Time has no compassion. It will never slow down, not even for a minute, not even to let you step back and get a grip. Time has a schedule to keep and that is all that matters. As far as Time is concerned, nothing happens a moment too soon, or too late for that matter.
I know.
Believe me I know.
I’ve been begging that mother fucker to just hold off for a second and not be rushing me so much. Why the hell is Time in such a hurry anyway? It’s not like Time has any place to go. Shit, Time can go fuck itself. It’s not like I’m scared or anything. I just want to make sure my thoughts are in order when the lights go out. I don’t need Time messing up my repentance.
That’s right I said it.
Repentance.
So what? It don’t take no Sherlock Holmes to figure out where I’m going with this shit. Nobody ever lets out the truth, except maybe the crazies, but I ain’t no crazy. I just got to get it out and I know you ain’t gonna be blabbing to no one. You're stuck inside this Hellhole just like me. Even if you got out, nobody is going to pay attention to you no how. Shit, you ‘probably ain’t nothing more than something I made up. You aint’ shit.
Damn it!
Sorry about that. I didn’t mean any disrespect. I’m just a little strained. It’s that mother fucker Time, all pushing at me and shit. Really I’m sorry.
Please, sit back down. It’s cool.
Thanks, I appreciate it, I really do. I have to get this off my chest.
I didn’t even know the lady. She just caught my eye. Maybe it was the checkered Capri pants propping up her MILF ass, plumped a bit by middle age and a couple of kids, but still sexy from three days at the gym every week? Maybe it was how she forgot to lock her car? She did have on a tight shirt that was cut low in the front, you know the kind. The ones that show just enough tit to make you stare at them trying to figure out what the rest of them look like, but that wasn’t it. I think that the voices in my head voted and she was elected.
She didn’t even notice me or my stare. She just walked into the automatic entrance like it was an ordinary day. I sniffed heavy as she passed, feasting on the scent of sweaty tulips that trailed behind her. She was plain, but far from ordinary. She was exquisite. Her beauty probably went unnoticed by most eyes, only to be regretted, like the sunrise a dying man never saw or the child a mother never bore. I could see her for what she really was. She was a temptress, just oozing sex, thinking her housewife costume concealed the whore within.
I followed her around as she shopped, making sure not to get to close. She never had a clue I was watching her. I saw how she pretended to shop, flipping through clothes and checking out toasters, but I was on to her. I could see past her casual façade, disgusted by her screaming advertisement to fornicate with anyone but her husband.
She strutted around for over an hour then pushed her cart through the checkout. I was already in the parking lot when she emerged from the automatic hole and made her way to her car. She was oblivious to the body, dripping in nervous sweat, closing in behind her.
When she opened the back door and started filling it with plastic bags, I closed in and pushed her flat against the back seat. My right arm forced her face deep into the leather, muffling any screams for help. I turned her upright sliding my hand over her mouth. The black of her eyes, gaping wide with panic, held me for a second and she almost seemed human.
I pummeled her face until she was unconscious.
I pulled the keys from her hand and folded the rest of her into the car. The back door bounced back, so I reached in and stuffed her in deeper, then slammed it shut. I gave the parking lot a quick scan, then slid into the driver side seat.
I’ll admit it; I almost lost it for a second. I let the situation hit me. My hand shook like crazy as I tumbled the keys between my fingers. I stabbed a couple of non winners at the ignition switch like an amateur until the whole key ring popped out of my sweaty hand and hit the floor mat.
I stopped, sat up straight and remembered how to breathe. I angled the rearview mirror down a bit until it offered me the reflection of that godless whore in the back seat. Her unconscious body quivered slightly in the rectangle. She was out. I was good to go. I reached down and picked up the keys. The one for the ignition was obvious in the calm and I headed out of the parking lot like an everyday consumer.
It was only fifteen miles back to my place, but no mother fucking lie, I must have seen twenty cops along the way.
Fuck yeah! It made me nervous, but they weren’t interested.
I just kept it under the speed limit and slid home safe and quiet like.
I pulled the car way out back and parked it between my wood shed and the forest where nobody could see it. She was still out cold when I pulled her out of the car. I balanced her over my right shoulder and staggered over to the double doors. They were unlocked so I pulled them open and flopped her down on the floor. I shut the doors behind me and locked them from the inside. Everything went pitch black, but it was just like the back of my hand and I grabbed the Coleman lantern right where it was supposed to be. I sparked up that lantern and laid it on the floor.
I remembered laughing because the light from the Coleman flickered and made everything look like a home movie.
I wrapped ten circles of duct tape around her wrists and twelve circles around her ankles to keep the bitch from going anywhere. Fuck if I ain’t careful. I stuffed an old sock into her mouth and secured it with three circles of tape around her head. I grabbed a pair of heavy fabric scissors off of my work bench. They sliced easily through her clothing and I started pealing it away from her body. When she was naked, except for her socks pinned under the duct tape, I stood up and looked down at her. She was almost hog tied and gagged with a sock, twisted in a reverse fetal, splayed out like the whore she was.
I gargled up a lugie and spit it down at her. It clammed down just south of her right temple and started to teardrop like cold syrup across her face.
She didn’t move.
I didn’t think it was fair to let her sleep through final stage of her life. I grabbed a can of gasoline and splashed it gently over her face. She wiggled from the sting, and then flung her eyes wide open with awareness. I could smell her fear. She glared up at me and screamed into the sock.
I knelt down and straddled her, book casing her with my knees. She flailed about, screaming hopeless pleas into dirty laundry.
Suddenly she stopped. I thought she was just accepting her fate.
Good for her!
I pushed apart her knees and starting giving the whore the fornication she wanted.
She didn’t protest. No screams, no squirming, no nothing.
She just went vacant.
I went limp.
Fuck you! It happens. The bitch wasn’t fighting back. I need that shit.
I stood up.
I could see her face twist around the laughter she was trying to push past the sock.
Fuck her man.
Nobody laughs at me.
I got mad and I got sloppy.
I plugged in a circular saw and cut off her feet. She wasn’t laughing any more. She was wide eyed with shock and staring at the doorway of death. I snipped the tape holding in the sock and pulled it out of her mouth. I wanted to hear her confess her sins and beg.
She just pleaded for her life.
That wasn’t good enough.
I sliced her up like she was a Christmas ham.
After it was done, I looked at all the blood. I knew I was fucked. That chicks DNA was splattered all over my shed. I walked back to my house and called 911.
That’s it.
Now it’s my turn.
Just a few more minutes until they light me up with high voltage and baked me in a casserole for God.
So anyway. When they come and take me down the hall, don’t say I cried. Tell them I said something important.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
5
Maine was about 19 hours in the wrong direction. Wrong, meaning that it was closer to home.
Home was not where Sapphire wanted to be. Everyone, back there, was small minded and short sighted. They had no dreams. All her friends wanted to walk out to the mailbox, meet Sir WorksALot, get married on the yellow line and move into the house across the street. Once there, they wanted to squeeze out a few puppies, make some salad for the PTA and then bitch about the beer induced fat making a halo around the stomach of their once lean former frat boy husband.
Don’t mind the cottage cheese on my thighs, they all laughed, because Hank from the Book of the Month Club will validate my sexiness every Thursday afternoon in the back seat or maybe a hotel if it gets too cold.
Let’s all be our parents….yeee..fucking…haw.
Sapphire was way too gone to be going back, even if Maine was 5 hours north of Connecticut. It was too close for comfort. She was on her way, leaving behind that macabre meatloaf that passed for normal. Mom probabably already made way too many calls to the State Police, reporting her as kidnapped, because her Precious would never leave home on her own and Dickless Dad just nodded in drunken agreement as he clicked the remote, hoping he could buy his balls back on the Home Shopping Channel.
Then again, with her head bouncing slightly at every pothole patching the Impala hit, she thought that it was the perfect plan. If she doubled back she just might outsmart her mom.
Besides, she saw the sign. It was right there on her milk carton. Sapphire wasn’t Catholic but she wondered if there was a Patron Saint of the Puffin.
Probably not.
Maybe she might end up doing something saint worthy enough for the Puffins to make the Pope, and all the other guys in funny hats at the Vatican, at least consider it?
Maybe she would be deified and worshiped by the Audubon Society?
Maybe Five Hairs would take his hand off her thigh and hit the blinker and pull into the rest area up ahead?
God, she was hungry.
Maybe this guy had some money?
Maybe he was hungry too?
Maybe he wasn’t, but would buy some shit anyway?
She hoped the place had Butt Doilies, because she hated to hover and she really had to pee.
Butt Doilies rock!
They create the security blanket between you and what ever disease or disgusting funkiness that resides on that plastic public horseshoe of a toilet seat. No need to balance your hovering ass on high heeled feet and right angled legs, just sit down on the paper and let the warm nuisance sprinkle out.
Sapphire read the scratched poetry on the walls of the stall and listened to the echoing splash of her pee stream.
“Here I sit, broken hearted. Tried to shit, but only farted.”
“I lived and learned, then got stoned and forgot.”
“MANNY SUCKS COCK!!!!!!!”
Not quite Pulitzer prize material, but it distracted her eyes and occupied her mind while she answered Nature’s Call. She balled up some tissue and wiped from front to back, just like her mother taught her when she was 3. Pulling up her pants, she thought about the trifecta of fast food outlets that filled the lobby.
“I hope he’s hungry.” She said out loud.
She waved her hands under the faucet and forced its automatic flow. No soap, just a casual rinse off and a damp fingered splash to her bangs. She almost body kissed a middle aged soccer mom as she turned to leave. For a brief second Sapphire glanced into her eyes and slid down their mind funnel. She saw three kids, a Doberman and a lean chiseled Pilates instructor that filled the gaps her inattentive husband left on his career path. Sapphire shuddered with cold contempt.
“Fuck that,” she thought, “Why pretend to settle on one dick?”
