IX: The Rebirth

On that couch I began to put my life together again and try to gain some perspective on my new life.  I started to go to therapy for the first time, actually went on antidepressants for a short period as I began to look at things such as my sister’s death, my sexuality and my endless search for God.  All of those topics were hard for me to discuss in this little rust belt of a town after what I had been through.

My coming out was not all that easy.  I had built what I thought was a solid support network within various 12 step programs, and when I came out I expected that support to carry through.  It did not however, I spent many nights sitting in the dark crying.  Perhaps that is why it was so easy for me to take on the persona of the tragic dark figure.  That is indeed how I felt inside.  

When I came out I was asked not to discuss it in meetings because it didn’t have anything to do with staying sober/clean.  I would argue that I used over those issues countless times.  So suddenly I felt like an outcast among the very people that I felt so welcomed by.  Some of these people I considered very close.  It hurt me quite deeply.  So much of my time on the couch and in therapy was spent letting go of that shame and finding my strength. 

I am not sure what would have become of me if I wouldn’t have had that support.  These people took me in, loved me, supported me and held my hand through one of the most difficult times in my life.  It is because of their love that I am here to write any of this.  I truly do owe them my life.

As a result of trying to piece my life back together I took a job doing “psychic readings” at a gay owned and operated bookstore called  “Mindreaders”.  The girl that ran it sat with me for six hours one day talking about all things spiritual.  We seemed to have an instant connection.  It was a good environment to be in at that time.  I was surrounded by gay literature and art doing what I was good at.

It was also the first time I got to spread my Reiki wings having been recently trained in Reiki.  That in and of itself is a story worth mentioning.  One of my dear friends had come back from out west and was all excited about Reiki.  I had never heard of it, and by what he described it sounded like a million other healing techniques that I had ran across.  I decided to take one of his classes however, more to support him than for any other reason. 

I was in for quite a shock after the attunement, I suddenly began running a fever, with cold sweats and all.  I was unable to finish the course and spent the next week in bed running a high fever.  This was what I needed to be convinced Reiki was something different than the forms of healing I had previously learned.  Since that day Reiki has been an active part of my life.  

So anyway, there I was working as a psychic in a gay bookstore, with a gay club next door, along with a cafe upstairs.  It was just what I needed to regain myself and complete the rebirth that had started to take place.  I was no longer surrounded by people that judged me, I was surrounded by people that supported me in this new phase of my life.

Things suddenly evolved one day when I arrived to do my psychic stuff and Ginger, who ran the shop called me and said she wouldn’t be coming in and asked if I would open the store and look after things.  I was a bit in shock, since, I was just the psychic.  What I didn’t know was that she had been looking for a way to get out of the shop and I became that way.

The day turned into to a week and on.  The owner came in and said “So you're running the place now?” to which I answered, “Well, I guess so is that okay?”.  He kind of shrugged and smiled.  We would later have a pretty good working relationship even though there was a lot of ugliness and drama that would take place around us.

Things continued like this for some time until Ginger decided to make the final jump and leave for good.  The owner let me run things for quite some time, I even began to stay at a motel that he owned during the week so I wouldn’t have to come in from my couch in Michigan every day.  These were some fun times for me, I was young gay and pretty.  I was most definitely having fun with it.

This all being said, I wasn’t any less dark during this time.  When I came out I didn’t become rainbow bright.  I just wore more makeup and pretty clothes.  I turned into a seductive little goth kid.  This kind of made me a freak among freaks and that made me a target of both interest and scandal.  I heard some pretty crazy rumors about myself from that time.  None of them are worth mentioning, they just served to further my dark tragic persona.  I didn’t mind actually, I may have even used it to keep people at a distance.

Soon the owner came to me and said he was going to shut the store down, he had opened it after all for Ginger and because she was no longer there, he was done with it.  I convinced him to let me take it over.  We decided on a payment plan and I took over the business.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved being there and the life I was living so I was willing to go for it.

From that point on the store consumed me, I was there for 12 hours a day, crashing at the motel night after night.  The store started to become a hangout place for people.  A hub of conversation and safety for people.  I even began to take on a occult students.  I was building a community around myself.  This became more so when the owner bought a huge building in the same complex and moved his bar/cafe and everything to it.  I moved with him and intentionally created a sitting area with couch and tables for people to come in and sit.  I wanted to create a safe place for people to come and discuss magick, spirituality, sexuality and the like.

