A Family Visit
We are running out of July. They are almost here. Brother called today and pinpointed his arrival: sometime between Saturday night and Sunday night. A friend of the family’s, living in New York City and trying his darnedest to be the grandest, wearing tights and playing in Twelfth Night, a famous theater in the city, on some street, at a certain time. We are not going to make it and the friend is simply going to have to suck it up and play for new acquaintances and strangers and hope for the best in those tights. Mother sent their itinerary. After stops in Los Angeles, Hawaii, Denver, and New Orleans, they’re flying to Hartford and will more than likely be on time. Monday is the day. Then shall commence a mad gang of wanderers, searching for fun and connection, pondering the Berkshires or Cape Cod or a game at Fenway and Father will be paying for it all because his sons - grown now of course - are still boys. They have not acclimated to America’s speed. Perhaps there will be a visit to a cousin. Maybe a barbecue. Grill up those veggies, man. I am anxious, I await, already the social calendar has rendered this summer packed and gone. To say ruined would be rude. So I’ll report it as absorbed. Wonder what fall will bring. A person must be able to get away, allowed to disappear on occasion, adventure the high seas and risk life and limb and engage the surreal. Engage things not normal. Swim in the waters of the unknown. Then reappear, back to the wife and the refrigerator and the dishes, take care of responsibilities, contemplate kicking the cat, tabulating how many hours of television he’s watched this week. Read the paper. I can feel their presence already, I can smell them, sense the force-field of family. I’m looking forward to it and I’m bitching simultaneously. To fall to one’s knees and cry, “When will this ever end?” invites the wrath of nature. And since I don’t yet want to die, I engage this up and down ride, wince at the pain and enjoy fleeting moments of pleasure. Where are they now?
- - -
First brother phoned and pinpointed his arrival somewhere around Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. He drives from Asheville. He screams in a station wagon up this country on an interstate. Perhaps he’ll camp at Tom’s Creek; maybe he’ll walk up the creek into the hills; he’ll see a man who drives a Mercedes with a small poodle. He’s just killed a child and he won’t marry the woman. Our father does not know this. Mother does. Divorced. Aren’t all parents divorced? Come on, don’t lie! He will not marry her and she climbs toward forty and that might be it then. He says he agonized but I don’t know that. We’ll talk. Won’t we? A family visit.
I killed my kid once. She was four months old. She came out of my girlfriend - twenty years old - a bloody mess. Paid the two-hundred bucks. My girlfriend went to jail shortly thereafter. Kill a kid - deal drugs - go to jail. But I’m an upstanding member of society. Makes one wonder about the rest of you.
The second brother called last night. We’ve already lost July. It’s the next month. My youngest brother’s name is Walt. Walt called and said he’d take the train. I’m to pick him up at the train station in Springfield. Nice downtown location. I’ll get there early and walk around and visit the museum and the public library and I’ll stare at all the poor people. Wanna see some poor folks? Don’t go to Appalachia, go to an urban train or bus station. We can’t all have money. Walt’s going to have suitcases because after this family visit he’s leaving for Europe with his girlfriend. His girlfriend is not pregnant. Walt has yet to kill a kid. I say you haven’t lived until you’ve killed a kid. No big deal. I’m Pro Choice. Woman’s right to choose. If you choose to slaughter, well, there’ll be others. Won’t there be?
Walt is my youngest brother. Jonathan is my middle brother. I am the oldest. Walt lives in New York and he wants to be somebody. Right now he’s making his living by catering. I catered once. Good money catering. Everybody should cater. Even rich people, even people on the other side of the catering. Last wedding I went to the caterer was an hour late. The bride flipped out and the maid of honor flipped out and everybody in the wedding party was flipping out, but I assure you none of the guests were: we were all hanging and drinking and enjoying the grand view. It was a wedding in the western mountains. Big mountains. Bigger than out here. In fact, if you set aside regional pride and get down to admitting the truth, our mountains out here are pansies. In fact, if you set aside the high opinion of yourself and of your friends, everybody out here is a pansy. Bunch of pansies. Busload of panse. Arrogant at the same time. That’s always been sad for me: big puffy guy or chick in a fancy dress with nice shoes, acting all big, Ivy League educated, naturally, and you’re looking at them and all you see is panse. That hurts. When you’re that small, get a little humility.
Walt caters and he goes to many movies. Movies cost twelve bucks in some theaters. His girlfriend has large calves but I’m just noticin’. He’s taking the train and then the rest of the gathering will commence.
Stepmother called while my mouth was full of toothpaste. I’m not like most people. When the phone rings most people spaz in their attempts to answer the fucking thing. Spit the toothpaste out, shouting to the phone as if the other person can hear them, wipe lips on towel, and then talk to somebody. You should see most people on the shitpot. You should see what I’ve seen. I finish the teeth, or the shit, or the conversation with my neighbor Bob who mows the lawn and this morning carried a case of Genuine Draft from his van, and then I call the folks back and calmly converse. You should see people.
Stepmother informed me that they’d be in on Monday night late. Somewhere’s around ten-thirty. “We’ll have lots of bags,” she said. They’re having a grand time in Colorado. They’re not going to Uncle’s cabin. Too bad. It’s fun going to Uncle’s cabin. Checking out the bison, the crick, the decrepit structures from some time of yore, gathering in sight the swaying aspen. They’ll have lots of bags and they’ll be in on Monday night. Monday Night Football has hired a comedian for the booth. You heard that right. They hired Dennis Miller. It just might work. But it won’t work. Then the family will be assembled and who knows what will happen. Maybe we’ll have fun; perhaps we’ll connect and further our relationships and we’ll play duck-duck-goose. Perhaps we’ll discuss the genetic code of the bacterium that causes cholera. Cholera is one of the world’s deadliest diseases. It spreads like wildfire. I read Love in the Time of Cholera. Didn’t you? Of course you did; everybody did.
When you listen to BBC’s World Service you hear a bunch of British accents.
You drink as much coffee as I have today and one of three things occur: 1) you get the dizzies, 2) you throw up on gag, 3) you shit your pants. Guess which of the three I have going on right now? My stepmother calls my writing scatological. Our lives are scatological.
You know how many Chinese there are? Lots of ‘em. Ever see a completely white honky speaking fluent Mandarin? That’s a sight. Nothing wrong with noticin’.
Hope there’s a baseball game on tonight. Perhaps we’ll bring the whole clan to Fenway for a game. I can write about Boston, can I not? Boston’s a worthy enough city, is it not? Who knows what I’m going to do Monday afternoon while waiting for my family’s arrival. Perhaps I’ll twiddle my thumbs. I know, I’ll drive into Vermont and go for a swim. I’ll do laundry so that my clothes don’t smell. I can smell. No, no, I shower everyday. It’s just the heat around here this summer.
Ever hear folks from India speak English? Don’t you just love it? No harm in noticin’.
They’re having problems over there in that region of the world over the Kashmiri issue. I asked a Pakistani gentleman who was in town selling hats and bracelets made in Guatemala what he thought of the Kashmiri situation and he laughed. He almost choked on his spit. “Jesus,” I said, “drink some water,” and I handed him some water. He thanked me and then we chatted. I like to chat. Once, on a roadtrip with a friend, my lips just wouldn’t stop and the guy said, “Geez, you sure can be chatty.” We were going to Baltimore.
One day I’m going to write a seven-hundred page novel that covers the events in one woman’s day. Don’t you think that will be cool?
One day I’d like to hijack an airplane. It would just be so much fun. So what if you get shot in the end? It’s all about how you live life. What is it? The spirit of the game.
My phone was buzzing and I did not jump into the air I calmly pushed my chair back and stood. I walked to the coffee table. Stood over it. The person or persons or representative of persons did not leave a voicemail. Rather than pissing me off, I merely ran the cold water in the kitchen sink until it was ice, and then I filled a glass and drank the water. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the bright ball of fire-red sun, behind hazy clouds so that you could see it real well, stare at it without too much trouble. I had to wear sandals and walk on the newly mowed grass (which means my feet collected all the cut grass) and stand on the edge of the meadow and watch the rest of the sunset. Swipe at the mosquitoes that suck your blood and infect you with West Nile and that particular virus kills you. Move around in circles. Inspect the lawnmower man’s handiwork. Clumps of wet grass resting in, well, clumps. Then the sun disappeared behind the trees and the collected evening haze and moisture and flared vermilion and the clouds burst into their particular sort of song. I stood on the edge of my lot and declared, “The color of the clouds sustains me forever.” I feel good saying things like that.
Ever been to the West Indies? Me neither. I hear they can play cricket down there. Right now they’re in a test match against Pakistan. Or is it South Africa? The local university here, just down the road, a state university with a large campus and lots of people, has a bunch of guys who enjoy playing cricket. They play in a field by the School of Education. Most of them are brown people. Just by coincidence. No harm in noticin’. They don’t wear white clothes, however: they wear sweatpants and gray shirts and their backpacks ring the playing field. Pickup cricket.
Don’t you wish you were a militant separatist? I do. Boy, I do. Further, I would like to kill this bug that keeps buzzing around my head. It is not a fly. It is not a bee. It is some kind of oddity, thin and weird, and it apparently defies identification. He’s heading for a world of hurt. Flying that like, putting all that energy into it, and he’s heading for the end. Funny, sounds like all of us. Buzzing to our ends. However, if you follow that line of logic you’ll never get anything done. Would you? If he lands I’m going to squash him. Men on the radio blather. Their topic of conversation sounds important; it’s the tone of their voices.
Don’t you wish you were a Hindu nationalist? Don’t you wish you were Hindi?
I’m not fond of some Britons who pronounce the word India as “Indier.”
I got him. I killed him with a thesaurus. And now he lies there next to me, not far from my writing wrist, with his guts out all over the desk. “Look at you now,” I said. He was a messy guy. Kind of dirty inside, what with guts and blood and all. Really, he messed himself all over my book. The grab for the thesaurus was unconscious. When I saw that I was holding it I said, “look up a word.” Here is the word: repentance. Choice synonyms were contrition and compunction. A choice antonym was, impenitence.
Cleaned up the death with toilet paper. Perfumed toilet paper. Now I must wash my hands. I’m expecting a girl to come over: we are going to swim in a swimming pool at a house I happen to know is vacant. You just pretend as if you belong. If cops show up you say, “What? I’m the landscaper, finished the job earlier, now cooling off.” It always works.
Don’t you wish you were a Tamil Tiger? Boy, I do.
Do you pay attention to the Dow? Come on, don’t lie. I know plenty of people who never listen to that portion of the report. So don’t lie; admit it.
Can’t stand folks who say “no pun intended” while they’re talking. People need to stop apologizing for their wit. Or attempts at wit. Say, “Pun intended.” It doesn’t really help matters much.
I like it when a Brit says the words “fast” and “past” in the same sentence. I like it in that it makes me laugh.
Don’t you wish you were a part of a coalition? Boy, I do.
And thus I sit here and await the arrival of my family. Incoming fast and strong. Who knows what sort of excitement that will bring? Perhaps we will go square dancing. Maybe there will be a hurricane. This is the beginning of hurricane season, you know. It will be fun to see a baseball game with my dad. Every daughter or son should go to the ballpark with a dad. Dads are good like that. Even if he did divorce your mother. The details are excruciating. Especially as you’re getting older now and appreciate more and more what it means to be alive.
= = =
Sitting at my desk and total darkness outside. I’m reading Hamill’s account of Che Guevara. I’m reading Hemingway’s In Our Time and tripping on the journalist-turned-novelist. I’m thinking I need to see some death, witness children being born; witness people screaming for mercy or for violent gain. I, too, am an east coast pansy. I’m not in ‘Nam, not in Bosnia, not anywhere. Mostly I’m in a college library reading The New Yorker, like the strictest of pansies. But now we are digesting Hamill and I’m feeling more like a man. I want to be a hood.
A mosquito just tripped around my legs, found the hole between them and slipped under the desk. Now I can’t see him. Ordinarily I would shrug him off- no big deal. It only takes one; this could be the one; the lone guy flitting down there under the desk searching for my ankle carrying the West Nile and all you need is one time, one moment of carelessness, one mistake. Like my mother used to warn me about sexually transmitted you-know-whats. It’s worse when you can’t see the guy. And so I push back the chair and go for a walk to the kitchen. In the sink I wash my face. Stare at myself. Think about my family. Wonder if I’ll ever have a family of my own. Wonder if I’ll have time to impregnate someone after being diagnosed with West Nile. Stand and stare out the window and cannot see a thing.
+ + +
Couple more days to go before they arrive. I’ve got all this time to kill. Gonna take off work; already told the boss. When duly informed she fired me. Now I am unemployed. That’s ok, it’s an employee’s market. The workers of the world unite: for eight bucks an hour and benefits after six months. My goal is to work for Burger King. Yes, killing time and thus I watch TV. Only thing on tonight (this public TV this all I have) is the final day of the Republican National Convention from Philadelphia. Wish I were a protester in Philadelphia. Being dragged off the streets by my ankles, cops with the hold. Go to jail with three hundred others. Get my photograph on the front cover of the New York Times. How much fun is that? Wish I were I political activist with an agenda.
Here’s the kind of guy I want to be: allow me to tell you this: I want to be a gentleman (a man with millions of dollars and a wife and two daughters) who is running for president and I’ve made it to the final day of the convention and I’m making my acceptance speech. I say a phrase, barely a sentence, and the throng roars. There are cheers and baton beatings and shouts and shots of teary-eyed white women holding small boys. That’s it: I WILL CUT TAXES AND I PROMISE TO LEAD!!! I say with (reading) conviction and the answer is ROAR and a bunch of slapping hands. Phrase-roar; phrase-roar; sentence and a smile-roar.
Wish I were an insider trader.
Today on a day that rained then gave us sun then rained with the power to extinguish hell, I visited a bookstore and an antique shop, a habitual haunt where people read books at extraordinary leisure. And, since I’ve been fired, and I’ve a couple of days to kill before the family arrives, I thought it would be a grand day to spend reading. The coffee and the reading gives rise to hunger. I had a plan. I’m hungry, I said, and decided to do something about it.
Ordered quiche and potato salad with side of cucumber salad and it was served on a purple glass plate. With care, because the cucumber salad was a drooling mayonnaise dressing and it sloshed with the turn and spin of my movements, walked to the front of the antique shop where many are fond of placing a chair. A good day to sit outside. Muggy and hot inside required a breeze. Set the plate of warm potato drool on the floor. Placed the chair outside, particular, in the cross breeze, in the shade, and returned to retrieve the plate. Ready to eat a pleasant meal. Reading all day, make us an appetite. Sat on the chair, with my knees together to make a table for the plate, drink next to the chair, prepared to take my first bite.
The fork quivers with the eager anticipation of a dive. Up the road, a slight incline, approaches a roar. A massive Coca-Cola tractor trailer, flashing red truck, making a delivery to the neighboring restaurant, steams up this road toward me. The cab heads straight for my knees-table, plate and drink. Three feet from my chair and the driver turns the rig slightly, slowing down, straightens, and pulls the entire massive rig to a stop a foot from my fork and my mouth and my toes. A view of the locust trees no more. A breeze hindered. This pleasant quiche; this fine carbonation; the secret seat in front of the antique shop on a river; and a monstrosity.
Happens everyday. It’s like stubbing a toe. What was this driver thinking? Didn’t he see the chair and quiche? Must have been a new guy on the route. Terry O. was sick, perhaps. The regular driver pulls down the restaurant driveway. With the truck beeping backwards. Like anyone else would. Now, had I already downed six or seven bites of that fabulous quiche on the purple plate I wouldn’t have anything to say. It was the timing; the moment of exactness, the seated ass, the rising fork, the anticipation and the breeze and the swaying locusts. The question I had at this point, fork still at my lips, laughing internally, was whether or not to eat with a bright red Coca-Cola truck at the tip of my nose. I hightailed it, finding a nook in the bookstore, alone with the sound of the river out the window.
Wish I was that guy on AM radio, in the fourteen-hundreds in these parts, who rails against- in a smooth, resonant voice with a Texas twang underneath, repetitive and droning, seemingly taking over the world (hypnotizing)- the New World Order and Communism and the United Nations. It’s beautiful. Best radio going. Way before Infowars and the current GOP. Who cares whether you believe in the message or not? It’s the voice. It’s the almost-psychedelic experience. The alien delivery. This is my guy. He’s educated, bright, praises Jesus occasionally, denounces Bill Clinton, among many others, quotes accurately world and United States history, quotes from the world’s leading magazines, comments on culture, supports his wack notions with fact, science, lessons of history, reams and reams of quotes, of “they-said-its.” His name is David J. Smith. He wrote a book called America on the Eve of Destruction. He writes in-full or edits what they call Newswatch Magazine. And that’s what he apparently does: he watches the news for the advance of the enemy. You can order cassette tapes- I’m listening to lecture 985 right now. A NEW WORLD ORRRDERRR, he drawls elegantly. He’s talking about a Yugoslavian Communist. He’s talking about losing the Vietnam War and bombing rice paddies. Now he quotes Daniel 12:7. He disses Alger Hiss and State Department employees. Remember cassettes?
A fly lands on my elbow. It is a communist fly.
He advocates the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations. David J. quotes the Congressional Record. Ronald Reagan had said that the United Nations was the largest concentration of world spies, “right here in our New York City.” This is our once-Christian nation; if we were to pull out of the UN they would move its headquarters to Moscow or Beijing. “Our far-left president Bill Clinton has become a dictator.” He wants to “socialize America.” He talks about the illuminati. “People’s faith would wane.” This is the guy I want to be. The whole world is in a lull. “You know what they say: the lull before the storm.” A great war: Christianity versus Atheism. Communism’s fault. I’m just twiddling my thumbs waiting for the arrival of my family. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, which proves he’s for world government.
Now we’ve got some stuff about Lucifer. But the thing with this guy is, he isn’t quoting the bible all the time; he isn’t talking God or Jesus the whole time. He’s a proselytizer, but not that kind of preacher. He talks politics and world government he quotes from history. But his approach goes beyond that: it’s the tone of his voice, the droning mesmerizer, the hours and hours that he’s able to hold court. Bill Clinton implements step-by-step the foundation of a New World Government.
My brother, Walt, tidies up some loose ends. He pays seven-hundred dollars a month for a closet and that is not contrivance: it is a closet and he sleeps in it. But he’s a young man with dreams. Dreams don’t wither until our thirties.
Tomorrow is Friday. Brother One had better be on the road. He’s driving. He probably has to be extra soft with his girlfriend. He’s probably contemplated not coming up here at all. In fact, now that I make that statement I’m thinking he may not show.
“Adam and Eve failed in their governmental process.”
My folks are with an uncle (a brother-in-law) who won’t allow you to do the dishes in hot water. Nor warm water. He insists on doing the dishes in cold water. It saves money. He dries out and holds onto used paper towels. My parents sit in his living room watching cable. They watch Bush accept the nomination. They see a ten-minute speech take an hour because of the phrase-cheers. Banner waves. Balloons and confetti.
