paternity (vol i)

I. Life Before Lisa Cuddy

Time passes in moments.

Minutes, days, weeks–––the years pass without a purpose until the day it's discovered.

The day of this discovery can be a dismal and discouraging accident, the moment itself might be comprised of decades or as instantaneous as the blink of an eye. The day can be memorable, bathing hope and promise in the light of an advent, an awakening. The day can be indifferent, an arbitrary acknowledgment of all things taken for granted. The only certainty is that one day the sum of wasted time will make itself seen.

For Greg House it was visible in the vulnerable, broken expression of a best friend.

Her eyes welling with tears were emeralds, bloodshot red, sapphires when she's happy, lonely, azure every other time, that night they were different.

Jade or viridian, he wanted to bring the blue back.

The kiss was about more than color or compassion. Affection melted with emotion and together they negated the bleak with the beautiful.

Mournful eyes faded to phantoms as he said goodnight. When the door shut there was still a little bit of her taste in his mouth and he let it linger. The flavor of the fleeting, perfect confession, of what they were both feeling, what they'd felt for so long, he savored. It was an ending.

It was only the beginning.

-

House is home now, confronting the conundrum, remembering the details of a long buried past, uncertain why the details he'd most like to forget are the most obstinately vivid.

He's alone. That much hasn't changed, not yet. On his couch he's lying with a headache, trying to forget about everything, trying to focus on the pain of his leg rather than the pain he's suppressed in his soul for decades.

He rubs his thigh, squinting imperceptibly when, for an instant, it feels as if the hollow of missing muscle is shallower, like a rippled indent, just a scar and not the gaping rift, the vacancy, the need and handicap it actually is.

Everything at once rushes forth in an attempt to not think of anything at all. Even the pain and awareness dissolve into memory. The struggle of the last weeks is close but overwhelmed tonight by the struggle of every day before.

-

Life is not linear. It's fragmented and unforgiving. A beginning does not necessarily begin and an ending does not necessarily end anything. There are no transitions between joy and sorrow. The chasm between pain and peace can be narrow or infinite. Love and hate, confusion and comprehension, desire and desperation, there is a thin line between every opposite and it is an impossible irony in life that opposites attract.

Conception is a beginning before a beginning, birth a first breath. What follows seems sequential: colicky and crawling, chalkboards and recess and classroom crushes, pimples, puberty, commencement and college.

Youth.

People learn and grow, move and change, live and die. There's hope and hindsight and life in between.

But memory shatters the illusion of experience as a straight line. What's remembered and forgotten are the moments that define an identity, justify an existence, make the minutes, days and years worth while. The earliest memories fade out, until the beginnings blur into the endings and there's no clear chronology, until the fear of forgetting yesterday, all yesterdays that were once tomorrows, is all that's left and the struggle to remember everything is the same as the search for self, for truth, for the meaning of it all.

birth to birthmark

Gregory House was born in a white sterile delivery room in Columbus General on the 11th of June a decade before man set foot on the moon.

Head first, he came into the world, eyes wide open and a sincere expression of disbelief filling his face, with his tiny mouth gaping but no sound escaping. A doubtful blink preceded the sting of a hand smacking him hard and the newborn's voice was heard. Weeping, he was alive, punished and in pain before even being held by those responsible for his existence.

Dawn broke, with sunlight sifting through hospital windows and freckling shadows intensifying the rigor of the bath of light. It was the beginning of a beautiful day to be born. Fast asleep, the baby boy looked at the doctors and parents before heavy lids fell shut, almost aware of the possibility that he could one day be both.

From his mother, he inherited every trait except the stray inexpressible few that developed prior to the paternal antipathy that would only subside after his father's death. John's influence was neither natural nor nurturing but more an aggressive and extraneous exercise in discipline. From his son's first steps there was a refusal to accept the subordinate, his son was the best, he would be the best. He'd make him work for it and settle for nothing less.

House inherited only one incessant attribute from his father, his name.

-

Childhood is a time of promises.

The promise of a future feels like a guarantee. The promise of two parents, bound and determined to see that their child succeeds seems requisite. The promise of play, of laughter and smiling and seeing the world in a way only a child can, is natural and necessary.

But for many, the timeline of youth is comprised only of broken promises. And childhood consists of disappointment and defeat, the saddest era in existence, because nobody can fathom the opposites of childhood and misery coexisting.

From the words that his wife was pregnant, John had expectations and hopes for his son, the assigned aspirations that every parent possesses and that every child will withstand and revolt against.

Religion was the first thing forced upon the boy. Baptism through his first communion, the occasional need to confess his sins inside a dusty pine chamber, midnight mass and turkey at his aunt's every Christmas–––Lent without reubens, Sunday mornings and spring afternoons staring at an alter where piety preached and stupidity wed––– he suffered through it all with few complaints. But absolution, he knew, was no solution.

Initially, it wasn't the unsubstantiated concept of belief that bothered him. There has always been a counterbalance of doubt to trust in his mind but in his heart, the boy marveled at the concept of faith. No, it was his father's hypocrisy that turned House against religion.

A man who waged wars, who sinned and called it sacred.

Other than instilling the fear of God, John's greatest effort focused on his son following in his own footsteps, unerringly. Growing up immersed in the military environment gave Greg an advantage and his father hoped he would become a marine, a commissioned officer or a warrant officer, something more than the enlisted eighteen year old he had been.

House's rebellious spirit resisted, even before he knew why, he had no desire to be like his father. Patriarchal adoration and the inherent inclination for imitation had skipped a generation. Worse, when he saw his father's fallen comrades, not the graves or memorials, but the shell shocked and the amputees, he was repulsed and had no intention of sacrificing an arm or a leg to serve his country.

Avoiding combat would in no way reduce the odds of him one day facing amputation and beneath the paternal pressure to be perfect, an individual existed and neither father nor son ever considered the possibility of that individual developing into a lonely, misanthropic drug addict.

-

There was a persistent impermanence to every aspect of his passing youth. One factor that brought about an early extinction to moments of happiness that most children experience was chronic transience. The House's were a Marine family, with a commandant husband, a warbride wife, and a lonely mobile military brat––––a picture of American pride. And constantly moving.

Destinations were random and unpredictable. Through the years, House found the temporary state of 'home' exciting. Everything was new and change kept life from becoming boring. After some initial resistance upon entering kindergarten, he'd return to this perspective and accept his inability to stay in one place.

Ohio was where he hit the ground running but soon they were in West Germany, Egypt, Hong Kong, California and then farther pacific to Japan. He learned the language as he was submerged into each new culture, with no choice but to adapt or die trying.

An innocent laugh accentuated by round dimples on the rare occasion of an unexpected smile and an evanescent almost incandescent halo that backlit the boy when the sun was shining, were the highlights of his youth's self. He was most often seen with a dirty face, stained clothes and tangled hair––– blonde, then auburn at the roots before it grew to be brown. Or gray.

When he was five he was sent to school, where he initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, weaving colored necklaces and manufacturing eternal handprints. He learned shapes and letters and sharing and took his dad's medals in for show and tell without permission. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the middle of less engaging tasks, like the morning recitation of the pledge of allegiance, a habit which irritated both his parents and teachers.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, enthusiastic expression was crossed with just a hint of sadness but even before he grew into his brooding snare and condescension, he had the inclination to alienate those around him. And aggravate those who remained.

From St. Sebastian's to St. Regis', parochial school was where his miseducation commenced. His classmates found that playing with little strips of construction paper, eating glue and daubing their fingers in color to paint peculiar and bright designs, were the most fascinating games in the world. House mocked them for being so easily amused. Complacency was a word he had yet to learn but the boy knew he was bored. Prone to throwing tantrums in the absence of a challenge, he was often bad enough to be forced to stand in the corner or be spanked—then he cried—but there were still lazy hours in the rainbow room that had a crucifix on every wall and skylight shining through windows while Sister Bailey's kind hand rested for a moment now and then in his tousled hair.

