Fire Shut Up in My Bones

“Gibsland was a place where the line between heroes and villains was not so clearly drawn.”

Blow’s hometown, Gibsland, is a small backwater whose only claim to fame is that Bonnie and Clyde were killed just south of there. The residents “still relished the infamy” (7). Blow’s observation reflects the American glorification of the outlaw in a society that prides itself on “law and order.” The line between law and lawlessness is frequently blurred in American culture—films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Easy Rider, and Dirty Harry, which exalts the renegade cop, all place traditional antagonists at the front and center of the narrative. In Gibsland, Blow sees the characters in his own narrative—women shooting guns at errant husbands, absentee fathers—not as simple villains but as flawed human beings with complex back-stories. He renders them with empathy and intricacy, and this strategy allows his audience to see them not as simple heroes or villains, but a very human mixture of both.

“She seemed to relish telling such stories—their power to educate and evoke, to turn our minds, to divert them from our own harsh realities.”

Blow’s mother tells stories to her children about slavery and the hard labor of picking cotton. Practitioners of oral tradition understand the power of narrative. Tales in any form—folktales, fables, or oral history—are on one level a pleasant distraction. On a deeper level, they immerse listeners in other worlds and experiences, and they create a shared sense of humanity. They even help develop cognition, igniting specific areas of the brain when humans listen to and process stories. In Blow’s case, listening to his mother’s stories educates him about his history and gives him a context in which to place his own life story.

“There was a power in his pose, but there was more in hers, a feminine power, the kind that lights a room and buckles a knee, the kind that makes men do things they know they shouldn’t—sneak in through open windows, lie to loved ones, give more than they have.”

Blow employs his talent for description throughout his memoir, and here, he turns it on his grandmother, Big Mama. She is physically and emotionally larger-than-life: “big hips, big bosom, big heart, big voice” (11). That oversized personality acts as a siren song to men, luring them into her orbit where they tend to take crazy risks and regret them later. Not all of her grand affability is positive, however. Her third husband leaves when she swindles him out of the car payment; and when Jeb dies, the loss withers her, shrinking her magnanimity into a shell of bitterness. As a child, Blow sees only Big Mama’s enormous spirit and sense of humor and life.

“They baptized me in their sea of stillness, and I emerged more like them than not.”

As an introspective child, Blow spends much of his time with the older folks in his neighborhood. He finds these moments “transcendent” as opposed to obligatory. He learns from adults the valuable skills of patience, slowing down, and kindness, writing, “They taught me that you only live once, but for a life well lived, one turn is enough” (22). This is valuable time for Blow, and he gains a perspective on life that serves him well through a host of difficult times ahead.

“As the old folks had imparted to me early on, grandeur never witnessed could not be coveted.”

Blow’s memoir is full of the wisdom of the old and experienced that comes from a lifetime of tragedy, joy, and dashed hopes. This aphorism operates as a coping mechanism for people who experience hardship as a daily event. These individuals look life squarely in the eye, see little hope on the horizon, and yet soldier on by not aiming too high. Resignation to one’s station and acceptance of it prevents disappointment. This is one bit of wisdom Blow doesn’t take to heart, as he follows his dreams to academic heights, career success, and beyond.

“I had learned early on that the wages of betrayal were meted out at the end of a gun barrel.”

Justice in Blow’s community has its own rules which are often brutal and informed by vigilantism. All around him, he sees the scars of men’s infidelity: “a chin-strap scar from a cut throat, leathery skin from a scalding, the nub of a shot-off arm” (44). The wronged in this environment have an implicit right to dole out punishment as they see fit with no intervention from neighbors or police. Blow paints a picture of lawlessness in which justice is served outside of courtrooms, and the community shrugs and looks the other way.

“A heart still works even when it’s broken.”

Over time, Spinner’s emotional manipulations and broken promises erode Blow’s faith in his father’s capacity for love. Worse, Blow becomes convinced that the lack of love is his fault. Spinner’s drunken ramblings repeatedly lift Blow’s hopes only to dash them on the slightest provocation. Still, even though he learns not to hope for anything from his father, Blow cannot stop caring for the man. He walks the tricky line between a love that is necessary and a cynicism that is all too easy.

“But even more important was the idea that, at any moment, we all had the awesome and underutilized power to simply let go of our past and step beyond it.”