She was going to taste a bunch of them, in all their throbbing saltiness, but when she found the right one, there would be no pretending. She wasn’t going to fuck it up. It wasn’t like she needed a man. She just knew that somewhere out there, a man existed that was more than a life support system for a cock. There had to be at least one man that would unlock the jaded cell of her heart. Her mother had to be wrong. She had to be. Sapphire had tried to be a lesbian. She really did. Women were so beautiful and soft. She even adored the firm shapeliness of breasts, but it just wasn’t there. She wanted a man, with all his imperfections. Strong shouldered, he would wrap her firmly as they made love and make her feel embraced. He would cuddle and laugh at her jokes but leave abruptly to conquer the world, not forgetting to kiss her passionately before he did.
Yeah right.
A girl can dream can’t she?
Right now all she had was Five Hairs. He had potential. After all, he had convinced her to double back towards home and he had such passion for the puffin. A man with passion is a good thing.
Maybe he had passion for other things, like tongue circling her clitoris till she came.
Maybe he lived for cuddling and pillow talk.
Maybe he was into buying two cheeseburgers so he could share.
Maybe it was just a passion for the puffin and that would have to suffice.
Johnny looked across the tile and saw Saphirre catch his glance and quickly look away. He saw a brief flicker of crazy flash out from her eyes. He didn't didn't know the difference between love and common sense and stared at her just long enough that it didn't matter.
Home was not where Sapphire wanted to be. Everyone, back there, was small minded and short sighted. They had no dreams. All her friends wanted to walk out to the mailbox, meet Sir WorksALot, get married on the yellow line and move into the house across the street. Once there, they wanted to squeeze out a few puppies, make some salad for the PTA and then bitch about the beer induced fat making a halo around the stomach of their once lean former frat boy husband.
Don’t mind the cottage cheese on my thighs, they all laughed, because Hank from the Book of the Month Club will validate my sexiness every Thursday afternoon in the back seat or maybe a hotel if it gets too cold.
Let’s all be our parents….yeee..fucking…haw.
Sapphire was way too gone to be going back, even if Maine was 5 hours north of Connecticut. It was too close for comfort. She was on her way, leaving behind that macabre meatloaf that passed for normal. Mom probabably already made way too many calls to the State Police, reporting her as kidnapped, because her Precious would never leave home on her own and Dickless Dad just nodded in drunken agreement as he clicked the remote, hoping he could buy his balls back on the Home Shopping Channel.
Then again, with her head bouncing slightly at every pothole patching the Impala hit, she thought that it was the perfect plan. If she doubled back she just might outsmart her mom.
Besides, she saw the sign. It was right there on her milk carton. Sapphire wasn’t Catholic but she wondered if there was a Patron Saint of the Puffin.
Probably not.
Maybe she might end up doing something saint worthy enough for the Puffins to make the Pope, and all the other guys in funny hats at the Vatican, at least consider it?
Maybe she would be deified and worshiped by the Audubon Society?
Maybe Five Hairs would take his hand off her thigh and hit the blinker and pull into the rest area up ahead?
God, she was hungry.
Maybe this guy had some money?
Maybe he was hungry too?
Maybe he wasn’t, but would buy some shit anyway?
She hoped the place had Butt Doilies, because she hated to hover and she really had to pee.
Butt Doilies rock!
They create the security blanket between you and what ever disease or disgusting funkiness that resides on that plastic public horseshoe of a toilet seat. No need to balance your hovering ass on high heeled feet and right angled legs, just sit down on the paper and let the warm nuisance sprinkle out.
Sapphire read the scratched poetry on the walls of the stall and listened to the echoing splash of her pee stream.
“Here I sit, broken hearted. Tried to shit, but only farted.”
“I lived and learned, then got stoned and forgot.”
“MANNY SUCKS COCK!!!!!!!”
Not quite Pulitzer prize material, but it distracted her eyes and occupied her mind while she answered Nature’s Call. She balled up some tissue and wiped from front to back, just like her mother taught her when she was 3. Pulling up her pants, she thought about the trifecta of fast food outlets that filled the lobby.
“I hope he’s hungry.” She said out loud.
She waved her hands under the faucet and forced its automatic flow. No soap, just a casual rinse off and a damp fingered splash to her bangs. She almost body kissed a middle aged soccer mom as she turned to leave. For a brief second Sapphire glanced into her eyes and slid down their mind funnel. She saw three kids, a Doberman and a lean chiseled Pilates instructor that filled the gaps her inattentive husband left on his career path. Sapphire shuddered with cold contempt.
“Fuck that,” she thought, “Why pretend to settle on one dick?”
She was going to taste a bunch of them, in all their throbbing saltiness, but when she found the right one, there would be no pretending. She wasn’t going to fuck it up. It wasn’t like she needed a man. She just knew that somewhere out there, a man existed that was more than a life support system for a cock. There had to be at least one man that would unlock the jaded cell of her heart. Her mother had to be wrong. She had to be. Sapphire had tried to be a lesbian. She really did. Women were so beautiful and soft. She even adored the firm shapeliness of breasts, but it just wasn’t there. She wanted a man, with all his imperfections. Strong shouldered, he would wrap her firmly as they made love and make her feel embraced. He would cuddle and laugh at her jokes but leave abruptly to conquer the world, not forgetting to kiss her passionately before he did.
Yeah right.
A girl can dream can’t she?
Right now all she had was Five Hairs. He had potential. After all, he had convinced her to double back towards home and he had such passion for the puffin. A man with passion is a good thing.
Maybe he had passion for other things, like tongue circling her clitoris till she came.
Maybe he lived for cuddling and pillow talk.
Maybe he was into buying two cheeseburgers so he could share.
Maybe it was just a passion for the puffin and that would have to suffice.
Johnny looked across the tile and saw Saphirre catch his glance and quickly look away. He saw a brief flicker of crazy flash out from her eyes. He didn't didn't know the difference between love and common sense and stared at her just long enough that it didn't matter.
Surfing The Corn
Thurber was a fucktard. In the fifteen years since he slid out of his mother’s slimy birth hole, he had mastered the art of being a shithead. He was dumber than a dirty sock and just as useless. The English language never sounded as ugly as when it rolled of his idiot tongue and polluted your intelligence. Extra syllables placed in misused words and the “r” he added to every thing ending with an a, made me want to cock punch God for not putting his soul into a toad or a dung beetle, or even a fungal cell hiding under some old guys toenail, anywhere but here. He was clueless to his ignorance and went blissfully through life completely unaware that at any moment he might get outwitted by a rock and get stuck holding down the earth while the rock made off with his car. The modified bowl cut he sported for as long as I could remember glistened black with an unwashed sheen. His shaggy unibrow pushed down on his squinty eyes that never stopped blinking and always seemed to be looking at something else. I had known him since second grade and had always avoided him like a dog turd on the sidewalk.
But there we were, just the two of us, in the bathroom nobody ever used because it was right next to the teachers lounge. I leaned back against one of the sinks. Thurber nervously pushed open both stall doors making sure we were alone. He seemed satisfied, then he shuffled back over to where I was. His shoulders bounced in a nervous twitch and he blinked at a spot just over my left shoulder. We paused for a moment in an awkward silence. My eyes tingled in the menthol vapor of pristine urinal cakes.
“So you got it?” I asked, ending the silence.
“Yeah.” Thurber mumbled out of the side of his mouth.
I waited for him to reach into his pocket or something, but he just stood there swaying in a tiny circle.
“So?” I barked.
“Yeah, yeah, hold on.” He reached into his jean jacket and pulled out a plastic bag. He flicked his wrist and let it unroll. “How many do you want?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I had no idea. I never did this shit before.
“I don’t know, how many do I need?” I tried to keep up my cool, “I mean is it any good?”
“Fuck yeah its good I took three and I’m balls out man.”
“Okay, give me nine.”
He looked surprised. “Nine?”
“Yeah, I got to get some for my friends.”
I held out my hand and he shook nine tiny chunks of what looked like blue plastic into my palm. I pulled my cigarettes out and pulled off the cellophane wrapping. I dumped the drugs in, folded it up and stuck it into my wallet.
“How much do you want for these?”
“Three dollars a hit.”
I flipped out twenty seven dollars from my roll of ones and held them out until I felt him take them. I gave him no more words. I just turned and stepped out of the bathroom into a sea of kids moving like cattle to their next class. I had to find Finkler.
I knew Finkler had Typing fourth period so I wiggled against the flow pushing my way over to the south hallway.
Typing was some archaic hold over from the fifties. It was taught by Mrs. Wright, a shriveled up old white haired dinosaur that should have retired a couple of decades ago. Most of us had computers, but her classroom was filled with bulky old typewriters. Her class was a joke but a lot of kids took it as an elective because it was an easy A. Finkler was never one to pass up an easy bump up on his GPA.
I made it to Mrs. Wright’s classroom and waited just outside the door. The river of bodies quickly drained out and the tardy bell echoed down the empty hallways. Like clones on a scripted page, the teachers closed their doors in unison. I heard the squeaking sneakers of some clown that took too long with his cigarette and was trying to outrun a tardy. Why run? If you’re late, you’re late. It’s not an absence until you miss half the class. If you don’t make the bell, you might as well take the whole twenty minutes. Fuck it. If the bell rings and you aren’t done with your smoke, take your time and have another one.
I heard some laughing and turned my head to the right. I saw Finkler, Krasney and Dumper turn the corner. I started walking up and met them next to a water fountain.
“Dude!” Dumper greeted me the word that made up ninety percent of his vocabulary. Krasney just nodded and bent over the fountain to grab a drink. Finkler flashed his goofy slack jaw grin that dampened all the girls and even caught me off guard form time to time, but not this time.
“Hey” he said.
“Hey.”
He was high. They all were. They probably sparked up a bowl in Dumpers IROC. Dumper was the only guy in our group that had a nice car. His dad owned a pizza place and Dumper worked there all the time. He didn’t seem to care about anything and always had weed.
