RAINER, edward theo

oh hmm. i guess there would be two sides of me to say. i’m not exactly easy to figure out in a way that i have a mask you see. it’s nothing due to trauma from the past or the loss of a loved one. in fact, i have all the family i could ever want. this is mostly due to the idea that i don’t want to hurt people. my parents say that i am a normal eighteen year old boy, though i'm twenty three. i’m not sure i completely believe that or how i should even take that. i would assume that most teenagers go through some kind of identity crisis while still in high school, and even though i have finished that stage of my life, i'm not entirely sure who i am yet. some people say i look like i am stoic, with no emotions on my face which i didn’t even think was possible. they say my eyes look empty of anything, which either means that i am unintelligent or i am just unemotional. i assume the latter once more, since i don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. i am told that is what my “mask” is. it’s an unfathomable mask that holds more meaning. just because i don’t have a smile on my face, doesn’t mean that i am an unhappy person or that i am having a bad day. sometimes it just means that it’s more internal and personal than external to the world.

i am someone who stands up. for gay rights. for animal rights. for people. for love. for peace. it’s a general thing where i have this odd need to state my beliefs and protect them when they are under attack. i’m not religious, though i should be but i do support those that believe in a form of a deity. i am not gay. i have no pets but i feel that those that don’t have much of a voice or are silenced by those around them, should have someone to help lend a voice. i guess i’m an activist in that sense. it’s something that my mother and father projected onto my from their own beliefs. they are very outspoken, loud people that stand up for what they believe in and i guess i would have that passion and drive to defend those that can’t speak for themselves. i usually get into debates, calmly and rationally defending my own rights and beliefs without adding heat to the argument. heat makes fire, i’m a lover not a fighter. at least not in this context. i try and keep everything at a very basic level of temperament as to not trigger my own internal anger at the ignorance of some people. it annoys me that people can just make that snap judgment about one race, one sexuality, one ethnicity and not take account into the thousands that are different from that person. just, that’s one of my biggest trigger points. it annoys me to no end.

i guess the cliché thing to say now would be that i am loyal to my friends. and that’s not a lie. i have this undying need to be loved and to please people and i make friends easily. really easily. i’m not sure if it’s the friendly behavior, the playfulness that appears sometimes or just my appearance but i have a ton of people that i call friends. some of them are categorized. best, close, confidants, good, iffy but they are all the same and i treat them the same. i don’t always divulge the same secrets or information to everyone but i am loyal to all of them. i will drop anything to be with my friends and i will do it in a split second. oh making brownies? bowl will come crashing to the floor. i am very serious when it comes to keeping my friends around and i will do just about anything for them. i make friends easily, it’s true, but i’m picky at the same time. it’s a contradiction i know. i’m picky with them because as i am loyal to them, i have the expectation that they will be the same to me in at least some form. if i need help, i know that my best friends will be there for me to help pick up the mess that is trailing behind me. and i would do the same for them. if you can’t exactly do that, then you really are not counted as a friend.

girls. oh my. this is a hard one. i’m lovable. i know i am, and a little cocky at times but with girls. i don’t fall hard or fast at all. but i’m not above flirting with them or having a quick one night stand. it’s not really a gentleman thing that i have going for me so far i guess but it’s true. i’m a male, and not entirely innocent. i will flirt with a beautiful girl and sometimes it leads to me to a relationship and sometimes it doesn’t. i won’t ever cheat. i won’t leave without reason. i am a very committedguy that just hasn’t found a girl to call his own in a while. i’m a gentleman though. an honest one. i hold open doors, pay the checks, pull the chair out and open and close the car door. i’m affectionate but not over clingly because honestly, i hate girls that cling to my side because they feel that i am going to fuck up or something. i won’t. i haven’t yet. i try and be attentive and spontaneous, flowers at the door or the office to know that i am thinking of you even when you are not by my side. or chocolates when i show up for a date. i do happen to listen when they talk but i guess i am just a hopeless romantic in that sense. i’m the contradiction to the phrase “chivalry is dead” because i very much try to be your hero. someone that you can depend on. i just, well, i haven’t found that person yet.

