It's hard to complain about others judging me when that line is already long, and I woke up at 2 in the morning to be first in line and used two credit cards to buy out the first two rows and a crate of spoiled produce. What I'm saying is thanks for the mean things you all said about me, and to pay you back motherfuckers, I am hereby christening DAY ONE of NABLOPOMO with an incentive of sorts, like the crumbs that will eventually lead you to a tiny cottage in the middle of the woods where an old crone is baking two small children. (APOLOGIES. I WENT TO A PUBLIC INSITUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND NEVER FINISHED MY COLLEGE TEXTS.)
No, what I mean is thank you for the horrible things you wrote, and in gratuity, I offer a token of my gratuity. For each one of you who comments on every single post as I attempt to post every day in November as part of NABLOPOMO MOFO, I will enter you in a contest, sponsored by a sponsor who has pledged $1 for each day.
That's RIGHT. The winner will get $30! Minus taxes ($12). I mean, come on! Who wouldn't give their right nut for $18? Don't. Even.
Oh, if you don't have nuts, you're still eligible for the prize. I guess.
Okay, so following is my first official NABLOPOMO MOFO post.
/cue the ducks
Dear Samsung,
I LOVE my new phone. Unfortunately, your AD WIZARDS made a serious error in naming it. Whereas other companies had the foresight to give their devices memorable names, you have crippled my ability to market your fine product by calling it the SGH-D807.
WTF?!?
Example 1: Unnamed person: Wow! Cool phone! Is that the RAZR? Me: Uh, no. Unnamed person: The SLVR? Me: Uh-uh. Unnamed person: The CHOCOLATE? Me: Close. Unnamed person: What is it? Me: The SGH-D807. Unnamed person: I pity you.
Scenario Two, A Metaphor: Unnamed person: Wow! Nice cock! Is that the RAZR? Me: Nope. Unnamed person: The chocolate? Me: Uh-uh. Unnamed person: The SLVR? Me: Not even close. Unnamed person: Then what is it? Me: The CLAMDIGGR 6.5. Unnamed person: Oooh! I've heard of that. Does it play MP3 ring tones? Me: I'm not sure. I keep it on vibrate.
"You probably have to wash the soap after you use it."
Whomonculus reminded me that there are a few things I need to attend to as I begin the LONG, SLOW process of shutting down One Child Left Behind. One of these is a final round of READER APPRECIATIONS.
I have long lamented the fact that in 2+ years of web-logging, I have yet to receive one genuine piece of snark. And as all of us battle-hardened bloggers know, if anonymous strangers are not wishing herpetic boils upon the heads of your unborn grandchildren then you really need to question whether or not you're getting the full value out of the internet.
But pretending is fun.
So please cast upon me your foulest seed, that thou shalt live in yonder sidebar from here to March 31.
I know you won't disappoint me. I recently discovered an awful truth: the only reason I get DOZENS of readers per day is because the comments here have ALWAYS been awesomier than the actual posts.
(oh, and speaking of awesomage, Heather is giving out weblog awards. please go over there and send in your votes. i'm not eligible, because I AM CLOSING DOWN THIS BLOG, SO DON'T EVEN THINK OF RECOMMENDING ME, RIM JOB.)
I hope you'll indulge me for a moment. Each year, i give a speech at the Washington State AmeriCorps Launch and swearing-in ceremony for the nearly 1,000 members who join the program. It's always been a big honor for me, and a chance to meet some very cool folks. Three years ago, former Governor Mike Lowry (who would later write a blurb for my first book) spoke after me, last year it was Governor Chris Gregoire, and this year, Congressman Jim McDermott. We have a solid history in our state of politicians, community leaders and business people getting behind national service, which helps take a bit of the edge off of my natural inclination towards cynicism.
The following is the text of my speech. Unlike in past years, I actually recorded this one, and am considering putting it up on the site as a podcast. As soon as I can get over my phonophobia, specifically, the fear of hearing my own voice.
It's a bit long for a blog entry, and some of you will recognize recycled phrases from past entries. Okay, it's a lot long for a blog entry.
* * *
Note to self: Before you begin your presentation to the 2006 Class of AmeriCorps members, inform them that the reason you look blurry is because you are actually giving your speech from 20 YEARS IN THE FUTURE and not because you are shaking from nervousness, because let's face it, no one here is going to believe you could possibly be nervous trying to motivate nearly 1,000 individuals knowing that if you fail the cornerstone of the Corporation for National and Community Service will crumble, the entire program will go bankrupt, all of you will be forced to become legislative pages and there will be a glut of useless, gray T-shirts overwhelming the bandwidth at eBay.
And the reason no one will believe you are nervous is because you're now in your third year of motivational commentary, and since AmeriCorps goes by many nicknames, one of which is THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA, most of you have now likely known me for three years, and no, I will NOT tell you how to get out of AmeriCorps, because here I am 10 years after my first day of service, and no one has told ME, yet.
Plus, the other reason I’m not nervous around you is because I got to meet many of you last week in Ocean Shores, and even though most of you had to hold my hair for me above the toilet, that wasn't nervousness, that was, you know, irony. It was SICKENING, how utterly calm I was and NOT NERVOUS, and anyway, it's out of my system now mostly. We're all old friends, is what I'm trying to say, and not just because I'm speaking to you from twenty years in the future or need to borrow money.