Dumper hugged me and aimed his inflected “Dude” at me in a way that meant see ya later and bounced. Krasney left the scene with out a word.
It was just me and Finkler.
I stared at him until the squeak from Krasney’s sneakers faded past the chemistry rooms.
“What’s up?” he half whispered and half snorted. He pushed his model high cheekbones up, squinted his eyes into tiny pink slits, and unfolded his smile.
Jesus, his smile, it was smoother than summer butter and whiter than a nuns ass. It was the greeting card his inner beauty sent out to the world. Finkler was kind of shy and he was quiet as a mouse, but everybody heard his smile. It was more than brilliant, it was musical and enchanting. His mother had overlooked a multitude of youthful transgressions, under its spell. Teachers turned a blind eye after basking in its beauty and so many young girls spread open their virtue just to grunt with sweaty abandoned under its hypnotic glow. I even got swept up into it every now and then, in moments of pubescent doubt.
“I got some dots.”
“Huh?” Finkler looked over his shoulder and giggled at something I wasn’t in on.
“I got some shit. Do you want some?” I pummeled his pot relaxed brain with more questions than it wanted to deal with and he started to get freaked out. Finkler took a couple of steps back and stashed away his smile. He shook his head a couple of times, then pushed both hands down and out from his body in the international sign for “Slow Down, I’m way to high for this shit.”
“Dude?” I asked.
“Dude!”
“Dude?” I asked again.
“Duuuude!” he smile and held out his hand.
I dumped three of the little blue dots into his hand. Almost instinctively, he popped all of them into his mouth and swallowed. “How many should I take?” he asked.
“I guess three.”
I tossed three hits on my tongue and closed my mouth. I didn’t know if I should suck on them or swallow them, so I balanced them on the back fold of my tongue.
Finkler slapped my shoulder, “I’m off to class.” He flung open the door, took twenty steps down the hall and went tardy into his typing class.
I swallowed and freaked out in silent panic. We weren’t supposed to separate. What the fuck? Now what? I couldn’t just stand there, some douche nozzle hall monitor might live out his wet dream and nab me.
I had to think.
I didn’t.
I went to class. I strolled into Mr. Schaeffer’s communications class almost ten minutes late. My lame attempt to slide in went completely noticed.
“Thanks for joining us Mr. Ferguson.” Mr. Scaeffer greeted me as he put down the chalk and turned around from the blackboard. “Did you enjoy the extra ten minutes?”
I crumpled my self into a desk in the back row. “Yeah.” I said
“You did?” He moved down the row to where I was. “Tell us, what you did. I’m sure the whole class wants to know.” He sat on my desk then cocked his head slightly upward. He had shoulder length curly black hair that glistened with some kind of product and he shook it for affect. I looked up over his Graucho Marx mustache and flaring nostrils and couldn’t see a glimpse of the teacher I used to think was cool.
“Fuck you!”
“What was that?” he squeaked as he slid off my desk, “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” I stood up and walked out of his class and away from the collective giggle erupting behind me. He might of brought his ingdignant protest out to the hallway, but I never noticed. I just kept walking away and cruised down the checkered hallway into a smile.
I went out the front door.
I walked past the flagpole.
I went down to the street and pushed the button on the crosswalk.
Purple came up and shook my hand then led me across the street. I met his friends, Marshmallow and Shinything and we ran away from the angry guy in the booth to the other side of the driving range. I think somebody was hitting golf balls at us, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop giggling until I flopped down into a cornfield.
I rolled over and closed my eyes against the sunlight. My ears soaked up the noise of the silence I never heard. Time bent just enough to let me see her face and space warped into a kaleidoscope.
I was tripping.
Shit yeah! Mother Fucker!
I was tripping.
Tripping balls.
I already forgot how I had gotten there but it was abvious where I was.
I was in a cornfield.
I started moving down the diagonal that the cornstalks had opened for me. I walked for a while until I got freaked out by the echo of my hair bouncing against my ear. I stopped and walked in a circle around myself, making sure not to step on my shadow. I didn’t mind how loud the humidity was, but when I started to smell the solitude and the moist brown earth burped over my shoes rather rudely, I flopped down on my cheeseburger beanbag that wasn’t there and called a time out.
I was prostrate across the bottom of a corn tank, psyched that I remembered the law of gravity and giggling like a feathered fucked nun. That is when it happened. There was never anything more amazing than that moment. I stepped out of myself looked at the me. I was hung on the wall for everyone to see. I saw my reflection in the world’s eye. It was ugly. I hated it. I stood up and tried to punch at it, but I couldn’t hit it. It just swirled around myself like dust in a sunbeam.
“Hey!” somebody shouted.
I looked diagonally down the corn and saw Finkler, his smile stretching past the edges of his face. Jesus, how I loved that smile. We stepped closer and I grabbed him into a hug. He stiffened, and then relaxed past the awkwardness, fumbling back a hug. It was nothing less than a moment and we separated.
“DUDE!” Finkler howled.
“DUDE!” I answered. This was better than butter, “What the fuck, man? I didn’t think I see you here.”
“Shit!” Finkler said letting his voice fall to a whisper. “Until I saw you, I thought I was running through a jigsaw puzzle.”
We both breathed heavy with laughter. I pushed my arm out against his shoulder and he folded into a sit. I looked down at him and we both lost our giggle. I looked over to the tree line and smelled yellow.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
Finkler jumped up, “See what?”
“What?”
“Fuck you.” Finkler snorted, “That is fucked up, just plain fucked upped” He kicked at the dirt and sent a few rocks rolling. He pushed his arm up onto the air and dangled a big wooden M in front of me. It was the boy’s bathroom pass from Mrs. Wright’s typing class. He felt my question and answered before I could ask.
“I looked up at the ceiling and saw four typewriters dancing across it shouting “My name is QWERTY!” Finkler went opaque, “I started screaming I had diarrhea and demanding the lave key. Mrs. Wright didn’t no if I was going to hit her or shit on her floor. She handed me the key and I ran out the door. I didn’t stop running until I ran into you.”
“No Way!”
“Hell Yeah!” He responded.
We let the conversation drop, spreading out into our individual trips. I didn’t notice the pause, but after a while, Finkler did, “I got some rum at my house.”
I followed him out of the cornfield and through some woods out into a suburban neighborhood. We marched past all the identical houses to the one he somehow remembered was his and he keyed us into the air conditioning. We listened to Pink Floyd and drank until we stopped tripping and the day blurred into night
But there we were, just the two of us, in the bathroom nobody ever used because it was right next to the teachers lounge. I leaned back against one of the sinks. Thurber nervously pushed open both stall doors making sure we were alone. He seemed satisfied, then he shuffled back over to where I was. His shoulders bounced in a nervous twitch and he blinked at a spot just over my left shoulder. We paused for a moment in an awkward silence. My eyes tingled in the menthol vapor of pristine urinal cakes.
“So you got it?” I asked, ending the silence.
“Yeah.” Thurber mumbled out of the side of his mouth.
I waited for him to reach into his pocket or something, but he just stood there swaying in a tiny circle.
“So?” I barked.
“Yeah, yeah, hold on.” He reached into his jean jacket and pulled out a plastic bag. He flicked his wrist and let it unroll. “How many do you want?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I had no idea. I never did this shit before.
“I don’t know, how many do I need?” I tried to keep up my cool, “I mean is it any good?”
“Fuck yeah its good I took three and I’m balls out man.”
“Okay, give me nine.”
He looked surprised. “Nine?”
“Yeah, I got to get some for my friends.”
I held out my hand and he shook nine tiny chunks of what looked like blue plastic into my palm. I pulled my cigarettes out and pulled off the cellophane wrapping. I dumped the drugs in, folded it up and stuck it into my wallet.
“How much do you want for these?”
“Three dollars a hit.”
I flipped out twenty seven dollars from my roll of ones and held them out until I felt him take them. I gave him no more words. I just turned and stepped out of the bathroom into a sea of kids moving like cattle to their next class. I had to find Finkler.
I knew Finkler had Typing fourth period so I wiggled against the flow pushing my way over to the south hallway.
Typing was some archaic hold over from the fifties. It was taught by Mrs. Wright, a shriveled up old white haired dinosaur that should have retired a couple of decades ago. Most of us had computers, but her classroom was filled with bulky old typewriters. Her class was a joke but a lot of kids took it as an elective because it was an easy A. Finkler was never one to pass up an easy bump up on his GPA.
I made it to Mrs. Wright’s classroom and waited just outside the door. The river of bodies quickly drained out and the tardy bell echoed down the empty hallways. Like clones on a scripted page, the teachers closed their doors in unison. I heard the squeaking sneakers of some clown that took too long with his cigarette and was trying to outrun a tardy. Why run? If you’re late, you’re late. It’s not an absence until you miss half the class. If you don’t make the bell, you might as well take the whole twenty minutes. Fuck it. If the bell rings and you aren’t done with your smoke, take your time and have another one.
I heard some laughing and turned my head to the right. I saw Finkler, Krasney and Dumper turn the corner. I started walking up and met them next to a water fountain.
“Dude!” Dumper greeted me the word that made up ninety percent of his vocabulary. Krasney just nodded and bent over the fountain to grab a drink. Finkler flashed his goofy slack jaw grin that dampened all the girls and even caught me off guard form time to time, but not this time.
“Hey” he said.
“Hey.”
He was high. They all were. They probably sparked up a bowl in Dumpers IROC. Dumper was the only guy in our group that had a nice car. His dad owned a pizza place and Dumper worked there all the time. He didn’t seem to care about anything and always had weed.
Dumper hugged me and aimed his inflected “Dude” at me in a way that meant see ya later and bounced. Krasney left the scene with out a word.
It was just me and Finkler.
I stared at him until the squeak from Krasney’s sneakers faded past the chemistry rooms.
