The Highwayman Book 2: Strange Love

Chapter 3: Paul Robert Cromby-2

Paul Robert Cromby. Born on November 21, 1990. A Thanksgiving baby. He had always taken care of me, leading me through life, steering me in the right direction. Not once had he betrayed me. Never. I could always count on the man, through all the good and bad in our lives. I could not have had a better brother, even in spirit.

Since his death some four years ago, my heart felt as if it had been ripped out of my chest and trampled. An emptiness felt prominent there now, filled with unending hurt. The pain felt infinite on a daily basis. Every f*****g day. Everything about my soul suffered from being off balance, topsy-turvy. The crazy, out-of-control spin of life. Since the moment my brother died, I had thought about him at least once a day, broken over the loss, emotionally unraveled even four years later. Half insane. Out of my head. A lot of crazy going on.

We had snowball fights as young boys, played on our bikes together, and spent hours competing against each other while gaming, improving our hand and eye coordination. Enjoying hide and seek, setting off firecrackers, biking, hiking, and being mischievous together because we were brothers who could. We learned to lie, cheat, and steal together, as brothers should. And we learned to survive together, united by our blood, particularly during those fragile years as students living under our parents’ roof. We made our way, one day into the next, getting by in life, inseparable. Our siblinghood ranked top notch and wouldn’t dissolve until we were in our twenties, which surprised the both of us when it happened.

Men like to break things, even when they don’t know what they’re doing. Breakage happens. It happened. Dear Christ, why?

I always thought of Paul as my protector, shielding me from any danger in the world. Challenges seemed insignificant with him at my side from early childhood into my adulthood. Never had he failed to help me through life, raising me up when I needed raised, and grounding me when necessary. Paul became my rock, sensitive and caring, and sheltered me from the bad no matter what the ugly situations entailed. Inconceivable events unfolded in our lives together, yet he made it a point to always be there for me. Through hell and high water, Paul cradled me with his love, bound me to him, and shaded me from any harmful intent created by others.

When Paul attended Temple and gained a degree in business, I felt helpless as a high school student, lost and confused. My best friend had vanished from my world, leaving me abandoned. Bewildered and partially out of my mind because of my brother’s temporary absence from my life, I became withdrawn from everything and everyone around me. Friendless and impossible to get along with, a tyrant with a smart mouth and much anger. Fifteen and no longer happy with life because of Paul’s extended sabbatical from our brotherhood, I met Sander and Lewis. I welcomed a world of drugs, alcohol, s*x, and violence. I changed and became a heathen. I turned dark inside, rotten. When people looked at me, they couldn’t see the person they knew. I became a stranger to them and to myself. Lost. Confused. Selfish. Dangerous. All because my brother abandoned me, left me behind, forgotten.

For as many women that Paul dated and had one-night stands with during his college years, I fooled around with just as many men. Mostly older daddies in their late forties and fifties. Salt and pepper-haired males who were suffering through mid-life crises. Kept and monetarily funded by those men, I provided each with s****l gratification, which Paul just happened to be left in the dark about. I became a teenage w***e of sorts at eighteen and nineteen, spreading my ass for any man with a wallet, willed to satisfy their s****l needs on a daily or weekly basis, performing mind-numbing s*x with those heartfelt gentlemen for drug money and the mere act of lust.

Blowjobs in the backseat of a Mercedes. Licking an English professor’s asshole before f*****g him. Coming on an investment banker’s face, splashing my ejaculate all over his cheeks and neck. Telling those aging men, “I love you, Daddy. I love you…I love you…I love you…I have always loved you and always will. I promise.” Photographed by those men. Called pet names that I abhorred. Spanked. Bitten. Tied up. All for cash. A kept lover for as long as I wanted to be kept. Under their care. Always. My life without my brother. Loved by someone else. Other men.

As my world spun out of control, I became a thief, drug user, drug seller, and hustler. Under Lewis and Sander’s care, men who were just a few years older than me, I transformed into a heathen and s****l deviant. Nothing normal occurred in my life. The longer Paul abandoned me, the worse I became. I learned to survive without him, using meth, stealing money, and having s*x with strange men for cash, all at Lewis and Sander’s sides; men who had become a replacement for the loss of Paul in my young life; the worst company I could have kept.

I had so many lovers then. The professional quarterback who went by the name of Tab. The priest who f****d me only at night, hiding from Jesus. The politician who kept me as a secret from his wife. The construction worker who liked to have threesomes and snort lines of cocaine off my stomach. The real estate mogul and his brother who did a tag team championship on my ass, f*****g me until I bled. The chemist, baker, police officer, rabbi, and maintenance man for an apartment complex. I became all of their lovers, sometimes at the same time. Just to get by in life. Without my brother.

Paul stayed on in Philadelphia, working at an investment company while he obtained a degree in business, and then his doctorate. My brother disappeared completely from my life, which only pushed me closer and closer to Lewis and Sander, for whom I had a strange sense of love. At twenty-two, I became their lover, living on the streets of Pittsburgh with them, continuing a rampage of activities in my life: stealing, having unprotected s*x for cash, and participating in heavy drug use. A permanent separation had happened between me and Paul. An abyss of sorts unfolded in our two worlds. Paul carried out the position of being the good son while I upheld the bad son role. We drifted apart, day by day, in different directions, forever lost.

The accident that took Paul’s life occurred at four-thirty in the afternoon on April 21 when he was thirty-one. It happened on Liberty Street in Philly. He entered the Quick & Stop convenience store for a coffee—sixteen ounces, cream and sugar—and a scratch-off lottery ticket, which he had played every other day, his only vice. Two African-American men in hoodies and black masks entered the establishment. They demanded cash from the female clerk. The clerk and Paul were murdered. Both were shot in the head and instantly died. The perpetrators were never caught, running away from the crime scene with a little under five hundred dollars.

I experienced a bleak day when I learned of Paul’s death, and the following year, and the year after that. My brother had crossed from this world into the next without a goodbye to, or from, me. And no longer did I have his protection, love, or care, losing him to two psycho fuckers/assholes/shooters who needed a measly five hundred in cash.

Motherfucker.

Fuck!

I missed him. I loved him. He turned out to be everything to me.

* * * *

Rain. Rain. So much of it. I thought we’d drown.

Lewis liked the rain, and Sander loathed it like his ex-wife, Candy. Why did Sander care so much about Candy when he purposely slit her neck open two years ago? It made no f*****g sense to me. Never did. Never would.

Lewis wrote haikus about the rain all the time. The humidity, thunder, and flashing yellow lightning were just a few of his themes about rain.

He wrote to me, The rain makes me happy. It always has and always will. I’ve fallen in love with it. Isn’t it strange what we fall in love with and then decide to destroy it?

I told him numerous times, “You’re too good for Sander and me. You’re above us. Find better boyfriends. Stop with your strange love for us. Find a guy in California, an actor, and settle down with him. Get a job. Buy a house. Do something better with your life. Don’t let your tongueless mouth stop you. You could have the world by its balls…and this is what you’ve chosen, the asshole. Taking s**t from everything…everyone.”

But Lewis didn’t listen to me. Never. The simple reason why he continued to be a part of our trio. Part of us. Strange lovers. Making us whole. Or as whole as we could somewhat be.

* * * *

Sometimes I wanted Lewis to have a tongue, just so I could hear his voice. Maybe then I could have loved him more, and protected him better from Sander.

Maybe.