Hope my folks bring cash because I’m broke. They’re going to have to pay for gas, food, dinners-out, and movies. Cases of beer. Whiskey. Bungalow rental on the Cape.
If I were a whale, I would open my maw and swallow whole the huge air-load of minute plankton of the night we around here term no-see-ums, the same that nibble my arms and legs and leave me squirming.
---------
My hair is mood dependent. That is, if you see me with smooth hair, nicely parted hair, respectable-looking dome, cut short perhaps or brushed or concerned or washed, or even more precise appearing rather sharp, coifed ever just so, then you know I’m feeling insecure. On the other hand, when you witness mania, a head of hair like a copse, standing straight up at times or bushy and wild, then you know I’m presently feeling like the man, a conquering hero, one who achieves dreams, who leads folks successfully through trying times, who doesn’t worry, who manifests strong and vibrant and alive. A movie star, that’s me when my hair is as it is on this great day.
Yesterday’s rains slammed the river and now the river is the only remaining testimony of the thunder: magnificently swollen, pounding a downed tree and you hear the occasionally hard and loud clack of a tossed boulder. Otherwise, it is sunny super and smooth. The humidity disappeared as well. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fine today. Why when I look in the mirror I say, “Baby, you so fine.” Why I stare at her body and don’t mind. Walk with a whistle and a strut. I am reminded of a radio interview one time whereon I heard the famous person talk about rhythm when you walk. That’s how you know someone is real groovy: when they have that true musical rhythm when walking. Robert Johnson, boy, you should have seen him walk. He walked like an orgasm.
When I attempt to walk like Robert Johnson, just now down Main Street, with my hair as it is, it comes off as the stroll of a seriously disturbed man. But that’s ok, that’s all right, that’s not a bad thing. Now that I’m unemployed I’m catching up on my literature. Reading on a bench in a public park. Have you ever known of a private park? Help me out here. Reading and watching girls. A voice shouts inside my head (that asshole in the brain room) “you’re not seventeen anymore!” and means it when I’m daydreaming seriously. Whoa, hold on there, don’t be disgusted: I’m just saying. It’s fun to be surrounded by youth and beauty. I’ll say it though no man can say it anymore.
Let’s see, why did I assemble us here with this thing? What did I tell you I’d write about? Oh, yes, we’re going to describe a family visit. Apologies, forgot there for a second. Jonathan called this morning at nine-thirty. I didn’t hear the phone ring. Sound asleep me was. Still way-gone at that time of the morning. Especially now that I’ve been sacked. A woman once laughed at me over the phone: she said, “Ha. You going to be awake at the crack of two in the afternoon? Then she laughed herself silly and somebody had to ask her if everything was all right.
Yes, so, Jonathan. He left a message from Asheville. In so many attempts at words, he said that he was leaving and would arrive around Friday night or Saturday afternoon. And I’m thinking, now, I know that drive. That’s a thousand miles up the spine of the Appalachians. Follow Interstate 81 and you don’t get to New York State for years. No, he won’t be here tonight. He kills a kid and is ready for a family reunion. Boy, I can’t wait to be playing cards- Hearts or Pinochle or “Oh Hell”- with the family and then do the roundtable with that topic. Have no idea how things are with the girlfriend. We’ll find out about it all. Read T.C. Boyle’s short story, published in The New Yorker somewhere in the first half of 2000, regarding said topic. It is grand. I hope she’s ok; I hope they’re ok. I hope we’re all ok. It’s all right to cry.
Sing me a lullaby.
An ex-girlfriend once wrote me a letter out of the blue. Two years had gone by; I didn’t even know where she was living. She wrote: “I’m living with a guy named Tad. He is a lawyer. He likes to fly-fish, hike large mountains, rock climb, read Shakespeare plays aloud to his daughter, and fuck.” And that was it.
Aimee Mann is now singing some kind of sappy song on the radio. The magazines are all writing articles about her. They’re going crazy. Apparently she is getting her due.
My brother arrives tomorrow late, contrary to his optimistic calculations, and we will settle in to drinking a bottle of whiskey. Getting smashed in the process and tipping cows. Or cars. We will drink whiskey and sit on the edge of my lot and dodge the West Nile.
On the bench, then, in real time, and I’m thinking “Gee, I’m hungry.” Hankering for a Rueben from a place called the Shady Glenn. Famous. Great grilled sandwiches, too. But it’s a hike: a twenty minute drive to get to the town in which it has served the public for forty years. I don’t have it in me. Now, I swear to you that the following is the truth. This is not, nor is anything I have said thus far or will ever say, a fabrication.
A bloke I know from the old school, a fellow who started out selling books in a funky spot on a river in cutoff jeans, who now earns a living by running a bicycle shop who gives out free used bikes if you bring him parts. Yeah, you bring him a hundred dollars worth of parts you found near a dumpster or stole from a neighbor from your youth who wouldn’t pay you more than five bucks an hour to mow his lawn and he will hand you a nice used bicycle. Nothing fancy, of course, but a cruising sort of thing great for riding around towns or cities. A euro kind of bike. You could hold your head up high on it. This friendly dude walks down the street in an obviously perturbed state. His face is all growly. A scowl and his lip protruding in a frown. His brow working hard and the eyes in apparent pain, a pain within, like he just broke up with his decade-long girlfriend.
What’s up? I queried.
“Just broke up with my decade-long girlfriend,” he said.
“No kidding?” Here’s to ya, then, I said and mock-held up a glass of whiskey and shot it back like a fake cowboy. I’ve no sympathy for breakups. My parents are divorced. I like breakups. They signify a new beginning. And I’m not being cheesy. They really do: it’s time to go be yourself for a while, explore a new part of yourself, do some self-work. Couples are rarely cool.
And then he says to me, “Hey, you want this Rueben? I don’t want it; I’m too depressed to eat.”
“A Rueben?” I replied in disbelief.
“Yeah. It’s from the Shady Glen.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. You want it?”
“My god, I mean . . .” then I launched into a story about the hankering.
I ate the sandwich. It wasn’t warm or anything. Kind of cold and greasy, as to be expected (it came all the way from the Glen) and the bread on slightly soggy side. Things were looking up; I thought about girls again; about mucous; about the loss of my job; about the upcoming and hugely imminent family visit, the coming storm, the coming together, the, hell, the gathering of a tribe. Man we will eat and drink and fart about the old times. And I can’t wait for that card game when Jonathan tells father about the abortion. Father will talk about the Republican National Convention. He will say Bush did a better job than anybody was expecting and that is a bad sign. A bad sign for all the freaks who are voting for Ralph Nader. No, no, Ralph is a great guy, don’t get me wrong. It’s just, well, come on folks. Father will talk about the rise of the Independent. Mother will be a social worker and then a psychologist. I will work to rein-in the brain voice. I will say, “Who’s turn to deal?” There will be hugs and kisses and laughs all around; there may be fisticuffs; there always are fights. Only white people use the word, in real terms, with seriousness, fisticuffs. Fucking white people.
- - -
They wouldn’t allow one of us in because this one didn’t have his identification. His age certificate; his pansy badge. Lost it somewhere. We at first tried to get into Packers and that’s when he noticed. Poor guy; I didn’t want to drink beer anyhow. It sort of evolved from there. Even the guy who got his ass kicked. By some weird twist of street fate we ended up hanging out with the guy who got his ass kicked. The cops were there and everything. I tried to act wise and confident around the cops. Didn’t want to tell them that I’d recently been fired from my job. They’d be suspicious. Being unemployed is suspicious activity. It’s like loitering. Vagrancy laws, social loitering. The cop didn’t look me in the eye. He knew I was trashed. Boy do I have some things to tell you.
There was a loud thump in my head last night, way late, deep into the morning, sometime around three or four. Thought the thump was a dream. Or my heart skipping a beat: sometimes it does that: jumps a beat and makes this loud noise in my head, in my ear, like listening to your heartbeat under water. It’s loud under there. In half dozing daze, snuggling spoon next to some girl, I tried to figure out the nature and origin of said thump.
But before that, earlier that day, after I’d eaten the Rueben and all seemed serendipitous, and I’m still sitting on the park bench, wiping my mouth with a paper towel, this girl I know came walking up the street. She grabbed me by the back of the neck, by my cuff, for chrissake, like a mother and her kitten, like a human who is playing that role with a kitten or puppy or cat they hate, pinching by the neck, and she looked me in the eye and said, “I need a date.” This girl I know.
“What kind of date?”
“I need you to accompany me to a dinner party. Some girl’s thirty-fourth. To a fancy restaurant in Sturbridge . . .”
“Oh, no, you’re not taking me to Old Sturbridge Village. No way. I hate those motherfuckers. Those pricks had me arrested for trespassing . . .”
“No, no, some nice establishment off Route Twenty. You’ll love it; I’m buying.”
“You’re buying?”
“Yes. You must come.” Then she kissed me full on the lips. We fucked once in the past. This girl I know. In a closet at some guy’s house. We didn’t know the guy. So I agreed and next thing I know I’m in her red Audi- dirty as hell inside; brake dust all over the wheels; a makeup bag on the floor of the passenger side- driving on country roads to interstate, flying because we’re late, she’s cursing because we’re late, driving ninety and weaving in and out of traffic. Her name is Melinda. I like the name Melinda. Makes me wanna fuck that name. She has a voice-activated cellphone and she says “Terrence” into the thing and it dials.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Terry, it’s me. I’m late.”
“As usual.”
“Yeah, well, the kitchen going to be open.? We’ll be there in another half-hour, don’t ask why I’m late. Listen, I’m bringing a date.”
“Look. In fact, as it turns out, we just sat down. I’m holding the menu right now. What do you feel like eating?”
“Some meat. Some chicken, some venison, something.” She turned to me: “What do you feel like?”
“Something with sauce,” I said. “Some kind of meat with sauce.”
She replied to her phone, driving ninety, “Some meat with sauce.” Then her battery died and the phone went dead and that ended things.
But the nature of the business had been properly conducted. We arrived to fine food. I hugged the birthday girl. She had nice hips. She wore a business suit. She commanded a BMW motorcycle. She smiled and had white teeth. She had a lapel pin that opened up into a small book, a short story one could read. Her boyfriend sported a goatee. He was nice.
I said, “Look these people in the eye, my friend, look them in the eye,” over and over to myself, trying to be cordial, wondering how it was that I was eating a filet medium-rare in a brown pepper sauce. I ordered a bottle of wine without asking if I could. Decided to get drunk. Told them a story about a restaurant in Antarctica, a small joint, covered by international treaty, that served human flesh. The only place in the world. See, you get monkey brain and lamb’s brain and raw fish all over the place, and so why not a little taste of homo sapiens, right? They didn’t think it was funny. I stopped trying.
But we’re leading up to the thump I heard in my dream; or my heart declining to beat. This girl, yes, this girl, drove me home after the meal, the hugs and comments about the fine motorcycle and caramel dessert, wanted to come home with me, to extend the date some. I felt like an escort pimp. I wouldn’t mind being one of those. Work for an escort service and act all graceful with middle-aged women; learn to waltz or ballroom dance, salsa to spice things up; work on my French. We made it home, did the do, and fell asleep in that spoon I was talking about earlier.
Which brings us to the thump. Man, damn that heart. But in world of dreams and confusion you never know what the thumps really are. I take my thumps seriously; I take my dreams seriously. Speaking of dreams:
Before we get to the nature of the thump:
Dream One is of a guy who is sleeping, sound asleep and content and reasonably mild-tempered. He’s under covers and it is nine in the early moments of Saturday morning. The time when we are all loving life. And some neighbor, in this dream, fires up a weed-whacker. You know it’s a weed-whacker instead of a lawnmower. And it whirrs and whacks and it’s nine in the fricking morning and it wakes you. You do a morning pee. When that’s finished it’s time for sleep and you’re back in bed and the guy still whacking weeds and it whirrs and spits and you’re beginning to get pissed.
Now you’re pissed. You can’t get back to sleep. In this dream I reach for my air gun. A BB gun rifle, or a paintball machine gun, and I load it with ammunition. Take aim, steady, fire. Fire the rifle and peg the guy in the back of the neck and he jumps five feet in the air but then the pain hits and he falls to the ground. He will have a bruise for two weeks. He’s lucky I didn’t knock out an eye. He looks around and finds the small pellet in the grass and picks it up and inside there’s a note, like a fortune cookie, like a message in a bottle. This man opens it and reads the small strip of paper and the small strip of paper reads: SHUT THE FUCK UP
simply, elegantly, a sniper shot from a window somewhere, a suburban book depository.
Dream Two, also aggressive, set somewhere in Vermont. You own a fancy and fine piece of property, some acreage. And you paint in a studio separated from the main house and barn. Up in the woods somewhere. And when people you don’t know, strangers, trespassers, walk the land to access the hiking trails that attain the summit of some local hill, you do not have obnoxious signs stapled to trees, you don’t threaten folks with prosecution or jokes about your shotgun. No, you have electronic garden gnomes. The gnomes shoot out of the ground like automatic sprinklers on a golf course in a retirement village in southern California. They pop out of the ground straight in the air whenever there’s some unknown walking the land. As motion detector lights on American garages, on people’s houses these days. These gnomes spring up and in a menacing voice say “Who the fuck are you?” and “It’s time you seriously considered removing yourself from this land.” Disconcerting and frightening if you’re simply walking through the meadow to access the trail of some small northern hill. These are dreams. Then the thump while I’m spooning.
The girl, Melanie, jumps up and reaches for her purse and I’m thinking there’s a gun in there, or mace. I’m disoriented. Then I hear my voice. Yes, I know who that is. He made it in one day. Close to a thousand miles and he must have acquired some Benzedrine to pull it off, some cocaine perhaps. My brother, Jonathan, made it and there are hugs and Jesus you made it and the whole thing is grand. I put a shirt on; Melanie says pleased to meet you; the two brothers chat into the night, fill up the rest of darkness hours with conversation and meet the sunrise with tired eyes. Melanie leaves to go to work and we sleep until noon. And thus began the accidental Day of Social. And I’m not that kind of guy. No, I most certainly am not.
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We tried to rave with lesbians. We all drooled over that one girl. But that was later, much later. I had to beg for a haircut. I’ve never had to beg for a haircut before. However, they were gracious. Had to give the guy a five dollar tip and get him high. The others, my brother and one of the girls, drank gin and tonics in an afternoon bar. The Red Sox on the television a Saturday day game. Lost to Kansas City. We talked about being bi-polar, about fly-fishing, about the joy of sex.
Called Walt the Youngest at two in the morning. He was rolling a joint, drunk and high and receiving a blowjob, and he answered the phone saying, “What time is this to be calling somebody?”Then he laughed, and laughed, and started choking. I cannot believe we ended up with the guy who publicly got his ass kicked. The kid in the coffeeshop playing the twelve-string guitar was pretty good and he used to play Harvard Square with Tracy Chapman and now she’s huge and he’s nobody, playing in a small-town coffeeshop. Dylan covers. People drinking carrot juice. Why, if that guy hadn’t a-gotten his ass kicked, I don’t know what I’d a-done.
Tried to crack a baseball bat over my knee, like a Ninja, feeling the force, visualize your knee through it, know the power, and I almost snapped my leg in two and my knee swelled to the size of a pumpkin. A bruise for three months. Still, nowadays, don’t touch me there.
My brother and I snuck to a home south of town, climbed the fence, stripped naked in a flash, and jumped into the swimming pool. Happened to know the lawyer was out of town. I’d received a tip. It’s fun to do that sort of thing: just find out when people are on vacation to their weekend homes in Maine and then you’re all over it.
You should have seen us dance with the lesbians.
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Walt called tonight. He said he’d take a train. Be in Hartford at eleven at night. I said Hartford won’t do. He asked why. I said because. He asked why. I replied because it’s fucking south of Bradley airport, that’s why, and it’s much easier to drop off 91 real quick-like and grab your ass and then get the parents. He added that nothing came to Springfield at a favorable time. I told Walt to take a bus. Walt told me to take a hike. I said that was very funny. After employing strict logic with the young man he agreed to take the bus into this small college town. Jonathan will retrieve him. I will drive the panic down the interstate to gather our parents. Then we’ll be here. We’ll either engage in massive adventure, or we’ll sit around the screened-in porch of some college professor’s and talk about Israeli politics and George W. Bush and the West Nile virus, circling the barbecue and enjoying the potato salad.
Yesterday is called The Day of Social for the following reason:
Ordinarily I do not entertain dramatic or drawn-out public hellos. And certainly not any lengthy conversation over coffee by accident. In fact, in order to avoid an unwanted Social, I have been known to duck into alleys, read my open wallet facing some brick wall or window, compare prices in a dress shop for women, run across the street and dive into the bushes near the library. This sort of thing. It’s natural; we all do it; no big deal; we’ve things to do and sometimes the sidewalk street greeting is too much: always a danger of the catch, the long story, the extended version. I don’t park in town because of the meters. Mostly my visits are longer than two hours and I’m not want to run around putting money in meters, beating the ticket guy in his khaki safari shorts and in this town they even wear a Kenyan safari hat like you see on the television. Not want to do that; thus, and important, I park at the train station down the road some and walk up (don’t think you can park on a side street near downtown, in a residential area, for they’ve beefed up patrolling those side streets and the signs are all brand new, posted and standing strong in bright colors and sharp language. Plus, ignoring those bright and forceful signs once, thinking “nah”, I got a nasty bright orange ticket and it’s not my favorite thing in the world.
That established, my brother and I pulled into that dusty lot near the train station and it happened to be at one of the two times the train arrives in this small college town. One in the early afternoon and one in the evening. There were people milling about; you cannot tell if they’re eagerly waiting to go somewhere, New York or Montreal, or whether they’re waiting for a friend or loved one to disembark, to hug and stow the luggage in the trunk and make it to the guest bedroom with the tv in it and the too-soft mattress but you sleep there anyhow. Can’t tell, really. But I saw those people, that small family of man, woman and child, and they’re special methanol van and I don’t know them all that well, truthfully, but just enough to require absolutely a hearty hello and a fair and descent hang of five to ten minutes, a conversation conveying love and information about jobs and homes and the new and the old. I knew it. I scanned the train yard quickly for an escape. Saw it over in the corner by the print design and t-shirt shop, and the rubber stamp shop, an escape on a dirt path around the building. Prepared for that escape; made sure I never looked back over there; but then I looked and I saw that I was caught. The male of the small family had noticed me, vaguely, and he was squinting trying to place me but he knew and had we, my brother and I, slithered away behind the building, acting all odd and slithery, then he would have known for sure that it was I, someone he knew, an asshole who couldn’t say hello. Thus, with a deep breath and a warning to Jonathan that sounded a bit like this, “Prepare to go in for a brief Social; keep it under five because I’ve got to get to the post office.” And we did all right. It was pleasant. The child squirmed just enough (though he looked a little too darn big to be breast feeding; a four year old on mother’s tit?; he was so large it looked almost pornographic, incestuous, but that’s mean) to distract attention and I moved deftly from introductions to a chat with the male and a chat with the female and kept it minimal and brief, with exclamations about the post office and this fancy mailing I had to do and would you know, perchance, when the post office closes on this fine day of Saturday. They were taking the train to New Haven. We got out of there fast.
