I was impressionable, naïve and curious. He was a tall young man with hair as black as a raven and the darkest eyes I had ever seen. Throughout the coming years, I would try to see behind the deep set eyes, but there was little emotion behind them, as years of abuse had instilled in him a stoicism rarely seen in someone as young as he. His face could register kindness or cruelty depending upon his many moods. His lips were full and soft, and his slender body had not yet thickened to form the broad physique of a grown man. He was sexy in a raw, edgy sort of way, the desire to be refined never a part of him, though he craved respect, a craving that would never be satisfied. Having experienced much more than the average sixteen-year-old boy in our little corner of the world, he seemed more mature and worldly than his peers, the reasons for which I would discover as time went on.
We lived in the small agricultural town of Marysville in northern Kansas, a stone’s throw from the Nebraska state line. It was a typical small town for the region, a little burg nestled in the Heartland of the United States of America, and I learned at a young age that romance and violence are too often intertwined, and love and control too often confused.