“What’s up?” he half whispered and half snorted. He pushed his model high cheekbones up, squinted his eyes into tiny pink slits, and unfolded his smile.
Jesus, his smile, it was smoother than summer butter and whiter than a nuns ass. It was the greeting card his inner beauty sent out to the world. Finkler was kind of shy and he was quiet as a mouse, but everybody heard his smile. It was more than brilliant, it was musical and enchanting. His mother had overlooked a multitude of youthful transgressions, under its spell. Teachers turned a blind eye after basking in its beauty and so many young girls spread open their virtue just to grunt with sweaty abandoned under its hypnotic glow. I even got swept up into it every now and then, in moments of pubescent doubt.
“I got some dots.”
“Huh?” Finkler looked over his shoulder and giggled at something I wasn’t in on.
“I got some shit. Do you want some?” I pummeled his pot relaxed brain with more questions than it wanted to deal with and he started to get freaked out. Finkler took a couple of steps back and stashed away his smile. He shook his head a couple of times, then pushed both hands down and out from his body in the international sign for “Slow Down, I’m way to high for this shit.”
“Dude?” I asked.
“Dude!”
“Dude?” I asked again.
“Duuuude!” he smile and held out his hand.
I dumped three of the little blue dots into his hand. Almost instinctively, he popped all of them into his mouth and swallowed. “How many should I take?” he asked.
“I guess three.”
I tossed three hits on my tongue and closed my mouth. I didn’t know if I should suck on them or swallow them, so I balanced them on the back fold of my tongue.
Finkler slapped my shoulder, “I’m off to class.” He flung open the door, took twenty steps down the hall and went tardy into his typing class.
I swallowed and freaked out in silent panic. We weren’t supposed to separate. What the fuck? Now what? I couldn’t just stand there, some douche nozzle hall monitor might live out his wet dream and nab me.
I had to think.
I didn’t.
I went to class. I strolled into Mr. Schaeffer’s communications class almost ten minutes late. My lame attempt to slide in went completely noticed.
“Thanks for joining us Mr. Ferguson.” Mr. Scaeffer greeted me as he put down the chalk and turned around from the blackboard. “Did you enjoy the extra ten minutes?”
I crumpled my self into a desk in the back row. “Yeah.” I said
“You did?” He moved down the row to where I was. “Tell us, what you did. I’m sure the whole class wants to know.” He sat on my desk then cocked his head slightly upward. He had shoulder length curly black hair that glistened with some kind of product and he shook it for affect. I looked up over his Graucho Marx mustache and flaring nostrils and couldn’t see a glimpse of the teacher I used to think was cool.
“Fuck you!”
“What was that?” he squeaked as he slid off my desk, “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” I stood up and walked out of his class and away from the collective giggle erupting behind me. He might of brought his ingdignant protest out to the hallway, but I never noticed. I just kept walking away and cruised down the checkered hallway into a smile.
I went out the front door.
I walked past the flagpole.
I went down to the street and pushed the button on the crosswalk.
Purple came up and shook my hand then led me across the street. I met his friends, Marshmallow and Shinything and we ran away from the angry guy in the booth to the other side of the driving range. I think somebody was hitting golf balls at us, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop giggling until I flopped down into a cornfield.
I rolled over and closed my eyes against the sunlight. My ears soaked up the noise of the silence I never heard. Time bent just enough to let me see her face and space warped into a kaleidoscope.
I was tripping.
Shit yeah! Mother Fucker!
I was tripping.
Tripping balls.
I already forgot how I had gotten there but it was abvious where I was.
I was in a cornfield.
I started moving down the diagonal that the cornstalks had opened for me. I walked for a while until I got freaked out by the echo of my hair bouncing against my ear. I stopped and walked in a circle around myself, making sure not to step on my shadow. I didn’t mind how loud the humidity was, but when I started to smell the solitude and the moist brown earth burped over my shoes rather rudely, I flopped down on my cheeseburger beanbag that wasn’t there and called a time out.
I was prostrate across the bottom of a corn tank, psyched that I remembered the law of gravity and giggling like a feathered fucked nun. That is when it happened. There was never anything more amazing than that moment. I stepped out of myself looked at the me. I was hung on the wall for everyone to see. I saw my reflection in the world’s eye. It was ugly. I hated it. I stood up and tried to punch at it, but I couldn’t hit it. It just swirled around myself like dust in a sunbeam.
“Hey!” somebody shouted.
I looked diagonally down the corn and saw Finkler, his smile stretching past the edges of his face. Jesus, how I loved that smile. We stepped closer and I grabbed him into a hug. He stiffened, and then relaxed past the awkwardness, fumbling back a hug. It was nothing less than a moment and we separated.
“DUDE!” Finkler howled.
“DUDE!” I answered. This was better than butter, “What the fuck, man? I didn’t think I see you here.”
“Shit!” Finkler said letting his voice fall to a whisper. “Until I saw you, I thought I was running through a jigsaw puzzle.”
We both breathed heavy with laughter. I pushed my arm out against his shoulder and he folded into a sit. I looked down at him and we both lost our giggle. I looked over to the tree line and smelled yellow.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
Finkler jumped up, “See what?”
“What?”
“Fuck you.” Finkler snorted, “That is fucked up, just plain fucked upped” He kicked at the dirt and sent a few rocks rolling. He pushed his arm up onto the air and dangled a big wooden M in front of me. It was the boy’s bathroom pass from Mrs. Wright’s typing class. He felt my question and answered before I could ask.
“I looked up at the ceiling and saw four typewriters dancing across it shouting “My name is QWERTY!” Finkler went opaque, “I started screaming I had diarrhea and demanding the lave key. Mrs. Wright didn’t no if I was going to hit her or shit on her floor. She handed me the key and I ran out the door. I didn’t stop running until I ran into you.”
“No Way!”
“Hell Yeah!” He responded.
We let the conversation drop, spreading out into our individual trips. I didn’t notice the pause, but after a while, Finkler did, “I got some rum at my house.”
I followed him out of the cornfield and through some woods out into a suburban neighborhood. We marched past all the identical houses to the one he somehow remembered was his and he keyed us into the air conditioning. We listened to Pink Floyd and drank until we stopped tripping and the day blurred into night
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Leaving Crazy
That afternoon I saw something.
Or maybe I smelt it.
I got off the bus and started splashing my way up the sidewalk to my house, but the puddles didn’t seem so deep, something was different. I gazed up into the hazy gray sky. My nose hairs tingled and I knew something was different. I could smell the damp getting pulled from the earth and a warm freshness taking its place.
All the way up the street, as I walked home from the bus stop, I could smell it, but I didn’t quite know what it meant.
I opened the door and went into my house.
Then I turned around.
I took one step down from the front porch. A few drops splashed off the overhang and landed barely noticed on my neck. I just stared for a second at the giant red orb streaking colors into the cloudless western sky.
The rain had stopped!
Hahahaahah!
The rain had stopped
We were going to get a game in tonight!
I knew it.
I just knew it.
I ran back up the porch steps and flung open the screen door. By the time its metal frame bounced a few times and clicked itself shut, I was past the back stair-landing and on the second floor. I exploded into my bedroom, blindly struggled a t-shirt over my head
and was looking for my cleats. My brother was on the bottom bunk reading a book. It was some sort of fantasy bullshit I’m sure. He peeled his eyes up from the story just long enough to glare his annoyance at me. We locked stares for a moment, but couldn’t translate our private code quickly enough for it to turn into a fight. His face wrinkled with disapproval and he rolled over.
Fuck Him.
I didn’t have time to pummel him.
Not now, I had to get ready.
“I’ll push a few knuckles into his rib cage later, just to remind him who wiggled out of Mom's vagina first.” I thought
I kicked off my sneakers and shed the rest of my play clothes onto the floor. I opened the second drawer from the top, the one I didn’t share with my brother, and pulled out my baseball uniform. The shirt was heavy red cotton. It was embroidered with the white word Cardinals on the front and the number 15 on the back. An ironed-on patch that said “Ferguson” curved slightly off center two inches above my number. The shirt was heavy and itchy but I never noticed, once I had it on.
I slipped my head through the v-neck and let it drape over my tiny frame. Next, I spread the elastic waist of my trousers and poked my feet down into the legs. I pulled them up and slid a skinny black belt through the loops around the top. I sat on the corner of Eric’s bed. I bent over and grunted as I struggled to pull my red stockings over my white socks, stretching the stirrup across my heal, so the solid part reached up to my knee and I tucked them into my pants. Faint grass stains, that had survived many bleachings, shaded my kneecaps.
In my mind, I looked like Mickey Mantle. Someone I only read about in books, but seamed bigger than anyone I saw on T.V.
“Hey! Get off my bed.” Eric shouted over his shoulder and down the bed to me. I just ignored him and pulled my cleats out from under the bed and pulled them over my feet. I twisted the laces into double knots and stood up, tucking in my shirt. All that was left was my cap and it was soon pulled down tight over my head almost hiding my eyes. I clicked my heels together and the mud from last weeks game splintered off into a dusty jumble. I grabbed my glove from under the bed and started downstairs, but first a quick step into the bathroom to see me in my uniform.
Damn!
I puffed up my five foot frame in proud display.
I looked sharp.
I went down the stairs and out into the driveway. Mrs Graneski was going to pick me up. At least, I figured she would. I always caught a ride with them to the games. Minutes passed by and every hope that the next car would be her disappointed me deeper into panick.
My happy two-step at the end of the driveway mutated into a nervous shuffle.
After Eternity,
I went back inside and grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall. I scanned through the scribbled numbers on the pad next to the phone and dialed the Graneskis.
“Hello.” I heard from the other end.
It was Chad.
“Hey, it’s Rob. Are you coming?”
“No, My mom says it is too wet.”
“What?” my voiced strained into a squeak, “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.” He chuckled.