No problem, I said to myself, nothing to be nervous about, I said out loud, and to prove it, I repeated the word 'nervous' again and again and again and again until I no longer recognized it as a word, nor did I recognize the growing puddle at my feet, although I am thankful for how much it rains in this part of the country, and I would have been even more thankful had I actually been outside at the time. Because I guess it is scary. Not the actual speech, you see, because I was once a firefighter, and I’m not afraid of yelling at perfect strangers and brandishing an axe and an organ donor cooler, but what's frightening is knowing, KNOWING that if I say the wrong thing, 90% of you will turn around and go home, and all those people in Washington State who need your help will come after ME! And they'll get pretty close, too, until they realize that, you know, I might rain on them.
The purpose of my sickeningly good speech, therefore, is to talk to you from 20 years in the future, to inform you of all the good you've done since the last we met, back in 2006, to motivate you for your upcoming year of service, and not just to tell jokes at my expense, because let's face it, while laughter MAY be the best medicine, it is NOT covered by your Health Plan, although the generic version, known by its street name as Bitter Melancholy, IS reimbursed at 50% after a $10 co-pay and a two-month delay. And I know what you're thinking, because I was also once in your shoes (and sometimes high heels whenever I was stuck at home by myself for long periods of time, I'm just sayin), and what you're thinking is, 'Pfft. I don't need laughter to get me through. Over-the-counter cold medicine and taurine will help those valleys feel like the high-speed super slide at Action Park.. After all, misery loves chemistry, but take it from someone who has a twenty year head start on you into the future, consuming Nyquil and Red Bull at 1pm in the afternoon CREATES just as many problems as it SOLVES, and those problems (runny nose, sinus pressure, headache, depression, inappropriate outbursts of pointing followed by even more inappropriate outbursts of laughter) are often compounded by 'HOURS LEFT IN THE WORKDAY.'
But you say, I have plenty of accomplishments, and I agree, you should be very proud, in summary, 1.You never believed it was not butter. Not for one instant. 2.Your MySpace account was never implicated in a crime, though among your 52,567 'friends,' you don't deny that one or two may have lived outside of those social norms we commonly refer to as the LAW. 3.You remembered to wear pants.
This last part is important, because I would like to take the benefit of foresight to remind you that there was a time when showing up to work meant pants were more than just optional, they were required by the conditions of your parole, and sometimes you forget this, and while we should all be forgiven for sometimes forgetting, it is better to wear pants first than ask for forgiveness later. Don't forget, only superheroes are allowed to show up wearing their underwear on the outside of their pants, and superheroes don't need forgiveness, they need our support, and by support I mean they need us to occasionally remind them that it is the PANTS that go on the outside.
Or the superheroes could simply follow my own example. For while most guys debate whether to buy underwear that looks like boxers or underwear that looks like briefs, I prefer to buy underwear that looks like a full pair of pants, that way there's no mistakes.
But you're no superheroes, you're just ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and ordinary people often forget their earlier accomplishments later in life, bogged down as we sometimes get in the rat race, which often looks a lot like the following scenario:
Oh, by the way, one of the things we very wisely eliminated in the future is Power Point, so you'll just have to use your imagination as I recreate this scene from my workplace that just occurred yesterday, or you know, twenty years ago yesterday, or should I say yesterday, twenty years removed, oh for Peter’s sake, I don't know why they say the future is so BRIGHT, because in fact the future is so CONFUSING, just bear with me:
My boss walks in: Brandon, Do you have that report yet? How many funny numbers did we eventually have to massage in order to turn the stockholders' frowns upside downs? How am I supposed to know, I don't even work here! Yes you do! So! I STILL don't know. You lemming.
And at that moment you realize you work at a place where your boss allows you to call him a lemming, and while this is a frightening thought, at least it's frightening in your favor, but still, something gnaws at you and it is this: You once did something meaningful with your life, back in 2006. You experienced a rite of passage, long after you thought rites of passage ended with that final hurdle of trading in your fake ID for the real one, but as you get older, you will realize that the rites of passage have only just begun. Give me a call when you experience that first weekend straining for a kidney stone, you'll know what I'm talking about. Just turn the phone volume down and pray you never have to strain for a COLON stone, because, well, that is totally the WRONG rite of passage.
You then vaguely recall that you once began a great journey. Every great journey seems to end up somehow back at STARTING POINT A, and not, as you might expect, 10,000 miles away from your parents' basement with an alias and a minor criminal record. Still, hopefully, you've not been mean to YOUR parents. Other than using your college trust fund to get a bachelor's degree in French Literature.
And very few parents actually still believe that AmeriCorps is nothing more than a failed energy company that runs power plants by burning cadaver parts solicited through Craig's List so that Utility Bills can be kept high in California because they never turn the lights down.
Look, don't worry, your parents still adore you. All I'm trying to do is somehow motivate you while reinforcing the long held notion that sometimes love, no matter how well intentioned, is little more than a Class C Misdemeanor.