The days flowed on in a monotonous blur.

At night, wherever home was, after the books made him sleepy, he had a tiny turntable and would play 45s–––children's songs he'd soon trade for rhythm and blues and blasphemous rock and roll. The desire to be a musician enticed him, he saw the potential for music to be liberation, escape and expression.

Sometimes he'd fall asleep watching a movie. A super-8 projector was always on his dresser and a white bedsheet easily hung on the wall. He liked loading the projector, the tactility of cellulose triacetate, of holding the film and frames.

For a while he wanted to be a director or photographer and has always preferred the soft glow of a fading and scratched reel over the pale flicker of a cathode ray tube. He was capable of being creative and would splice together home movies and cartoons, solaced by the illusion of control, by manipulating the teleology of his childhood reality.

The lens of the projector was quickly replaced by the convex and concave elements of a telescope, a split reel by the slide of microscope.

(There are still days when his soul aches with a permanent nostalgia for that tangibility, for that feeling that he could edit the sad parts, direct his own fate, that forever wasn't impossible).

For a time when nothing was impossible ––––

Always, after he was in bed a long time, there were voices–––indefinite and fading, infinitely sorrowful and just outside his window. As he fell asleep he would drown the voices in one of his favorite dreams, the one about becoming a great athlete and winning countless gold trophies or becoming an astronaut and testing the limits of the universe. It was always the becoming he dreamed of and never the being. This characteristic was and still is at the heart of his unhappiness.

As an only child, Greg spent many hours alone. It wasn't that he was friendless, he socialized with ease and had an intercontinental ensemble of buddies. But at the end of the day, after school and sports, tree climbing and limb breaking, he was all by himself.

Encouraged to play sports, he swam first because the ocean was in his backyard and because he wanted to surf and sail and on some days drown. Eventually he'd row and became a decent oarsman but broke his scapula soon after and the azure infinity, crashing in waves, narrowed quickly.

There was still chess and science and music and the exploration of the always new geography under his feet. He was mocked for his last name (but usually armed with a much harsher, poignant retort) and almost never called by his first except for an exasperated 'Gregory' when he made trouble.

He was bullied in places where his difference was unacceptable, though it rarely bothered him. There were a few fist fights and a number of schoolyard duels but he was more passive aggressive than forcefully violent. Blessed with an unusual existential resilience, his confidence always returned and his self assurance never tapered.

Deemed 'gifted' in grade school, he was already being separated from the average and the normal. The sixties came to pass and he spent most of the time reading. House found Holmes early. There was 'A Scandal in Bohemia,' and 'The Hound of Baskervilles' had its pages falling away from the binding as he turned them. 'The Lost World' was another favorite and anthropology a subject of interest. But dinosaurs were closer to history than science so the paleontology phase faded. Conan Doyle had been friends with Houdini and magic quickly consumed the next stage of his curiosity. A conceptual system that asserts man's ability to control the natural world through mystical, paranormal or supernatural means was absurd, he knew, even at eight years old. But it was interesting and unorthodox and an alternative to the quantitative burden of his primary education.

People began to fascinate him, their flaws and anomalies. He was keenly observant of all those around him and knew when his best friend Will was hiding scars from his stepfather's abuse, when his English teacher was going through a difficult divorce and when Elizabeth Rutherford, a girl he had a crush on in the fourth grade, started her period.

Everything occurred for a reason and 'why' was his most favorite word. Every effect had a cause, every question an answer. House never kept a journal but sometimes felt compelled to write. He often carried with him a notebook full of observations and insights about human behavior and habits. It was never speculation, he always knew he was right.

His heroes weren't the drafted and dying troops overseas, or the vets who survived nor were they his parents, any comic book or otherwise fictional characters. He had no real heroes except, on rare occasions, himself.

House didn't understand why heroism was defined as risking life for war and charging toward death, all death was certain. Accelerating this inevitability was just stupid. He knew he'd only live once and even if he never truly appreciated his life, he tried not to waste it.

aside:mother

In 1967 Blythe got in a car, a combination of black ice and running a red light, she survived. The event made House realize how random life could be, how death depends on chance more than destiny. His first reaction was a somewhat self-centered one, he panicked. Realizing how close he'd come to loss and how easily he could be broken by tragedy, he didn't cry. He brooded in the ER waiting room about what he would do if he lost his mother. It would just be him and John, he'd have no freedom, no parents because his father's a marine pilot, flying high and killing communists. House would be an orphan.

Perhaps he already was one, waiting, not knowing the outcome of the unforeseen disaster.

During Blythe's stay at the hospital, her son rose hell. A near-loss is a momentary anxiety and the weight of what could have happened was lifted as soon as he heard her voice. So House spent the days switching charts, mummifying himself in surgical tape, stealing lollipops from pediatrics and popping balloons in other patient's rooms.

After she returned home, House nursed his mother back to health. He concocted elixirs consisting of Coca Cola, Mylanta, ice cream, aspirin and antibiotics, a panacea of sorts. He examined her arm, changed her butterfly stitches and made sure she got bed rest, bringing her bowls of cereal in the morning and bowls of soup for dinner.

The dynamic of their relationship changed, he almost appreciated her. She was infallible in a way, invincible when she tried. Years later, when he'd suspect and believe and prove that John wasn't his father, he still couldn't hate Blythe. She held the secret of his identity, she was a part of him, she was his mother. It was the first and, sometimes, only truth he knew.

- - - - - -

Punctuality was his prison and time a constraint. If House was even five minutes late, he didn't eat dinner. On days he knew he'd be late, because of the bus or practice, or any of the things that make kids careless about time, Blythe made him and extra large lunch. But the boy was always thin, always reaching over and helping himself to his cafeteria mates' meals.

A patient prisoner, he developed his own philosophy of time, a sort of eternalism that demoted punctuality to the formality and conformity he already disdained.

Through chronic tardiness, a complete disregard for schedules and ignoring time completely, knowing it would pass soon enough, House wandered and grew. The past was immutably fixed, the future undefined and nebulous and his casual often contemptuous approach to time, tethered to his incapability of admitting any viewpoint but his own and resisting or defying all discipline, would come to characterize his career and his adulthood, year after year.

From ten to twelve he was enrolled in military school. Or schools, to be more accurate. He was resentful against all those in authority over him and this, combined with a contemptuous indifference toward his country and his work left him ostracized and exhausted from reps and laps and punishments at school, bruised and broken from domestic abuse at home for not becoming, in any respect, his father's son. The image of himself as a sort of pariah was born but he never envied conformists. He was beginning to see who he was and already knew who he wasn't.

House grew discouraged and eventually, after a few expulsions and establishing an ineradicable infamy, had no choice but to join the ranks of the ordinary in a public junior high.

(There were moments of abysmal introspection when he realized he wasn't like anybody around him; that, even if he had the will to, he could and would never be like everybody else.

He wasn't liked or loved, praised or popular. He knew he'd never be the touchdown scoring quarterback with a squad of pretty girls cheering for him. He had his books and his bicycle and the everpresent knowledge that this, and now, are fleeting and and forgettable and that there is no such thing as forever).

aside: alone

Algebra was easy and science second nature but his intellect remained marred by mischief. Born with a rather puritan conscience (not that he yielded to it), the struggle was to shed his scruples. Later in life he'd all but slew them completely. As he approached adolescence though, he considered himself much worse than other boys.

But his antics were hardly halted by guilt. Sarcasm, the desire to influence people in almost every way (manipulative, and 'bastard' would come soon), a certain coldness and lack of affection, amounting sometimes to cruelty, a shifting sense of honor and shame, an unholy selfishness and a puzzled, furtive, growing interest in everything concerning sex plagued his personality.