That fat asswipe could care less. Baseball was some father inflicted torture he had to endure. My father barely knew I played baseball and his father assumed he was going to the majors. Both of our dads were clueless for different reasons, but they were right on target at missing the point.
Chad loved any reason not to go.
I wished my dad could find a reason to be there.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” I screamed.
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” He hung up the phone.
Shit!
My stepmother was working for another half hour and who knew when my dad would push his pickled ass away from the bar. My stepbrother Jeff had a car but he was up in his room with his friends. I wasn’t even allowed to knock on his door. The last time I did, I got a swirlie from him and one of his friends. After, when they were laughing and I was standing degraded on the bathroom tile with toilet water streaming down my face, I clenched my tiny fists and swung them tornado like in fury. I managed to push a few knuckles into Jeff’s nose and forced a trickle of blood out of his left nostril. He glared at me in disbelief, stunned for just a second, and then he remembered he had seven years and a hundred pounds in his favor.
Time paused.
It really did.
Years later, I can live that moment over and over again, frame by frame. I can see all four knuckles of his man sized hand growing larger as it sped towards my face. He had a small black band around his pinky and tiny blonde hairs on all his fingers.
I spun my head quickly and the blow landed on the back of my head, just above my last vertebrae. The force of the blow sent my head flying but my legs were stopped by a claw foot tub. Inertia bent me double and I slammed my face into the white cast iron. The bottom left corner of my top incisor, the heart of my smile, crumbled into powder.
I can still feel it disintegrating.
So fuck that. I ain’t asking him.
I went back out into the driveway. I kicked at some rocks and threw my glove down as hard as I could against the blacktop.
“Fuck!” I screamed and kicked my glove out into the grass.
I pushed hard against the mounds of tears that were welling up in the corner of my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. I just wanted to handle this.
It was just another let down.
I walked out into the lawn and picked up my glove then threw it against the house.
“Assholes!” I screamed.
Just then, Jeff walked out the side door with one of his buddies. He ducked, then giggled almost girlike, “Jesus, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I mumbled and picked up my glove.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“No, seriously, what the fuck is up?”
I looked over at him and he kind of looked half human.
“I don’t have a ride to my game.”
“That’s it?” He said as he nudged a Marlborough between his lips and opened the door of his Mustang. “Get in.”
I was smart enough not to question his generosity and slid into the back seat. His fat friend Steve got in the front. It was barely a ten minute ride, made shorter by his speed. Jeff cranked some Alice Cooper on the radio the whole time and had all the windows rolled down. I saw him turn his head a couple of times like he was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear a thing. I just smiled and nodded, the world muted by the clamorous whirlwind spinning around me.
Jeff pulled to a stop in the gravel parking lot next to the field. To my surprise he turned down the radio and turned to me.
“Is your old man still picking you up?”
His friend had gotten out and leaned his seat forward for my exit. I slid up until my feet were out and touching the ground.
“Yeah, “I said standing up.
“You sure? I can come back you know.”
I got mad at his sincerity and became defensive of my dad.
“He’s coming!” I barked and marched away to meet up with my team.
“Your life.” He delivered in deadpan presage.
His friend got back in and slammed the door. One of them spun the volume up on the radio. I heard his tires growl sideways across the gravel and spit a few stones backwards as he spun off.
I didn’t look back and bit down on my bottom lip because I didn’t thank him.
A game was played that night and I don’t remember a thing about it. I don’t know if we won or lost or how I played. I know at some point it ended and I got my free hot dog and soda. I remember squeezing my glove under my left arm so I could hold my soda and eat my hot dog with my right hand as I walked down the long entrance to the street.
Dad liked it if I was right at the entrance when he got there.
By the time I got out to the road, my hot dog was gone and the cup that held my soda was empty and crumpled into my back pocket.
There was this big rock just left of the gate that was my favorite. I hopped up on it and sat with my legs folded into my chest. I watched all the cars rumble out. At first I waved, then slowly started to hide my eyes as the parking lot emptied. One of the last cars to leave was my coach.
He rolled down the window. “You need a ride?”
“No, my dad’s on his way.”
He rolled up his window, turned right and rumbled off into the gray. The sun was well under the horizon and dark was falling fast. I heard a pop behind me and turned to see the lights around the ball field shut down. A few minutes later, the lady who does the announcing and seems to run the place, drove out and got out of her car. She pulled the gate shut and closed some kind of lock on it. Just before she got back into her car she saw me out of the corner of her eye.
“Holy Shit!” she screamed “You scared the shit out of me. What are you still doing here?”
“I’m waiting for a ride.”
“You sure your mom is coming? Because I can give you a ride.”
“It’s my dad and he’s coming.”
She bent down into her car and fumbled a cigarette out from her purse. She lit it and sucked in a drag, holding it in while she stared at me. I imagine she was caught in the moral dilemma of sitting with some eleven year old or meeting some guy named Lenny at the bar who sported a pornstache and would feed her shots until she was too drunk too care who was wiggling between her thighs.
Lenny won.
“O.K. see ya.”
I stared at her taillights until I was just imagining that they were there.
It was dark now.
I looked up and pointed out the constellations to myself, Cassiopeia, Hercules and the Bears. Every set of headlights made me jump up, for a while. Soon I started making bets with myself that he would be here in the next five cars…..no..no… the next five cars… or maybe the next five… and so on.
Time passed. It was probably longer in kid time than it was in adult time.
I started to get cold so pulled my arms back through the armholes of my shirt and folded them against my chest.
I looked out into the dark and ran out of games to play. I was really cold and started to get angry.
I didn’t expect much from my dad.
I knew he’d be late, but this was getting pretty shitty.
I was getting….
Some headlights turned into the street. The car was moving pretty fast and pushing out some loud music.
It was my dad.
When he pulled up he leaned across the front seat and opened the door.
“Hey! Get in!” He was smiling, oblivious to how late he was or that I was all alone.
I got in and closed the door. My dad punched it and spun his Monte Carlo around. I pushed my self as far as I could into the passenger door. He lit a Winston and cranked up the radio. I just stared out into space.
Somewhere on the way home he noticed the lifelong disappointment that was exploding from my small crumpled frame. He turned the radio down and pulled over.
“What the fuck is up with you?” His voice was loud and blistered with alcohol.
I was speechless in fear. I knew he could smell my tears but I swallowed hard to suppress any whimpers and stiffened all my muscles.
I looked at him to say something but a bubble swelled in my throat and choked down my words. I flexed my eyes trying to stop the tears. It was useless. I blinked and flushed two salty trickles out over my cheeks.
He knew he had me.
He always did.
He was my dad.
“Here’s the thing.” He began, “I came and picked you up at the normal time and then I took you out to dinner. We went to Ponderosa.”
Normally he would never even question that I would back up his lie.
“O.K.?”
“Yes.” I mumbled with a shrug.
I was mad.
Mostly....
I was scared.
We rumbled down the summer night. The music hissing out from the dashboard speakers in whiny AM, gave us an excuse not to talk.
My dad pulled into the driveway and I didn’t let the car stop before I pushed open the passenger door. I stomped in through the side door and streaked up the stairs to my bedroom. My peripheral caught my step-mom streaking into the kitchen.
“Where have you guys been? Your dinner is on a plate in the fridge. Hey!”
I pretended I didn’t hear her scream my name or her demands that I come back..
My bedroom was dark and my brother was pretending to be asleep. I pulled off my uniform and kicked it into a heap against the radiator. Slick as a melting ice cube, I hopped up onto the top bunk and slid under the covers in one motion. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to make myself disappear. Downstairs, the argument escalated and the yelling pounded its way up into our bedroom. The loud words were muffled but I definitely heard my name a couple of times.
“Please, please, don’t come up.” I screamed silently to myself. “Please don’t come up here.” My pleas shriveled unheard and disappeared into the tornado of panic swirling inside my head. My dad kicked open my bedroom door with his foot. The old door was heavy and bounced back at him off the wall with so much force, it almost seemed like it was trying to protect me. My dad bent his arm across his chest to protect himself then pinned the door against the wall.
I laid motionless under my covers, slowing my breathing into a laboring drawl trying to hide in a counterfeit sleep.
Dad didn’t buy it.
“I know you aren’t sleeping.” He barked “Get the fuck up and come down to kitchen. Pat wants to talk to you.” He didn’t wait for a response because he knew I was too scared to disobey him. He turned and ping ponged down the stairs barely keeping himself upright. I pushed off my blankets and slowly slid my body over the edge of my mattress. It seemed liked years until my feet went flat against the floor. I shuffled slowly toward the rectangle light of the doorway, trying to delay the inevitable.
“Get the fuck down here!” My dad roared in his bellowing angry voice that he used when he meant business. I could feel the corners of my eyes burn with the sting of oncoming tears and tried to focus myself back into control.
I descended off the bottom step into kitchen and put both feet into some other people’s shit.
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t ask for this.
Hell, I barely even knew these people.
Pat hadn’t even been my step mother for half a year. I only met her a couple of times before some cheesy candle lit ceremony at her parent’s house made her my new mom. She was little more than a stranger to me. All I knew about her was that she packed a lot of anger into her tiny frame and that she could make great meatballs. Oh yeah, and even at eleven years old, I knew if she was dumb enough to marry my dad, she was just desperate.
Ahh Dad.
I didn’t know him either. Yeah he raised me and he was everything to me. He was the one constant in an endless chain of moving from one place to the next. He was even my hero for a while. But, I was long past jaded by then, even for a boy so young. He was the lie that sometimes told the truth, the promise that got kept once in a while and an interest in everything but me. I never knew what version of the man was going to show up and my imagination couldn’t paint him into a champion any longer.
I looked up into the angry air of the kitchen. Pat leaned in profile with her back flat against the refrigerator. Her arms were folded in front of her in a bitter clench and she glared out across the kitchen. I rolled my eyes down her line of sight until they ran smack dab into my fathers impaling bloodshot squint.