Okay, so sure, looking back, maybe this wasn't the easiest destination for such a long journey. And you've arrived with hearts full of good deeds and bellies full of conference food, and already you've been told that certain passions of yours might be off limits for the next year, like influencing legislation or using your workplace computer to manage your love life, but they might as well make all that stuff perfectly LEGAL, because it's not like you're going to have time for any of that, anyway. I mean, I’ve seen how many pages are in your work plans and it's a lot, it's, it’s at least…well, it's more pages than even Mark Foley would be interested in. And the reason I’ve seen those work plans is because I have in fact written work plans for my own members, and I know how wordy I can get and so do you and so do I and you do, too. If there are ANY activities AmeriCorps should prohibit, it should be sleeping, and eating between meals. Get used to using the restroom at the same time everyday.
Oh, now, I can see the looks in your eyes, some of you are thinking about quitting already, but from what I hear, they put America Online in charge of AmeriCorps withdrawals. Good luck quitting now, sucker.
I'm kidding. You can quit any time. You only do AmeriCorps to help you relax, and then only on weekends and non-federal holidays in the privacy of your own home. You'll quit when you're ready. When you're good and ready. And tired of wearing the same grocery basket day in and day out.
From my vantage point in the year 2026, I know that you do not quit, however. I wish you could see it from where I stand, this lovely future with all of you in it. You did so much people. Your accomplishments were, in fact, planetary. True the International Astronomical Union later classified your accomplishments as Small Solar System Bodies, but there isn't a scientist among us who would want Pluto landing in our back yard.
And you also learned that the idealism of poetry that has driven your actions sometimes presented unexpected realities, such as that first day you realized that the number one problem with the road less traveled is that it's clogged with people asking for directions. You also learned that there’s no need to worry about rocking the boat when everyone is already hanging over the railing blowing into their self-inflatable life preservers.
Not only that, but you woke up to a new person who no longer allowed the din of everyday living to drown out the cries for help all around us. I desperately want to tell you these things now, because you will forget what you've accomplished down the road, and if you forget, there's a danger that others will forget, and there's only so much writing in these hands, and I can't tell all your stories to my children. You have to help me out, folks. You have to plant this future memory now, that there is more. Much more.
Downplaying your achievements, which will be your biggest mistake by far, very likely because you were too close to the action, too close to the tutored child, too close to the abused spouse, too close to the polluted environment, too close to it all to actually see that you made more than a difference. My friends, you made a statement. You made a stand.
And you exercised a freedom. Maybe not one of the ones you hear about, press, assembly, petition, but the freedom to act for the betterment of your community, the freedom to speak out against the injustices suffered by those whose only crime was to be born into the wrong tax bracket, and I am proud of you, these twenty years later, for having had the courage to do so. Why defend a freedom if you have no intention of exercising it?
And you didn't just stop after your term expired. You continued to volunteer. Because for every rat race there is a sugar pill behind the lever, and that reward for you became volunteerism.
I know all this, not only because I can see your future, but because I have the privilege of counting myself as one of you. I share with you the untold secret of the volunteer, which is, of course, that our actions are driven not by the needs of others, but by our own very personal need to clean up our present so that we can imagine a future. It was a hard secret for me to crack, and I wish it were easier to teach hope, but it's even harder to teach experience.
And as we all know, this is a hard present in which to gain that experience.
I want to thank you in advance for your efforts. Because one day when you're taking a stroll down memory lane, you will pass that old avenue that marks your time in AmeriCorps, and before you get to the end of the road, you will have to stop, you’ll be a bit tired; you'll have to lean over and brace your hands against your knees, the tripod position we learned about as EMTs, and wonder why it's so hard to breathe, why your heart feels so large inside your chest.
Larger than your past mistakes, larger than your lost friendships, larger than missing your prom, larger than the bad news coming down the airwaves, larger than your checking account, larger than the words to loved ones you wish you could take back, larger than that second helping of dessert, larger than that time you were the smaller person, larger than the late fees, larger than the corners you cut, larger than the excuses for missing the birthday, larger than the broken alibi, larger than avoiding the issues, larger than the times when you didn't make a difference, larger than the times when you could have helped but didn't, larger than the times when you didn't take a stand, larger than not caring enough to cast your vote.
Larger than the moment when you didn't lend your hands, those same hands that are now shaking at the memory, on knees that are shaking because it feels so good to be back on this old street, holding up a chest that heaves at how fortunate you were to have lived here for a little while, a chest surrounding a heart entirely too full, entirely too full with everything that you did manage to achieve while you were here.
There is nothing I can do for that kind of breathing difficulty. There is nothing I would want to. It is a lovely illness. It is not nearly contagious enough. If it does not kill you, it will make you stronger. If it does not kill you, you will long for the symptoms.
I think you can be forgiven for your breathing difficulty.
Go out then and rock the boat, people. The water’s not so deep as it looks.
The radio airwaves are replete with our state’s move towards ALL MALE VOTING, and this pleases my inner-suffragist, because if there is anyone responsible for the WHORE IN IRAQ, it must, by definition, be a woman.
In any case, I just finished my absentee ballot (IF ONLY PARENTING WERE THIS SANCTIONED), and I plan on MAILING it in tomorrow, because I can’t be bothered on the second Tuesday of November, as I will be starting the single greatest business of all time: a company that will take all of your keys and convert them into one single universal master key.
I’ll wait a moment while you pick yourself up off the floor.
First of all, NO, I am not sharing my forthcoming riches with you, nor will I have my multinational conglomerate cut you a deal just because you supported me when I was little more than a chatty alcoholic with access to the Internet.