i got to say that i am a little more cautious and more hazardous when it comes to well life. i try to keep myself out of drama with girls and guys. i am careful when it comes to getting the middle of a friend and her boyfriend because that always causes drama. i’m a friendly guy, i hug and kiss the top of my girlfriend’s, girls who are friends, head. sometimes that’s not always the best option. you would think two black eyes later that i would learn better but i really haven’t. anyway, i try and keep myself as well as try to stop myself from putting others into those awkward and potentially violent situations with other friends, family, exs, currents. it’s just not a good mix for me at all since as a male, i am thrown into those situations all the time. unintentionally of course. i don’t actually sit around and think of what path of destruction i can leave behind for someone else to clean up. i’m courteous and careful about what i say and do.

i always trying to keep in mind that people have feelings and i really hate to hurt them. a slight flaw of mine. okay a major flaw. in a play, this would be my downfall and possibly it could be in the end. i hate to hurt people’s feelings and i feel some serious guilt when i do. people say that i sugarcoat…a lot. and it’s true. i do. i’m not an outright blunt person to spill the truth about someone’s ugly shoes or about how i feel about them. i am a person that takes others into consideration before i answer of even begin to contemplate the truth. it’s a flaw. a big one. i know. i have others. i’m sarcastic when it comes to certain things, and i have a huge fear of heights as well. i guess i have some self-doubt despite my cocky nature, it really is more about self doubt of pleasing people than pleasing myself but it’s a flaw none the less. i can’t make a choice, that’s a little obvious when my parents asked me which school i should go to and i flipped a coin when i got my acceptance letters to the universities. and i have a little bit of a dyslexic problem that was discovered when i was eight.

okay i guess i should get into a bit of my temper. it’s nothing bad. at least, it hasn’t turned into anything bad but people have trigger points. i do too. mine are my mother and father naturally, and my little sister, my current girlfriend/crushes and my friends. my snap is not always a blind-hitting-till-they-die type but my friends and family say my eyes darken in hue, my hands curl into fists and my stare turns into a harsh glare. i’ve blacked out once. i will admit it but it was for a good reason, this seventeen year old kid picking on my sixteen year old sister. i beat him badly, regretted it instantly but i swear that my anger hasn’t been that bad since. i am a really good person most of the time. gentleman like is what i am referred to but everyone has a temper. mine just takes a trigger point. a natural protective feeling comes over me and i can’t help but lay my fist into that person’s face. well, guy’s face, i would never hit a girl. i walk away when i get that mad at a girl which has only happened a handful of times.

so yea…i guess that’s me in a nutshell, it’s a flushed out version of who i am. dyslexic but intelligent, a lover but a fighter, a hopeless romantic but a flirt/charmer. it’s confusing i know. i guess that’s a typical confusion young adult though, right?

i guess this is where i talk about my family, my past and my tragedies. well, i’m happy to say that besides a few broken bones, my dyslexia and my grandmother dying when i was twelve, nothing bad has really ever happened to me. i was born on a very calm day according my father. apparently, they were well prepared for me and it was an easy birth, well as easy as a birth can be. seven pounds and eight ounces. i guess i really was always a small child, just a little under the average weight but nothing that had to do with an eating disorder. apparently, my metabolism was just a little faster than other people and i burned up calories and fat easily. most of my body mass now is built from muscles, since i’m a pretty active guy. anyway, back to the childhood. i was born to thomas and anabeth rainer. they were and are very much still in love. i see it whenever they look at each other and they raised me to be a nerd but athletic and a gentleman but i always had a bit of a charm to my words. i can honestly say that i don’t remember my sister being born, or my initial reaction to it. according to my mother, i didn’t want to take her home at all. which i guess would be the initial reaction—fascination with the tiny little bundle, but jealous of the attention that it was getting. a typical little kid reaction.

i grew up pretty fast if you ask my parents. if you ask me, i think it went slowly. much to slow actually, i was never a patient person but that’s okay as well. a child wanting to grow up and once they do, they want the years to slow down so they can enjoy everything they chose to miss. no regrets on my end though. i grew up with my little sister bridgit. beautiful, sweet, a little rebellious at time but she always has her big brother to put her back into place. well at least i think i do a good job at doing it. she used to blame me for everything when we were younger though and i remember i really hated her. not actual hate but her actions really pissed me off. the puppy dog eyes to my parents and they just fell to her feet. i tried to imitate bridgit when i was eight because i thought about how easy it was, well my plan backfired and my parents thought that i was mocking her. i got in big trouble because i “upset” her. fake tears and all. we had the sibling rivalry but with the want to be there for each other. i was there when she hurt herself, carrying her into the house and bandaging the wounds, i was there to protect her from the girls and guys that taunted her and i was there the first time her heart was broken. i’ve gotten into fights for her, and i have tried my best to be the big brother while keeping that rivalry alive.