“Tell her what we did boy,” He directed me with a slurred siss.
My senses became acute and the ordinary was exaggerated into bizarre. I watched my dad’s work worn fingers drum down on the table in a repeated rotation, each finger thundering a blast into the air. I heard the second hand, on the tea kettle clock next to the stove slide past a black hash mark and groove into another second. The pungent sting of turbulent sweat, marinated by my dad’s beer soaked exhale, jabbed into my nostrils like it had jurisdiction over my sense of smell. I watched in slow motion as Pat flung a porcelain napkin holder that just missed my dad and shattered against the wall. Dad soared to his feet, kicking his chair out from under him. All the red in his eyes evaporated into a white anger. I wanted to run but was glued to the floor with fear. I looked at Pat and she didn’t even flinch as my dad stormed up to her with in an inch of her face.
“What the fuck was that?” he blared, painting her face with spit.
Pat stood her ground, her nose almost touching his, “Don’t give me a bunch of bullshit Bob. I know where you were. I called Old Timers and know you were there. I also know you left three hours ago with that ugly slut Jane.”
Dad paused a second, not long, but long enough to cement his guilt. “Bullshit. Ask Rob where we were.”
They both turned their heads to me.
“Fuck you Bob. I know what happened.” Pat mumbled, “I don’t care if you get your stupid kid to lie for you.”
Then silence.
They stared at me.
I wanted to sell him out. I really did. He left me there alone for hours and it wasn’t the first time. I could get him back for that quick right hand that always slaps against my head whenever he gets angry enough to justify it.
But, you know, he’s my dad.
“Dad took me to Ponderosa because I hit a homerun and we won the game.” I lied, and then I laid it on even thicker, “I can’t believe you guys are fighting over this and keeping me up on a school night.”
I didn’t wait for a reaction; I just turned and ran up to my bunk.
There was only silence behind me. I managed to slip into bed and drift off to sleep before any of the monsters came after me.
I remember waking up a bit later and hearing the dampened sounds of sex.
Or maybe I smelt it.
I got off the bus and started splashing my way up the sidewalk to my house, but the puddles didn’t seem so deep, something was different. I gazed up into the hazy gray sky. My nose hairs tingled and I knew something was different. I could smell the damp getting pulled from the earth and a warm freshness taking its place.
All the way up the street, as I walked home from the bus stop, I could smell it, but I didn’t quite know what it meant.
I opened the door and went into my house.
Then I turned around.
I took one step down from the front porch. A few drops splashed off the overhang and landed barely noticed on my neck. I just stared for a second at the giant red orb streaking colors into the cloudless western sky.
The rain had stopped!
Hahahaahah!
The rain had stopped
We were going to get a game in tonight!
I knew it.
I just knew it.
I ran back up the porch steps and flung open the screen door. By the time its metal frame bounced a few times and clicked itself shut, I was past the back stair-landing and on the second floor. I exploded into my bedroom, blindly struggled a t-shirt over my head
and was looking for my cleats. My brother was on the bottom bunk reading a book. It was some sort of fantasy bullshit I’m sure. He peeled his eyes up from the story just long enough to glare his annoyance at me. We locked stares for a moment, but couldn’t translate our private code quickly enough for it to turn into a fight. His face wrinkled with disapproval and he rolled over.
Fuck Him.
I didn’t have time to pummel him.
Not now, I had to get ready.
“I’ll push a few knuckles into his rib cage later, just to remind him who wiggled out of Mom's vagina first.” I thought
I kicked off my sneakers and shed the rest of my play clothes onto the floor. I opened the second drawer from the top, the one I didn’t share with my brother, and pulled out my baseball uniform. The shirt was heavy red cotton. It was embroidered with the white word Cardinals on the front and the number 15 on the back. An ironed-on patch that said “Ferguson” curved slightly off center two inches above my number. The shirt was heavy and itchy but I never noticed, once I had it on.
I slipped my head through the v-neck and let it drape over my tiny frame. Next, I spread the elastic waist of my trousers and poked my feet down into the legs. I pulled them up and slid a skinny black belt through the loops around the top. I sat on the corner of Eric’s bed. I bent over and grunted as I struggled to pull my red stockings over my white socks, stretching the stirrup across my heal, so the solid part reached up to my knee and I tucked them into my pants. Faint grass stains, that had survived many bleachings, shaded my kneecaps.
In my mind, I looked like Mickey Mantle. Someone I only read about in books, but seamed bigger than anyone I saw on T.V.
“Hey! Get off my bed.” Eric shouted over his shoulder and down the bed to me. I just ignored him and pulled my cleats out from under the bed and pulled them over my feet. I twisted the laces into double knots and stood up, tucking in my shirt. All that was left was my cap and it was soon pulled down tight over my head almost hiding my eyes. I clicked my heels together and the mud from last weeks game splintered off into a dusty jumble. I grabbed my glove from under the bed and started downstairs, but first a quick step into the bathroom to see me in my uniform.
Damn!
I puffed up my five foot frame in proud display.
I looked sharp.
I went down the stairs and out into the driveway. Mrs Graneski was going to pick me up. At least, I figured she would. I always caught a ride with them to the games. Minutes passed by and every hope that the next car would be her disappointed me deeper into panick.
My happy two-step at the end of the driveway mutated into a nervous shuffle.
After Eternity,
I went back inside and grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall. I scanned through the scribbled numbers on the pad next to the phone and dialed the Graneskis.
“Hello.” I heard from the other end.
It was Chad.
“Hey, it’s Rob. Are you coming?”
“No, My mom says it is too wet.”
“What?” my voiced strained into a squeak, “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.” He chuckled.
That fat asswipe could care less. Baseball was some father inflicted torture he had to endure. My father barely knew I played baseball and his father assumed he was going to the majors. Both of our dads were clueless for different reasons, but they were right on target at missing the point.
Chad loved any reason not to go.
I wished my dad could find a reason to be there.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” I screamed.
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” He hung up the phone.
Shit!
My stepmother was working for another half hour and who knew when my dad would push his pickled ass away from the bar. My stepbrother Jeff had a car but he was up in his room with his friends. I wasn’t even allowed to knock on his door. The last time I did, I got a swirlie from him and one of his friends. After, when they were laughing and I was standing degraded on the bathroom tile with toilet water streaming down my face, I clenched my tiny fists and swung them tornado like in fury. I managed to push a few knuckles into Jeff’s nose and forced a trickle of blood out of his left nostril. He glared at me in disbelief, stunned for just a second, and then he remembered he had seven years and a hundred pounds in his favor.
Time paused.
It really did.
Years later, I can live that moment over and over again, frame by frame. I can see all four knuckles of his man sized hand growing larger as it sped towards my face. He had a small black band around his pinky and tiny blonde hairs on all his fingers.
I spun my head quickly and the blow landed on the back of my head, just above my last vertebrae. The force of the blow sent my head flying but my legs were stopped by a claw foot tub. Inertia bent me double and I slammed my face into the white cast iron. The bottom left corner of my top incisor, the heart of my smile, crumbled into powder.
I can still feel it disintegrating.
So fuck that. I ain’t asking him.
I went back out into the driveway. I kicked at some rocks and threw my glove down as hard as I could against the blacktop.
“Fuck!” I screamed and kicked my glove out into the grass.
I pushed hard against the mounds of tears that were welling up in the corner of my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. I just wanted to handle this.
It was just another let down.
I walked out into the lawn and picked up my glove then threw it against the house.
“Assholes!” I screamed.
Just then, Jeff walked out the side door with one of his buddies. He ducked, then giggled almost girlike, “Jesus, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I mumbled and picked up my glove.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“No, seriously, what the fuck is up?”
I looked over at him and he kind of looked half human.
“I don’t have a ride to my game.”
“That’s it?” He said as he nudged a Marlborough between his lips and opened the door of his Mustang. “Get in.”
I was smart enough not to question his generosity and slid into the back seat. His fat friend Steve got in the front. It was barely a ten minute ride, made shorter by his speed. Jeff cranked some Alice Cooper on the radio the whole time and had all the windows rolled down. I saw him turn his head a couple of times like he was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear a thing. I just smiled and nodded, the world muted by the clamorous whirlwind spinning around me.
Jeff pulled to a stop in the gravel parking lot next to the field. To my surprise he turned down the radio and turned to me.
“Is your old man still picking you up?”
His friend had gotten out and leaned his seat forward for my exit. I slid up until my feet were out and touching the ground.
“Yeah, “I said standing up.
“You sure? I can come back you know.”
I got mad at his sincerity and became defensive of my dad.
“He’s coming!” I barked and marched away to meet up with my team.
“Your life.” He delivered in deadpan presage.
His friend got back in and slammed the door. One of them spun the volume up on the radio. I heard his tires growl sideways across the gravel and spit a few stones backwards as he spun off.
I didn’t look back and bit down on my bottom lip because I didn’t thank him.
A game was played that night and I don’t remember a thing about it. I don’t know if we won or lost or how I played. I know at some point it ended and I got my free hot dog and soda. I remember squeezing my glove under my left arm so I could hold my soda and eat my hot dog with my right hand as I walked down the long entrance to the street.
Dad liked it if I was right at the entrance when he got there.
By the time I got out to the road, my hot dog was gone and the cup that held my soda was empty and crumpled into my back pocket.
There was this big rock just left of the gate that was my favorite. I hopped up on it and sat with my legs folded into my chest. I watched all the cars rumble out. At first I waved, then slowly started to hide my eyes as the parking lot emptied. One of the last cars to leave was my coach.
He rolled down the window. “You need a ride?”
“No, my dad’s on his way.”
He rolled up his window, turned right and rumbled off into the gray. The sun was well under the horizon and dark was falling fast. I heard a pop behind me and turned to see the lights around the ball field shut down. A few minutes later, the lady who does the announcing and seems to run the place, drove out and got out of her car. She pulled the gate shut and closed some kind of lock on it. Just before she got back into her car she saw me out of the corner of her eye.