For the last feature, time spent alone meant, more than anything, an early introduction to the miracle of masturbation. When he awoke from his first wet dream, with sweaty tendrils and sticky beneath the sheets, he wasn't appalled or confounded, he was interested, he was curious. Already in his possession were more than a few biology books. The texts answered most questions and his amorous schoolmates elaborated on the rest.

There was a strange mythology surrounding the act. The Greeks credited the god Hermes with its invention: he allegedly took pity on his son Pan, who was pining for Echo but unable to seduce her, and taught him the trick of masturbation in order to relieve his suffering. Pan in his turn taught the habit to young shepherds.

In ancient Egypt the god Atum was believed to have created the universe by masturbating, with the ebb and flow of the Nile attributed to the frequency of his ejaculations. Pharaohs, because of this, were at one time required to masturbate ceremonially into the Nile.

He laughed when they moved to Cairo.

The girls at school were driving him mad. He'd gotten used to a cleavage free environment between fifth and seventh grade and now the perfume and the dresses, the legs under those dresses and the thighs at the top of those legs, it was all too much.

Ogling or examining, sometimes it was a gaze unnoticed, by a girl who stole his senses, sometimes an inexperienced teacher, but usually a girl. Close but impossible, she would always be.

It started in the shower. It was a place of privacy, a locked door and infrequent intrusion. He'd conceal his lust by holding books in front of himself during the day at school, the arousal would wane at practice but when he came home it returned, raging and ready. The downpour was scolding as the steamed filled his lungs and it was just tug and pull and jerk and then down the drain.

Some nights once wasn't enough, or he'd showered in the locker room and would have more than heat and water around him. There was his body, solid, striving to be strong in the mirror. House would stare as he stroked, more contemplative than most. He liked the way he looked. The arms, the chest, the hamstrings all had room for improvement. But the muscle in his hand he was happy with. He was beautiful and he knew it.

He had become Narcissus rather than Atum.

The mirror also let him scrutinize more closely the distance and trajectory. He was always measuring. Everything was quantifiable, even his own self gratification.

Soon he'd find his uncle's Playboys and take more than a few. Porn was more easily attained than the courage to approach a girl. He knew he wouldn't go blind or grow hair on his palms but he also knew that the release that resembled happiness was no cure for loneliness.

There was none of the compulsory guilt, no shame or doubt that what feels good is good. He'd eventually venture outside the bounds of the bedroom or bath. When he was in the middle of a long boring lecture he'd excuse himself, saunter casually to the lavatory and after ten or fifteen savage strokes spill with a hiss into the urinal. He'd never outgrow that compulsion completely and sometimes still, while making a clinic patient wait, wanders to the bathroom, wondering if Wilson will be there.

Doubled over his flying fist with his mouth wide open and his eyes pressed shut, the solo endeavor on long days made being alone almost tolerable. It still does.

Wistful about wanking, there were ideas in his head about girls, about sex being more than sperm and syphilis and unexpected pregnancy. Few females were present in his life and as of yet he was still antisocial with that other gender, so he had fantasies. Some were graphic and obscene, with him pounding hard into every orifice as he was goaded on by the red headed girl on the corner of the street, whose name he made sure never to learn, lest it taint the sweet sticky unreality of it all.

Some were oedipal, residual moments of comfort from his recent childhood.

Most were reflective, hopeful but not optimistic. They were scenarios between he and a girl with a name. There were words between them and motions. He tried to imagine touching her breast, the color of her nipples, the pink he'd slip into, slowly, an attempt at tenderness.

He'd lunge into his grip in a dark room, bucking smooth, rubbing and pumping and pulling the skin over the rim of his glans.

Then a female filled his mind who had no name, no face. She was beautiful, she was truth somehow and he concentrated on every detail of this ideal lover, everything he wanted, more than he expected. He would come panting, swept up in the perfection of anonymity. This person could exist, she could be as real as the puddle on his stomach and more constant than the cramp in his wrist.

Reality recurred soon though, with the chemicals of instant and easy euphoria swimming away and somber equilibrium flowing through his bloodstream again.

Hoping that in the next few years he'd discover a world of more than crusted socks and crumpled kleenex, he tried to deny but always suspected that there was something inherently unlikable about himself. He embraced rather than resisted it but in the half waking awareness he knew that even if he could stay in one place long enough, nobody would ever love the awkward gaping genius. Here, he first considered the possibility that he might not let them, even if they tried.

- - - -

It was 1971 and around three o'clock on the fourth of July when Greg House was stranded at a gathering of soldiers and soldiers' wives who were gallantly exercising their carnivorous natures and sweating profusely in uniforms and sundresses. Some might call it a barbecue but being the youngest person there, House likened it more to purgatory. The sky was overcast, as hopeless as an escape and the patriotic celebration suffered from geographical irony, they weren't even in America.

Bored, he began speculating: who was related to who, who was most likely to have a heat stroke, who was eating what and why. He'd deduced that the parfaits had curdled, the punch was spiked and a certain lieutenant was dating his cousin.

A pretty girl about twice his age stood at a distance and a glimpse became an examination, the examination anatomical adoration until he was ogling certain parts of her and ignoring the rest. The red white and blue tank top she was wearing was a vehicle of destruction, no, a weapon, with two grenades...

The metaphor was interrupted when the incestuous lieutenant stepped into his field of view and blocked the only thing he liked about his country of origin. House was about to move, maybe even approach the girl (with a beer in his hand, he knew he looked older than he was) when the lieutenant stepped aside and another man sat where he was standing. When he could see again, the girl had disappeared and after a moments of scanning the gray and green and scorching landscape, he saw she was attempting to swallow the tongue of some young marine in the shade.

The discovery was tinged with dejection and House looked down, expecting to see his feet and usually comforted by the sight of sneakers, this time he saw only the auburn balding scalp of an officer he didn't recognize. The man was his father's age and rank, in an unfamiliar uniform, a comrade perhaps, a friend of the family maybe, though he hadn't remembered ever seeing him before.

Skylight reflected off the stranger's scalp, glaring gray and as House looked closer, the reflection became a revelation. Beneath the bright white there was red. It was a small strawberry shaped birthmark flooded in sweat; a birthmark identical in size, shape and location to his own. Coincidence was his first thought. Then he thought maybe the man was an uncle, some relative he'd never met. Surely there was a connection. He investigated and learned only that they weren't related.

Then House asked his father, feigning historical interest, where he was stationed in October 1958. John admitted that he was deployed to Okinawa for training exercises at the beginning of September and continued with a long detailed account of the heroism he witnessed in Korea, the carnage and loss and how it was all necessary and rewarding.

John took pride in taking lives. Perhaps, ultimately in an effort to be the opposite of him, House pursued medicine to take pride in saving lives. Not necessarily for the benefit of humanity but to negate his father's work.

Between the birthmark discovery and chronological confirmation about his own conception, House scrutinized and compared his father and himself. He was searching for evidence, for physical proof of what he knew was true.

What information he could gather about inherited traits was vague and elementary. He had dimples, but so did Blythe. He had a hitchhiker's thumb, but so did John. Neither parent had detached ears. Then there were his toes. House's second toe was not bigger than the rest, John's was. Of course, House's feet were still growing.

There were acquired traits as well. He considered his high tolerance for pain an acquired trait, the need to crack his knuckles and his taste for whiskey he also blamed on John but in all other ways he refused to be anything like this person pretending to be a patriarch.

The war waged on against the man who was no one to him. House was stuck in the middle, watching two people who didn't love each other and probably never have, stay together for the kid or because it was convenient or because they were afraid of change.

Worse than divorce, their animosity was natural, infidelity reality. He felt repulsed and vindicated in the same instant. It was a confirmation to something he never realized he'd suspected. It was the first puzzle that would alter his life, its solution a confrontation of his own creation.

If House was conceived from an extramarital affair, not unconditional love, or romantic love or any kind of love, but lust–– an adulterous tryst––– he was an accident. Or his mother married the wrong man. Either way, he was a bastard.

Both of his parents were liars.

A philosophy was born.