Secondly, you don’t even support me, anyway, because I can hear you saying, ‘But such a company isn’t possible, because not all keys are the same size, and some keys cannot even legally be copied, and some keys are metaphorical keys, like the keys to my heart, and I have a new tenant who DOESN’T have herpes, you sore loser.’
And to that, I say: AMERICA.
That’s right, I’m dropping the patriotic argument on you. This is a bad-ass nation. We put a man on the moon, and you’re trying to tell me that I can’t start a company that can turn all of my keys into one single piece of copper that will not only open all of my doors, start my car and lock my kids in the gun safe, but also send my messages, photos and e-mail via blue tooth? You’re trying to say that even though we are bad-ass enough to bomb the country that DIDN’T attack us, I can’t forge a one inch piece of steel to bow to my every whim? All I have to say to you, Kim Jong Il, is that if North Korea ever attacks us, Bolivia better watch-thefuck-out, because this is America and ANYTHING is possible. A-fucking-men.
By the way, in addition to the next Fortune 500 company, I have also invented another new word: infuckification, which is ‘the act of inserting a derivative of ‘fuck’ between the syllables of another word for emphasis. For example, ‘Un-fucking-believable,’ ‘Fan-fucking-tastic,’ ‘Al-thefuck-most,’ et-fucking-cetera.
I’m thinking of calling my new company FreeKey, or maybe Allkey, or DuckKey, or WhisKey or DostoevsKey. I don’t know, the name’s not important, it’s the concept that’s key, and the concept here is BAD-ASS AMERIKEY. Ooh! I like that! If America were an adjective, it would be Amerikey. As in, this hot dog and fried twinkie tastes very amer-icky. That silicon blonde with the sub-mediocre singing voice sounds very amer-icky.
In any case, please send me your keys and $450 dollars in 8 easy installments.
Notes: Chiasmus AB then BA e.g., Willingly learned, then forgotten gladly
Treatment Seems funny, we eagerly put in a window, and the first thing we did was to drape it, blocking out the view we desired so desperately. One of us, I won’t say which, sees a wall and wants to punch a hole through it with no expectations other than the subsequent breeze; the other, whom I won’t mention, likes to color those new vistas in rose and turmeric. This is how the house looks now.
I have yet to wake up one morning and exclaim, 'TODAY IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE BECAUSE I AM IN IT,' though I have heard of the concept of contentedness. It's a hard word to spell out loud. The battery on my iPod/FM transmitter dies, and suddenly my airwaves are filled with a radio evangelist, though I do not know this at the time, because there is a period of about 20 seconds every time my mind tries to figure out if the voice is from NPR or God. They sound so very similar. I know the message he’s trying to get across, but I don’t let on. I was that boy in middle school. I’m that boy now.
Safety I planned to put in a deck for two years before writing forced me to put those plans on hold. When the third contract came through, I acquiesced and brought on a contractor, a friend of a friend. It was never the money, but the control, the ability to put things in place so they would match up with my hopes, that served as the foundation of my reluctance. Those hopes changed one day while I was watching the boys working, just before they began to put the railings on. Stop, I said. The contractor told me that I would have to put on railings, that it wouldn’t pass code. And I thought, what a terrific way to ruin my tranquility: safety features. I love it like this, I said. This is how the house looks now.
The Father figure on the airwaves pauses and emphatically points out that every single person desires the same thing: happiness. And even though songwriters who stabbed themselves in the hearts once said the exact same thing, I cannot bring myself to nod in agreement. I’m not indifferent to my safety, I’m not being contrary, I just prefer a balanced approach. Balance means that whenever I stumble into bliss, I fully expect to come down off the mountain and suffer through the mire. Whenever the pillow is cold, I want the pistons to fire. I smile throughout the flight, in the taxi I caress the scratches I’ve acquired. I was that boy in middle school. I’m that boy now.
Expectations I try not to allow my imagination be dampened by physical laws, though I fully expect physical laws to try my patience. I clear out a space on the northwestern-most spot on my property, suddenly visited by sunlight, due to recent clearcuts and a change in Earth’s orbit that I’ve no doubt will soon make headlines. I adorn the plot with old bricks and tiger ferns. I spend the entire summer envisioning a 20-foot Glory Bower, lifting the kids up to the lowest branches, rubbing the leaves for their peanut butter aroma. In the end, I realize that any tree I plant here will never achieve my expectations. So I leave it bare, landscaped, ready for planting. This is how the house looks now.
Waking up with someone next to you is more than just the attainment of a childhood fantasy, it is relief. It is finally being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘Now you can stop telling people that you were happier alone, because that sort of self-deception always made everyone uncomfortable.’ What a shame that I always knew what they were getting at, but could never bring myself to let on. I was that boy in middle school. I’m that boy now.
I travel more in those days than since, or no, rather my trips from that time can be measured in miles and not baggage. A black bear in Juneau comes between me and my rental car, never looks my way, continues on into the forest. He cannot decide if he approves of my presence there, or if we are after the same prey. In the room I remember how much I adored the three years in college in absolute silence and solitude. I adore the concept, anyway, because in those few months the house was filled with noise and disquietude. In the hotel room, I turn on the television to mask the humming from the fluorescent lamp. That’s all.