At this point I do not know that it will be the Day of the Social. We’re walking around, minding our own, chatting some and staring at girls, making way to the post office on main street, folks about in gangs and throngs, some sort of teddy bear fair occurring on the common, children mad with teddy bear delight and ice cream from the magic ice cream bus, a double-decker direct from London with seating on the top and umbrellas and folks chewing through cones and cups, larges and smalls, of ice cream. Yes, we’re minding our own and moving to mail this magic piece of mine and there is another familiar face. One that I cannot duck. Impossible anyway: she saw me immediately. She was in a smock. A beautiful blonde woman, single mom, two kids. Now, I’ve got to begin flying now in order to get this all in, and to do so without boring you. I’ll say that within the first few sentences of our howareyous she informs me that she’s dating a man who likes to fuck. Fine. It’s healthy. The healing of the nations, this fucking. A palliative. “I’ve got to mail this thing,” I say in a way that would send most to conclude the sidewalk greeting and continue on their merry way. She replies, “Oh, let me walk you there, I’m not doing anything.” And here we go. In for the ride. And it’s ok, it is a good thing. Return books to the library and she attends. Jonathan gets into a conversation with her. She did the Iron Man and her arms show it. She got fired once for telling the head chef to suck her big toe. He made an example of her. A suggestion for coffee was made. At this point I’m resigned. What else were we going to do? Two brothers in this town, obviously looking like brothers, and this blonde in a smock. We get coffee. While we’re there all realize that we, as individuals and as a unit, are hungry. The call for lunch. Now we are eating sandwiches on the sidewalk, at a white plastic table and green plastic chairs and a man without eyebrows says hello to Silvey and we are informed that no-eyebrows is so because he lost all his hair, everywhere. Jonathan asks, “How do you know, everywhere?” And Silvey laughs and that is that and the conversation is about her new boyfriend who likes to fuck. I’ve returned the library books and now my agenda calls for a haircut. I’ve memorized the saturday schedule. Or at least I think I have it memorized. I’ve never had to beg anyone for a haircut before. We agree to meet at this bar named after an orangutan and keep one eye on the Red Sox while we converse about fucking and drink ourselves silly in the middle of the afternoon like they teach you to do at Cool School. Can’t be a writer and not be drinking in a town tavern in the middle of the afternoon. A casual sort of imbibation. They depart for the bar and at the approach of the barber shop I see and almost conniption that the blind has been lowered and it reads CLOSED and my eye moves immediately to the hours and the hours inform me that they shut down at two forty five instead of three forty five and I can’t believe it. For a month I’ve been saying, “Boyd, get a haircut, get a haircut before your parents arrive.” And I’ve run out of time, they pull in tomorrow, I’ve assembled the rare money and it is the proper amount, and this is the Day of Errands. Emboldened by the fear of failure, and panicked, I try the door. It is still unlocked. There are three remaining in the chairs. Three barbers work heads. The one nearest the door veritably shouts at me “We’re closed! I’m sorry,” and in her eyes is a real fear, a fear of staying late, a fear of inundation, a fear of the loss of control, almost a mortal fear. I beg. Ask for mercy, explain the parent thing in fast and furious language, beg more, grovel, point out how easy it will be, imply that I will leave a fat tip. Finally, the guy of the three accepts, with the condition that he “gets to do anything he wants.” I go with the joke, laugh, and thank him. I’m trimmed beard and all walking down the street sucking on a cherry lollipop and reconnect with Jonathan and Silvey and they’re already on their second. Eyes beginning to glaze. I’m famous, I’m a writer, and so I order two gin and tonics in an attempt to close the gap and begin the drinking scene.
We stay with Silvey for a few more hours. Visit her house. Ogle the cats and the bathroom paint job and the quietude of the street and the lean of the white pine and smoke cigarettes on a college town porch. It is a fine afternoon. Now it is six and evening.
The two brothers finally take our leave and head for an orchard I know of and we find the orchard and Eagle Scouts are having a ceremony but that doesn’t stop us from finding a spot in the sun, on the windward side of the hill, with views north and west and slamming gorgeous, for a complete lay-down nap in the tall grasses. The kind you don’t do very often. Most of you bring a blanket. But the full grass, body extended, drowsy eyes closed and the breeze just so, I felt like Van Gogh. I felt important and sexy. I felt poetic. A half an hour slumber and we’re up again, moving through country roads, to that pool I told you about earlier. Swam and jumped and dived, in the glory of our nakedness, and the sweat is gone and the finely clipped hairs on my ears and neck and cuff are gone. We drive to Northampton.
Hungry suckers.
Desire to do it cheaply. Head for a pizza joint and the plan is to obtain a slice and then find a coffee and then gawk at women and men and errant pets and ice cream licking tourists. At the doorway, we’re going in and the other is coming out, we bump into a good friend of mine, a friend who two years ago moved to just outside Mexico City to write a novel and he is ponytailed and grizzled and sporting a sort of mange, and he is carrying a bending and curving slice and yet we hug and cannot believe our good fortunes.
I’m too far gone to care that I’m not going to be able to follow my individual whim and fancy. I decide to go with it, to resign, to title the day, to accept my fate. That brings me to the beer garden and smoking joints on the walkway in the park and dancing with frenzied and beautiful lesbians in the gay hangout joint. Watching that one guy get his ass kicked, until the cops responded, and not fully comprehending why the guy who’d just received a wuppin’ was walking with us. This gathering of friends lasted until it was time to go home, time for sleep, time for a silent drive shared by the brothers. Jonathan was content to receive the stimulus of the group. Again, I say, and this is perhaps good and proper to keep in mind for the rest of the week, the family invasion, I resigned.
A concert got out and people were chatty, sweating, warm, buzzing. Apparently the guy, the singer-songwriter, was good. A red convertible parked out front. I hopped into it, sat in it, and the alarm began to sound. I ran down the street and jumped into a bush.
Dodging the West Nile carriers. Another bird found dead. How do birds get caught by mosquitoes? Can’t they just zip away? A bat swooped down from above and ate a mosquito and I cheered.
I talked with a girl and really began getting in to her and then Jonathan butted in, took over, and she seemed to enjoy his company better. This is when fratricide is contemplated seriously.
A small girl, a five-year-old, went screaming by in her underwear with chocolate smeared over her cheeks and chin and forehead, screaming and yelling that her father was in big trouble, and her father chased her down in a swift walk, not running mind you, and explained sheepishly, apologetically, that she’d had too much sugar.
Jonathan, after I’d been singing in the shower, said that he found me insane and that I was the king of fools, the Michael Jordan of all fools, a pro. He was attempting to sleep and I was asking him what he was doing.
When we were in Middle School we had a term, a phrase, regarding whether something was stupid or that we didn’t like it or did not find that it merited worth: we would say that it sucked shit. Well, after watching a movie tonight we both said, in a rhyming and unisoned ‘jinx’ The Bed You Sleep In sucked shit. And it did. Whenever we watch a shitty movie together (because the choice had involved careful decision making at the video store, and if we strikeout we take offense) it is a rule that we inflict some damage on our persons, like those guys who used to whip themselves. This time I allowed Jonathan to punch me in the stomach as hard as he could, and I likewise returned the favor. We were both doubled over in pain. His punch had dropped me to the carpet. All ‘cause we subjected ourselves to this dank film. Things like this can happen.
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Whether they’re brothers or not, when two large men have to share the same bed there are only a few variations they can choose. My brothers are sleeping in the head-toe fashion, using the head-toe method. I’ve seen a fair amount of men employ this method. My cousin wanted to use it with me. For my own money I think it is the pansy version, the small style that is indicative of fear and insecurity, homophobia and loathing, deep-personal mistrust, icky-poo and cooties. But it can be a lot simpler than that: I’m not comfortable sleeping with some guy’s toes near my head. I mean, it’s the smells. They’ve just pulled off their socks. They’ve been walking all day in new york city, pounding pavement, or dancing to Buckwheat Zydeco, their shoes cramp their style, and now this guy, this large hairy man, wants to put his toes next to my face. I’m not in to it; don’t like it; fight against it. You’re sleeping there, minding your own, beginning to drift off into that Neverland, and then you get that sort of whiff, subtle and wafting, insistent and ebbing. No, I’d rather have the guy’s head up near mine, on a pillow, no big deal, risking the chance that our butts touch (is that it?) or our hands or elbows or feet (is that it? The intimacy of footsie, accidental, too much for some guys?) than the smells. And what if an errant foot is shoved during the fitful storm of dream into your nose or eye? Sorry, I’m a same-same kind of guy, a head-head man. My brothers go head-toe on the foldout futon couch in the living room. There shit is everywhere.
Yes, we’ve retrieved Walt and he is here safely. He did not take the train. He grabbed the bus like I told him to, like he should have, and Jonathan picked him up; I drove, after a Monday driving around Vermont, to Connecticut and gathered my folks. It went smoothly.
Let’s keep this simple: Today I played art dealer: my job is to travel to various galleries and collect my client’s artwork, unwanted or unsold. I emailed ahead; I know their business hours; this is a regular thing, a sure thing. Jonathan and I drove on country roads, backroads, past farm and dale, cow and horse, tractor and manure, tourist and local, car and motorcycle, people kayaking swollen rivers, to the town of Wilmington, Vermont. Went to the gallery. Ready to do this, boom boom boom; I’m even doubleparked, this is going to be quick, in a flash, like a pro. Everyone else is open, the other shops waving thematic flags and represented by wooden handpainted OPEN signs. A fancy brick building of shop. Tourists and locals. My brother, from the south, is not used to this: he says, “There sure are a lot of Jews,” and he blames it on new york. I tell him that they are tourists, mere visitors in their new jeans shorts and their matching tshirts and new white shining sneakers. Mere visitors. “But the woman in the giftshop?” he questioned. She’s a new york Jew, he said, with attitude; she’s rude. “Not like down south,” he said. No, not like down south. We passed this giftshop, a bustle and a buzz in there, and ascend the stairs to this smooth and cool art gallery, “Only Fine Art” reads the business card and the demarcating sign and the emblazoned door. I try the door, ready to do this bam bam bam, and then we’re going to get a sandwich on homemade bread and they’re famous for their baguettes and smoked turkey and I enjoy those hippy juice drinks and I can’t wait for that lunch I’ve been talking about it since we left, and we are going to a wilderness pond- you have to hike in- and grab a swim, get some exercise, look at the black spruce and balsam, say hello to the loons, for there will be some loons and the lucky ones get to be there when they sing. Perhaps a moose or two; a wind-ripple on the pond in the middle of nowhere and you pass beavers in the marsh-meadows on the road and the East Branch of the Deerfield and guys going out on the Long Trail and gals with a canoe. Yes, I try the door to this fancy gallery they’re trying to be somebody and the door is closed. The sign on this fancy glass door says that they are open till five. There are no lights on inside, no sign of life. I’ve got to pick up this artwork! I think, this is my job, they’re supposed to be open, not in front of my brother. We go to the first gift store, with the attitude wench behind the counter, and I ask the beautiful women in makeup and loose silk clothes just where the hell the gallery people are. They shrug their shoulder, whole lotta shoulder shrugging going on, and say “I can’t imagine where’d they be,” and shake their heads. Meanwhile, folks are trying to buy jewelry and nice silk things. Look in the phone book and dial the number; leave messages, pound on the glass doors, leave yellow stickies on the fine glass door of the fancy gallery. No luck no avail. A two hour drive and empty handed, on a day that they are supposed to be open. It happens like that.
“We’ve gotta get outta here,” I say. “Get me out of this little burg.”
Jonathan says for the thirtieth time, “I’m just along for the ride.”
We sit on a bench. Fine day to watch tourists walk a main street. Tourists are people, too. Women shout in high-pitched voices across the street. “How’s the new car?” and the reply is screamed, again in that female tone, pitched necessarily high to allow the voice to carry the distance across the street. We laugh, two brothers. A busy lane, this Route Nine, and trucks ply their momentum, swim their job.
Up the Deerfield Valley we drive. To the place where the paved roads turns to dirt. To where it welcomes you to the Green Mountain National Forest. To where the beaver is building a home and earning a living. To where the moose runs away from you. We drive to the trailhead and hike the muddy path to Branch Pond. It is here that we are naked with the loon. She dives and swims but does not howl, not like wolf nor like Daffy Duck on crack, those loons. She dives. There are balsam fir. Jonathan is content, his smile real. The water cold and we are anxious about submerging - “going in”- but we do. The loon is apparent nonchalant, diving and fishing, swimming in the half-sun. I suppose she thinks she could take us, in the water.
From this moment, this word on the page, we bomb out of the Green Mountains and trip back south and make it to supper and the Reds are beating the Braves or it’s the other way around and a man sits next to us playing Keno. He wins a hundred dollars. Jonathan plays and loses money, loses money. Children throw small basketball at the sport hoops, the drinking cage. A couple plays pool. I order medium-rare, which in this country, all over the place, especially in decent restaurants, cooked me a burger well, and it was brown and hard. Further, I’d ordered soup and the nervous fidgety guy didn’t bring the bowl of soup so I asked him for a cup and he didn’t bring that either. That’s the only time I’m angry at the help. Never mind, I told him, forget the soup. “No, I’ll get it for you,” he said. I replied, “No, you will not.”
In the small Honda is the bomb south to pick them up. Without a hitch I’m there and with the same trouble free environment grab them from baggage claim. Now the parents have joined us. Jonathan will get Walt. Parents are tired. But in good health. The baggage claim area is crowded. Lots of folks from Denver. We walk to the car.
Walt and Jonathan go to a bar after their meeting greeting at the bus station. I like bus stations; bus stations are romantic, American, real.
My mother talks about a cousin getting fired because he wouldn’t take lunch breaks. He’d been with the company for twenty years. My dad talks about Al Gore and he shouts.
The luggage goes upstairs in the guest bedroom of a friend’s home.
+ + +
They named the kid they killed Vincent. After Vincent Van Gogh.
My brother Jonathan carries an ultrasound photograph around with him. At least he does for now. Some hospital in Nottingham, England is printed on the small black and white. My brother carries it around in a manuscript I sent him years ago. The manuscript is unpublished. My mother says it’s because I was never willing to send it out to people. I believed if I just wrote forever publishers would be beating down my door, beating down each other to get to me, beating a path to my garden gate. It never happened.
I’ve never seen him sob like that.
We’ve fought our whole lives, sure, like brothers not far apart in years will do sometimes. But we’ve never come to serious blows and there was never a knife involved. Tonight there was a knife. I thought for sure the way we shouting and knocking around furniture that a neighbor would call the cops and there would be a domestic disturbance filmed on the television show Cops and police officers would show up at the door, wary and concerned, with a film crew at their backs. I’d have a knife in my ribs. We’d be on camera attempting to play it off like nothing happened, like it’s all good, marijuana smoke in the air and the smell of alcohol on our breaths in our clothes and blood streaming from our noses. Nothing going on here, officers. Never have a seen a knife in our disagreements. Our disagreements can turn ugly: I mean, for middle class regular white folks who went to good schools and received college educations and you think that all is normal and right. No guns or anything.
- People play solitaire because of their sense of hope; it is a hopeful game; we are addicted to the chance that it might work; and we are addicted to the successful run.-
I’m surprised he didn’t rip my shirt in shreds like the last time. Rip it right off my back. My hip was jammed out of joint, however. And I never knew my leg could bend like that. This is my younger brother. My leg was around his head, much like might be done with a couple having fun sex, and he was twisting it awful fierce. My youngest brother said, stoned, “Now you know what it’s like to be a bitch getting fucked.” The eloquence was all his.
Vincent is dead and he will never be.
There was a real fear within me that I wouldn’t be able to do this segment of the narrative. That it would be too difficult, impossible, and that it would contain far too much action and information to be properly conveyed. I went in anyhow. Don’t regret it and my fingers are flying. I was mean to my brother tonight. I called him a baby killer. I am fresh of the scrum on the living room futon, blood dripping from a torn eye and a swollen mouth and I’m not sure about the jaw, and yet still find time to chronicle. And there is no guarantee that you, Reader, will be reading these words. For I will not allow this work to be published without the sanction of my family. They might not like it, but if they give me the ok then it will be a go. My publisher is itching to get this out there, famous guy like I am with a family, a family, a family like the rest of us.
Morning was the smell of coffee. Jonathan rose before the other two brothers and tossed and fidgeted and sat out back on the lawn and read and wrote in his notebook. Jonathan read from Ulysses tonight at the kitchen table, after supper drinking gin and tonics, and I didn’t like his read: he played into the idea that Ulysses is too difficult to read. My father said, “Nobody has read it; it’s a myth.” That’s not true: I’ve read it, twice. And I know this one lady, who frequents bookstores with her kids on her legs and back, who has. Our father hid the bottle of gin somewhere. It was nine o’clock and we’d already eaten our spaghetti dinner with salad and summer ears of corn, and already had three or four of ‘em each, with a glass of wine or two at supper, with a beer or two as well, and I guess he felt that, considering the family history and considering Jonathan’s situation, that he’d better get that bottle out of there. You should have seen him surreptitiously skulk out of the kitchen. I went looking for it afterward but couldn’t find diddle.
Jonathan wants to hit the parents up for some money. Don’t we all, haven’t we all, we know what that’s like. He needs help with the rent, too. A friend in town, down there in Asheville, allowed Jonathan to stay with him for a few days while he was in-between apartments. That’s what friends are for, no? Then the whole thing goes down with the pregnancy and the abortion and his girl is thousands of miles away in England and it is natural and expected that Jonathan would have to call his girl to arrange things and to be supportive and helpful. Thus, he uses the phone. Now we, the family, are up here having a grand ol’ time lounging about, eating drinking and fighting, and when my brother arrives here, at this small apartment by himself, after storming out of the rented movie a movie that was all about impregnation and relationships and the insertion of the penis into the vagina, the friend left a message that Jonathan owed $150 for the phone calls to England. Now who does that? Only the most tactless asshole on the planet and no friend of mine, that’s for sure. I say he needs a butt-whipping. I’m an advocate of physical violence. I say beat the stupid over the head and teach those fuckers a lesson. Whomever they are and for whatever they’ve done. Jonathan goes through one of the trials of his life, is poor and strapped and distraught (and I’m calling him baby killer which helps nada), and this shit calls and tells him that he owes for the call. In fact, the more I think of it, we should kill him now. Take the bitch out; end his miserable life.