Love was an invention, romance was an illusion and his life was a lie. Though his own self perception was shattered the instant he saw the sweat soaked strawberry, he took it in stride. House was no more affected than a child who grows to a certain age and realizes Santa Claus (and God, in his case) isn't real. Fidelity was a myth people made to placate conformity and keep their conscience in check.

His identity had been redefined or negated, it was in jeopardy the entire time. He felt particularly betrayed because of this. Not only had he lost any aspiring sense of who he was, or wanted to be, but the answer was beyond his grasp. He could never approach the friend of the family in which he belonged, he could never ask the stranger the question or seek proof. His resentment escalated because of this limitation, this perpetually unanswerable question, more than the secret itself.

'Semper fi,' he'd think as a civilian in a crowd of marines at every formal and familial gathering his biological father attended––– but, everybody lies.

At the end of July and in the middle of the night a parched insomniac twelve year old House wandered downstairs for a drink of water. The journey to the kitchen had been perfectly quiet and he surprised himself by grabbing a glass and a handful of ice, in a dark house whose floorplan and furniture placement he had yet to memorize, so silently. When the freezer door shut a magnet fell. The porcelain, or enamel, or whatever it was made of shattered and broke the silence. His father was standing at attention before he could even assess the damage. House picked up the pieces and threw them in the trash, turning away with the water in his hand and without saying a word.

The trash can was full, with the stellate remains of the ceramic souvenir near the edge, threatening to drop and divide into even smaller fragments. In a demanding but drowsy voice, John told Greg to take the trash out. House rubbed his eyes, the corners scratching with sand and said, "No. It's three in the morning." He'd been scolded many times for his refusal of responsibility, smacks and punches and slander, but developed an endurance for it and knew the limits of his parent's intolerance. It was the middle of the night, John was whispering, he thought his spousal respect to not wake Blythe would deter the abuse until morning. This time though, he underestimated the effect on his father of the sight of him walking away.

"Now," John reiterated, grinding his teeth. "Listen to me, boy."

House turned his head, a lanky leaning specter except for his mouth, a highlighted half moon of scorn. He didn't consider the consequences, only the truth:

"Why? You're not my father."

John uttered a strange husky sound and sprang for him. House dodged to the side, tipped a chair and tried to get past the table. He sighed sharply when a hand grasped his shoulder and felt the dull impact of a fist against the side of his head and glancing blows on the upper part of his body. As he slipped in John's grasp,

dragged or lifted when he clung to an arm, aware of every pang and strain, House made no sound except to laugh hysterically a few times. After a lull during which he was tightly held and they trembled together, murmuring truncated words, his father half dragged, half threatened his son upstairs.

During the agonizing ascent House spoke, whispering in a broken voice a memorized recitation of all the evidence that John was not his father. The soldier restrained himself, slapping his teenage son one last time before shoving him into his bedroom. With the paternal push their eyes connected and his father saw the honesty in Greg's eyes and knew in his heart that he was telling the truth.

For a long time House stood by the door. Listening as his dad locked him in, he was cold and bruised, his head hurt and there was a long shallow scratch on his neck from his father's fingernail. He sobbed harder the more he tried to stifle tears and all of the emotions he knew he shouldn't be feeling. It wasn't his father beating him, it was a stranger. He wished he could prove it. He wished 'father' was more than a title, more than a designation. It should be a person and a presence and in the absence of that presence, he desperately wished the pain was different. But the same it remained, regardless of identity or paternity, pain has been the only constant in his life.

It wasn't until he crawled into bed that he realized his nose was bleeding. A few fingers dabbed at nostrils when he felt the slow trickle and saw his blood black in the unlit room.

Rather than instill self pity or rouse the rational desire for revenge, House was almost consoled by the sight of his blood. He pushed a stack of paperback Conan Doyles from his bed, reached for a flashlight and picked up an anatomy textbook, determined to learn everything he didn't already know about the cause of nose bleeds (trauma, he thought, obviously) and the science of sinuses.

Early in the morning he fell asleep with his head on the book, one last drop of blood poetically staining the page, a tangible seal on his fate.

After that night, reason became his religion and objectivity replaced emotion. His heart hardened until the beat of it became muffled reverb, buried beneath a callous.

He'd grow and change and always deny that his obsession with mysteries and medicine was owed to his father (since 'father ' is only a word, a role at best, he still uses it to describe John). But his cynicism and doubt and success are a result of the fractured fable he was born into, the abuse, of everything he suffered and especially the man he murdered with honesty and objectivity, with the distance he put between them and the genius that would be his greatness.

They didn't speak for two months, summer had ended with patricide dismissed but not forgotten. The war never ended because neither could surrender. House's arrogance advanced, a sense of superiority and his rancor matured, growing like a tumor between illegitimate father and son, after every beating.

John found that physical abuse wasn't enough anymore and the ice baths came, the nights of sleeping in the yard, waking in fog or frost, the imprint of his body like a chalk outline in the damp grass, a neighbor's dog snarling nose to nose with him and teachers asking why he was late for class.

Through and after the revelation, it was a great stage for Greg. Paternity would come to be a cradle for many emotional crises. It spurned his disobedience by logically justifying defiance of his dad and it complemented his curiosity. As an adult, his cynicism would spread (patients never disproved his distrust and his best friend would be a lecherous oncologist) but this event remains the catalyst for his disposition and his disbelief.

sarah's serenade

Puberty presented a new dilemma: the ineloquent introduction of the opposite sex. There were other obstacles as well. His body was changing and not just in the cliché educational explanation about erections way. He grew six inches almost overnight. A few facial hairs made their first appearance below his nostrils and along the crease of his chin. House shaved unnecessarily and occasionally and with a few scars to show. Physically he became a presence and a force, transforming from a skinny, lanky, lonesome boy into a tall, broad, handsome silhouette of a man. He spent most evenings running or lifting weights, joined cross country and a few other teams before finding his home in lacrosse.

Amid it all, at thirteen he discovered the insoluble element of romantic love, or lack thereof.

Her name was Sarah. She was three years older and paid by his parents for piano lessons, though House learned nothing about music from the girl. The original instructor was an old German woman who died after three sessions and was somehow replaced by a tall brunette with absolutely no knowledge of notation but whose breasts compensated for this much, at least twice over.

He no longer needed lessons and could play proficiently since he was nine. But Blythe insisted that he didn't know everything, yet. He was so comfortable at the keys that the piano began to bore him and the forced instruction from an inferior player made the music seem like a waste of time.

Three times a week he saw Sarah, often they were left alone in an empty room, hollow except for the piano and with their awkward interaction at the center of it. House disliked her at first. Sure, she was better than grandma Wagner but she came off as coquettish, pretentious and abundantly annoying. Sarah was barely three years his senior but treated him like a child. She feigned experience (at the keys and in general) and was a bad liar. Their roles were not friendly.

Until one day they were.

House heard her talking on the telephone. His parents were gone (his father was deployed and his mother was distracted) and Sarah often did that, spent five minutes with him and forty five on the phone. He always let her, never tattling about her shrugging off of responsibility, if for no other reason than the opportunity to eves drop.

The conversations she had were usually obscenely boring. She'd be complaining to a girlfriend about a bad grade on a biology exam or some new addition to her wardrobe. House listened only out of curiosity, he knew little about teenage girls except what he'd deduced over the last few years.

One day her side of the conversation became much more interesting. She was whispering when House was about to abandon her for the more captivating entertainment of television when he heard the word 'sex.' Not 'love', or 'breasts', or 'kiss', none of the elements of the vocabulary associated with or leading to the act itself, but the word banal and beautiful from her lips to his heart, 'sex.'

The three letters invaded his imagination and House stood very still, listening for what he hoped would be a detailed recount of a recent romp. But to his dismay she continued quietly and in a tone that suggested disgust more than triumph. He wanted to stop listening but couldn't. Sarah was confessing a sort of blunder, the experience of inexperience that is sixteen.