I know I should go out, but god what's the point? I've got regrets sitting all alone on the fake mahogany nightstand, with no one to give them comfort. Who will think of my babies? My nameless, hurtful offspring, with nicknames like Provo and Albuquerque. I wonder if they'd be lost if I never returned? Or if they'd escape when the cleaning lady came, and drift from room to room to torment the other weary pilgrims. Who would adopt my remorse?
I’m sitting at the table thumbing through the pages of local restaurants, halfheartedly counting out the change on the floor next to me, next to a single boot and a half-empty bottle of gin, this fullness of sitting in a quiet hotel room alone, with nothing but the thoughts of all the horrid things I’ve done to keep me company. Maybe not fullness, what's the word? Perhaps there's no word. I hope there's not a word for this. Being able to describe it would only make it worse, diagnosis worse than the disease. There’re too many goddamned words to describe what shouldn’t be given more than singular terms.
The liquor store warns me, of course, that the consumption of alcohol will lead to me finding myself irresistible, or rather, unresistant to scratches, nicks and knots. Through the television speakers I hear a man ask an audience how they want to experience what remains of their lives? Do they want to fill the days with laughter and noble deeds, and cast aside the humiliation and crises? Or perhaps he’s not addressing an audience. It might, in fact, be the fluorescent lamp.
In Montana, I am forced to rent an SUV, the hotel a lodge in the middle of Gallatin National Forest. When the pavement gives way to gravel, an overcast darkness descends, and it’s not long before I have the 4-wheel drive engaged, am crawling through the Indian Paintbrush searching for the dark shape that crossed my path. When I capture her in the headlights, she never looks my way. In the field below, the lights of a dozen eyes reflected and bounding away in frightened pairs, thankful for my presence, or in any case, eager to take advantage of an opportunity presented.
The odd, unexplainable headaches are the most fulfilling, because you can very easily imagine the worst and most beautiful symptoms possible. At this very moment I’m convinced a 3 carat diamond is being created by the fiery heat of my worries and intense pressure of my paranasal sinuses. I imagine Stage 2 jala neti is all that stands between baby and a new car.
Other times I imagine the unusual head pains are nothing more than old memories, stored on the top shelf of a closet I had completely forgotten, jarred suddenly loose by recent near hits. Or perhaps they were near misses, which would seem to me a misnomer. Wouldn’t a near miss imply a hit? In any case, I open the door and there is junk lying at my feet.
It’s a photograph of me at 12-years-old, holding my hand to the sun, the magical properties of which can destroy e. coli if left in the light, bottled for 6 hours or more. This is my second expiation of the day, the first measured in humiliation and not blood. I have been taken to task by a Dungeness crab, the only one I was able to keep caged as I pulled, hand over hand the yellow nylon until the trap surfaced. I’m sure no one told me that the animal would punish my curiosity, and in kinder circumstances they might have laughed gently at the lesson learned. They shook their heads. There are children left behind, and children taken to the front on the shoulders of giants, but really, most are just standing around in the middle rocking in the boat, drifting to shore. Picking up scraps from men who take that knowledge for granted. There are a lot of things these men never tell you, including where babies come from, and more importantly, where babies go.
I was thinking about this crab today, suddenly finding himself in Ascension, and I can very well believe the simpler of the sea creatures truly do imagine a heaven above their world, an angry prism that occasionally drops low into the water and takes his sacrifice. Only the fish that swim near the surface ever seem to really fight the line. I hooked a King salmon on the second to last day, and I regretted hauling it in. At the first call of Fish On!, the salmon leapt 5 feet into the air, and repeated the acrobatics until there was nothing left but to club the back of its head until its scales and blood decorated our boots.
The ling cod surfaced without so much as offering the resistance of his considerable weight. When his great round head broke the surface of the water, the line was limp. He had offered himself to this heaven faster than I could reel. I could sense his matter-of-fact laconism.
Murky water down below, into weightless clarity, I once felt myself lifted from similarly roiled currents, and I held my breath a little longer, thoughts of safety secondary to a child filled with the wonders of rising and what might possibly come next.
i adore the shore, and even more the grocery store, with its uncanny tendency to play 'I Want to Know What Love Is' every single time i walk down aisle four. but today as i was searching for stomach relief with protective coating action, i suddenly realized that no music was playing, and it was a surprise to me, a great and lonely surprise much like when you think you and your best friend are double teaming a crack hooker only come to find out you're actually at home alone reading Cosmopolitan with a military surplus flashlight that smells faintly of phosphorous.
hold on, the phone is ringing.
uh, excuse me for a moment.
* * *
From: brandon To: Cathleen Black
Dear Hearst Enterprises,
In the October 17th post on the hugely popular and women-friendly web site, One Child Left Behind Dot Com, it might appear that the author was comparing reading one of your magazines to chomping at the naughty bits of a drug-addicted prostitute. That couldn't be further from the truth, as Mr. R----- only frequents licensed brothels and massage parlors. In fact, the only real victims here are the street hookers, bereft of his money and services, which more often than not includes a slide show of the various birds who visit his backyard, and at least one that doesn't, the Western Scrub Jay.
That. That used to be a television. And now it is a very poorly performing nightstand. Too narrow at the top, you see.
AND THEN SHE SAID
When did it stop being, you know, a television?