Jonathan left my apartment before Walt and me. He drove off in his own car, presumably to walk into town with pops. I’m raring to go, ready to finish a short story, sit in a chair on the lawn, drink some of that morning coffee, and then the two remaining brothers would meet the family at the other house. For some plan I don’t know what. For reading six pages of Ulysses. For consulting the collection of Shakespeare plays in order to pinpoint which, exactly, character is Fabian in Twelfth Night. Fabian attends Olivia. Ready to roll out of the house and the phone rings. Listen for the answering machine. It is a friend and sure, why not, I’ll chat with him, he’s just returned from a trip to new york, to see an agent, to visit a gallery, to be somebody. Thus, I answer it. He is being kicked out of his situation on a farm on Cape Cod. The owner’s son doesn’t get along with him. Feels he’s being taken advantage of. Further, his girlfriend’s cousin has just been shot in the chest and he has died from the wounds. Too, there is no more money in the bank.
Never have I seen my brother cry like he did tonight. It scared the shit out of me. Made me realize that I’m a shitty human being, a waste, a failure, a selfish lazy no good mistake.
So I got drunk.
Went to the video store and rented three movies and all three films sucked. That’s never happened before.
After the phone call we went to the other house. All were sitting around the kitchen table. Canned vegetables and fruits behind them on shelves. Nobody had gone anywhere. Mother set about making tuna fish sandwiches. I ate one the two other boys at two. The pickles were homemade. A bowl of blueberries. Enough blueberries to make six pies and still paint your walls blue. Afterwards, start to do the dishes and I’m informed by my parents’ friend that they have a dishwasher and to not worry about it. The three coffee mugs I’d washed I set on the counter. The sponge smelled like hell might smell. A deep, nasty spunky dank odor, a painful redolence. When the bowl of fruit was brought out I grabbed a nectarine and began eating it. I smelled the horrible something. Simply thought it was the sponge over the sink. Then I realized it was my hands, my sponge-touching hands had be defiled and now I was a stink, a ferocious agonizing waft. With immediacy I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. Then the nectarine was better.
Sat under a maple tree in a plastic lawnchair with weak white legs and read two magazines. Or parts of two magazines. Then Walt became nervous. He wanted to play something, to do something active. We did not have a ball or a mitt. We settled on throwing a tennis ball around the yard. In the sun and I was sweating in a relationship with profusion. Walt tossed from the shade of the woods over there, at the far end of the yard. Not content with the situation, filled with disapproval, I moved backwards across the grass until I had returned under the crown of the maple tree and we heaved the tennis ball back and forth from shade spot to shade spot. When Walt flung the ball into the grape vines that was it. I sat back down in the white plastic chair and read in the breeze and the shade.
A call for the pond! We piled into Jonathan’s car, the automobile of his bomb from North Carolina First In Fight I don’t believe in state birds anyway (there’s too much crossover) and stepped out into the humidity and sunlight at the local pond. Kids with floaters and rafts. Kids screaming. Women with cleavage that made you look, no matter who you were, man or woman. We three brother dived into the frigid (because of all the rain) waters and splashed and swam and treaded water in idle.
The swim yes was a swim and it was a good thing, too. Without a pause it was off to the supermarket. Things are quickly escalating to the hairy. Mother pushes a cart down the aisle and we pretty much throw anything that catches our whim and pleasure, anything that our imagination conjures, anything and everything, tossed into the cart, without regard to cost. Apparently Jonathan couldn’t deal with what that filled cart told him, metaphorically. This full cart and this inability on any of our parts to help pay for it possibly made Jonathan snap. Hey, I know how it can be.
We rented movies and purchased three hundred dollars in groceries and purchased gin and ginger ale and tonic and a twelve pack of beer and a massive bottle of wine. Dinner was fine and I did not help set the table and I did not help clear the table nor did I do the dishes. They teach you to do these things when a fed guest in someone’s home. Walt and I were like, “Come on, hook us up.” This, in addition to all other developments in Jonathan’s life, led to his snapping.
Never have I witnessed a man sobbing like that. Certainly not my brother.
Perhaps I took it too far, calling him a baby killer and everything, calling him an asshole for throwing our groceries on the driveway asphalt. He walked out of yet another shitty movie chosen by yours truly. An ill-conceived and ill-executed excuse for a film and my brother is walking out of the room. I want to say “You don’t walk out of any movie the family is watching.” When I saw the mess on the hood of my car and the mess in the driveway- cereal boxes tossed about; yogurt containers out of the shopping bag and on the seats and floors; milk and ruby red grapefruit juice on the ground- I was doubled over in painful cramps, in anticipation, with the desire to kick his ass. I drove home with that kind of storm. Walt laughing at every jab and joke I made about kicking Jonathan’s ass. “He’s in for a world of hurt; I’m going to write a screenplay called A World of Hurt about a brother who gets his butt beat at the hands of his brother. The lights in the apartment were off and my reaction was “This bitch thinks that he can walk out of our family movie moment and toss our food around and drive home with nary a word or conversation and then go to bed and turn off all the lights and he thinks that we’re going to tiptoe in there or something? Please. . . Yes, you fuck us and now we’re going to whisper and slide our way silently to bed. I think not. Here comes the wrath.
Entered the apartment cursing. Calling him all manner of things reserved for extremely trying moments. Asshole cunt bitch fuck licking nose up your ass whore fucker baby killer. Then I put away the clean dishes that were in the drip rack on the counter. Then I even apologized. However, his face red and a few beers in him he jabs back. We start to go at it. I tell him to die. He says kill me. I say kill yourself. He jumps up and now he’s in my face. He opens the utensil drawer and grabs hold of the huge and sharp cutting knife, the kind a chief might use. It was then that I saw the angry stabbing and the knife in my rib. We toss and curse and turn and curse and before you know it he says, “Fuck it, that’s it, I’m out of here.”
“Where you going?”
“North Carolina; back home; I hate you and I don’t want to be here.”
“You don’t hate me, come on.”
“I’ve always hated you. Fuck off.” And he’s packing his suitcase and stuffing his sleeping bag and grabbing his car keys and I say “You’re not leaving here. You’ll have to get by me.” That’s me, standing at the door like I’m something. He tries to shove me aside and I push him and we land on the futon that is now pulled down and a bed or a boxing ring, square and appropriate, and we are at each other’s throats, he swings and misses and I grab and now he’s on top of me and ripping my leg out of its socket and now Walt jumps in and I shout for him to get off of me, come one, this is between the two of us and there is four hundred pounds on me now and I can’t move. Jonathan is ready to strike again and Walt holds his arms; there is shouting and cursing and spittle; surely this is when the neighbors call the cops and we’re on the television show by accident.
But then he’s off, sitting on the chair, and I’m panting for my breath with a racing heart. Walk cracks a beer. Jonathan begins to sob. His face red and his eyes welling and spilling and his voice indecipherable through heaving sobs, wailing about his shitty life and he hates me because I remind him of the worst in himself, and I’m a selfish no-good bastard and I abuse my girlfriend and use her so that I can be an “artist” and then I fuck other chicks anyway and I’m the worst. Jonathan is crying and I’ve never seen him like this, ever. Not in thirty years. Not in any of the homes in which we’ve lived. Not even close. It is frightening. I start to feel like a bad person. A horrible person and it hurts inside, like a life kind of hurt, as in I’m making all the wrong decisions in my life and only think of or for myself and I’m heading for nothing but doom. A world of hurt. A sad, sorry, lonely life. Jonathan is crying and talking about the divorce and our mother and Walt is rolling a joint. This is when he shows us the ultrasound photograph of the womb, of the child, of his son Vincent. “He would have had a good life; he had blue eyes; and I killed him.” More sobs. More pain about lack of money. And then the friend, the friend down in North Carolina, calls and informs him that he owes one-fifty for the phone calls to England. Phone calls to England during the crisis. That ‘friend’ needs to be butt slapped. To spank or not to spank. Insensitivity running rampant. The supermarket cart being filled with everything that we would never buy on our own because we wouldn’t have the money for it. Heard of a woman who won a thousand bucks on a scratch ticket and she went and purchased groceries. My people are going to be here for a week and only a week and I swear we bought six boxes of cereal. Three or four jugs of juice. You should see the cold cuts. Somewhere inside the supermarket, before I went to read the magazines in the special book section, I said “My favorite part about life, thus far, has been cold cuts.” Nobody looked at me. No one looks at me when I talk anymore. Jonathan wouldn’t buy me a coffee. He got one and a jelly donut and, boy, they sure filled that jelly donut.
Jonathan is weeping like I’ve never seen him nor any man cry, and sipping beer in-between and the joint is passed around and attempts to make jokes about it or anything do not work. The weight of life hits me. I realize that I am not doing this life thing correctly. Not doing it right.
You should have seen him break the beer bottle on the cinderblock supporting a potted plant and waggle that broken fierce bottle at me.
Walt desires to play a few sets of tennis.
Jonathan says, “I’ve read your fucking work and you’re nothing but a sesquipedalian.”
“I don’t like how you read Ulysses,” I said.
“Let me have a cigarette.”
He’s thinking about getting back down there, back to North Carolina, and asking this woman to marry him and to have another go at this pregnancy thing, and he’s planning to get an advanced degree and get a better job and work two or three jobs to pull it all off in the meantime. Make it all go; make it work; stepmother could only say, in a kind of disgust, “Jesus, why didn’t you use protection?”
There is no way I should be using other people’s pain for the meat to this story; perhaps I write it to deal with my own pain.
One could say that he had a good cry.
I don’t want to be shocked into hating myself.
And just because he’s struggling to be a good man and to earn a proper living and take care of a family doesn’t mean that I have to, does it? Even if this journey makes me feel horrible? The choices we all have to make and what the hell are we to do.
We had to borrow money to rent the stinking videos. Then the shopping cart thing and Jonathan’s inability or unwillingness to take care of a family must have crushed him, made him feel like the smallest of all possible beings. He placed a loaf of bread on my kitchen table in a shiver.
Dinner conversation wasn’t very juicy. Father hid the gin. Father hid the gin.
= = =
Dreaming about peeing. Dreaming that I’m in a nightclub and my date has disappeared and I have to use the bathroom. In the crowded room everyone is screaming at me as I push by them to find the john. No luck. Ask the owner and he screams at me so I push him over and he falls in some mud and beer. Now I’m worried about big guys pummeling me. Now I decided to leave, swimming through a sea of bodies, music loud, beer and gin and drunks and elbows jabbing me, until I am able to force myself outside. My car is gone. It is a twenty mile drive to my apartment. Oh yeah, we parked down the block. When we arrived there were no parking spots this a jamming night. Perhaps this is Providence, Rhode Island. I’m walking to my car and then I stop to pee at a chain link fence. A dog is barking with fangs on the other side of the fence and I piss on him, which only infuriates him more. I can’t be bothered. Then I wake up and my bladder is full and it hurts. Here is my wonder: had I fully relieved myself in the dream, would I have pissed all over my bed? Would I have wet my bed? This is possible, like the excitement in a wet dream. As it stands, I pulled myself painfully out of bed (my hip hurting where both brothers, four hundred pounds, had twisted my and fucked me like a bitch; lips swollen; eye still bleeding; the smell of beer yet remaining in this small home; thankful that a neighbor didn’t call the cops and we weren’t on the tele) and dragged myself to the bathroom and took care of all of that. A shower would be nice. A pot of coffee now.
Oh, there’s Jonathan. He looks at me. He stumbles to the bathroom. He passes my bedroom to do so. Then he returns the way he came (this a “shotgun cabin” as in Louisiana) and flings open the front door. Oh, there’s Walt doing the same. The toilet flushes. Kitchen sounds. Walt stops at the door of my room and makes a muscle with his arm; flexes his chest; grunts. I desire to rise and make a pot of coffee for this trio. But then I hear the telltale sounds of Jonathan (because Walt wouldn’t do it; Walt wouldn’t know how to do it) pouring beans and grinding beans and tossing the old soggy filter. Soon the waft will fill the apartment. Cars loud on the road outside.
We will convene for some kind of day, for activity and togetherness, for conversation. Hopefully we will not watch another shitty movie tonight. We’ve got Tim Roth’s directorial debut. He’s good; this will probably be good. Did ya’all see Tim Roth as Van Gogh in that Altman film? He did well; he’s a good guy.
Ordinarily our mother phones in the morning and tells us to wake up and gives us the scoop: we’re doing this, meet us here by such and such a time, etcetera. You know how that works. Yesterday no call and today no call. They rise at eight on summer vacations (which is a far cry from five in the morning during work) and we, the boys, the trio of artistic bums, the hopefuls, rise at eleven or twelve. It is somewhere in there when I write this now. I wonder what shirt I’ll wear today. Wonder what we’ll do. I’m supposed to be thinking about it. I miss that morning phone call from mother. There is now plenty of food in the fridge. When I stormed home last night, naturally I screamed that there was no way in the good hell that Jonathan would eat any of this food in my house in my presence, what with the way he threw it all over the driveway and tossed it purposefully and with anger into my car. Now I don’t care. Now I can hear him pouring cereal and milk. Now the smell of coffee. They are silent out there. Wonder what that means. Wonder if I should check.
Damn, should probably take this opportunity, this lull, to jump in the shower and grab mine first. You know how that can be. Shave my neck. That’s all I shave these days: my neck. I’m growing a small and tight beard. I want to be Van Gogh.
Walt received a mosquito bite yesterday on his elbow. Now it is inflamed, large, and red. Swollen, I should say. He is worried about West Nile. Hope I don’t have to write the story of a West Nile death. Don’t know that right now; I’m writing in real time; I’m chronicling a family visit. His elbow swells and he jokes about dying at the hands of some African virus, looking down at his swollen, ruddy elbow. I say “It’s the joint; haven’t you ever gotten a mosquito bite on the knuckle of your finger? You know, and it swells up all red and shit? Well, it’s the same with your elbow. Nothing to worry about; you should have seen my knee once; the little bugger got me just right.” He did not seem soothed. He stared at his elbow. This morning, when I officially rise, I will say, “So, how’s your elbow?” And Walt will hold his arm all askew (in order to see the elbow) and he will stare at it and fret.
The day gray and humid. It may rain. Have no idea what to lead these folks on today, where to take them, swim in the river perhaps visit a candle factory. You know how that can go. Hopefully my folks are awakened and strolling with contentment downtown, getting a coffee and reading the morning paper, and discussing the plight, the situation, of our boy Jonathan. Of course he told them. Didn’t I tell you that he told them? He said that he wasn’t going to say anything but then he realized he was broke and he needed the rest of the security deposit for his new apartment and now he’s got this “friend” calling him for that infamous phone barrage to England and he knew, what with the sad developments in his personal life and the knowledge that he does, at least, unlike me, have a full-time real job on the career track, that he could easily and without a stretch ask father for money. Yes, hopefully the parents are content as they stroll downtown looking in on the best bookstore in town, the newspaper under an arm, talking in controlled tones about their middle son.
And yet I repeat the refrain of my life: it is a great day to be alive.
It is too quiet: what are those brothers doing? They better not have conspired, they better not have left me. I’ve a need to use the bathroom again. Should jump in the shower before any of ‘em. The cars on the road are loud. When a particularly loud one drives by- an asshole you can tell- I flick them the bird or the sound of them the bird. I’d better get out of bed and investigate, see what that silence is all about; but first I’ve got to say my prayers. Thank you for this sleep. I am thankful.
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Went to visit Bill Cosby today. But we weren’t welcome. The brown fence surrounds how many acres- hundreds- and the whole mountainside and it is a wonder they didn’t hand him the road, too. Then you’d never see that beautiful stretch of the Deerfield River. We showed up at the front gate, the whole family, I was leading them, and the sign read “IF YOU HAVE NOT BEEN INVITED DO NOT PASS THROUGH THESE GATES.” Oooh. Wanted to go in badly; stopped and stared; mother took a photograph; all of us standing in front of the open gate, in front of the sign, in front of the brown house and barn. How pretty can one many get? How much land does one man need? How exclusive how reclusive how how inclusive can one person be? We drove down and around those rolling hills and had a picnic on the rocks.
Stand on the smooth boulders and rocks on the edge of the raging river. The water is higher than usual. It is cold. We toe the water. Mother and father are sitting in lawnchairs that we brought down from the high roadway, the high bridge spanning this part of the river, south of Shelburne Center somewhere, a secret part of the state, don’t go hunting for it, and the steep climb down the dirt trail. Some asshole had used the ravine as his dump, a secret asshole night perhaps, as there was in the woods a queen-sized mattress tossed and twisted and leaning against a tree, a washing machine and some clothes and a small refrigerator. But we ignored them as we descended toward the roiling river. The water cold, rapids shooting by the put-in point, rapids flinging you downriver, under the bridge, downriver, and you need to swim for your life to reach the shore, to reach the aiding eddy, to make the rocks. Mother said she was worried: she was worried about heart attacks. We swam and jumped off the rocks and checked for submerged secret stones that might have crushed our skulls our snapped our wrists on some incautious dive; we checked and then summoned the courage and dived into that glorious, cold, rushing river. Under the bridge you go, the high spanning bridge: nobody was around, our family alone, nary a car driving slowly in the crooked notch, this mountain river valley.
Sandwiches in the bread-loaf sack the bread came in, stacked and full with ham, turkey, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. A thermos of ice water. Folding chairs. Dive into the water, father taking pictures, the sound of falling cascades and swirling river, dad on the rocks now, and then beach yourself on the rocks, sharp rocks at times, and eat a fistful of grapes. Just you try and fight the current. Go on, jump in there and attempt to swim across, break the might of the center rapid, get to the other side, and watch yourself snagged and snatched and sent down, downstream over there. And fight to get to shore. No wonder people drown. No wonder they die.
Mother is watching the news on this vacation. Back home they don’t have television. There are still people who don’t watch. She is watching the news on West Nile. And now, on the river, boys swimming and shouts reverberating off the canyon walls, the cliffs, the high spanning bridge and the forest, mother sprays herself with repellent.
There is no fight today. No fisticuffs. No wrestling like madmen, domestic violence style, on the downed futon, no crashing furniture. We told the story of the night before and our parents were not impressed. No word on whether Jonathan is going to receive any aid.
Coffee in the morning and this time we have milk and cereal and yogurt, breakfast stuff, grapefruit juice. Thanks to mom and dad; thanks to filling the shopping cart.