As Billie chases one of Spinner’s mistresses down the highway, vengeance in her mind and a loaded gun in her purse, she makes a sudden and abrupt decision to let go of her anger. She sees its counterproductivity and the damage it is doing to her and her family. It’s a lesson Blow internalizes and uses many years later to save his own life as he also speeds down the interstate in a blind rage ready to murder Chester.

“I didn’t realize that this was a test of my willingness to break the rules and of my ability to keep a secret. I didn’t realize that Chester wanted me to make my bones by killing that part of me that was still innocent.”

Chester’s manipulation of Blow begins before he ever lays in his bed. Convincing him to steal, he tests his own power over his younger cousin, along with Blow’s willingness to betray his morality in exchange for acceptance. This is the modus operandi of many abusers, who gradually lure their victims away from themselves and into a darkness that feels strange and frightening at first but ultimately familiar. Blow never acclimates to this darkness, but the damage is done. He is robbed of his trust, and it is replaced by a shame he buries for years.

“In that moment, I reached the fraying point between my spirit and my body—in that moment, the connection between them was irreparably severed.”

In the midst of Chester’s sexual assault, Blow disconnects from his body, observing it objectively from the outside. While this is a necessary survival tactic for a young boy who cannot process what is happening to him, it also breaks that vital mind-body link that makes human beings whole. Blow spends the rest of his youth and early adulthood trying to reconnect the two halves of his soul, and while some strategies are an effective distraction—religion, sports, girls—depression always lurks in the shadows, waiting for any opportunity to drag him back into the darkness.

“There was no one to break my fall. No one to save me.”

As Blow struggles to cope with the trauma of his abuse, he faces far too many obstacles for a young child to deal with. These include no father to talk to; the taunts of his abuser pushing him deeper into a pit of guilt; a feeling that his victimization is obvious to the outside world; and a family that doesn’t talk about its feelings because that’s not what real men do. He is in freefall, and the unsurprising result is withdrawal, depression, and a near suicide attempt.

“It was words and reading that had made me quiet, and being quiet had made me a mark. Quiet was fine for old folks on porches, but not for young boys.”

As Blow struggles to avoid the “punk” stigma, he looks to his friend Shane as an example of how not to behave. While Shane is not outwardly effeminate like Lawrence, he doesn’t have to be. Merely the fact that he doesn’t talk about girls is enough to garner suspicion—that, and his love of wordplay as opposed to physical play. As someone who also loves to read and delights in the informative and entertaining power of words, Blow worries he too will be stigmatized by his peers.

“I think that’s what drew me to him—a boy who looked like my father but did the right thing by children.”

One of Blow’s childhood friends—one in a succession of “best” friends—is Sam Robert, a boy whose family is even poorer than his. Despite his awkward gait and bad teeth, Sam Robert, the oldest of six children, assumes the duty of caring for his younger siblings; his mother, a bitter alcoholic, is incapable of doing so. Sam Robert has similar physical features as Spinner, which allows Blow to imagine his father as a responsible, loving man rather than the absentee parent he really is. His kinship with Sam Robert is based in part on wanting to make up for lost time with a father he never had.

“In Gibsland, our racial role-playing was subtle and sophisticated. We had an unspoken understanding: we simply danced around each other, moving to a tune that everyone knew but no one sang—warm smiles sharing space with cold stares, public platitudes dissolving into the ugly things that found voice behind closed doors.”

While race relations aren’t the central focus of Blow’s memoir, ugly racial incidents pop up from time to time. When the white insurance man comes around to collect payment, Blow’s Uncle Paul becomes deferential and timid, an acknowledgment of the racial power dynamics between Black and white community members. Racism isn’t always overt, however, and the complicated interactions—the possibility that one’s Blackness will become a liability—forces folks on the Black side of town to adopt a sort of submissive bilingualism. This code switching is a tacit agreement between Black residents and white residents; it is not explicitly demanded but practiced as a precaution. As Blow discovers, racism may be kept mostly beneath the surface, but it can find its way into the open.

“Whereas Chester’s betrayal had broken my spirit, Paul’s had broken my heart.”

While still struggling to deal with Chester’s abuse, his uncle Paul attempts a similar act one night. Blow leaves the room before Paul’s hand actually reaches its target, and he tries to convince himself that he’s misinterpreted the gesture—that somehow it wasn’t Paul but some involuntary reflex that caused the hand to creep across his hips. Blow is finally forced to acknowledge that his uncle is no better than Chester, a realization that tears at him because his history with Paul is benign and friendly, making the betrayal even worse.

“I had to resort to the most useful and dangerous lesson a damaged child ever learns—how to lie to himself.”