Well, that would have been before it came into my possession. As long as I’ve had it, it has never worked. It was given to me by a neighbor who thought it wrong that I had no television. He said it only needed a single part, but the term for that part was unfamiliar to me. So when I called the local electronics store, I stayed completely silent on the other end of the line unable to describe what I needed, until he hung up.
AND THEN SHE SAID
I could listen to you talk all day.
You may have to. We have no television.
And then by the 10th day, she had still not broken his heart, and he was despondent. So he called her, but stood silent on the other end of the line, unable to describe why she should have left long before now. And then he wondered if he hadn’t tried hard enough to drive her away, if he had neglected all those little things that had always worked in the past, but, no, he thought and recalled the forgotten dates, the misspelled names, the inappropriate gifts, the drunken over-familiarity. No, I’ve done everything right, he thought. And he smiled, because he remembered that on several occasions, she had even laughed out loud at one or two of his errors in judgment.
And he wondered this for so long that he didn’t notice the phone had gone dead, and or that she had gotten into her car, and that she made the cross-town drive 7 minutes more quickly than she ever had before, and that suddenly she was standing right next to him, the phone still in his hand, and she leaned over to kiss him, but at the last moment, he ducked.
AND THEN SHE SAID
You’re far too pretty for me to dump, so just knock that shit off already. And she removed his clothes and led him to his bedroom, and she fired up a notebook computer. And they watched a movie while their feet became reacquainted after a long absence. And afterwards, she put the computer on top of the television set, and she didn’t worry that it might teeter off the narrow ledge, or that she would, for that matter, because she had far more pressing concerns on her mind.
A Who, What, Where, When, Why and How with an 8-year-old
Brandon: Who is your best friend? Besides ME.
Tristan: Noah and Tyler. Noah lets me borrow stuff. Tyler shares food with me. If you give to Tyler, you get from Tyler.
Brandon: What is your earliest memory?
Tristan: That’s a hard one. I think when I went to church and Naya was put in the little bath (ed. note – her baptism). I remember that the guy grabbed her and she didn’t cry at all. (laughs. ed. note – not sure why). My uncle and aunt came. And my grandparents.
Brandon: Where is your favorite place in the whole world?
Tristan: Gameworks. And home. And at Noah’s house. The fair. The zoo. Camping. Swimming places.
Brandon: When were you happiest?
Tristan: Christmas and Halloween. (ed. note – I start shaking my head in disappointment). Oh come on! Hey, don’t write come on. When I ate pizza.
Brandon: Why do you think you were born?
Tristan: Because you guys really wanted to be with someone and you love me. Because I might discover something in life. Like a new rock that no one else has discovered before.
Brandon: How can we make the world a better place?
Tristan: That’s a silly one. DON’T WRITE THAT DOWN. Uh, teaching people to not throw junk out of their windows. And to follow the speed limit. To make new inventions. Like robots that serve you what you want. Like a million dollars. You can write that down.
I discovered today that I need more scientists in my life. I would think they would make interesting drunks, and when I groped them, they could explain why my behavior is inappropriate from a scientific standpoint. Better living through science, I would say, and I'm not sure, but I bet that scientists do not roll their eyes.
I engage in imaginary dialogues, as is evident from all the ducks. But my imaginary talkalogues with all the chemists and physicists and biologists and biophysicists and biochemists and ornithologists that wander the vast and endless sea of my mindscape in their lab coats and form-fitting sweaters are sadly incomplete. For while I can make up dialogue for ordinary people, like doctors and lawyers and gunnery sergeants, I am not nearly smart enough to speak for a scientist.
/cue the ducks
Me: So, can my response to her be defined as a chemical reaction? Scientist: Me: Can objects in motion defy the laws of gravity if alcohol is introduced? Scientist: Me: Okay, here's one. There are some one million species in the world. Scientist: Uh, a little more than that. Me: So, my question is, why aren’t we seeing new species pop up every day? All I seem to hear about is animals going extinct, which makes no sense since based on history, species should be constantly expanding. Does this mean that we’ve topped out and will eventually return to one single organism? Scientist: There's an easy explanation for that. Me: Really? What is it? Scientist: Me: Why do I keep falling down? Scientist: Me: What is poetry? Scientist: It's the rearrangement of words for their aesthetic qualities. Me: Does it get easier? Scientist: I'm afraid it doesn't. It's always hard. I still carry a calculator, if you catch my meaning. Me: I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Scientist: I think we are.
In relationships, very little holds more fascination for me than the things we do to each other when making up after a fight.
Nooo! I’m not talking about THOSE kinds of things, pervy! Get your mind out of the filth pot!
What I mean are the disgraceful sex acts meant to humiliate the other person into a learned lesson.
(Oh. I can see by the look in your eyes that these ARE the things you were thinking about. WELCOME TO THE GUTTER. YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE.)
And like all my depraved fascinations, this is one I’d like to figure out before I’m 64, after which I’m relatively sure the best part of make up sex will be the epsom bath and the nap.
But it’s not like I’ll ever get to the make-up sex. When I’m that old, I probably won’t even realize when I’m fighting….
THE YEAR 2037 Alex: You’re such an old ninny! You can’t remember a goddamned thing and you’re impotent! Brandon: At least I’m not impotent!
(I’ve never seen an old couple get into a smack down, so my concerns about the lack of make-up sex after 64 are well-founded in limited observation, stereotype and supposition.)
