folder in other people’s brains called Johnny Boston and

they’ve tagged it with labels like that.

It’s just how I cope. How I get through the fuckin’ day. How I start out in the city, end up on a

newly abandoned tropical island with several smoldering buildings, find a girl chained to a wall in a

dungeon, take her to my boat, pump her full of drugs for an impromptu interrogation, and not have any

feelings about it.

That’s just… not normal. I understand that. But it’s my process and it helps.

I feel weird sleeping in the stateroom. Not sure why, I’ve claimed it as my own. But I wanted to

sleep up top tonight so I could know if she came upstairs and… I don’t know. Tried to leave, or

whatever.