“Holy Shit!” she screamed “You scared the shit out of me. What are you still doing here?”
“I’m waiting for a ride.”
“You sure your mom is coming? Because I can give you a ride.”
“It’s my dad and he’s coming.”
She bent down into her car and fumbled a cigarette out from her purse. She lit it and sucked in a drag, holding it in while she stared at me. I imagine she was caught in the moral dilemma of sitting with some eleven year old or meeting some guy named Lenny at the bar who sported a pornstache and would feed her shots until she was too drunk too care who was wiggling between her thighs.
Lenny won.
“O.K. see ya.”
I stared at her taillights until I was just imagining that they were there.
It was dark now.
I looked up and pointed out the constellations to myself, Cassiopeia, Hercules and the Bears. Every set of headlights made me jump up, for a while. Soon I started making bets with myself that he would be here in the next five cars…..no..no… the next five cars… or maybe the next five… and so on.
Time passed. It was probably longer in kid time than it was in adult time.
I started to get cold so pulled my arms back through the armholes of my shirt and folded them against my chest.
I looked out into the dark and ran out of games to play. I was really cold and started to get angry.
I didn’t expect much from my dad.
I knew he’d be late, but this was getting pretty shitty.
I was getting….
Some headlights turned into the street. The car was moving pretty fast and pushing out some loud music.
It was my dad.
When he pulled up he leaned across the front seat and opened the door.
“Hey! Get in!” He was smiling, oblivious to how late he was or that I was all alone.
I got in and closed the door. My dad punched it and spun his Monte Carlo around. I pushed my self as far as I could into the passenger door. He lit a Winston and cranked up the radio. I just stared out into space.
Somewhere on the way home he noticed the lifelong disappointment that was exploding from my small crumpled frame. He turned the radio down and pulled over.
“What the fuck is up with you?” His voice was loud and blistered with alcohol.
I was speechless in fear. I knew he could smell my tears but I swallowed hard to suppress any whimpers and stiffened all my muscles.
I looked at him to say something but a bubble swelled in my throat and choked down my words. I flexed my eyes trying to stop the tears. It was useless. I blinked and flushed two salty trickles out over my cheeks.
He knew he had me.
He always did.
He was my dad.
“Here’s the thing.” He began, “I came and picked you up at the normal time and then I took you out to dinner. We went to Ponderosa.”
Normally he would never even question that I would back up his lie.
“O.K.?”
“Yes.” I mumbled with a shrug.
I was mad.
Mostly....
I was scared.
We rumbled down the summer night. The music hissing out from the dashboard speakers in whiny AM, gave us an excuse not to talk.
My dad pulled into the driveway and I didn’t let the car stop before I pushed open the passenger door. I stomped in through the side door and streaked up the stairs to my bedroom. My peripheral caught my step-mom streaking into the kitchen.
“Where have you guys been? Your dinner is on a plate in the fridge. Hey!”
I pretended I didn’t hear her scream my name or her demands that I come back..
My bedroom was dark and my brother was pretending to be asleep. I pulled off my uniform and kicked it into a heap against the radiator. Slick as a melting ice cube, I hopped up onto the top bunk and slid under the covers in one motion. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to make myself disappear. Downstairs, the argument escalated and the yelling pounded its way up into our bedroom. The loud words were muffled but I definitely heard my name a couple of times.
“Please, please, don’t come up.” I screamed silently to myself. “Please don’t come up here.” My pleas shriveled unheard and disappeared into the tornado of panic swirling inside my head. My dad kicked open my bedroom door with his foot. The old door was heavy and bounced back at him off the wall with so much force, it almost seemed like it was trying to protect me. My dad bent his arm across his chest to protect himself then pinned the door against the wall.
I laid motionless under my covers, slowing my breathing into a laboring drawl trying to hide in a counterfeit sleep.
Dad didn’t buy it.
“I know you aren’t sleeping.” He barked “Get the fuck up and come down to kitchen. Pat wants to talk to you.” He didn’t wait for a response because he knew I was too scared to disobey him. He turned and ping ponged down the stairs barely keeping himself upright. I pushed off my blankets and slowly slid my body over the edge of my mattress. It seemed liked years until my feet went flat against the floor. I shuffled slowly toward the rectangle light of the doorway, trying to delay the inevitable.
“Get the fuck down here!” My dad roared in his bellowing angry voice that he used when he meant business. I could feel the corners of my eyes burn with the sting of oncoming tears and tried to focus myself back into control.
I descended off the bottom step into kitchen and put both feet into some other people’s shit.
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t ask for this.
Hell, I barely even knew these people.
Pat hadn’t even been my step mother for half a year. I only met her a couple of times before some cheesy candle lit ceremony at her parent’s house made her my new mom. She was little more than a stranger to me. All I knew about her was that she packed a lot of anger into her tiny frame and that she could make great meatballs. Oh yeah, and even at eleven years old, I knew if she was dumb enough to marry my dad, she was just desperate.
Ahh Dad.
I didn’t know him either. Yeah he raised me and he was everything to me. He was the one constant in an endless chain of moving from one place to the next. He was even my hero for a while. But, I was long past jaded by then, even for a boy so young. He was the lie that sometimes told the truth, the promise that got kept once in a while and an interest in everything but me. I never knew what version of the man was going to show up and my imagination couldn’t paint him into a champion any longer.
I looked up into the angry air of the kitchen. Pat leaned in profile with her back flat against the refrigerator. Her arms were folded in front of her in a bitter clench and she glared out across the kitchen. I rolled my eyes down her line of sight until they ran smack dab into my fathers impaling bloodshot squint.
“Tell her what we did boy,” He directed me with a slurred siss.
My senses became acute and the ordinary was exaggerated into bizarre. I watched my dad’s work worn fingers drum down on the table in a repeated rotation, each finger thundering a blast into the air. I heard the second hand, on the tea kettle clock next to the stove slide past a black hash mark and groove into another second. The pungent sting of turbulent sweat, marinated by my dad’s beer soaked exhale, jabbed into my nostrils like it had jurisdiction over my sense of smell. I watched in slow motion as Pat flung a porcelain napkin holder that just missed my dad and shattered against the wall. Dad soared to his feet, kicking his chair out from under him. All the red in his eyes evaporated into a white anger. I wanted to run but was glued to the floor with fear. I looked at Pat and she didn’t even flinch as my dad stormed up to her with in an inch of her face.
“What the fuck was that?” he blared, painting her face with spit.
Pat stood her ground, her nose almost touching his, “Don’t give me a bunch of bullshit Bob. I know where you were. I called Old Timers and know you were there. I also know you left three hours ago with that ugly slut Jane.”
Dad paused a second, not long, but long enough to cement his guilt. “Bullshit. Ask Rob where we were.”
They both turned their heads to me.
“Fuck you Bob. I know what happened.” Pat mumbled, “I don’t care if you get your stupid kid to lie for you.”
Then silence.
They stared at me.
I wanted to sell him out. I really did. He left me there alone for hours and it wasn’t the first time. I could get him back for that quick right hand that always slaps against my head whenever he gets angry enough to justify it.
But, you know, he’s my dad.
“Dad took me to Ponderosa because I hit a homerun and we won the game.” I lied, and then I laid it on even thicker, “I can’t believe you guys are fighting over this and keeping me up on a school night.”
I didn’t wait for a reaction; I just turned and ran up to my bunk.
There was only silence behind me. I managed to slip into bed and drift off to sleep before any of the monsters came after me.
I remember waking up a bit later and hearing the dampened sounds of sex.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Maybe I Deserved It
After the red lights stopped alternating in their warning dance and the bus shrugged off empty, I shuffled up the gravel driveway to my house. Soon after, I heard the metallic gag of the transmission as the bus turned around at the town line and headed back down my road. I felt the cool insanity of being twelve years old fill my being. I quickly scanned my surroundings and zoomed in on an egg sized rock two feet to my left. I took a step and scooped it up with my right hand. My thumb instinctively rubbed the dirt away so it could angle tightly around the back edge.
I waited until the nose of the bus passed my mailbox and then rotated my arm forward. The egg sized rock bee lined from my hand and shattered the window three seats from the back.
I felt cool for less than a second and then the screeching tires panicked me into a run. All rational thought left me and intelligence just stood off to the side laughing. I thought I could get away by scurrying under my front deck, past a missing piece of lattice.
I low crawled between the damp earth and pressurized wood and tried to make myself small against the foundation of my house. The cold cement didn’t yield to my scared hot skin trying to melt safely into the basement and I was frozen in my fear.
I heard the bus driver wheezing and cussing her way up the gravel to my house.
Then hell broke loose.
I heard the side door open and the heavy footsteps of my dad pounded down on the boards above me. I gagged with fear and tried to make myself smaller.
I looked out through the diamond holes of the lattice and saw my bus driver with her hands on her knees and gasping for breath.
She looked up and said to my dad “Your fucking piece of shit kid just threw a rock through my window and I’m going to kill him!”
Well, my dad might not have been the best of fathers, and he may have thought that I was a piece of shit, but damn if someone was going to talk shit about his kids. He started spewing out hatred and insults that whittled that 300 lbs bus driver into a sniveling toothpick.
He took a few angry steps in her direction. She found herself in my world and I saw the fear knock her over.
Stumbling to her feet, she retreated down the gravel and drove her bus off.
My sense of relief was short lived.
Moments after the diesel growl of the bus signaled its departure, a shadow filled the space in the lattice and five fingers cuffed each of my ankles. I was jerked out, face down, and then flipped over so I could see the anger.
I was afraid.
But….
I wasn’t impressed.
I had seen it before and it was getting a little old.
I closed my eyes and watched the bright lights. They flickered every time fist found flesh and the light show somehow made me numb to the pain.
It wasn’t easy to know when it was over, but there was this moment when I noticed the silence. I stood up and ran up the steps, past the door and straight up to my room.