Her boyfriend, or ex boyfriend, had futilely attempted seduction the night before and she panicked, pushing him off of her and bruising more than his ego, ending everything. He left humiliated and cursing and House was about to hear of his anatomical defects when,

"Greg! What are you doing?"

House was caught but he couldn't look at her. As he stared at his feet his cheeks were burning, coloring his face like a low incessant fever. He didn't answer and desperately hoped that his silence needed no explanation. It was only after a long stagnant stretch that the shame and blush receded, as if their cause had already been forgotten, or his sin absolved, when he looked at her again. Then he saw Sarah wasn't angry, her eyes were full of feminine tears. She was hurt, resigned, but none of the pain was because of him. When finally she could no longer suppress a sob, she walked over to the piano bench and sat. She covered her face and he watched for the first time tears shed out of an irrational and doomed love, the end of a love, but not the last.

Suddenly aware and confidant that they were completely alone and would be for a while, he sat beside her, considered playing a song he had begun composing over the last several weeks, but didn't. Instead his arm curled around her and a trembling hand rested low on her back. He was holding her in a withdrawn, present but imperfect way; the only way he knew how. After a few minutes her crying stopped and Sarah rested her head on his shoulder.

The warmth of proximity spurred the shy intelligent boy as he stood wavering at the starting line of a new, incredible marathon. Manhood seemed a whim away. The knowledge of the solace his shoulder could provide was unfamiliar but comfortably intimate. Voluntary exposure was rare; she had no reason to trust him and yet she did. The weight was a reinforcement, the embrace an epiphany, the silent static inspiration. Sarah sat up, their faces close, the stream of tears had finally stopped. Her hazel eyes were looking at him, as if to apologize, but helpless and speechless, she was lost.

An almost chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose the very elements of his body. A rigor passed over him, blood rose through his body from his toes to his,forehead and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love and one chance.

Certain there was nothing else he could do, House leaned in and kissed her. It was bold and brash and made genuine with his abashed reluctance. A light meeting of lips, their mouths stayed together, tips of noses tickling for a long minute. Tasting the black cherries of her lip gloss and salt of her tears, he kissed her again and again, deeper and with a strange sentimental conviction, wanting to do more than extend the embrace, he wanted to instill permanence through repetition, memorization by means of refrain.

It was music. Or what music should be––––a delicate warm expression, gentle, physical sincerity blind with enchantment. He felt that life was just beginning. There was more than this he knew, but he'd seen the world already, he'd run from problems and wept from pain and now he was standing still. In this moment he hoped was endless, he was happy. It didn't matter where he was because he was with her.

They kissed her until they heard a door slam.

Sarah wiped away her tears and he stroked her hair, his voice masculine without being mature as he whispered some sweet nothing in her ear. Love and longing were real, they could be tangible and captured, if only by accident.

There on the bench he had the overwhelming desire to lose his virginity to this girl, this sad girl whose head wasn't heavy on his shoulder, this girl who was moments earlier nothing more than an older stranger. He wanted to share his secrets with Sarah. He wanted to know hers. Undressing or dissecting, this was his first poetic desire for the knowledge nobody else had.

Footsteps followed the sound of the door slamming, the echo of stilettos that made House cringe. It was Blythe. She'd returned with groceries or dry cleaning and soon her voice would be interrupting the cathartic reticence of the brief but addictive taste that was romantic potential.

He was grinning when he began playing again. Silence would have raised suspicion and both of their lips were glistening. C flat, A minor, eventually a song, it was Sarah's song, though neither of them knew it yet. When he sensed his mother behind him, House pretended to miss a key and let his new girlfriend correct him. It was convincing, it was a lie, it was their beginning but no mistake.

Sarah left late, a little relieved and with a new incentive for her part time job. She'd be back twice that week and House was high on the thought, relishing in her obligation, an exalted virginal enthusiasm radiating from his chest. His heart was wide open for the very first time, a heart with expectations, a heart that had to be broken.

For a moment he considered running after her, kissing her on the sidewalk or street, announcing and flaunting the mutual want that made the kiss happen. But he sat too long, ruminating about what they might do the next time they meet and about his breath and what he should do with his tongue.

His audacity seemed to thrive when the stakes were highest––– he was risking rejection, and getting caught and the thrill was in the confrontation, the calculated risk and its reward.

The kiss made him reconsider a loveless life, it made him believe that honesty existed, not everybody lies.

It was not his first kiss. But it was the first kiss that meant something. And so, after thirteen consecutive years of insignificant transience, House stumbled upon meaning simply by listening, there to be leaned on, and with a kiss––– the same way he would years later and in his boss's hallway.

The affair with Sarah went on for weeks. They were always left alone together.

At first they sat on the bench, it was an excuse to be close, he'd hold her hand, stroke her arm, blow in her ear. When finally they kissed, it was commensurate to a crescendo.

Sometimes they'd kiss furiously, expelling all the day's teenaged angst, his hands on her hips, her nails tracing the curve of his ears as she'd bite his bottom lip. Over time, his confidence and experience grew and House would lead them to his bedroom as nonchalantly as his arousal would allow, where they'd make out on his mattress, slow but urgent, until they forgot the clock was ticking.

It was all pressing and probing, nothing more than heavy petting. Their clothes stayed on and he didn't mind because he was finally learning something from the girl. Each session offered new information about sex and love and loyalty and women. The best education was kissing behind closed doors. Sarah's was the first female button he'd unbuttoned but her body was only a part of it. House involuntarily found her interesting. And through this affair with an older girl, his ego was born.

They'd lay side by side on the bed for an hour, his arm a strong loop, her hair dark perfection spilling across his pillows. He anticipated their meetings, but was bad at hiding it and knew his mother was beginning to suspect something.

At night when he missed her, he'd struggle with that feeling of loss and absence, almost sentimental, only to find a greater wave of emotion wash over him. Loving her might be insane or impossible, because he can't stay here, he can never just stay. House wondered if there could be passion without permanence, if his ambitions were being influenced by these thoughts and feelings he couldn't name, couldn't describe, illogical and unscientific. It couldn't be real, just another aspect of the juvenalia he'd never shed and something else he'd always a regret.

Music was math before Sarah, scales and notation, time signature and duration, it was all numbers, he was always counting. There was no heart, no soul in any song. When he was alone and could think of nothing but her, he'd write. What he saw in her, what he felt, what he wanted and believed, he'd rhyme it all into a rhythm. House devoted countless hours to composing a poetic promise.

Prosody made it a science, verse without voice in some abstract inexpressible expression. It wasn't a love song. It was a tribute to truth, this girl he thought was honesty incarnate and the hope of something more.

When he'd finished it, rewritten, revised and reconsidered, he decided to play it for her, to seduce or impress, really
confess ––––what she was to him.

The night of his planned, personal concert she arrived late. An air of uncertainty fill Sarah's face but House took her hand and lead her to the piano, his palms sweaty, fingers trembling when they finally touched the keys.

He played for her and she knew what it was, his song for her. The brilliant Byronic boy had actually felt something and he could admit it. But this was too much, too emotional, too mature. She wanted to stop him, to try and explain that they're not the same, that this was all just supposed to be a game, but the music was too beautiful to interrupt. It was sad and short, resonating grace, emphatic and original, each chord was a revelation, the entire piece a release, the look in her eyes as she watched him perform was such like the dream he longed for and never thought he'd find.

The echo of the last note was forever, as close to forever as he thought he'd ever be. Silence surrounded them until the end of that eternity. They were still in a breathless hush, mute out of the fear that the spell would break and they'd fall without wings out of paradise.

Speechless, Sarah was staring at him, down, then at their reflection in the black gloss of the Steinway. Words seemed useless by then, and though he choked on his first thought, House knew he had to say something.