my parents were pretty simple. we grew up a far away from here, in indiana, a small community of close knit people. i was never a fan of the people that were around me, because the only thing that town was interested in was who slept with who and the drama that went with it. i ignored the drama most of the time but i couldn’t stop myself from being a part of it sometimes. my family is not a wealthy family by any means but we were not dirt poor either. that wording was a little harsh but we are something like middle class. we have money to keep us alive and give us what we want but not enough that we can be rolling in it. my mother is a caterer and my father is a construction worker. we are a very close family, we usually do what we are asked and of course we have our fair share of arguments but we always bounce back the next day. we are the family that sit down for dinner and talk about our day. the mother cooks, the father relaxes and the children are off doing whatever they want to do but they are always home for dinner. even when i get sick, i sit down there for dinner. it’s a family tradition that has yet to die and i kind of like it. we sit there, talk, connect and get even closer. but i think there is a reason behind it. did i mention i was a twin? well..i was. my mother and father left us in a parking lot for about two seconds to put a cart away and apparently, my younger brother (by three and a half minutes) went missing from the spot that they left us at. they searched forever, everywhere, and then got the police involved but nothing was ever recovered and then after a year, they picked up the pieces of their life.

so i guess that’s the basic outline of my family. protective old brother. doting son. teenage boy. i guess i should talk about the incidents that helped shape me. a lot of things happened to me between the ages of eight and twelve. the first would be my first broken bone. my elbow of all things and it hurt. it really, really hurt. i know it’s cliché and really stupid but i learned that i could not fly off the roof with a rope attached to me. my parents had gone out and i remember my sister yelling at me not to jump but i did. and i didn’t swing to the other side of the yard like i thought i would. the rope snapped before i even got to the second story window and just fell on my side. i turned my body to keep my neck protected i guess and all i heard was something that shattered like glass and then i blacked out. woke up in the hospital, my parents freaking out, my sister just shaking her head and my babysitter who was sleeping in the chair next to me. the next time that i broke a bone was when i was ten, it was during a soccer game and the ball slipped under my foot as i was running up the field. spiral fracture in my ankle. it hurt too. the last time was when i was twelve, i broke my entire hand, one reason my left is a little bigger than my right (not exactly noticeable but ya..). the growth plate in my right hand cracked right in half and i had to get surgery to fix that one. my mother was pissed at me for days because i was told not to touch this table thing until my mother came home to help me move it. i thought i could and i ducked out of the way as it was falling but i tried to grab it at the same time and it got my hand.

my next tragic thing is my dyslexia. it doesn’t really bother me anymore since i am now used to it after 15 years. it was discovered when i was eight. told you a lot of stuff happened when i was eight. i was learning how to actually write cursive and i couldn’t even spell my name. my teachers got all worried and whatnot and my mother was once again freaking out, so upset with herself for letting this learning disability happened to me. which i reassured her that it wasn’t her fault but she didn’t believe me. i had to go into a separate class, a slow one as my peers referred it to and i hated it. it felt different and i worked my ass off not to overcome it, but to control it. i can read pretty well now, i get a few letters mixed up like p and b and l and i and g and y. random last one i know but when words like gogurt don’t make sense, i am smart enough to realize it’s a y and not a g.

so i guess the third tragic thing would be..the loss of that twin. we had found each other in vegas, where i had been relocated and i brought my little sister with me because my parents were starting to retire and they kind of needed time to themselves. but yea, we foudn one another and then ..his past was too dark for me to ignore. he killed people, he set fire to houses, so i locked him up in a jail cell. but..things happen in prison and during a riot, he was killed. i have no idea how anything like that happened, it's rare for those kind of deaths but it happened and i guess, my life is back to the way it was. i didn't really know my brother, he didn't want me to know him and i have kept it from my sister so she doesn't know anything about it.

so how did i get from vegas to LA...well, a girl. yea. she's here and i followed her but that ended only a couple of weeks of us being here. we are still friends- sometimes. she is stringing me ...still, i don't know why i'm still here. it just feels right. i'm bringing my sister here in a couple of weeks to join me out here.