After the river swim, heading towards late afternoon and early evening, the light beginning to slant, we walked the Bridge of Flowers and oohed and ahhed appropriately. Parents took more photographs. The kids jumping into the holes the rapids the dangerous water at the potholes. Probably one of the last places in America that has not been closed by some government agency because the populace, the youth, is having too much fun. There is always danger in fun. Walt received a pregnancy lecture today, in the friends’ gazebo, on a breezy afternoon. Mother: “Now, Walt, what have you learned.” Not a lot of talk there from Walt’s end. Lots of fidgeting. Saw the glass blowers in that darned town, too. Blow some glass and watch them do it, hot as hell, boiling, the sweating day, men who smoke marijuana, artists with fine, oiled arms, cigarettes maybe, signs that say Don’t Touch The Glass and a visit to the gallery store, the nice fish and the fancy vases. We walked Bridge Street and we made it to the coffee roasters and ordered iced mochas and sat at a round table and the conversation was fast, unforced, and furious, and before we knew it they were closing and we were booted to the street. Now, that is a good sign. Family conversation. No tears, no fights, no curse words. Iced mochas and visit the single restroom and then it’s back to the street. In front of the old library we stroll. Folks comment on the architecture. Local kids stand about, sitting on the stoop, hurting for something to do, perhaps, like they do in Paradise California. Pretty fifteen year-old girls grab comment from the boys. My lips remain still but my eyes, my eyes and thoughts are vicious, dangerous, illegal.
Watched a movie tonight about incest. The daughter is getting fucked in the ass. Hey, I didn’t make the movie, Tim Roth did. And he made it well. The last shot: was that a crane that made the shot? Had to have been. The infant has internal bleeding. Is the infant getting fucked by the husband, too, you wonder? The son, the son and friend of the abused daughter, stabs their dad and the screaming groaning doubled-over scene is grand. Another movie with fabulous shots of English coast and crashing waves and green pasture grass and stone walls and narrow lanes and naked winter trees, windswept, and the tidy and ancient manor house, farmhouse, homestead. The rain comes down and I yearn to live in England and experience the coastal mists and rains. Have a raincoat. Live in a stone farmhouse. The daughter is fucked in the ass. How many monkeys, oh the poor homo sapiens, are abused, fucked by their parents or uncles, how many? The numbers are proportionally probably pretty low. And yet, in literature and in film we are subjected to the evils and horrors and depravity of it all, to the degree that it makes me feel like we all had been getting fucked by our fathers and I know that’s not the case. Thus, in the name of art and truth and a few fucked-up artists, we are inundated by a moist barrage of incest art, warped sex cinema, oddity family situations. I’m beginning to think that I need to start abusing some kids. Fuck me an infant. Get me some of that toddler ass. Raise my daughters, feed them, clothe them, send them off to school, and get a piece of pussy in the teddy bear room of youth. Yes, that’s what all this art tells me.
Brothers sit on the bench outside the apartment and smoke cigarettes. At least for the first three days. Now they get lazy: now they sit at a screened window or the cracked front door and smoke; now they dispense with the courtesy with the niceties with the formalities with propitious guest behavior and they smoke the butts freely, sitting in the lone chair or on the couch, smoking.
This morning, before the day properly began in the technical sense, the boys still sitting around, drinking coffee and sharing that morning butt, showering perhaps and moving slowly into the day, all three in underwear or shorts and all three bare-chested, the sun beating down strong and Jonathan got a sunburn in that hour or two, Walt on the grass, there was a call to have a wrestling tournament. We always do this. A nice lawn is required. Ten bucks from each of us in the pot. In the old days I would clean up and get thirty bucks. We wrestle and the winner plays the next. Winner of both gets to keep the pot. On the lawn this morning, after coffee and before cereal, bare-chested and still perhaps male and testosterone and excited or energized from last evening’s fun, we all agreed heartily to the wrestling tournament. We placed our bills on the lawnchair. The two youngers went first. Walt was beaten, though he won last year, at the hands of Jonathan. Then it was my turn. He said, “Call me baby killer, will you?” and proceeded to twist me into odd positions and knock my knee out of whack and scratch me down the back in four long fingernail painful lines. They, these lines, drew blood here and there. We fought and grunted and Jonathan won the pot. The bastard. I’ve won every year forever. The older brother advantage slowly dwindling: things beginning to even out; settle, coalesce into one brotherhood. We fight and spit and cough, and then it is time for the day. Sweat is washed in the shower.
We had a photograph show and tell this evening, over vanilla ice cream and blueberries. Parents in Israel, in Jerusalem, at the Wailing Wall and the Golan Heights and they even snuck into Lebanon. Photographs of Roman ruins. Reconstructing a rubble. Photographs of Jewish settlements. Walt says, “If they can solve the Jerusalem problem they should be able to solve all the problems of the world.” Jonathan choked on himself. Whenever there are pronouncements, there are chokings.
Purchase an underwater camera for nine bucks, the disposable kind, and snorkel off Hawaii; see the sea turtle, swimming like flying, ease and grace. Mother retells the story and she flaps her arms slowly, and even makes a slight face with her lips, as if that was a turtle. They, bravely for them, take a helicopter ride for umpteen dollars for the hour or two, around the islands. They see and photographs lava flowing into the ocean and hissing and steaming and mother tells us about the new island forming. Photographs of mother next to blue water; father on the USS Missouri. “Do you know what happened on the Missouri?” mother asks, expecting an answer, appearing smart. It was Walt who knew about the surrender.
Photographs of New Orleans. Of alligators swimming in green muck. A naked, plucked chicken, its ass-end toward the camera, looking remarkably like a human ass, is dangled from a line and the massive beast in the green muck snaps it and cracks it and swallows it whole. Mom gets a picture of one leg sticking out of the alligators mouth. Someone we don’t even know got married in Louisiana and we gaze at the pictures anyhow. “Nice dress,” offers one of us.
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This is what it has to be: of course, I didn’t receive the bad news until the end of the day, when my girlfriend got back in town. She’d been on a business trip to Baltimore. Saw her briefly before sleep. After the long day with the family. Really, I didn’t want to talk about myself in this story. But now, after the news, I don’t know. I just don’t know. She wrote it in a letter and placed the letter underneath my pillow. Didn’t know it was there until I flipped to my stomach and stuck an arm under the pillow and there it was. The oddity. Three-thirty in the morning. What a time for bad news.
Before we get there, however, let us meet the parents in the house in town. Let mother be making turkey sandwiches with Fat Free mayonnaise. The worst kind. Allow dad to be reading the paper. Then we depart, all of us in Jonathan’s station wagon with First in Flight North Carolina license plates. We drove west, toward new york state and Vermont, toward the farthest corner, toward the land where the people play in the summertime, go to theater festivals and Tanglewood and concert series and eat in fine restaurants. We drove and the parents commented on the nice river: what river is that, son?, and that one, and slow down Jonathan, you’re going to make me throw up; we stopped at the hairpin curve overlook and stared over the valley, three states in view, the Taconics, too. Fighting in conversational tones about where, exactly, we should picnic, we ended up under an overpass and near some dumpsters in what they call Heritage State Park. Old buildings and the old railway and the history of North Adams and the Hoosic Tunnel and there is a visitor information center there and you can get all the brochures you would ever need. We ate, under this overpass, at a picnic table with a cooler rested on it and paper dixie cups for the ice water. Then it was off to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Old mill turned into a museum. Partially funded by the Guggenheim. A praying mantis mates and then eats its mate the male. The chick praying mantis strolls along and eats the bugs that have recently eaten whole a tomato and the mantis sucks the red tomato juice from the caterpillar bug and the juice is bright red and these are massive color photographs in an equally massive gallery hall inside this old yet refurbished mill. The mantis, well-fed on bug and tomato strolls onto the head of a frog and we can’t help but think of the story of the gingerbread man and the sly fox. The frog shoots the mantis with its tongue and there you have it: an exhibition. Do these folks make a living doing contemporary art? The uber-organ pumping a groaning song, blowing hot air, in the largest gallery of its kind. A fan blowing delicate flags spread about the floor; the fan mimicking the weather conditions outside and connected to a computer which informs it (or them) of the weather outside. Today was a gentle day and only one fan was on: a calm breeze from the west, slightly waving.
Yet another coffee shop this family. Jonathan and I launch into a fabricated and loudly-spoken story about sailing a yacht from Bristol to Charleston, South Carolina to Bermuda and then to Key West, where Walt will have driven a bright red Pontiac Grand Prix. We speak loudly thus because of a penchant for storytelling and a dislike for eavesdroppers. There was one sly eavesdropper sitting on the couch, near the fireplace, sipping his large coffee, with a ponytail and odd attitude, and we didn’t want anything of him. So we lied, and shared the imagination with the room: Walt was going to live on a houseboat in the Keys.
There is always the drive back, the return trip, and some doze as we do, in and out of sleep. Some are yawning and staring at the river and the houses as we drive by. Stop at a roadside barbecue joint and overeat. The family shares two pitchers of beer. Dark now and we choose five movies for five dollars for five nights. I will not list them for you. We watched one of them with Danny DeVito in it. It was ok. Think mother was crying at that one part. Vanilla ice cream in the kitchen, after midnight now, as we discuss the tomorrow’s events. The boys drive home. The boys chat. The boys ready for sleep. And that is when I found the letter. She told me she was breaking up with me and moving to California. “It’s best for both of us,” she said. And “I will always love you,” and “Perhaps we can get back together one day,” and “May you find your happiness,” and “You’re a good man; don’t give up the dream.” Three years we’ve been together. What, am I supposed to cry now? Am I supposed to be emotional like my brother has been emotional? More crises? This will make it the fifth time a woman has severed the relationship while my parents have been visiting. Makes me think I should never be dating when my folks are coming to town. I read the letter again and again. Why a letter? I want to say to her: why tell me in a letter? Why not face-to-face? The night is all of a sudden much darker, colder, lonely. The fall looks to be more frightening; don’t know how I’ll make it; and yet, this is what I’ve asked for, this is the design. Why does it hurt so? She can’t leave! Not yet, not until my life is in order, not until the car is insured! Jesus, I can’t feel it now, this life, spinning, spinning out of control. I read the letter and sleep with the letter under my pillow and wonder what tomorrow will bring.
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A man masturbates vigorously, staring at the naked women with cocks in their mouths and assholes, high heels on a couch or a bed, the poor girls, these women, getting pounded hard. You know what everyone says about pornography in this country. He skulks in the basement storage room of his apartment complex. His brothers are upstairs. He yanks and pulls, eases up a bit, flips a page, stares more, and eagerly strokes again. He isn’t thinking about anything else. He imagines being a cock-hung stud, a bachelor with three chicks, a sultan in a tent, sex his only design sex his only pleasure. His favorite memories are of fucking his high school sweetheart in father’s car in some dark, lonely parking lot in the woods. Window steam. The highlight of his life. I’ve heard married men talk honestly about sex and marriage. They’ll never share their thoughts now, not in this climate, not even in this country, men on the run. He tidies into a tissue without spillage and files the magazines into the packing boxes in his storage room and turns out the light and wipes the floor dust from his knees. Man, if anybody ever walked in on him, on his knees, he would have to end it right then and there. You can’t lock the door from the inside. He gazed at magazines for two hours, pulling all the while, and then afterwards a modicum of guilt. A slow silky guilt that coats his being rather than pierces it, like the old days. He attempts to hold his head up, ascends the stairs, enters his apartment. All are asleep. This man makes it to bed and then feels something under his pillow. He reaches for it: it is a letter: he reads it. His girl is going to leave him. She wishes him all the happiness in the world.
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Again coffee smells waft through my home and wake me. A brother suggests a swim before we go bookstore hopping. Tonight we’ll be in Northampton, the town of cool in this small valley on the Connecticut River (be it known that I hate ‘local’ style writing, and cringe every time I write place names around my chosen domicile, my accidental settlement), gazing at girls again I suppose, eating too much food and spending the parents’ money. Can’t believe dad is going to retire in a year. We thought it would be three. Three more, he said, and then he’d be done. Now, disgusted and perhaps disillusioned, he’s going to call it a day after this school year. We’re spending his money. None of us has the cash or the wherewithal to take care of them as they get older. This is our shortcoming, come about, arrived at, by absolute selfishness. We’re artists, the line used to go, and we have dreams to fulfill. Bunk. Hogwash. Delusion. Sadness. Do you know who you are? Good.
Jonathan suggests swimming. He, having awakened two or three hours earlier than the rest, having already written verse in his little notebook, is always itchy to get going and he’s itchy now. He’s pacing. Walt is listening to those Cuban Buena Vista cats, congas and the trumpet and the silky, aged voices. He’s moves his hips like the salsa girl. Wish I could speak Spanish. Wish I were the man. Walt eats a bagel with cream cheese and salmon chunks. Chases his double espresso with water. The day is blue skies and white cartoon clouds of puff. The kind that float from here to there and don’t say anything. A gentle breeze. The flora green as can be; someone used the term rainforest. A mobile in my office twirls. But the wind chimes do not sing.
You should see the interplay, the traffic jam, around the bathroom in the morning. Three grown boys, two hundred hairy pounds each, jostling for that first shower, the morning dump release, brush your teeth and pluck a nose hair and perhaps a shave. Walt clogs the toilet. Jonathan clogs the sink with the suction cup for a mirror stick bud vase. The suction cup went down the drain and provided a perfect dam. I plunged and the suction cup squirted into the air along with the reservoir of water. Calls for “Save the hot water, bitch!” The dishes pile in the kitchen sink. Walt reads The New Yorker and talks about the club B.B. King opened in the big city. Boys standing around bare chested with mouths of toothpaste foam. One folds his towel another tosses his into a damp clump. Clothes piled in ownership areas; Walt’s over there near the lamp, Jonathan’s over there on the kitchen bench. At least they make the bed every morning: turn up the couch, fold and stack the sheets. A fan blows wind into the room. A gentle day.
Decide I’m going to take out an ad in the personals. Now that I’ve been left. Had a friend on Long Island who, a two-year span of life, would say when you asked him how he was doing, “I’ve been left” and leave it at that. Now that I ride the same, I’m taking out this personal and it will read: ARTIST SEEKING WEALTHY WOMAN WHO WILL SUPPORT HIM; OF COURSE, ALL TERMS BEING AGREEABLE.
Before this day can properly begin I attempt to call her number. No answer, but the phone still rings. She could have lied about leaving town, to throw off the trail, to make things easier. That friend, just up there, who said that he got left? Well, he hunted down his girl in her same apartment after she told him she’d moved to Tucson and this woman had to get a restraining order. I do not harass. No answer on the phone so I tell my brothers, “Gents, I’ll be right back, don’t go anywhere.” She lives down the road, or used to, or something. When I arrived the curtains were down from the windows. Of course I opened the door: we had an extra key for the nighttime slip-ins of sexual fun. Of hellos when my refrigerator was empty. I let myself in and the place was empty. Not a note, not a piece of discarded something I could have snagged for memories, not even a smile. Gone, this woman, gone she tells me to California. I owed her money, big money, like two thousand dollars. She didn’t remove her girl books from my apartment. The book about healthy relationships. Now I have Women Who Run With The Wolves, above my bed. Perhaps I can get a dollar for it at the local bookstore. On this day with my family, after a swim perhaps, as we bookstore hop (so they say) and keep things local today. And that one over there, Backlash, I can get a buck for that, as well. Or maybe, as my mother would say, I should read them. Maybe I should read the one about cultivating a lasting, healthy, sharing relationship. Perhaps it is my turn to cry.
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Watching shitty movies can hurt. The pain experienced when you’ve been having a grand evening, spending it with siblings and friends over home-cooked chow at a round kitchen table and better than average conversation in a living room that smells of wood, and then you come home to watch the movie. Your friend puts on African music while the joint is passed. You’ve rented five movies in five nights and the family is leaving at the end of those five nights so you’ve got to at least watch one per. The friend, however, the outsider, the one from Cape Cod in a bullet-riddled pickup truck, he wants to listen to music and perhaps converse and he most assuredly desires that the gang of young people on the nighttime couch do a reading. That would be sit around or stand around and read a piece, a short story, something from a great book, a chapter from your own work, Gatsby some. He is slightly shy of adamant, which is unusual for him (ordinarily he is whole-hog) and then he makes the mistake- for him- of going to the bathroom. It is then that I turn down the music. Turn it down slowly, like a disc jockey might in a fancy club, fade out some call it, and then start the film and the television is on the blue screen and then it flicks and the previews have begun. It happens like that. The visitor knows he must do what the greater will dictates, the family gathered, the brothers and a girl from a bar, gin and tonics encouraged her, laughter and the promise of film. The pain occurs when it is after two in the morning and the high of the evening, the camaraderie and friendship and laughter and music and drug-spell and alcohol pell mell slams against the brunt of a shitty film. One must be silent when watching a movie; one stares ahead and watches; hardly interaction; all of which gives rise to a sedentary, immobile, soporific state. When the movie is shit it makes it all the worse, heightens the feeling of loneliness and worthlessness, emboldened by the late hour and the slippage of time, saddened by what could have been had you one the other way toward conversation and the read your friend wanted to do. Yes, the shitty movie is then rubbed as a filthy ointment all over you, all over your saggy male breasts, out-of-shape boy, sad fuck.
A spider runs across my wall. It pauses in the light of a lamp. The visitor, the friend from Cape Cod, has entered into the moist night to sleep in his van. Jonathan on the floor- we hadn’t pulled the couch out for the movie, the extra company, the shitty film. Walt slid and eventually fell into the couch lengthwise, asleep, gone to the world. Those of us still awake can still hear the rain. The girl from the bar went with the friend from the Cape. It rains hard now: I must place a towel where it leaks from the roof and the vent. There is a towel, sopping wet, on top of the heater blaster. There is a towel on the floor, the one I used this morning after a shower, near the door to my bedroom. It is sad when water from the outside finds its way inside without permission. It is sad to be placing buckets underneath holes in the roof. It is sad to not be sound.
People jump off the rocks at the pond, sure. Walt climbs the cliff face and stands upright at the lip. He looks around cautiously; he looks into the water; he gauges his leap; the lifeguard, the guy in the blue STAFF t-shirt will call the cops if you jump. Walt looks into the water again. Jonathan attempts to distract the STAFF guy by making noises and splashing about and then engaging in conversation on the shore. Walt is next witnessed climbing back down through the birch trees on the sharp slope. He doesn’t do it.
Our thing today was the bookstore on the river. Sat in the window in the full audible of the river cascading over rocks. I didn’t look at books; I’ve no money to buy any books and it just kills me to see all the books that I want but cannot have. Jonathan finds books and Walt finds books and they a pile accrue. Now they have to decide what books to buy. Mother purchases a cookbook, a cookbook for desserts, chocolate cake and strudel. A girl shows me a first edition of Raise High The Roofbeam Carpenters and it is beautiful. It makes me think of another time. I read a magazine in the window on the river. This is when it begins to rain.