That part of the business worked, the rest however did not.  I was loosing my ass, but kept plugging away waiting for a miracle.  By this point I had moved in with a goth couple that I had met in the store.  They were also helping me run the store in exchange I was paying our rent.  This way I was able to at least break away from time to time and just get out.  I was such a romantic in those days, thinking that I would meet mister right.  So much so that I most likely passed him up in my own arrogance.  I had some pretty amazing people want to go out with me.  I just wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t young and pretty, but young and pretty meant drama, drama, drama.  I even dated a married man for a bit during that time.  I liked the fact that I could send him home if he annoyed me.  I was a shallow, tragically dark little ass hole no question. 

My practice continued as usual.  I actually had a working  altar in the shop and would invoke in morning, every morning.  So this was also a time of great magickal power for me.  I think that is why the place was such a gathering place, there was a lot of awesome energy being flung around.   The place most definitely had a vibe.

Things got harder and harder on the business end of things and so I brought in an accountant and business planner.  We all sat down and went over the books trying to figure out how to save the store.  They both basically said I would be better off calling it quits.  The sadder thing was they discovered that there seemed to be a great deal of money continually missing.  I didn’t want to jump to conclusions so I started to ask some of the people that would hang out if they had noticed anyone dipping into the register. 

I was consistently given the same answer, they had all seen my roommates buy meals for a store full of people, dip in for this and that.  Basically they had been treating it like an ATM.  I was so hurt and angry.  When I confronted them, the whole thing blew up, and ended with the police being called and us never speaking in person again.  

After closing my store and losing two people that I truly loved, I fell back into a dark deep depression.  I would sleep in a closet within a room that was painted black.  No space was dark enough, I was only awake at night and spent most of my time in a dazed depressed state.   I am not sure how long this lasted, I can tell you that I am so surprised I did not hurt myself or someone else in those days.  I had a habit of waving a gun around, and had one with me always.  Life meant nothing to me, not mine and not anyone else.  I was still convinced that it was all nothing in the end and life was just one big lie.  

It was November and I went to Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandmother’s house on my dad’s side and she said that I should move south because they were planning to move to Alabama.  So I thought about it all night and decided I would do just that.  My friend that I had stayed with in Indiana when I first came back had moved to Georgia and gotten married.  I had visited her once and loved it there.  That is what I would do then, I would go south.

I convinced another friend of mine to go with me.  So we packed whatever we could fit in her car, borrowed some money from a professor friend of mine and headed south.

XIII: The Little Prince (Of Darkness)

While I was living in the big house with the Lesbian, I took on a summer job at a local college radio station as a weekend announcer.  It was just enough for me to pay for my room and have roaming money.  When I say roaming I mean just that.  I would sleep most of the day and then get all prettied up and roam the streets at night.  I must have looked like quite a freak roaming the streets in my black trench, black hair and Siouxsie wannabe makeup on.  It is amazing that I never ran into trouble roaming the streets the way I did. South Bend, has become quite a rough town since then.

Many people were concerned about me during this time.  I showed all the symptoms of being clinically depressed.  I was just tragically goth, lost in a very difficult breakup and an even more difficult process of reinventing myself. I decided that I needed a new identity, a new energy.  I needed to become a completely different person.  So I set out to do just that.  I no longer felt like the person I was on any level.  I have only undergone those kind of extreme changes a couple of times in my life.  It was like I had suddenly remembered who I was.  My memory has gotten clearer as my life has gone on.

I spent the better part of that year dating, practicing the Black Sun System, roaming the streets and filling out paperwork to legally change my name.  You would be surprised how much paperwork is involved in all that.  Now it would most likely be impossible, this was before 9/11 after all.

Thankfully I had a dear friend that was paralegal and she helped me with all that paperwork.  This was also before everyone had a computer, I certainly didn’t have one, so I had to do all that paperwork on a typewriter and if anyone is familiar with the court system, they are unforgiving.  Everything has to be perfect.