Which might explain why currently it’s so goddamned difficult to get into a fight with me and move on towards forgiveness.
Alex: Fine, I’m sorry for hurting your feelings. Brandon: You KNOW how big a baby I am. Alex: What’s important is that I’ve apologized and we still love each other and can move on and forget all about it. Brandon: WRONG! If you think I’m letting this go, you’ve got an appointment with the INS, sister!
But can you blame me? Make-up sex is one of those exercises you can be bad at and still have a relatively good time. It’s really the one instance where you might have a heart attack and still feel like you came out on top. It is a moral obligation to pick up the tab.
All this assumes, of course, that the person with whom you are fighting isn’t an inner demon or a mannequin wrapped in that sweater she left behind in 1992. In which case, you should probably stop relying so heavily on technology to fill the conversational void. After all, there are not, like, two Ps in iPod.
As I mentioned, we come from a long line of muted kinderhoods, years of silence when the other 3-year-olds were taking their first verbal steps towards greatness, we were tentative, or indifferent. Or, as my white grandmother used to say about me, ‘Y’all, he’s just a real patient chi-uhld. He’s just takin’ his precious ti-uhm.’
I’m convinced I was let off the hook because I was a pretty baby. I was blonde and fond of oversized collars and sweater vests, unlike most of the other toddlers who had no sense of fashion, likely because they were breast-fed and hadn’t yet come to appreciate the subtle differences between menthol and low-tar.
Sadly, we caught up, but when you lose those first few years of speech, you spend an entire lifetime never knowing quite what to say in appropriate moments. Sentenced to writing out should-have-saids and tormenting yourself with pointless revisions.
Oh, and scarring your own children, in that ironic loop I like to call the VICIOUS CYCLE GAH DAMMNIT.
“I saw your butt crack.”
“What?”
“When you were fixing the dishwasher. I saw your butt crack.”
FOR THE RECORD, I do NOT have a butt crack in the PLUMBER sense of the word. My opinion of food is, “Meh.” So it’s not like I really have substantial CRACKAGE, less’n you consider that each of us has a crack in the technical sense of the word. And low-cut jeans were just as hip for men two years ago as for women, and really, WHO STANDS THERE AND WATCHES WHEN SOMEONE FIXES A DISHWASHER?!? Obviously, even if you take up the belt an extra notch by poking random holes through the pleather with an ice pick (WE WERE POOR, PEOPLE), there will still be a BIT of ass cleavage.
I mean, it was a little harmless crack (WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE), but it was MY crack. It's one thing to see it on a construction worker, but seeing it on a family member is paramount to abuse.
Of course, I suppose I’m hypocritical for whining about it, since I’m of the opinion that children should be mildly abused so that they'll be more interesting when they grow up, but I didn't really intend on abusing my son. Nevertheless, I HAVE. He's scarred, and not the GOOD kind of scarred, not the SEXY scarred that will get him sympathetic make-out sessions when he’s writing short stories about it in college, and I might as well stop saving for his college, anyway, because what's the point anymore?
Or maybe not.
Last week, Alex came home from her wine convention, and she bought him some tchotchkes which were wholly uninteresting for an 8-year-old, and I thought, THANK GOD HE’S ASLEEP. But she also wrote a letter to him, one that I didn’t notice at first. And the next morning when he woke up, I walked into his bedroom and saw him leaning against his dresser, tracing the handwritten words with his heavy blue eyes, and he was smiling and longing and falling into some previously unknown world where each crossroad bears the street signs for Literacy and Love.
I know that the latest trend is to put all your money on going out with a bang, but I sometimes cannot help but notice that the safe investment has always been and thoroughly remains the simple sigh and whimper.
I crave nostalgia, though I’ve grown remarkably inept at predicting the past. Out loud, I speak into my notebook how we share places that you’ve never even visited, the remarkable ability of technology to defy the space-time continuum. It is a continuum that shows remarkable cruelty, especially over the telephone, where you let me once linger on the line until it was time to make a choice, and I chose poorly, but decisively, nevertheless. And you signed on the dotted line until years later when I kept reliving the good times you asked, then why not go back to the way things used to be? I thought, we’re not so wired for forgiveness that way. And you followed, then why relive it at all? And I thought, we’re wired for cravings.
About this time, several years back, I was put in charge of an ordinary houseplant that suffered from the floral equivalent of elephantiasis. A dracaena fragrans, some 10 feet over its expected height. I wrestled with ungainly limbs, yellowing leaves and untilled soil. But mostly I wrestled with co-workers who begged me to prune the goddamned thing, and I always thought about the David’s Phlox and Sedum we coppice every year, but those are outdoor plants with room to grow. This, as the old saying goes, was something entirely else.
I stayed late one night, and the darkness of the Evergreen State College campus is profound and lonely when viewed from behind the windows of a well-lit office. I knew a girl back then, an artist who turned every head but always came to my door, and I wondered if she had tricked the locks because the room was full of jasmine and nutmeg. No one came. At the exit, I looked up at the dracaena and saw that it had flowered.
For a week, the flower released its fragrance at 5:45 every night, long after everyone had gone home. “How come you keep working so late?” was answered by cryptic shrugs. Who the hell stays late for a flower?