Dinner is another casserole already pre-made that morning by mother. She heats it up and we start drinking gin. It rains. Somebody sent for beer and bread and a pie crust. We crush blueberries and make a pie. We drink gin at the round kitchen table and the lips flap and the conversation flows. Then the friend from the beach shows and he knows my parents and they hug. His parents are retiring this year. My parents comment on that fact. They talk about winter in Minnesota. Seven people around the round table in the kitchen and the rain increases intensity. It is an inside kind of night. No going downtown to revel or rave. No drinking at the brewpub’s outdoor roof deck. The water slides down the slanted windows of the attached greenroom. Vanilla ice cream and blueberry pie. Tell me there is something more to summer. Something more to family visits. The round table and blueberry pie. Mother does a few tap dancing moves she did in college when she studied theater. Years gone by, memory is I don’t know, and she still knows some of the tap dancing moves and she pulls of Bugs Bunny going off stage with his hat and cane. You know that looney move.
Jonathan is reading The Moon Is Down. In the gazebo earlier today, he discussed the construction of the novel. He points to the formation of the chapters, of the blocks of prose that set up the beginning of the chapter and then the break into dialogue. He points with a finger at the words, the pages, the paragraphs. He admires the construction, obviously, and he criticizes the format of my first novel. It is here thus that I now place some dialogue into the narrative, in order to break up the pretty pattern of the blocks of prose: study how it looks.
“Hey, ha ha, pour me another gin and tonic, please. Only this time use some ice.”
“Get your own drink.”
“I got you one.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Suck my ass you hairy-assed pig.”
“I’ll give you some ass to suck. Now you pour me a drink.”
“No.”
“How about some chips, then?”
“Look, you’re going to have to expect watching a movie when dealing with this crew.”
“And you’re going to have to expect a foot in your ass when you deal with me.”
“Pour me a drink. And give me tonic or gingerale; not that seltzer crap.”
“Seltzer is tonic water.”
“It most certainly is not. Anyway, what do you think of Gore’s choice of Lieberman?”
“I think they’re going down the drain and we’re going to have a republican president and quite possibly a republican majority; pass me some of that seltzer . . .”
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While waiting for the family to assemble at the museum yesterday (you know how family or group assemblages can be; the amoeba) I grabbed a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright off the shelf in the museum gift shop and opened it at random and learned that Wright had many visitors who would try to get an audience with him uninvited. People who would show up at his home and declare that they would stay the weekend or the month, who desired to apprentice, who desired to get in to the school, who made up stories that would connect them to the place ( a friend a cousin a college roommate). Discussing other architects in that environment was heresy. Wright burned the books of other architects. It was the thing to do: to receive an invite meant that you were of the highest breed and caliber; to visit Wright’s home and studio was an honor. Learned that when World War II broke out the place in Arizona was busy and crowded and people would still attempt to get a piece of Wright’s tutelage. Then the family assembled, then it was time to put the book down, on the stack with the other books, and walk the amoeba to the car.
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In the mail arrives an officious envelope holding a letter comprised of mean words. A month or so ago, with the cousin visiting, bombing back from Boston after retrieving said cousin from his fight and from seeing a Red Sox game, I flew through some small nonexistent town and the bastard cop had his lights on, sitting up there on the right was he, before I could react any which way. You only have twenty days to protest and receive a court date. I waited, the ticket in the glove compartment in my ex-girlfriend’s car, not knowing they would be precise and harsh with that twenty day deadline. Now the letter: it informs me that I’ve missed the date and I’m at risk of losing my license and we have added a fine for being late and might I pay the now 175 dollar ticket soon rather than later.
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Finally. Finally: the rain last night found a spring in two places on this damn roof; the landlord will never fix it and after two years of trying I’ve given up; but now the clouds move in thickets, like an airborne copse, across the sky revealing with it one of those August winds that remind one of Fall. Finally, fall and the thick clouds steamroll the horizon and there are occasionally glimpses of blue sky. The air is wet and sweet and were I Diane Ackerman I would come up with some wickedly smooth phrase of prose to describe it all: clouds like a down comforter spread on the atmospheric bed of our existence, smooth and calming, dreaming of lost loves and loves to find just over there. Yes, if I were. Oh, look! Look at the way the trees blow on the hill-slope, taking turns in their dance, two-stepping on some earthen floor of their lives. When you sit in the last room of this apartment, the one off the lawn, with the windows open as they are now, the breezes lick down the hill-slope and sweep in a general golf swing motion straight in and they brush your hair, the twirl your mobile, they acknowledge your hanging calendar, the one that says AUGUST and has a photograph of a Stewartia pseudocamellia and that ‘t’ is pronounced hard.
Folks called this morning, left a message, all around lounging listened to mother informing us that they, the parents, were walking downtown for coffee. No pancake breakfast once again, primarily because we always arrive there in the afternoon. They are having coffee and probably browsing that bookshop in the basement of Starbucks and most assuredly visiting the public library and hopefully going upstairs this time to see the sitting room near the fireplace. They will have today’s paper. They were read criticisms of Gore’s choice for vice-president. They will worry that their boys are drunks. Walt said, “They’re probably wondering where the local chapter of AA holds its meetings.” There is general chuckle.
The house is a mess. Trying to accommodate these large men, these boys, and their stuff is strewn everywhere. I am getting better: when I looked up and Jonathan was lying on his back reading Steinbeck with his legs up on my stack of sacred To-Read magazines and books and a few folders of my own work and the stack was beginning to slide to one side, I did not panic, did not yell at him like the old days, and began to adopt an attitude that it was a healthy thing that my sacred stack was being tarnished, violated, molested. Fuck sacred stacks. Let them slide into the abyss of things. Allow them to disappear. Dissolve into the landscape of our real lives.
The music has stopped. There had been dance music playing for awhile. Made you want to jig. I stood up and twirled a few. Now it is silent. Like the old days, I wonder, “Have they left me?” Having posed the question my options are to worry or ignore. To ignore means I may continue writing. To worry means I must stop, lift myself from this chair and this desk, and walk the hallway to see what they are doing, to see whether they have indeed slipped away into the gray day. No sound, not even a rustle, save the cars on the street. A real man would shoot out the tires of the asshole speeding by on the street. Shit, I’ve chosen to worry. I must investigate.
Speaking of speeding. The government has abused me with foul and threatening language, and this after the relationship that we’ve nurtured. I’ve been a good citizen. I’ve done my duty. I’ve fought in foreign wars; ok, maybe not, but I would if called upon; ok, maybe not, but I’d support those who did protect our country; no, I’d go and I’d be one of those war correspondents in fatigues writing for the Stars and Stripes. Yes, abusive tone in their letter and I’m going to have to respond. And this doesn’t even cover the mail from this morning. We must also address the transgressions of my insurance agent. I’ve been with this insurance guy for ten years. In those ten years I’ve never been late. Now, with times tough and girlfriends splitting and no job to speak of, unemployed and not looking, I was a measly three days late on my payment, made the payment anyway, and they felt it necessary to be rude. But we’ll get to that. First, the government:
YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED EFFECTIVE 09/08/00, YOUR LICENSE/RIGHT TO OPERATE A MOTOR VEHICLE WILL BE SUSPENDED, BY AUTOMATIC APPLICATION OF LAW, BECAUSE YOU HAVE DEFAULTED ON THE ASSESSMENT AND FINES NOTED BELOW:
They go on to be assholes. I was two days late in mailing my small slip that stated I would like a court date. Two days. The court date, no matter the deal, ordinarily and automatically halves any fine you receive. They were swift to say no deal, no sir. They go on to say WHEN YOUR LICENSE OR RIGHT TO OPERATE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED, YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY CEASE TO OPERATE ALL MOTOR VEHICLES. . .
If the license become suspended I must pay 50 bucks to reinstate it. The jamming, twisting, fisting arm of the state. It must be said, I do not mind paying the fine for speeding, nor the late fees, nor any other charges, I’m merely commenting on the asshole nature of their correspondence. Further: two days late. Cut the guy some slack and allow the guy to go to court.
And to the insurance company. Keep in mind that I’ve been with this guy for ten years. Never been late. Now, unemployed forcibly single and filled with a quiet rage and a family visiting all over my ass, I’m a trifling three days late on my fucking it’s a law insurance payment and I receive (again, not minding that I owe money to any one person or institution, a good citizen am I) this sort of language:
STATUTORY NOTICE OF CANCELLATION
NONPAYMENT OF THE INSURANCE PREMIUM FOR THE POLICY IDENTIFIED ABOVE. THIS CANCELLATION WILL NOT TAKE EFFECT IF THE MINIMUM AMOUNT DUE IS PAID ON OR PRIOR TO THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF CANCELLATION.
You are hereby notified that the State Motor Vehicle Liability Policy, herein designated, issued to you by the above named company is hereby cancelled in accordance with its terms, such cancellation to become effective at 12:01 A.M. on the date stated above. Section 113A of Chapter 175 of the General Laws, as amended, requires . . .
and the shit goes on and on; keeping forcefully in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that I missed a payment by three days with a partner in business and commerce I have engaged for over a decade, and had, in fact, sent in the payment above mentioned, it arriving of course sadly and apologetic three days late. May they all eat their own cocks. May their children die of TB. May they live within a shroud of true and rich unhappiness. All of them, the bastards.
Don’t think about eating Cheerios when you’re saying your prayers.
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You might not think this is much, but it means a lot to me: a repeated theme: spoke earlier about Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright and how visitors and riffraff and idolaters and seekers of fame and architectural wisdom, all and more, descended on his home whenever they felt impolite or emboldened, and that, for the most part, Wright hated it. It was a random read of a book, from the book section of the gift shop of a museum somewhere in the western part of the state, sitting on a windowsill, casual and waiting, and I read about famous man in famous setting at famous house being a genius of culture and art absorbing a barrage of thrusting seekers. Today, in town, people eating Indian food from cardboard holders with plastic forks and a beer tent over there near the stage and people staring at other people and getting caught by girlfriends or wives staring at all the summertime chests, the family strolled around the city on the other side of the river. My mother wants to see the house from the book House by Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize winner and drinker of wine in some aikido living room telling a story of riding around with cops and boring the pants off of me and the band Sonic Youth, which rests on a slope with views in this river valley of ours. This evening, however, placing coins in the meter, we did the family gang thing amidst the noisy crowds of Saturday activity. “At six,” I said, “we will meet in the bookshop. There is this bookstore in the basement of a brick building on a corner, the same corner in the same city where some guy in an above section got his ass kicked, and that is where we met tonight. I made it on time. Looked for something to read. A paragraph of anything something give it to me. Did not desire to read fiction, a chapter of it while waiting, waiting patiently for the amoebic gathering to coalesce into one unit of decisive action. Nothing from science and nothing from poetry and so, working off the success I’d had from the museum read ( it’s the maximum amount of learning done in the quickest time; the neatest tidbit; some bit of brief scholarship that remains, that remains in the mind) I looked in the Biography section and found a volume on the life of Bill Faulkner. Open it at random; read from paragraph one of a new chapter (the closest next chapter to the opening at random) and see what it is, it doesn’t matter, allow it to flow into me absorb, absorb and the selection is ol’ Bill at his farm, with a gate that says NO TRESPASSING and a quartet- two couples- in a coupe desire to visit him. The connections are there but they are flimsy, shaky. The woman in the backseat is shy and embarrassed. She doesn’t want to bother the famous writer. They visit the farm and they thrust themselves upon ol’ Bill and Bill loathes the uninvited visitor, cannot stand them, is prickly and grumpy and he is drinking. He is in khakis and a t-shirt. His hair trimmed. For some reason the woman in the backseat attracts Bill, sticks in his memory, and when she writes a letter of apology, crying about a painful life and an unhappiness, something strikes a chord and Bill Faulkner writes in return. She goes to Bard. They continue a correspondence. They decide to meet in Memphis. Soon he wants to fuck her; he is in love with her; she tells him he doesn’t mind if he drinks; they meet in secret; he decides to help her with her own writing career; Bill really wants to bed this young woman. I put the book down, called on by the others to get the show on the road, at the part where he is trying to convince this woman, this senior in college and he an old man, to write a piece together, a play perhaps, and that work eventually came to be known as Requiem for a Nun. And there you have it; her parents didn’t want her to be a writer; they wanted her to get married and to be a good wife; her father was a drunk- he enjoyed his martini. Nothing like an afternoon martini. We shall see just how influential this woman’s voice was on the making of Requiem. The tone of the chapter is that Faulkner wanted a piece of that young ass. It doesn’t get any more difficult than that; surreptitious meetings in Memphis, under the auspices of dropping off a manuscript. Oh yes, I’ve something to learn about ol’ Bill.
Sitting in the bookstore, in the green chair that smells of the Sixties, back against granite stone, occasionally spying on the woman sitting in the chair opposite me, who is wearing a tight skirt and her skirt is around her sitting thighs and one can see into the shadowy cavern of the secret world, up her legs, her breasts equal in beautiful measure and sex. I stare; Jonathan asks her out; she laughs and puts down her book and leaves the store. We boys have frightened her off for sure.
Dinner at a nice pizza joint on a sloping hill. Mine is a red pizza with all meat and now I have heartburn. My folks got calzone and salads and they split the calzone and it was cold and they sent it back. I don’t like it when people I’m responsible for, friends or family, don’t have a good time due to the weakness of others or the weakness of my choice for the group. I chose this restaurant and here was my mother and father sending back their entree with frowns. Great. Each brother drank about forty-eight ounces of beer. We walked across the street for coffee. The night was cool and chilly the hints of spring coming from all angles now. A bicycle trickster guy, the kind of guy who can twirl his bike around while standing on a tire or some such, was hit by a car and the car disappeared and there’s this guy lying in the street with an ambulance and cops and a crowd of onlookers. Casual onlookers with summertime ice cream cones and smiles, conversations still going. Mother didn’t want to watch this kid lying in the street. Prince was playing loudly in the coffeeshop on the stereo with nose-ringed kids dancing behind the counter and taking orders for food and drink.
Took a walk on the college grounds, by the pond and the library and the center for the performing arts. Then out to the city again and the motorcycle gangs were parked in a line as they often do during the summer months on a weekend evening. Not like the Hells Angels in Missoula, mind you, but close enough. A movie by a Japanese director about loneliness, with the camera always three feet off the floor, a sitting Japanese person it is. Ozu made a grand movie and we watched it with heavy lids.
Midges keep the tourists away in Scotland and it pisses off the Ministry of Tourism.
Global tourism is the industry of the Twenty-First Century. Visit an island in the Indian Ocean please. Some Highland towns and counties rely solely on the tourist dollar. Have you seen the Sphinx lately?
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Jonathan calls his girlfriend and they talk on the phone for an hour. Walt calls his girlfriend and they talk on the phone for an hour about their upcoming trip to Europe: they want to visit Prague. [There are wild noises outside and they are created by the wind.] One of their girlfriends leaves a message on the machine and it is a high-pitched female voice. They seem happy with their mates, Jonathan’s killing of Vincent notwithstanding. Mother repeats to Walt that he cannot ever get a woman pregnant. Jonathan asked father tonight about a thousand dollars. I’ve yet to learn whether his bid was successful. I have nobody to call and no one calls me.
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The woman was being fucked by this dog. A Labrador retriever with a red-purple erection, its forepaws clutching as if she were a bitch. Now, there was some confusion on the dog’s part. But he had a third party, another human being, giving a helping hand. The third party guiding the dog’s raging one into the woman on her hands and knees. To speak in bold stereotypes, the woman obviously existed on meth, lost teeth and was as ugly as the end. She had a tattoo. A less kind viewer would say that she was a crack-whore in need of some cash. And there she was, getting pounded by this hound and it was something to see. I did not lose my job because of pornography sites on the internet. I lost my job because I wasn’t taking lunch. Yeah, that’s it. Simply working eight straight and leaving for home an hour earlier than the others. I had writing to do and painting to do and photographs to develop. The new manager came in and fired my immediate supervisor and me in a flash. We weren’t union and that was the end of things, out on our ass. No, I was not looking at porn on the internet at work. Maybe at the public library. Perhaps at the college library down the road. And certainly here at home: it’s fascinating. I mean, have you ever seen a woman getting fucked by a dog, bestiality in all its expressive glory? I don’t think you have. Wonder whether Lars Von Trier has. That’s all, it’s fascinating.
My ex-girlfriend accessed my old outdated computer and saw the puppy dog hosing the woman on her knees and she- my girlfriend- assumed I was that kind of guy. She confronted me with it, a downloaded video. The beginning of the end. Walt left on my bicycle to play tennis at the college. He wanted me to come along. “I don’t want to sweat,” I meekly said. Don’t mind being lame when all I want to do is sit on the meadow and read short stories. He left on my bike in his exercise shorts with his rackets in their bag slung over his shoulder. Jonathan was gone when I made it out of bed. Went to be with father, the two purchasing barbecue ingredients and the like. Gone by ten in the morning. For the first time this week, entirely alone am I. It’s frightening. What to do; hike into town to the friend’s house of my parents, ready for the barbecue. We have a cousin coming out from Boston and don’t know when she’s going to arrive. I’ve got to be on my best behavior. You cannot buy alcohol in this state on Sunday, the bastards. She’s bringing a boyfriend, this cousin of mine, best behavior man will I be. Darn it all. Gin and tonics till the eyes water and tongue doesn’t precisely function.
We are getting on toward the end of this family visit. Two more days and they, we, disperse to the wind. Back to jobs, back to girlfriends, back to real life.
The bill last night at dinner was $175. At a pizza joint.
A friend bops in with his head over my bed. He makes an egg sandwich on my stove while I wash my face. He talks about moving from the coast forever and going to California. He wants me to go with him. I’ve no job and no woman yet know that I wont’ go. He doesn’t know that: he talks excitedly about the Central Valley and all the tomatoes we will eat. He talks about this one girl named Jo we once met. She was with somebody else then. But she flirted. She had large breasts and a seven year-old daughter. My friend wants her and talks about having her and working in a coffeeshop if need be to pay the small amount of rent necessary to live in the bungalow of a buddy. Yes, this friend pops in and wakes me and makes his egg sandwich and brews a green tea and speaks fast about a screenplay he’s writing. I hate artists. Being an artist is sad, indeed. He sads all over me in my living room, on my couch, and my of course my ex-girlfriend hasn’t vacuumed in awhile. She never will again. Thinking of vacuums makes me wonder about working as an Electrolux salesman. Heard they’re hiring. It can’t be difficult to sell an Electrolux, they’re indestructible, you can stand on them, everybody loves them, they have a lifetime guarantee. My friend on the couch eats his egg sandwich and verbally goes to town about moving west. Says things like “The great western movement,” and the “final exodus of me,” and “a profound new settlement mimicking the freedom of our forefathers and the founding of our country.” He drinks my juice, the one glass left that I was going to have this morning. The day is gray clouds, solid this time and not moving, and the wind smells as rain does. This friend is an organic farmer and he likes his cucumbers. He talks about growing through the winter in Maine. Then he disappears and I am left alone.