"I was wondering if you wanted to start ––––" His voice cracked unromantically, in that pubescent tone and the moment called for masculine reticence rather than boyish candor. So he sat a minute, took her hand again, not even questioning if it was the next logical step. He'd aged years since they met.

"I think I'm going to be here a while," a lie but mostly hope, he had to hope.

"Sarah, I think..."

"I think..." Softly and for the first time,

"I love you."

House leaned in, trying to whisper, trying to kiss her.

"No," she said pulling her hand away and standing.

"No you don't."

"You're just a boy, Greg. We can't keep doing this," said Sarah.

"But–––"

"I shouldn't see you anymore. I can't. I'm sorry."

With a peck on the cheek and the slam of a door his first love was gone.

Sudden revulsion seized House, disgust and loathing for the whole incident, the affair, for being open and having any expectations. Injured naivete had his face red and his ears ringing. He desired frantically to be away, to another country, another planet if possible and to never see her again, to never kiss her or anyone ever again.

He ran to his bedroom and plummeted to the floor. Burying himself under blankets, he hated everything–––the room, the music, the bed where they had sprawled lazily, thinking in terms of dreams, remote, languorous, content. The room echoed with emptiness.

It had all been meaningless, as insignificant as anything. Hollow, he felt worse when he was motionless.

So he stood, he ran. He ran away.

Soles were in his hands and shoes on his feet then flashing through a patch of moonlight, darting into a blind labyrinth of alleys and becoming a turbulent scuffle somewhere in the enfolding darkness. Heel over gate, knee over fence he left the pain behind him, dying in the dust, trying to catch up.

Camp Pendleton was his father's base five miles north and he was running in that direction, feeling like he needed punished, beat, kicked and punched, he wanted the physical pain over what he was feeling, the heart that wouldn't stop bleeding.

The Oceanside dusk laid between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky. He ran for hours, until the twilight coagulated into night and he was standing in silence except for footsteps and the cars that passed and didn't notice him.

He ran away until he realized he couldn't.

When House got home he was dehydrated, his knees were aching and the blood of his bleeding heart was beginning to clot, soon to be a scab and then a scar. Dizzy and gasping, close to puking, he was proud. He'd never run farther or faster, harder or longer. With return he'd not forgotten, the world was continually wounding him.

House climbed to his bedroom, showered and changed, trying, determined not to cry. It was his selfishness, he told himself. That's why he was so hurt.

The room paled, the dark was shot through with damp and chill and the first flare of dawn was lit to a yellowish gray. He sat at his desk, his pulse rapid, his heart beating allegro, still threatening to escape his ribs. The desk was cluttered and he went scavenging through drawers in search of a book, something to comfort or relax him, in lieu of a confidant, a father or friend.

Instead he found a snapshot. It was Sarah, smiling from a step. He'd taken it when they first began ascending to his bedroom. He took it to remember her when he was gone, in another place, another time and never thought he'd need it so soon, he never thought she'd leave first.

In the same drawer there was a lighter (he began smoking cigarettes the year before and would try pot the year after) and he picked it up, holding the picture above his thumb and the flame. But he couldn't burn it. She had become a part of him, some integral aspect of his identity and life that he couldn't destroy and that scared him. The memory of her will always be more haunting than recollection.

Eventually the photograph would get lost, forgotten or left behind when he moved again but there were days when he sat at the piano and played that song, the melancholy ballad that would have been Sarah's serenade.

Crestfallen and crushed, under the aching sadness, he knew he'd lost something but he didn't know why and he didn't know what. He had a vision of his world as a place where love was unlikely and life was unfair. Lost youth and wasted time were a dismal payment for maturity, bitter calomel beneath the thin sugar of love's exaltation. For the first time he witnessed the rise, crest and decay of all that he felt was meaningful.

He quit meaning or she quit him.

After Sarah, House traded the piano for a guitar, started saving for his first motorcycle and swore he'd never fall in love.

untouchable

Misadventures of adolescence continued in Japan. The age of believing was over, everything had to be scientific, quantifiable, proven. House took a profound interest in chemistry, learning elements and formulas and the composition of everything down to the molecule, the atom, every subatomic particle.

The crucible beneath the beaker in the lab was a test, the fire his future.

Here, he dove into the culture and emerged a new person. Like Japan itself, he was experiencing a rebirth. Okinawa was no longer under American occupation and following the shock of the oil crisis in 1973, the nation would shift to technological industries. There was still the stigma of devastation from world war and a sigh of relief with independence. House's classmates were less than amicable with him and he had few friends there except a couple fellow military brats.

Outside of Kadena Air Base, one boy approached the tall abrasive newcomer, the stranger who could never stay. His name was Reginald Kurosawa, he was half English, poor and less than popular; they became buddies immediately.

Reggie was a quiet, private boy, aloof at times and beyond a few deductions House knew little of his new friend, so it promised a rich confectionery for his curiosity when Reggie invited him to spend a weekend at Cape Meada.

On the first day they went rock climbing. Or, to be more accurate they went

seventy foot long half-submerged bouldering cave climbing. They crawled across the two traversing routes, up one side of the cave and down the other with a sort of ignorant courage, feeling no sense of danger because of the water beneath them. But on Reggie's descent, he lost his footing on the wet rocks and fell hard, scraping his chin, breaking a few toes and landing on his arm.

House took him to the hospital.

They came in through the wrong entrance and passed a man in the hallway, wheeling a mop and bucket. Unkept and wearing clothes that were grimy and tattered even for a janitor, as Reggie was rushed into the ER, House waited and stared at the strange man a while before being told of his origins. He was a baraku,

his ancestors had held occupations considered unclean; they were tanners, gravediggers, slaughterers. Untouchables, only because of the curse of genealogy, inheriting like himself, a hereditary stipulation, a stain on their identity.

Before the weekend was over Reggie came down with an infection. His doctors didn't know what to do and House watched his new and only friend deteriorate. Until they called in the janitor. He was a doctor. The guy who knew he wasn't accepted by the staff, who didn't even try, who didn't care that he was ostracized, was needed–––––because he was right. The excluded was the best. They had to listen to him and nothing else mattered.

While Reggie recovered, House visited and investigated the hospital, he watched what the doctors did but never forgot about the baraku. He felt he was already one and knew medical school could make him the other.

It was fortuitous irony, after a crash from a cave and the puss of an infection, House had a goal, an agenda. He had a dream to make a difference, in spite of his difference. He was destined to be a doctor.

The next year he was in the states again, still brooding over his own tainted origins, in a place without ancestral discrimination yet he still didn't fit in. Amid his internal turmoil, another obsession was beginning to dominate his psyche: sex. Or, to be more accurate: sex with someone––––the loss of his virginity. It was a hindrance, a restraint, a weight he longed to have lifted more than anything.

Girls were a game. When one said yes, he'd take her to the drive-in and kiss and caress in the humidity of the backseat, concentrating on little more than making it to the next base. But a sports metaphor hardly did it justice.

House was curious about what made girls come and how it was different. Many nights he'd ride home with a few fingers glistening but without ever receiving reciprocity. During less active spells, he masturbated in the absence of female companions, waiting and wondering how, if and when he'd finally lose it.

It wasn't that he didn't have any contact with girls but they were rare events, as isolated as stars in the sky. His own lust was insatiable and the fingering sessions that seemed more like anatomy lessons or the occasional circle jerk with details of other boy's exploits, did little to temper his anticipation. He'd fluster the hearts of many girls in the years to come, but for now was still stuck in the shallow end of the pool of sexual exploration

Beyond sex, the horizon of his interest narrowed to science. And, speed. House had finally saved enough money and bought a motorcycle. During the night he spent in the hospital after his first accident (three weeks before he got his driver's license), he had the pessimistic foresight to realize that the scar on his nose would always be there even when the bike and the drive were gone.

forever lost

Spring and sixteen arrived simultaneously. Prom was late that year and so was House. He appeared on his bike an hour into the celebration and unaware it was occurring. He was at the school because he'd forgotten something. Notes, and not his own. House knew the night janitor would let him in, thus allowing him to sustain the illusion that he was taking no notes in class and still acing every exam.