As a child without the support or tools to cope with a second betrayal, Blow must create imaginary scenarios to explain away the actions of those adults in whose care he is entrusted. Lies are comfortable, but the truth is inconceivable. And when Blow and Paul are still living under the same roof, a fraught silence passing between them, comfort is the only self-care Blow can manage.

“The culture we were all adrift in was steeped in a kind of premature sexualization.”

Being a teenager with raging hormones is difficult enough, but to be immersed in that atmosphere while feeling inadequate and apart from it is worse. Blow feels the sting of ostracism because he does not conform to the macho peer pressure—a sting which pushes him into sexual situations before he is ready. Exacerbating the problem is a culture of silence that refuses to discuss sexuality openly and honestly, instead hushing it up in the blind hope that everything will work itself out. Too often, it doesn’t.

“Religion itself increasingly seemed a hollow homage to an eviscerated idea, a thing done out of the momentum of its always having been done.”

While Blow tries to use religion as therapy for his emotional wounds, a strategy that works in the short term, he begins to doubt its efficacy in the long term. Religion in its institutionalized form—even the daily superstitions supposedly non-religious folks abide by—are empty rituals in his eyes that have long lost their meaning beyond the simple act of repetition. This realization prods him toward a simpler, more basic definition of religion. He doesn’t discount God, but he simply reimagines the idea of God in an abstract way. He sees God in nature, love, and the manifestation of all that is good.

“There was a strange resonance for me between the hazing and Chester’s betrayal: me again receiving secret abuse because I had been chosen.”

When Blow pledges a fraternity—a choice he makes because of Greek life’s loyal brotherhood and alleged ethical code—he confronts a brutal regimen of punishment and submission that feels all too familiar. Once again, the “honor” of being chosen acts as an emotional trigger that leaves him vulnerable to accepting abuse. Perhaps his embrace of the fraternity lifestyle—his tolerance of the hazing, as victim and later as perpetrator—is a subconscious way to finally face the abuse he has never completely dealt with.

“The liquor left me lightheaded and Jell-O-kneed, like a loose-wallet man slinking out of a cathouse—feeling just right and all kinds of wrong.”

Part of Blow’s fraternity initiation is alcohol consumption, a new vice for him. He experiences the strange duality—the pleasure and the discomfort—that many first-time drinkers experience. It is a momentary euphoria coupled with a nagging sense that the body is not meant to feel like this, and that despite the feeling of courage and bravado, actions taken in this state will likely not end well. Having grown up with an alcoholic father, Blow is especially wary of the dangers of drinking and vows to stay dry thereafter.

“I had taken a bold action, though it would surely bring me harm. It was the first time I realized that my strength was rooted not only in long-suffering but also in risk-taking.”

Fed up with the abusive treatment at the hands of the brothers—especially a particularly brutal hazer named Nash—Blow openly rebels, defying the implicit rule that pledges must always obey no matter how severe the treatment. In the harsh ecosystem of fraternities, Blow’s statement of support for a pledge over the direct orders of a superior brother carries little weight, but it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. Blow realizes that following his moral compass rather than the arbitrary rules of Hell Week is the kind of decision a man must be able to make in good conscience. It is a clear benchmark on the road to an ethical life. He never suffers the consequences of his disobedience because Nash is arrested. On the contrary, he reaps the rewards of his good deed: He is elected fraternity president.

“We were both searching for redemption and validation, aiming higher than our station, pretending to be more refined than our families and histories supported.”

Blow’s intensely passionate relationship with Greta is founded in commonality. They both have past scars that have yet to heal; they are both striving to transcend their family’s histories and expectations. Unfortunately, a long-term relationship cannot survive on mutual trauma alone, and although they ultimately marry and have children, the marriage doesn’t last. Their search for their authentic selves ultimately takes them on divergent paths that wander too far afield for them to maintain a durable connection.

“I had gone from the bottom of the male hierarchy to the top of it, and all it had required was the complete suffocation of my soul.”

As president of his fraternity, Blow maintains the hazing ritual despite his misgivings. He chooses to honor tradition over the dignity and well-being of the pledges in his charge. Subconsciously, he revels in his top-dog status, having climbed so far from the introversion and withering shame of his youth. While that ascent warrants pride, he also has an epiphany as he chases a fleeing pledge across an open field: “This wasn’t right. This wasn’t me. I was better than this” (200). The tradeoff, he realizes, is not worth it, and surrendering his status in favor of his ethics is an easier choice than he imagines.