There is a carefree attitude that accompanies the philosophy of my life and I’m not sure that’s healthy. Look where it’s gotten me, or left me. Left in an apartment whose bill structure I won’t be able to cover in a few weeks, with nary a noodle in my cupboards, mooching off my mom and dad and two brothers both younger. Not only will I order two twenty-four ounce fucking beers at dinner I will order another. Say things like “Who needs a girlfriend, I want to be a powerful bachelor and I’m going to sleep with her, and her, and her, yes” and then I’m left sitting here in painful wonder. Were I feeling better today, about myself and life, I would have written “marvelous wonder.” A fly skims toward my nose. I attempt to dodge it. A lone afternoon mosquito makes a move for an ankle and I can only wonder that the mosquito who is running around a regular afternoon and not preparing for the weekend could only be rabid with West Nile. He is out to get me and I am here to be got.
Never have thrown away photographs of old girlfriends. Keep them in a drawer. Occasionally I stare at them and think about somehow reconnecting. They all have children. They all have lives. They all laugh when they see me in town. Who knows what they say behind my back. That poor guy, have you seen him lately? See what happens when you make certain choices? And I think of my brother and the killing of Vincent and he says that there is no way under the sun he is going to marry this woman. Walt shrugs and goes to play tennis at the college. “What happens when you’re by yourself?” I ask him. “Serve it up,” he says simply, “And keep an eye out for a game; I’m always able to get a game.” And older brother wouldn’t play with younger brother and here I sit on the grass, thinking about the Japanese man last night who gently married-off daughter. And he drinks alone now and he is sad. Perhaps his son will make the old man breakfast.
= = =
A wet chill has descended over the rolling land. Darkness and the orange of town lights over the ridge and a breeze. The breeze comes in my window, through the screen, and straight into my nostril. I breathe deeply. Tonight is Jonathan’s last night. He will head back to his life tomorrow, a screaming drive down Interstate 81, straight into his girlfriend’s arms and they will begin the healing process that is necessary after killing your kid. Perhaps this family trip was not strategically placed as far as he is concerned. Things set in stone, in calendar cement, and fluid events sometimes collide. Jonathan sleeps on my fold-out futon stupid couch and he is in his sleeping bag. Walt is next to him. Though I made fun of them the entire week, they are still sleeping head to toe, toe to head. As soon as I left the living room, after petering conversation and dwindling energy, Walt turned out the lamp next to the futon couch. A room drops into darkness and I am back here again, in the screens, entirely alone. Because of my family visit, because they have paid for everything, because they have been here at all, I have not looked in the newspaper for a job, have not thought about it much, have even at times forgotten that I lost my job. Soon the reality of those untimely events will come crashing down on me. Soon I will be forced to sell my car and maybe some books and I’ll even look around for more things to shed. Damn this hectic reality. Walt farts and smells up the entire house and he is not coy about it, not respectful, and they are the painful kind. When we remark he says, “Damn, what’s a brother to do?”
My cousin got a nose job in high school. I did not, at the time, approve; do not approve now. She brought her boyfriend to the house down the hill, parents’ friends’ house, and we sat around the kitchen table, under the light, and slipped through variegated and untethered conversation. Didn’t do much for me; didn’t do much for either of us. Her boyfriend’s name was Doug. “Hi, Doug, pleased to meet ya.” Leaned in real close on the handshake and detected that he almost had a heart attack. Then I was silent for most of the night. Barbecue of hotdogs and burgers. Medium-rare; my folks enjoy their buns toasted. The owner of the house returned from Philadelphia. He worked in the garden the whole time I was there. I said, “See that? That’s nervous displacement activity.” Owner gardened and weeded and finally joined us for burgers at the long table in the greenhouse and I think he has reached the end of his rope, the last straw, some camel going to be complaining about a sore back. Yes, Owner shuffled around and I worried for him. Even said, “Thank you for allowing this family, this crazed and odd family, to invade your space,” and he poo-pooed it as no big deal but you could see it in his lips. Doug is getting a Ph.D.. He is a geographer. If they marry, it will be my cousin’s second marriage and she is only thirty. Her first husband left her, cheated on her, fucked another woman a grad student from the university and it was so-long and you can keep the house I’m outta here. She was crushed. Now this couple before us had met on the computer, the help-you-out network, the urban matchmakers. Doug fidgeted. I cursed and drank four gin and tonics and read more of that Faulkner biography, bits of it at random, and drank more to pretend I was a big-guy writer and realized that I couldn’t keep up with him. He was a drunk and an ass and a crybaby. My hero, the guy I’d looked up to for ten years, is, upon this read, a pansy. More unhappiness, more sad marriage, more drinking, more surreptitious activity and libidinous sneaking around and sad excuses to go to Memphis or New York. He had lovers.
When he gave his Nobel speech nobody in the audience knew what he had just said. They had to read the transcript in the newspaper the next day and it was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. He mumbled and he was nervous, drunk, and grumpy. Learned of another lover he tried to score, learned of his trysts in Hollywood; learned of his contemplation of divorce; learned he stayed married because of his daughter. He was a moody bastard, spiteful, sad and stupid. A crybaby who at times couldn’t work, and, according to this biography, there was a time when he couldn’t work for a year. I’m reading this, learning about my hero for the first time, at the kitchen table under the light with inane conversation going on around me and some one throwing a New Yorker across the room and dad making carrot salad, with marshmallows, and mother doing the meat and then dad readying the barbecue, the coals, in a slight drizzle, and Owner nervously buzzing about and I’m single and Jonathan killed Vincent and Walt drinking the last four beers and my cousin got a nose job and her hair looked nice and some commented that Walt might be losing his hair and I said, off to the side, “I’ll still love you when you lose your hair,” and some laughed and some did not and mom also sliced several tomatoes nice and thick and Jonathan peeled in appropriately-sized sections some lettuce and the buns made it to a dispersal table some call it a buffet table and the rain continued down; keep reading the biography at random with an ear on the conversation and I perked up when the geographer mentioned maps and satellite imagery of global vegetation- I offered a minimal tidbit on global human settlement patterns, a favorite and yet dilettante area of study of mine - and my cousin said that I never visit her, even though I drive right by her house in the city all the time. Oddly, there were no cheese slices for cheese burgers.
Folks went driving around with my cousin today looking at houses, as, as you well know by now, they may be moving to the area upon their retirement. Poor folks, the end of an era the end of a life. When youthful vitality is gone it is gone. I never knew that growing up: I was indestructible and did not manifest the advancement of time or age: a lover and a player of games and now I do none of it.
Faulkner was on the same plane as Cheever in the crying alcoholic unhappily married writer category.
They went looking for houses, Sunday being open house day, and did not like anything they saw. Bitched about the prices and inflation and then the discussion turned to Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley and other hyper-inflated areas. They bus-in the regular help; burger flippers cannot afford to live there. We live in an odd state. They are now discouraged; it continued to drizzle and someone said, “There’s always Oregon,” and some laughed with an eye on the grilling hamburgers.
Blueberry pie once more, with vanilla ice cream, the cousin left after Jerusalem photographs at the round table, and the three brothers plus dad walked into town for a cappuccino. Though we could not get cappuccino because the better coffeeshop was closed, this being a Sunday night in the off season, and we were forced to engage the ice cream shop with high schoolers doing the preparing and the serving. Don’t order one from these people; go straight coffee; we talked about the events for tomorrow and the first discussions of departure times began floating around, how to get folks to the airport and topics such as jet lag and the like. It happened, it floated, and then the night was over, the three boys retiring, after kissing mom goodnight on the cheek, to watch a movie by a Polish director, about love and intrigue and revenge and love again. You know the story, you know the movie, you can visualize us sitting in a row of three on the folded-down couch, propped by pillows, watching the bastard get even. Walt continued to smell everything up; Jonathan smoked a cigarette under the massive umbrella with university insignia; I found myself at the edge of the grass taking a pee and contemplating the secretion of uric acid by this one spider. A spider who walked on the ceiling and I wonder if she could drop on me any sort of moisture much that a bird can and has and the spider stopped moving and I watched her. Ice clinks in the crystal and condensation sweats onto my trousers and it is not what you think; it certainly is not the spider; no, their liquid waste is secreted, standard stuff, the life of that sort of living.
Learned that King Louis couldn’t ejaculate into Marie-Antoinette and this fact gave France great cause for concern. People discussed this sort of thing. I read it aloud at the kitchen table, an excerpt from a new book, history lesson for the day.
+ + +
Knew a guy who slept with his laptop. Beside him in bed, sometimes resting on a pillow sometimes on the mattress. He got over the dust and feathers that would settle on his machine overnight. He would wake in a flash and write a dream, try to follow the oddity and apparent incongruity of the dream, the fluid flam of night visions, the absolute insanity of deep-sleep trains of thought. The time when we are our best. The machine, the sleek black machine that he cared more for than sex, than his mother, than himself, that he would wipe down and polish every morning before going off to work, resting beside him on sleep mode. So all you have to do is grab, hit one key, and you’re off and running. There he is with the machine on his righted knees; on his lap; sitting up in bed now, wiping his eyes, capturing the freedom of bedtime inspiration. Then his girlfriend screamed, “It’s the laptop or me!” and he said, “Baby, I need to sleep with my machine,” and she was off and running.
These days one can make love to the computer, with the aid of the machine, as good a lay as any.
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Jonathan woke this morning while I was still gone to the world under covers and haze, in the waving path of a fan, occasionally reacting to the pouring water outside. “Where is the leak now?” I wondered in subconscious. He went downtown and purchased a pound of Kenya AA whole bean when I’d the night before suggested a half, not thinking he would do any of it anyhow. He purchased that pound of whole bean and drove back to my apartment and set the pot to brewing. Then left a note asking, “Do any of these five videos require returning?” and he signed it with a sweeping, swirling indecipherable J. He then drove in return downtown and was standing outside a bookstore when he phoned and invited the slow and the lazy to join him on Main Street for cross-legged perhaps conversational togetherness. Walt laughed at the sound of the voice on the machine. Uncharacteristically, I took a shower first thing. Unusually for me, I washed my head with two rounds of shampoo: I ordinarily, as is my want, use merely one round as I don’t like the fluff of a dry and puffy two rounds, which occurs with goddam conditioner anyway. The whole process bah. Flah to the whole thing. Walt smokes marijuana in the kitchen in a tie and vest and corduroy slacks and leather shoes looking quite the dapper young man. He walks back here to as for a paperclip: that can only mean he desires to poke something out of the pipe or bong or other smoking implement.
We could wait here for the arrival of mother and father. Or go downtown to join Jonathan in morning now afternoon seriousness, surrounding books and surrounding his last day. He will be leaving tonight, after supper, for a five hour first stint, which would put him somewhere in Pennsylvania. Where he will camp on Tom’s Creek and wake the following morning next to a man who drives an older model Mercedes and who runs his small yapping poodle and perhaps picnics at the table under the tree with some woman not his wife. Yes, he will depart and the rest will tomorrow from the airport in Hartford and that will be the end of it. I won’t have time to recuperate. Have to find a job with immediacy and then fly out to California to be a best man in some wedding on the coast. The groom is paying for my flight and my tuxedo and his own bachelor party and little does he know it but for the week that I’m out there he will be feeding me three squares. Otherwise I’ll starve; flying out there without a dollar to my name, a sad sack and sorry case and barely grabbing the next and ensuing vine, the vine to vine, the vine rarely swinging my way any longer, getting harder and harder to grab onto, slowly losing grip. But I will smile at this wedding and be happy and read a story I wrote the new couple and the congregation of friends and family about the mountains and about the coast and about the newfangled yuppie of the Silicon Valley and the inflationary pressures in certain pockets of this great land. The next wave, the new generation. Jonathan will be gone and I will, though it might not have appeared so during this read, be melancholy and sad, I will miss him and wish we lived in greater proximity to one another. I love my brother and I love my brother and I am thankful for this time spent with family.
There is the waft of juicy marijuana floating down the ‘shotgun’ apartment.
The plan for today is to wait here for the parents- they visiting this apartment that they decry as ‘smelly’ and ‘unwholesome’- and we will go on a hike come hell or high water. Speaking of high water, it has been a wet year, you all know that, and it has rained steadily for two days. I’ve always desired to take my folks on a hike in the neighboring woods, to better gauge the wholesomeness of my life and better appreciate the setting of my, this, sorry apartment complex of low-income housing nestled against a hill, and yet we have never accomplished the walk or stroll necessary for the appreciation. Today it must happen. Parental stipulation: that it cannot be soggy or swampy and “I’ve only got my tennis shoes” and “I don’t want to have to be wiping them off and worrying about where to place them in my suitcase, in whichever plastic sack” and the hills cannot be too dramatic. That limits greatly my options. You see what I’m up against. And now, to make it worse, it is a day of gray and wet drizzle. “In the woods,” I will say when they arrive, “you won’t get as wet because of the protection of the trees,” and “I promise to take you on a path of stones and not one of running or standing water.” Our loop, the loop I’ve envisioned, has been cut from a circular route of three glorious and calm miles, a loop on which we would have acquired dramatic views to the west and afforded picnic possibilities, to a loop of an hour and some of it on road. Come hell or high water. As I look up, gaze out the window, the sprinkle turns steadily worse, to a rain you can hear, to a rain that is best described as “in sheets.” They will never agree to this. Windbreaker raincoat and boots, not gonna. A baseball hat with perhaps a solitary drip of water on the bill, not gonna. A hike with my parents, a hike with my folks, a walk with my family, the last gathered day.
Monday and everybody is at work. A silent wet day. A beautiful Oregon rainforest; you grew up in Germany and you’re going to love a day such as this one. My options slimming my opportunities dimming one brother downtown and another perhaps reading and what do I do now; I’ll go bother him, tickle his ribs, curse in a swamp of vulgarity. Maybe we’ll watch another film. Eat cereal. Drink more coffee. Stand on our heads. I’m up to five pushups and ten sit-ups (chasing backwards for youthful vigor). The guts on the men in this family are sad: there have been numerous suggestions to line us up and snap a photo of just the midsections, four of us, sloping and rounding, bellybutton cavern, hair jungle and the formation- perhaps- of breasts. When you overeat three burgers and two hotdogs and tell yourself the two corncobs were healthy and then beer or gin and tonics all day long, no exercise, and two plates of blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream but you tell yourself it’s just a family gathering, it’s just the visit and vacation and it will be over soon, and each day you overeat and sit around, you will begin to approximate a balloon. Take a photo, mom, of those cavernous bellybuttons in a jungle of hair and sloping hoglike flesh. Help us all. Ten sit-ups, five pushups, the younger ones laugh at me. Dad asks “You still doing pushups?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
A pause: “Well, because it’s a pain in the ass, you know. A pain in the ass and a struggle and who wants to engage the struggle.”
He laughs.
“Besides, you know all those folks who are tight or sculptured? They’re in possession of some mental problems. . . Only people with mental problems would work that hard for a muscle; terrible insecurities, sad paranoia, looping insanity.”
“Yeah. . .”
“The best form of exercise is a walk in the woods; one hour of fast or vigorous walking, perhaps a little uphill, and you’ll be fine. Only the sad and despondent lift weights.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why I don’t do pull-ups anymore; five pushups, yeah, for a measly amount of tone. For some blood circulation, to halt the sag somewhat, fight the sag, don’t desire breasts gravity nature don’t do this to me.” Sip the coffee eat the ice cream and sit for five days. Sit for five days and that turns to more and youth passes on, no longer interested in you, not going to waste its time on a misshapen vessel. Once youth gives up on you, you no longer feel the nagging need to exercise, you get used to sitting (at a job, at a desk, in life) for weeks on end and before you know it the time is compounded to the depths of life, to decades, and you sag. And it’s more difficult to regain any of that vigor or vitality, harder to coax youth back into your body to any degree; before you know it the thirty year-old is forty and that time is gone. Yes, ten sit-ups, to at least say, ‘hold on.’”
And you sit and eat, sit and eat, maybe fuck some, and life becomes too easy.
The rich and the fat. Eat and consume, gobble till it’s gone.
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Used to laugh at my father’s growing gut and his curious formation of breasts, not a fat man, by any means, don’t envision that, but a girth, man, sure, growing older and hah if you can get him on a bike and he will blame that one being busy, on work and life and you don’t have time to exercise. Yes, I would laugh and my brothers would laugh and now we sport the same, we are filling similar space, the sags under our eyes, the tone of voice, the nervous hands fidgeting with forks at dinner tables, bobbing knee, we’ll probably get close to that double-chin, too. Laughing and even mocking and now look at us, the same. We are our father. We sound the same on the phone; comb our hair the same way; where like clothes; gravitate toward the same profession; sensibilities, aesthetic, and even dislikes uniquely similar. The gut, the love-handles, the walk even. All those things we used to say would never be us, we would never end up like that, never even going to sit like that in a cafe or concert hall. We are the same and fighting it isn’t the way any longer, embracing it is the way, each brother calling the other father’s name. At some point you either embrace it and be proud, or try your darnedest to discard it or him and end up hating yourself. Hating yourself gets boring; hating life or others gets boring; say hello to yourself, say hello to your dad.
We can no longer laugh at dad; we are our father’s sons. Why do we try to escape ourselves, why do we run? Some people are afraid of life; some love to swim in the fear; for me it is simply a dance, a relationship with a beating heart and a mind. Today I will tell my dad that I love him. Today I will kiss my mom on her cheek. And even so, they will not want to hike today in the wet woods, windbreaker nothing, watch the white tennis shoes, please, and man, here’s a hill again, are you trying to kill us.
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Walt puts on some Bob Dylan and I realize that I love America.
This is poetry.
Sitting in a chair with a blanket over my legs as an old man might do. It is cold out, cold enough for socks and shoes. Suppose at some point in my life it won’t bother me that one month slides into another faster and faster, rapidly moving away from my possession of life. This chill in the air makes me look at the calendar. We are approaching the middle of August in this northeast and the summer is all but gone. One friend says, and he always says, “I got left.” It is no fun looking for a job in September; autumn is a time for fun and relaxation, for hiking in the fall hills, for peeping leaves with the rest of them and placing your freestanding tent on level ground, for breathing in that fresh air and knowing winter will arrive soon enough and knowing that you will be able to pay for the oil this year and your car has passed inspection and you have auto insurance and will make it, of course, through another year. Autumn is not the time to be looking for work.
The blanket over my legs. Walt is on the phone. I want to visit Jonathan downtown, but don’t know how to get there, and besides, the plan, the plan called for us to meet the old folks here at this apartment, despite the rain, in spite of the wet.
Cannot believe we are running out of August.
Another family visit, a yearly thing, the marking of summertime, is almost over and regular life resumes and I wonder why. Why must I reenter regular life? The clouds are thick and almost black today, marching slowly, and they touch me in a kind of way that makes me want to sing.
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The rain continued. Mother called and nonchalantly said, as if it was automatically understood, that they weren’t going to go on the local hike, the walk from the apartment, the activity I’d visualized for years running now. Walt on the phone, talking mundane business about flights, and I said, “Give me the phone.” Informed that Jonathan was taking a nap. He’s leaving after dinner.