Walking up the stairs and past the pretty people, he didn't envy any of the suits and ties or boys in them wearing too much cologne, nor did he look twice at any of the corsages on the made up girls whose heads rested in forced tranquility on their horny date's shoulders as they slowly and pitifully attempted to waltz. Formality, conformity, dancing––– it wasn't his style.

So House walked out quickly and unseen, with pilfered notes and his bike keys in hand, snarling in disdain at the pop song that initiated his exit.

Over the sound of his keys and slosh of his own footsteps in muddy grass, he heard a loud sob. It was coming from a shadow beneath the security light, a girl. House hesitated then approached her, looming a long minute before asking if she was okay. As the girl's body racked with exaggerated sobs, he could understand nothing except that her son of a bitch date abandoned her.

His first instinct was to turn away, the female frustration impaired speech was irritating and she was fine, physically. He couldn't help her. And consoling a sad strange girl three years earlier had only left him hurt.

She seemed weak, leaning on the wall and when Nicole finally wiped her face House saw a black streak across the top of her hand from the mascara and offered to give her a ride home.

There was no motivation behind his offer other than the sight of painted sorrow. There was no logic either. It wasn't quite sympathy or compassion but the visibility of her pain struck a chord, like a bloody nose, so he didn't leave alone.

As he drove into her driveway House saw there were no lights on and during his walk beside her to the door asked if her parents were already asleep. She said they weren't home. In the dim ocher light of the porch lamp, he smiled. Perhaps the mundane mission of the night had deviated.

Nicole added that they were gone until Monday. It was just her and her brother for the weekend and he was still at the prom. When finally she unlocked the door House held his breath. Time seemed to stop as he leaned in to kiss her goodnight, but she halted the kiss by speaking and his lips landed on her cheek. The words altered his target in more ways than one, it was an invitation inside.

Such an invitation from a melancholy girl, with no parents in the zip code, late on prom night means one thing: an end to all the speculation about the joys and expectations of the promised event, the act, the accomplishment––––the experience of a lifetime, or at least the first.

And so a thievery propelled bike ride would end with the loss of his virginity. It was an unforeseeable concession and there's an appeal to spontaneity when you're sixteen and transience is you're only routine, instability an addiction. House swallowed as best he could but his mouth had gone dry. They stepped inside.

Beaming with tremendous anxiety, his heart was a raucous drum, the only sound he could hear. The first time, any first time, (seeing '2001: A Space Odyssey', hearing 'Baba O' Riley') was always the greatest experience, leaving a permanent impression, unpredictable and unimaginable.

What if he did something wrong? What if her parents came home or her brother walked in? How was his breath, he didn't have condoms, was she on the pill? They hardly knew each other, she had been in one of his classes, maybe.

It was opportunity more than attraction and that almost made him reconsider.

Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was it—unsought, unsuspected months before, minutes––– but now breaking in silver light through the window, dancing along the carpet as though the moon were smiling at the now inevitable act, the moment had arrived.

Cobalt fingernails raked through his hair and he was walking backwards as her tongue lapped along his tonsils. With little reluctance, his hands cupped her ass, she tugged on his collar and peeled him out of the leather jacket. They found her bedroom with closed eyes, he reached for a light switch but she turned on a lamp. Fumbling frantically with his fly while trying to concentrate on kissing her, sixteen years of hormones had House grinning and groping like a stammering moron. He knew she wasn't a virgin and tried desperately to hide the fact he was nervous and all other apparent anxieties about his inexperience.

Nicole was neither gorgeous nor a novice and through their coital exposition the combination of ardor and clumsiness made him, for a moment, wish it were different. But his dreams of a pleasure so vast he screams, of a wet and waiting inconsequential weight being lifted, made him settle for what he had in front of him.

In and attempt to recompose, his fingers settled around one thin strap of her gown sliding it to the point of her shoulder, almost off. She had helmet hair after the ride there but one sable curl fell free and curved around her blushed cheek.

It was suspended surreality, that this was happening: he found the zipper at the back of the dress and pulled it down, slow enough to leave them both aching, until it slid down her body. She was naked after the snap of a bra, standing in a pool of taffeta and tulle, breathing long and slow into his mouth as he cradled her breast, finding a nipple and teasing it hard. House was sweating now, sweltering in the heat of her bedroom, a smug condescending smile shaping and all thumbs.

Nicole sat on the edge of the bed and House was about to follow when her hand splayed across his abdomen and he stood in front of her like that, dizzy with weak knees and calves cramping from the tension of the moment. She slid his jeans down and he threw his shirt across the room and waited.

One finger stroked horizontal across the elastic of his briefs. She tugged. His erection was impressive, the slow friction of its reveal enough to make him come. Rampaging upright, bending a little to the left, there was no modesty, no embarrassment, just pride. And her lips, inches away.

Moving it from side to side, gripping it with her hand, tugging on it with the other and then giving him three, four quick hard strokes before several excruciatingly slow ones, Nicole took every inch of him in her mouth, choking the base, squeezing the straining stiffness then tenderly easing the sensitive skin up and over the head before releasing it, filling the small dim room with the slippery sounds of sex.

The sight of his shaft disappearing down her throat and the unbelievable, indescribably astounding suction of her mouth had House on the edge already, squinting and panting in short wordless gusts. She licked and sucked and kissed the proud purple tip, stroking until he grunted. It was a guttural sound Nicole had heard many times before and, bored and heartbroken herself, she unclenched her fist releasing him right before eruption.

Turning the lamp off, she laid back on the bed. House stepped out of the jeans and underwear that were at his ankles and climbed on top of her. He braced himself above her, positioning his erection between his fingers like a pool cue and penetrating her in a fluid thrust that surprised them both. They shut their eyes and a moment later he opened his to see her lashes long and lids shaded with grayer remnants of the mascara that motivated, the reason he was here. He kissed her forehead and her nose, bracketing her shoulders between his elbows before settling deep and beginning to move in her experimentally. He clutched hard at her shoulder but she pretended not to notice and rolled her hips up to meet his.

Each thrust was slow and tentative, he'd been close since the middle of the bike ride there but had the persevering intent to not disappoint. He regretted the ordinary position, trying to distract himself by speculating why it's called missionary, and wished he could let her lead. He considered a strong clasp and rolling over until she was on top but doubted the bed was large enough for such a heroic attempt.

It was less awkward than he would have imagined, had he any premonition of how the night would progress. A certain amount of serotonin allowed spontaneity to eclipse inexperience.

Following the first few minutes, House wondered if he was hurting her because she never stopped wincing. He wished he could hold her breasts but his lips made up for this, tongue circling, sucking one nipple. Tasting soap and eliciting no response, his mouth resigned from her chest. When he examined her expression, her eyes avoided his. It wasn't love and part of him liked that.

He ground down, tangling pubic hair, coiled curls and light brown fur. With his face buried against her neck, his forehead sinking into the pillow, House found that he had enough leverage to angle for depth. The smooth lunges and deep breaths he took were evocative, raising a familiar emotion, recognition and a sense of well being. The sense was scent, Sarah's shampoo. Music was playing behind his closed eyes, he could see the girl, hear her song and imagined that he really was making love to her.

The lie could only last so long. He opened his eyes, trying to hold his breath, jerked a few times, involuntarily, then withdrew almost completely. When he thrust again Nicole moaned. Then words followed that were mostly nonsense and profanity, soft and damp, her voice tempting and luring, provoking and stoking all the restraint he could manage for a few more escalatory minutes.

When she said 'Greg' it sounded like a question and he wondered if she didn't remember, or ever really know his name. (Detachment would come to satisfy him but now is was simply depressing). He answered the question with a few short quick pushes and small shifts until they finally found a rhythm. Nicole sighed with her legs wrapped around him, her nails digging into his shoulders and scratching the side of his neck as she pushed up to meet his every downstroke.