Finally I had everything ready, had done all the prerequisites and was ready to go before the judge.  I was obviously very nervous as I waited for my turn. The woman before me was turned down for a name change and all she wanted was to change her name back to her maiden name.  The judge kinda gruffly told her she should have done that during the divorce and denied her.  I was thinking that I didn’t stand a chance, I mean I was asking to change my entire name!

Up until this moment my dealings with judges hadn’t been all that great.  I’ll go into that story a little later. As I'm standing there oozing Black Sunniness he asks me to approach the bench and asks if I had fulfilled all the requirements. I told him I had.  Then he very candidly asked me why I wanted to change my name.  I said that I had been off of drugs for several years and that I didn’t want my past to interfere in the life I was trying to build.  He asked me if I was trying to avoid any debt, to which I responded no.  He then amazingly said “Granted”.  At that moment I legally became Caleb Ryan Storms.  It is hard to believe I have ever been known as anyone else.

This was by far one of the more complicated times of my life.  I was trying to transfer all my paperwork over to my new name, While dealing with the residuals of a completely different legal matter that was going on.  Plus trying to explain to my family and friends why I was now Caleb.  

My family took it the hardest, they felt it was in some way a divorce from them and took the whole thing very personally.  I actually thought they would be pleased, oddly enough.  I didn’t think they would want to be associated with an openly gay, gender bending mystic such as myself.  I felt like I was doing them a favor.

As far as the other legal matter, this is quite a story all on its own.  It was late one night and I was feeling particularly down, swimming in my own loneliness and self loathing.  I decided to go to Camp Chesterfield to recharge my batteries.  So a friend an I jump in her car and set off.  

We were almost there when we got pulled over in the lovely Whitley County Indiana.  We were apparently pulled over for speeding, although we were coming off of a ramp, so legally we should have had time to decelerate.  That was the first clue that this was not going to be a reasonable officer.  

He took one look at me and decided I was going to jail for something.  So he began to question us about everything.  I of course was the tragic, angsty conversationalist that I normally was in those days and that didn’t help matters.

He took me in his car and ran my license.  This is where the story gets crazy.  I had a ticket from when I lived in Virginia that apparently was showing up as not being paid.  The crazy thing about this is not only did I send them a money order for it.  I also had received a valid Indiana License since then.  Which means that it was not showing up previous in the DMV records.  

On finding this out he said and I quote “I want you to teletype Virginia and see if we can bring him in on this”.  My heart sunk, this ego with a badge was actually going to charge me with driving on a suspended license from another state!  He also decided that I was suicidal and so I had a nice stay in a bright yellow padded cell.  

Being the good little occultist that I was I noticed that there was a camera in my padded pod.  So I started performing the “Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram” followed by the Black Sun Casting and then the chanting of God Names.  When I had become quite magickally delicious, I sat down to meditate.  At which point an officer came in to ask me what I was doing.  I exclaimed I had religious freedom and he needed to leave me alone.  I was not a model prisoner in the slightest.

Upon going to court however it was a different story,  I cleaned up and presented myself like a well behaved Catholic School Boy.  Even telling the judge that I worked in the radio department of the University of Notre Dame. Which was true at the time.  He basically said that I shouldn’t have been arrested really and gave me time served with the speculation that I would straighten things out with Virginia.  Which I had already done previous to my court date.  My license was suspended for 90 days and that was the end of it, or so I thought.

As it turns out I was hit by a bunch of fees after the fact because I never went back for my Indiana License.  I was also hit with a fee for not showing proof of insurance years after the event.  This is partly why Caleb Storms never drove much, the red tape I would have to weed through just to get a license is ridiculous.

After the name change, the court case and the lesbian’s house I was ready for a change.  I rekindled my relationship with my online crush through the phone. We decided or maybe I just decided to give our relationship a go.  So I packed a few boxes and headed down to Wisconsin to fulfill my internet fantasy.

My dad and step mom drove me over to Madison, where he lived.  That was a very disappointing reality call.  The person I met was not at all the person I fell for.  My first lesson in internet relationships, before there was really an internet.  Anyway, I think I only stayed a few days and then took a bus back home.  Not having a place to live I stayed on some friends couch in exchange for cleaning their house.  That was the beginning of me really looking at who I was and how I wanted to live  It was during this time that Caleb Storms was truly born.