“I don’t want to,” said mom.
“You have to; you don’t have a choice in this matter,” I said with caffeinated insistence. “This is a gray, cloudy day, with a nice warm breeze, the kind of day that inspired poetry and song. You have to come over; you promised; it’s the only reason I’m living. Come on, I promise the hike won’t be a swamp, won’t be more than an hour, and we can finally do this walk.” She handed me over to dad. Dad wanted to go into town to the Chamber of Commerce to get a map, to find the townships and counties from afar when dealing with real estate agents, in case they chose to move here, buy a home here. “Come walk first,” I said, “and then we’ll go into town and get you the map.” Plenty of pauses and finally an okay, we’ll go, we’ll go on this darn walk.
Cascades over rocks and the path on an old fire road. Dry as you’re going to get in this weather. It was sprinkling. Mom borrowed a New York Yankees baseball cap; she placed it on her fluffy white hair. Dad borrowed a State University cap and had to re-finagle the adjuster. Mom brought an umbrella. She wore tennis shoes. Dad in boots. We hiked. Jonathan slept at the friend’s house. On the couch. I’ll never know because I didn’t see him. Walt came with us and the family strolled on the wet street. Held out my arms to oncoming traffic to slow them down. Scowled, cursed.
We entered the woods at the brook path. Water roaring a sight to see. There the dilapidated house. Mom joked about buying it. We ascended past the treacherous parts, the cliff and the mud sections, walking slowly, holding mom’s hand, making sure she didn’t fall, lifting or bracing until she was on stable ground. At the lookout mom and dad asked about this view and that view and the general direction of things and where was the river and is that the university tower and what is that farm there and the nice mountain range with mist rising from the summits and the crevasses and the town is there, yes, I can see it. Drizzled on us. Able to stand in the gray, dabbling wet anyhow. Checking our watches. Mom wants to be back by five. Forced to cut the hike, the stroll envisioned, the hoped-for goal, in dramatic half. I say as much. Then we carefully descend, avoid wet roots, avoid rivulets in the path, and make it down to the road. I must describe the swimming hole rather than show it to them.
Back to the main ranch, the focus of our time together. We ate pork with slices of mandarin orange. My girlfriend would have made it for us were she still around; instead, I did my best in the kitchen, informing Walt that he’d better do the dishes this time rather than sitting on his ass. He laughed and ate a Reduced Fat Oreo. Fuck reduced fat cookies. Or reduced fat cakes. Ate supper in the greenhouse again, chatting over plates of food and a pitcher of water. Ordinarily I am chatty and even invasive. Now quiet. How could I tell them about my firing and lack of money and breakup? After Jonathan stole the show with his child-killing? Couldn’t do it. Further, how could I beg dad to save me with this one when Jonathan already hit them up for a thousand dollars? Still don’t know the outcome of that one. Wonder if he’ll tell me. Perhaps when he calls.
No, best to leave them out of my troubles. I’ll find a job, I’ll sell my stupid car, ride my bicycle everywhere, walk in winter, beg rides or borrow cars when time to grocery shop, find somebody else to love, somehow rent a suit for this wedding in San Francisco. And so silent at supper in the greenhouse with water running in sheets down the sloped glass sides. The man of the house, the friend of my parents, is quiet too, and I worry about him. Worry about his impression of us, this clan. Of course, I tell the gathered that it is nervous displacement activity. This man takes out the recycling. He won’t play cards; he’s missing his wife, his wife would have been able to absorb some of the contact with this family, relieve some of the collected energy, and besides, it’s through her that we know this house at all. She’s in California, tending to her dying mother who is undergoing an operation. Tending to the dying, that’s what we do.
Walt clears the table miracle of miracles and proceeds to do the dishes. He would never have done it had I not cooked the meal, by accident, by breakup default, by divorce. We eat more blueberry pie with more vanilla ice cream and I’ve put on twenty-five pounds easy. Then Jonathan hugs all of us and preparing to leave. He’s nervous. He will drive into Pennsylvania or beyond tonight and find a campsite. I say, “Brother, we’re not the kissing kind,” to quote The Grapes of Wrath, at least the movie, and smooch him on the cheek. Before I can count to thirty or realize what’s happening or think of anything pertinent to say, to wish him luck, to give him love regarding ol’ Vincent Who Didn’t Last Very Long, he’s gone, vanished, driving down wet American roads toward points south, following the Appalachian spine, heading home, to life, to work, to salvage the relationship, to figure it all out, to investigate his new digs. I wonder if he got the money.
The remaining play two games of cards. Joke and laugh loudly and exclaim in unison to grand moves or sneaky moves or humorous comments or winning cards. Then the card game’s over and we say good night and Walt and I are lying on the pulled-down futon, propped against pillows, watching yet another movie. “We hit one film every night,” Walt observes. I say, “Yup.” Eat a Reduced Fat Oreo. My teeth blackened. Flash my gums at my brother. Tonight quiet and strange without the other brother. Am not looking forward to being totally alone. Drive the rest of them to the airport tomorrow at noon and then that’s it, all she wrote, one more family vacation to mark another year. One after the other, sliding gone by, so long, friend, brother, dad. What is the wave of a hand? Deepening quiet tonight when Walt slips into bed, under his covers, the dark night like a weight and the breeze cool and moist, silent, stealthy, alone. Heck, Jonathan has left and Walt’s asleep and I might as well go to bed.
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Don’t have any idea how you all react to it, but I know how I react to it: just like that, they’re gone, a hug and a wave and life tugs them away or you away and it’s over. Perhaps there’s something in the passage of time that makes me quietly sad; maybe something in mortality that makes me mourn. Now I am alone, and, truly, what have I gained? The quiet eerie. Silence and the bugs of August. When you wave your hand through the outside air the darkness is tangible.
Another notice came in the mail today reminding me of the impending loss of my driver’s license. Your days are numbered, it said.
WIN A ROLLS ROYCE shouted the hot dog package. Just peel back the inside label and see if you are the instant winner. Sorry, it read, no Rolls, but you save 35c on your next purchase of hot dogs at any location nearest you.
The cranberry juice guys getting into the act: the bottle shouts CHECK CAP FOR YOUR PRIZE and the cap says, when I open it, SORRY, THIS IS NOT A WINNING CAP, please try again. I want to write a novel one day called, Sorry, This Is Not A Winning Cap. Would make it a worthy life.
Have to call California to see about this wedding. Going to have to borrow money from a friend to get the suit, for the van service in San Francisco, for the cans of soup I’ll eat there, stretching to the buffet at the wedding and after the buffet the few days to the return flight. Land in Hartford at six in the morning. No one to pick me up; no car to leave in the parking lot and even if I had a car to leave in the parking lot I wouldn’t have money to get the car out of the parking lot.
He stole the book. The sneaky guy, my brother Jonathan, stole the book Lust For Life, which all of you know is a story of Vincent Van Gogh. He also took my coffee table folio of the painter, called Vincent, and the postcard I had in my office of “Les Iris” and the print of “Cedar in Wheat Field” displayed in my bedroom. Gone are they all. Whisked away without notice. We call that, in this part of the world, stolen. He made off with them. To probably plaster the walls of his new apartment, to read all the Vincent books there are, to add to his collection, construct a shrine. I can see the apartment now.
Just like that, they’re gone.
Made it to the House of My Parents’ Visit at noon sharp. Father reading an article about some movie written in a left-wing rag. Mom somewhere upstairs. The suitcases already lined up and ready to go in the hallway. Nervous Displacement Owner shuttling about his garden again, avoiding eye-contact, and his wife returned from tending her aging mother: Owner Wife had broken her wrist. Walt and Parents were thankfully going to the airport at the same time, though on different airlines and staggered departures. She wanted an aisle seat and didn’t get one. The clouds broke and the sun came out and it grew instantly hot. Waiting for the collection to hit the highway and speed to the airport in the low rider. Low rider because it was a borrowed car, a Honda Civic sedan, small and squat, with four adults and three months worth of luggage and the thing scraped at the end of the driveway.
Yes, just like that, they’re gone. Time snuffs out everything and everyone, out.
It happened again: on every page of this Faulkner biography he’s drinking or thinking about fucking someone other than his wife. The things we do not know until we learn them. No, truthfully, open to a page any page: he’s drinking, recovering from a night of drinking, eagerly anticipating his first drink, calling a girl he’s attempting to bed, deciding not to drink today but drinking anyway, bedding someone, mixing a drink, doing an interview with an unknowing British interviewer and the interviewer didn’t know anything otherwise, didn’t know that the eagerness and slight incoherence on account of the main man were due to his being sauced. Do it, open to a page, and Bill’s imbibing like the best of them, everything up in the air, everything painful, worse, it seems, than Cheever.
In the living room waiting for the gang to assemble on this the last of days. Picked up Kidder’s Hometown and opened it again at random and read from the first paragraph and read until called upon to load the vehicle, to burden the car, to saddle the ride. Read about a judge’s lunch break, taken in a tavern, and the characters sitting at the bar. The judge an honest, understanding bloke, and he enjoyed the pleasure of a cigarette. Everybody knew him. Read about a guy whose bookie fucked his girlfriend and the guy went crazy and tore up the apartment and ripped apart the jailhouse and didn’t pay his taxes and made the newspaper and became, in small part, a local legend. The judge on a lunch break. A cop cruising his beat, enduring witness duty, engaging the author. The last day and dad finishes his article about some movie and he saw the movie a few months ago and he recommends it to me. I say, “Sure, I’ll see it,” though our reviewer in these parts hated it and told us all to avoid. Our film reviewer in these parts is an asshole.
My mother doesn’t know it yet; she doesn’t know about my girlfriend jumping ship like so many rats; mom hands me a gewgaw and says, “Now, give this to her and tell her to grab life by the horns.”
“Okay, momma, I will; she’s grabbing life by the horns, alright.”
Jonathan stole it. The book under other books in a pile, on the bottom, spine turned away knowing that he would want it. No, I did not hide the folio book called Vincent because, man, I thought no way he would steal that ancient and priceless tome bequeathed to me from our biological mother. No way turned into absolutely and he’s gone, chuckling or sobbing who can say. Bombing and maybe he slept at Tom’s Creek or maybe he didn’t, racing a return to life, to reality, to his job his career and his girlfriend and the new apartment where he’ll probably have a room with Van Goghs everywhere and an altar on the dresser drawers and a candle, “Starry Night” in full view, all the books possible including Dear Theo and The Agony and the Ecstasy on a sad bookshelf. The ultrasound photograph next to the candle, framed now, titled with a date.
I was grossly rude and insensitive when Jonathan first arrived, calling him “baby killer” and all of that; I deserved the lashing and the bashing on the living room couch; the sobbing tears in the chair, Jonathan baring all like I’ve never seen him, a pain that I was at first unwilling to appreciate or able to comprehend. I’m sorry for being an asshole. I don’t like hurting people. Wish I were nice.
See, I told you: lifted the Faulkner biography, turned to a page in the first third of the text, and read, “Ol’ Bill lay on the couch, whining about the pain in his head, crying about the lack of whiskey on the farm.” Bill dreamed about a girl in Memphis. Desired an illicit humping. Nothing wrong with cheating, humping, and drinking, no there is not.
When you listen to the BBC in London Greenwich Mean Time you hear a load of British accents.
The Democratic National Convention rising now, started a couple of days ago, and my father told me about Clinton’s speech; some are saying that it was “the political speech of the century.” The press lauds and swoons, and my father, who does not hand these things out lightly, compliments to the highest degree his speech. But he also loved Hillary, along with the New York Times, when Trump destroyed us all. “Slaying,” the term he used, “without being coarse or rude. It was smooth,” my pops said in the living room of Owner’s, waiting for the departure, luggage lined in the hallway paused. A great phrase: a teeming mass of movement. Regarding germs, they cause diseases, they’re out to get us, in short, we want to kill them. Germs are the enemy. Now they talk about lyme disease; now I remember a trip to the beach, a beach with long grasses and dunes, and now I’m afraid again. The deer tick sucks the primary host. The scientist from Yale talks about skin problems and I turn to scratch my wrist. Are my knees swollen? Germs and ticks are “masters of adaptation and survival.” They’re occupying the world, these organisms. Smallpox kept alive, the smallpox stocks, at the Center For Disease Control.
The voices talk about a marvelous book. Pop culture all over me. Saw Susan Sontag speak on TV about the essay versus the novel; then Joyce Carol Oates [a great phrase, “the subvisible world.” One guy says that we owe our very existence to germs . . .] interviewed, with her sunken, lukewarm eyes and her non-smile and curly brown hair- she is thin and stooped- by Mr. Rose when he still successfully used the bathrobe trick, maybe he used it on Joyce Carol Oates but she never said anything, except to him - “Oh, Charles, really?” - and they talk about Marilyn Monroe and the phenomenon of the icon and tragedy, and they speak of the writer of fiction and we learn that she teaches at Princeton and learn that she’s pumped out seventy books and some say this one is her best; and we hear from Zadie Smith, somewhat shy with cool-kind spectacles and a puffy hat the young, beautiful, they say talented woman from London has written a book and the critics rave and she smiles, yes, and there are dimples and yet she does not look at ol’ Mr. Rose in the eyes much. Probably because of the creepy bathrobes.
Leave the television on, gather-in popular culture; leave the radio on in the living room and the Red Sox are down to Tampa Bay in Florida; the radio churning in my study I call it a study it’s a hole in the wall surrounded by stacks of paper and dirty clothes in a pile and clean clothes yet to be filed, a small slot in which I can read or write or pretend to read or write, yes the radio on the news the news always playing and perhaps I’ll switch to that weird rightwing Christian always popular blasting of culture and one can walk from this end of the ‘shotgun’ apartment to the other and gather information and soak culture and receive tidbits by the merest of accidents. Too, one can open some of the many books or magazines and read a quick snatch and possess something, a small thing, that one didn’t possess prior to the move. So you can see that I’m pacing from one end of this ‘shotgun’ flat to the other and my immediate impression of the Democratic Convention is that they- the Democrats- do not know how to wave foam banging tubes and there are fewer flags and not as many shouts in unison.
Further, there are more diverse issues being discussed; there are, heaven fucking forbid, arguments and disagreements, opposing views, platforms and policies. This is not the almost-panicked conformity the Republicans offer, nobody daring to dissent for fear of creating any problem in their furious attempts to retake the White House, to control the House and the Senate, to appoint men to the Supreme Court. And there are more black folks on the floor. And Cornell West does his usual shaking and manic man proselytizing. It falls flat because, though there are still dramatic issues to deal with, nobody talks that way anymore. The revolution is over. Capitalism co-opts him and white nationalism all the same. And that is a desperate thing, a mournful day indeed. Look at him go, with his afro and goatee.
Pundits battle for word time. Then Kennedy speaks and I have to leave. A sorry state, this reading the teleprompter thing, people end up looking like unpainted totem poles, poles not ready to display. I can’t wait for Gore to speak. One says that the choice of Lieberman for VP spells the death of their hopes. A Jew has never done this before, they are bound to lose, says this guy in an angry tone in a loud bar. Jesse Jackson speaks. The Convention continues and lacks the TV gloss of the Republican extravaganza, lacks the uniformity. A Senator says he will pray for a victory, because this is an election with so much at stake. The TV continues blaring, the radio noises mix in an indecipherable broth.
Don’t you wish you were a pro-Jakarta militia? Don’t you wish you were a member of the UN peace-keeping force in East Timor? I want to gain independence and I desire to break free.
Finally they were ready. And just like that, they were gone. Walt and I loaded the small car with all the gear. Stuffed it into the trunk and on the back seat in a rigid, thick pile. Two thin spots on the backseat for two butts. Walt’s tennis rackets on the back, behind the heads, on the speakers. And the low rider is off, turning south on the interstate, eighty miles an hour among the big trucks, an early afternoon scream to the airport. Conversation of the wrapping-up variety. Well-wishing; small comments about Jonathan; Walt’s next move as a young man. Then we were at the airport; dropped mom and dad and their five-hundred pounds of suitcases and bags on the curb. Dad finds a cart. They wander inside and I hug them once, hug them again, a kiss on mom’s cheek. After a hug for father we shake hands. They don’t have a line at the ticket counter. Produce passports. Mother wanted an aisle seat but they didn’t have one available and I heard the ticket counter guy say “One-hundred and fifteen people have checked in already.” Mother shook her head. Walt waited in the car on the curb. Skycaps doing their thing all around him. Then I drove him to his terminal, Terminal B, and there was a long line, probably thirty minutes long, and he grew nervous. Needed to collect one hundred dollars from mom and dad.
I drove around the loop, back to Terminal A, pulled up to the curb, found parents sitting next to each in black connected chairs, their carryons next to feet. Hugged them again, kissed them again, told them about Walt. They started to walk toward him. Their flight leaving two hours before his. I drove to Terminal B again and hugged Walt again and he looked like the nervous boy I knew growing up, the kid who had to lock all the windows when mom and dad went to a play or a concert or out to eat with friends. I told him that they were coming, coming to give him the money he required to take the shuttle home, and then hugged him again. Drive around the loop, hug one, hug two. Then I sat in the front seat, Miles Davis playing a song I despise on one of the later albums, a song that needed fast-forwarding.
Miles played and I started off, quickly on the interstate and just like that, just like that it was over. Then eighty with trucks again, music playing, window down, wondering what my next move will be. For the first time truly absorbing my firing and my girlfriend leaving and what possible move I can make, to ease the pain of this transition, to function at all possible. And options arise, perhaps leave for Fresno and pick oranges with a friend, perhaps live with bio-mom, in her basement, or maybe I’ll move down south to live with Jonathan, live in Vincent’s room and get some job in a bookstore, or work for a gas station, a self-service kind where the guy sits in a cage and the only things you can buy off him are cigarettes. I’ll sit in a cage and read about a famous man’s drinking, I’ll read about a famous painter, I’ll listen to the radio news and I’ll listen to the baseball game and I’ll think about an ultrasound photograph, about the love I have for my family and the fear I feel about the future, about being lonely and mediocre, about not doing anything worthy in my one life. Perhaps I should have borrowed money from mom and dad, to help me get over the hump, like the old days, to have competed head-to-head with Jonathan on personal turmoil and the need for cash, personal problems and relationships, bills and debt.
I’m always amazed at how quickly the severing is after the goodbye hug, how fast ten days can fly by, about how little the connection really is when they visit anyhow, how much more we have to do. The day grew hot and humid, sun beating down, and I sat in my quiet apartment on the couch staring out the window at the movement, the action out there. Soon, I decided to take a nap, to lie down and not think about any of my issues or needs or worries, and closed my eyes and turned on my side and slept the rest of the afternoon. And sleeping it felt better, somehow endurable, and just like that it was over and gone, another cycle finished, another year disappeared.