House held back as long as he could. He tried kissing her but they were faint and sloppy and altogether unwanted. Before he came, House had an epiphany: that it was all misdirected pent up passion, a mistake. He was still thinking of Sarah, of what they could have had, of tomorrow, of what it all means. Then he tried to force it away, the pain and loss and memories that didn't matter because it was too late.

His pelvis was pistoning, the collision of hips was bruisingly rough, jutting as his biceps flexed and his face contorted. He had some idea of the spectacle it must have been––– the fury of his humping and her immobility, of one's enthusiasm and the other's absence of expectations. He half laughed, half gagged when he realized that this was it, the long sought thrill he'd dreamed about for so many years. There was regret enough that he wanted to stop.

But she squirmed and squeezed, contracting around him until he let go and came hard, long and deep, with someone, for the first time.

After the hormones and adrenaline ebbed away, prolactin flowed through his body and he felt tired. House didn't know if he should sleep or leave. His feet were cold but from the ankles up he was on fire. Sweat ran down his temple and his chest heaved for a long time.

Skewed by a sinister slant of light, whatever he had, was voluntarily lost. More than his virginity, he had he lost something precious or wasted something that could have been meaningful, monumental, memorable. Was he a victim of his own impatience? Did he sacrifice the hope of something better for instant gratification?

For pathological curiosity, for the pleasure of lust?

Did he just succumb out of residual regret for the loss of Sarah? An irreversible blunder, firsts are the most difficult experiences to erase from memory and from a conscience. Rather than a triumphant feeling of what finally was, he had only the tragic sense of what shouldn't have been.

House's stomach and heart sank with the realization that he had not just lost something significant, but significance itself. The potential evaporated and it would be years before it reappeared.

He was expecting it to make him feel mature, some milestone or turning point, the proverbial right of passage. House didn't come of age but he did come––inside a girl who, not until he was panting post-climax, did he realize was blonde. It was a bleach blonde, fake like her orgasm. Nothing had changed, the sensation was new, but not really different. It wasn't until the experience was in the past tense that he saw it was boring, ordinary and strived to make it interesting. extraordinary, something sublime.

Later, after the other awkward firsts of dressing and leaving and saying goodbye to someone he didn't love, didn't really even know, House slipped back into his bedroom early enough that neither of his parents knew he'd ever gone out.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, wondering what it meant, what everything meant and if knowing would make a difference.

cheating, chance and chronology

At seventeen he saw his first Stones concert. 'Let It Bleed' had been a satirical response and when he bought the record he was already thinking in terms of tourniquets and O negative. 'Goat's Head Soup' was a delicacy and 'Somegirls' had yet to be released but he would come to agreement with the advantages of promiscuity and 'Lies,' of course.

House had all of their albums by then, most scratched or with a torn sleeve or lost somewhere, from moving so much. The experience of seeing them in Madison Square Garden was phenomenal. They lived in Connecticut that year, and House was harboring his enthusiasm about starting college that fall.

High school graduation was ceremoniously formal, less memorable than seeing the Glimmer Twins [Jagger and Richards] live in New York. John, still hoping his son would go to West Point, was beaming pride regardless as he was honored at the top of his glass, granted awards and scholarships and admission to Johns Hopkins University.

The day he moved out couldn't have come quick enough. Greg was gone, leaving John and Blythe with years more of roaming and promising himself a few semesters of staying in one state.

He excelled in academics, as was expected. He didn't join a fraternity but partied enough to cover the entire Greek alphabet. House ran and rowed again and was on the winning lacrosse team when the Blue Jays took the NCAA championship his third year.

The transition from high school to Hopkins was the making of the man. He left his boyhood blunders behind him and marched forward, with more intelligence and experience than most of those in his class. Charming and charismatic, he was exceedingly handsome, had poise and personality without perfect posture or shaving regularly. Beneath the aura of condescension and curiosity he remained cold, calculating and calloused.

He cheated.

Everybody knew him but few liked the enigma. Dylan Crandall was his friend and roommate for a while. Their refrigerator, at any point in time, had little in it other than beer and ice cream. But Crandall had a car and a conscience and would believe just about anything. House took advantage of all three of these traits. Crandall fell in love and fell in love again, House tried to ignore the stupidly sensitive naïveté and for the most part was a good friend.

More than biology or chemistry or physics, House studied sex as an undergrad. He was much better looking than the other eventual doctors, his seduction techniques had become more sophisticated and the girls had become easier.

Crandall's girlfriend, (who he was considering marrying) was flaky, she was a flirt. She took advantage of him to the point that it was impeding House's perks. Then one night when she was high and he was drunk, House received the most exquisite blowjob from the girl, then outed her as a liar and watched as his friend walked away.

When he was sober again he felt guilty. But he was right about the girl ans her mixed signals. He proved it. And he regretted it. Such is the finality of infidelity.

House's sexual identity transformed after a few pelvis thrusting years as an undergrad. The emptiness overwhelmed the pleasure, he became more aware of the absence of something he never had, that he might never have. Did he yearn for meaning? No. But he wondered about it. Should he search for it, wait for it, give up completely?

The PreMed curriculum passed and soon House was reeking havoc in the halls of the medical school. He was on track to graduate early and was already considering what his second specialty would be. Studying under Brightman and Gilmar, he was learning from the best and establishing his reputation as the cocky kid whose brilliance was unbridled and whose bedside manner was nonexistent.

He exasperated every instructor, every doctor and nurse, everybody he impressed and diagnosed and treated and some he didn't. There was no doubt that he would be a doctor but that he should be, there was much.

House applied for an internship at the Mayo Clinic early his second year as a med student. He had a handful of recommendations and the opportunity was practically a guarantee. There would have been challenging patient cases under the supervision of one of the country's leading diagnosticians. It would have been the apex of his education, working with the best doctors, sophisticated technology at his disposal, ongoing education and the most valuable resource of all: tanned girls in bikinis. The internship would have gotten him away from the Chesapeake and near to the ocean, he'd have spent the summer in Florida.

It's ancient history now, what would have been. A myth really, him losing the Doyle internship and getting expelled, Philip Weber and the suicide of a certain future. An allegory maybe, with Von Lieberman the rat and House the dishonest hero with the moral being 'don't cheat' or 'stop taking shortcuts' or don't trust the answer of a competitor.

His philosophy of success tumbled down upon him and House applied and was accepted to the University of Michigan without ever looking for the reasons. He was lazy, arrogant but almost always right . This time, it didn't matter.

It was a crippling blow, not just that he lost a prestigious vacation or that he got booted from one of the best medical schools in the world––––expulsion wasn't the same as rejection, he could handle getting kicked out. House lost his home. A lifetime spent constantly moving, he stayed in one state for almost six years and this self sabotage left it the same as always, incomplete and pushed forward.

-

But what was the loss of one opportunity would become much more than a second chance. As he approached Ann Arbor more than twenty years ago, House had no idea how it would change everything. He was only there to finish what he started. It was supposed to be an ending, but it was only the beginning.

The years spent there would redefine his life, reintroduce meaning and more. He'd find himself and he'd be found, for the first time, by somebody else.

In the chronology of his life House knows now, there would be everything before and then there would be Lisa Cuddy.

This is the hiatus fic I promised. Since hiatus is almost over I thought I should start posting it.
It's a post ep for JTTW, starts canon but by the 4th chapter will be AU. It will be 9 chapters in 3 volumes, 3 chapters per volume. Though this is a post 5x11 ep, the first two chapters are backstory, so I apologize for the nonlinear way it's told. I'm still working on this so there should be days between chapter updates and a week or two between volume updates. I really hope people read and enjoy this and keep reading it as it's updated because I'm feeling really drained and insecure right now but I think this story goes a lot of interesting places.
I will try and post entire first volume by the 19th. Thank you for reading! Please comment.