I couldn’t lock the doors to my room, so I tried to disappear in the space between the left side of my dresser and the wall.
I wasn’t afraid, but I shivered as the stairs warned me that he was coming.
His presence pushed on the paper thin walls of my room.
I waited for the bust in.
I waited.
I could hear him breathing.
Then I heard the stairs creak with his retreat.
I didn’t believe it and stayed right where I was for at least twenty minutes. I couldn’t believe that was all I was going to get.
But it was.
I even thought I deserved more.
It would be another six months until my father beat me again and that time was for the last time.
Not like I didn't deserve it.
I got suspended from school for fighting. I was always the new kid and I was always fighting. He slapped me upside the head and managed to pop my ear drum. I crashed down the stairs and grabbed my head, failing to hold back the tears I knew would just piss him off more. Something inside of him clicked at that moment. He stared down at me, paused in a contorted torture I will never forget and he promised to never hit me again.
The way he was looking at me and the way he said it, I knew he meant it.
He never has
I waited until the nose of the bus passed my mailbox and then rotated my arm forward. The egg sized rock bee lined from my hand and shattered the window three seats from the back.
I felt cool for less than a second and then the screeching tires panicked me into a run. All rational thought left me and intelligence just stood off to the side laughing. I thought I could get away by scurrying under my front deck, past a missing piece of lattice.
I low crawled between the damp earth and pressurized wood and tried to make myself small against the foundation of my house. The cold cement didn’t yield to my scared hot skin trying to melt safely into the basement and I was frozen in my fear.
I heard the bus driver wheezing and cussing her way up the gravel to my house.
Then hell broke loose.
I heard the side door open and the heavy footsteps of my dad pounded down on the boards above me. I gagged with fear and tried to make myself smaller.
I looked out through the diamond holes of the lattice and saw my bus driver with her hands on her knees and gasping for breath.
She looked up and said to my dad “Your fucking piece of shit kid just threw a rock through my window and I’m going to kill him!”
Well, my dad might not have been the best of fathers, and he may have thought that I was a piece of shit, but damn if someone was going to talk shit about his kids. He started spewing out hatred and insults that whittled that 300 lbs bus driver into a sniveling toothpick.
He took a few angry steps in her direction. She found herself in my world and I saw the fear knock her over.
Stumbling to her feet, she retreated down the gravel and drove her bus off.
My sense of relief was short lived.
Moments after the diesel growl of the bus signaled its departure, a shadow filled the space in the lattice and five fingers cuffed each of my ankles. I was jerked out, face down, and then flipped over so I could see the anger.
I was afraid.
But….
I wasn’t impressed.
I had seen it before and it was getting a little old.
I closed my eyes and watched the bright lights. They flickered every time fist found flesh and the light show somehow made me numb to the pain.
It wasn’t easy to know when it was over, but there was this moment when I noticed the silence. I stood up and ran up the steps, past the door and straight up to my room.
I couldn’t lock the doors to my room, so I tried to disappear in the space between the left side of my dresser and the wall.
I wasn’t afraid, but I shivered as the stairs warned me that he was coming.
His presence pushed on the paper thin walls of my room.
I waited for the bust in.
I waited.
I could hear him breathing.
Then I heard the stairs creak with his retreat.
I didn’t believe it and stayed right where I was for at least twenty minutes. I couldn’t believe that was all I was going to get.
But it was.
I even thought I deserved more.
It would be another six months until my father beat me again and that time was for the last time.
Not like I didn't deserve it.
I got suspended from school for fighting. I was always the new kid and I was always fighting. He slapped me upside the head and managed to pop my ear drum. I crashed down the stairs and grabbed my head, failing to hold back the tears I knew would just piss him off more. Something inside of him clicked at that moment. He stared down at me, paused in a contorted torture I will never forget and he promised to never hit me again.
The way he was looking at me and the way he said it, I knew he meant it.
He never has
A Letter From Mom
I have this memory that really isn’t mine. I was there, alright, but I was only a bit player in that fucked up scene. The tragedy played out all around me and I stumbled through it like Rosencrantz.
It all started with a letter.
Letters are powerful things. They capture forever words that might be forgotten seconds after slipping past the lips. Proof standing of the delicate insanity that resides in us all. The anonymous pale of the parchment, emboldens us to throw open the locked gates hiding our inner most thoughts and pushes them out our fingertips in scribbles of ink. Folded into thirds and stuffed behind the postage, letters deliver all the words that we really wanted to say.
Letters change the world.
This particular letter changed my world. This letter, three small pages filled with poorly scripted confessions, turned my brother’s world upside down.
My brother and I were the last kids to get off the bus. Being the last stop was pretty cool in the morning, but it sucked on the ride home. I followed Eric down the steps and off of the bus. He started up the gravel driveway. I put my books down and turned to watch the bus pull away. I stood there for a while, the grumble of the bus faded on down the road, and I breathed in deep. Spring was just about done and you could almost taste the salty thick of summer in the air. I went over and pulled open our red mailbox. We always had a ton of mail. I was mostly junk mail or bills. I rarely got anything, but it was my job to bring it up to the house. I made my way up the gravel and flipped through the twenty or so letters. About halfway through, I saw it and started running up the driveway. I bounded across the porch and into the kitchen.
“Yo! Eric, come here.” I yelled and through the entire pile of mail onto the counter, save for one letter. “You got some mail.”
I made my way over to the living room and flopped down into the couch. I didn’t here any movement from the basement and gave out another yell.
“Hey!”
Nothing
“You got some mail.” I yelled, slacking my jaw and faking a baritone. “It’s from mom.”
I heard the downstairs toilet flush and some awkward banging as my brother clamored his way up from the basement and into the living room.
“Mom?” he asked rhetorically and picked his letter up from the floor. I was hoping he might open and read it there but he didn’t. He just stuffed it in his back pocket and squirreled off down to his room. I kind of wanted to hear about her, hear about what she was thinking. Maybe she might even mention me.
Mom didn’t write me. I guess she was just too embarrassed. I didn’t expect an apology from her. I knew her all too well. She always had an excuse and it was always someone else’s fault. I always believed her lies. I was the only one that still did, but this last time I couldn’t. She fucked me over and got caught red handed. She couldn’t sweet talk her way around it.
One day she dropped me off at my girlfriend’s house. No one was home but I knew where the key was and I let myself in. Mom made note of where the key was hidden and went back there two days later with some guys and a van and robbed the place. Unfortunately, my girlfriend’s brother was home sick in his room in the attic and saw the whole thing. Mom was quickly picked up and sent to prison. I lost a girlfriend, suffered some embarrassment when it came out in the papers and stopped believing all the lies that come out of her mouth. She knew it and since she couldn’t lie to me anymore, she just stopped talking to me.
My brother, on the other hand, got a letter every other week. I admit I was jealous. I hated the stupid cunt, but she was my mother. If she was going to fucking write a letter, why not write two? I didn’t care that she fucked up. She had been fucking up for as long as I can remember. Hell, one of my first memories of my mother is visiting her prison and hearing “Rock the Boat” over the loudspeakers.
But no, Eric was the one she wrote to.
I envied him on all those days he got a letter and I didn’t.
That day, was even worse, he took his letter and never came out of his room. He didn’t share it with me. I banged on his door a couple of times.
“Fuck Off!” was all I got.
My brother was a strange cat so I just shrugged it off. I forgot about the letter and went on with my day.
I used to get up early in those days to go to church. My dad worked third shift and we didn’t see much of each other but occasionally we crossed paths. I barely blinked when I saw him at the kitchen table as I reached up to grab some cereal. Then I saw my brother and I could feel the shit start to sprinkle back from the fan.
“Rob, come over here and sit down,” Dad said “I got to talked to you about something.”
I inched over to the table and sat down.
My dad cleared his throat. He wasn’t nervous; in fact he was straight deadpan.
“Eric got a letter that wasn’t meant for him. Your mother must have mixed up the letters she was trying to send. The letter confused your brother and he showed it to me. I thought it would be best if I just explain it to the both of you at the same time.”
I looked over at Eric. His eyes caught mine and he tried to wink, but he was too sleepy. I kicked his shin lightly under the table. He shifted upright and we smiled at each other like friends.
“Your mother likes women,” dad said. That statement got our attention and we both turned and stared at my dad intently.
I felt a faint throbbing that I quickly suppressed.
Eric stood up and said “Fuck This” then walked down to his room. I didn’t know what floored me more, the fact that my mom was a lesbian or that my little brother just swore in front of my dad.
“You know what I’m saying, Rob?”
Dad was looking kind of drunk.
“I already knew.” Was the lie I threw back at him. I went downstairs to my brother’s room and knocked on his door. He wouldn’t open.
I remember seeing the sinking look of betrayal on my brother’s face that day. At first, I chuckled and welcomed him to my pain, and then I looked closer and saw the hurt I had already learned how to bury.
We have never talked about that day or our dad’s explanation of it.
I just wonder how his eyes saw that dayMoments
I enjoy the moments
with my son
our life, the minutes
and how every second goes
I feel time now
and appreciate
its swift and subtle flow
I was ten and merely blinked,
then suddenly I was old.
I wonder how long I held my breath
as I watched my son be born.
I wonder how many times again
I'll hold my breath
and pray
while
waiting
hoping
watching
as his wonderful unfolds.
A promise
is just
a promise
it means nothing
without time
I will be a better Dad
someday
a better Dad
than mine.
with my son
our life, the minutes
and how every second goes
I feel time now
and appreciate
its swift and subtle flow
I was ten and merely blinked,
then suddenly I was old.
I wonder how long I held my breath
as I watched my son be born.
I wonder how many times again
I'll hold my breath
and pray
while
waiting
hoping
watching
as his wonderful unfolds.
A promise
is just
a promise
it means nothing
without time
I will be a better Dad
someday
a better Dad
than mine.
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