A week later, a co-worker made a grand entrance into my office, a pair of scissors in one hand, the dracaena’s flower in the other. “I thought you would like to know! That I took the liberty of! Cutting the flower from the plant! (SHE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW ITS NAME) The flowers drain its energy, you know!”
She laid the petals on my desk and left before I could commit murder/suicide. She was crestfallen when I saw her next, “HOW COULD YOU,” I said with my eyes. WHY WOULD YOU.
I’ve since written you letters, and then edited out any question marks. It’s the interrogatives that strain the relationship, like so many flowers that spend their days in silence, steeling themselves for the knife. These days, it seems, I'm content to let everything run its course.
Dave left a very astute comment, “Wait until after TequilaCon!” and those words bounced around inside my numbed skull like Obiwan repeating, “Trust your feelings, Luke.” And no matter how melted down I may have felt last week, how lovingly I caressed the self-destruct button, how achingly close I drove to the rumble strips along the highway, I knew that I still have some bit of purpose left in this life, and that purpose is to review potential bars so that Jenny doesn’t wind up hosting bloggers from all around the world at some corner Gas ’n Sip all the while thinking, “YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DE-LINK ME JUST BECAUSE BRANDON DECIDED 2006-2007 WOULD BE THE YEAR HE DECIDED TO BAIL ON SANITY. AREN’T YOU?!”
On Friday, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and started all over again. Once in Portland, I made a bee line to Kevin’s house where I said, “LET’S SHOWER OURSELVES WITH AFFECTION.”
If all of this sounds like some song you vaguely remember from childhood, it’s only because I’ve been humming this tune and marching to the beat of that drum for so long that it’s surely infected your subconscious spaces. But it doesn’t carry that joyous tone of old, though I’m smiling, like how MISSION ACCOMPLISHED has taken on an ironic meaning of late (CRAP).
I tend to throw down the drinks a little more heavilier and oftener when I’m in this state (OREGON).
But I did manage a few laughs, and though I made an ass of myself, I hear that some people are fond of asses, fonder than even less offensive parts, and I had a good long ride home the next day where I could yell GAH! DAMMIT! every time I remembered something else I done or said. It was a cathartic and woefully short 100 miles.
We stopped by Paddy’s, and I hadn’t seen Asia in far too long, and I forgot about my leaking reactor core momentarily, and I basked in the dark glow of the bar and in the fierce kind of energy she exudes, which must be an accumulation of all the miles she has stepped on, all those marathons and bike trails. I feel slower than her in almost every way, ‘cept talkin’, my own barnacle growth from years of never saying a damned thing.
We ambled on to Rialto Pool Room, which smelled more of empty furnaces than movie stars, and though space aplenty, ill suited to a gathering of international bloggers. Even those enamored of pirates and ninjas. But we were joined by Sibyl! and Vahid and their friend Chelsea. And I continued to drink, this time moving on to a dirty Churchill martini (2 parts gin, peek at the vermouth, 1 part gin, drop of brine), more because it’s a favorite joke of mine. And because I was still carrying a bit of the melancholy with me, and sadness is a mission for alcohol (ACCOMPLISHED).
By this time I cannot but barely remember, but I know we went to another joint. And I can’t for the life of me remember the name of this place, though I do know it didn’t make the TequilaConPACNW07 shortlist. And I don’t know how we got to the next place, which is my favorite (HOLD ON, I’M GETTING THERE), but we got there.
The Rose and Raindrop, in addition to having upstairs space, also has wi-fi, so at the TequilaCon event, none of us even have to speak to each other, but can rely upon instant messaging and electronic mailing and live blogging and pod casting, should anyone be so inclined. And anyone who can’t be in Portland in the real-sense, can still be there in the non-sense, and drink from the comfort of his/her own home.
There is a place across the street where they serve french fries. And it was the second time I’ve had drinks at Rose and Raindrop only to be followed by across-the-street french fries with Asia. But it was the first time I ever clipped the butt off a half-cigarette and started smoking it in front of a group of shocked onlookers and friends. Mercifully, Chelsea joined me, so that the whole thing seemed quite normal.
At Kevin’s house, these are the words that were exchanged:
Brandon: I want to check my email. Kevin: Nope. Brandon: Please. Kevin: Nope. Brandon: Ple—zzzzzz. Kevin: Good night, you sweet thing. /kisses me on forehead and tucks me in *
*I’m guessing.
In the morning, he said, “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever spent the night without vomiting.” And I said, “I’d like some water. And a banana. And some of that fizzy orange powder that wards off colds and recollections.”
On the way home, I kept seeing things that reminded me of my camera, and how it forced me to stop for what remains beautiful in this world, as though having a camera was like a responsibility to remember and share. And now I fear that I’ve returned to my old habit of walking with my head down.
I also found $20 in my pocket, which concerns me, because they are not MY $20. And I would like very much to return these monies to their rightful owner.
In my backyard, one of the remaining sunflowers, heavy with seed and underfertilized, had fallen nearly to the ground, pendent, watching over a newly sprouted dandelion. And there’s me, caressing a button that no longer exists.
I learned last week that I always imagine the worst when faced with silence. It’s a minor failing I worked on correcting between the bars on Friday night. Mission accomplished.
Civil liberties are the freedoms that help individuals ward off unwanted government penetration into our lives and persons (Hi, Mark!). Sort of like post-pubescent genital hair.
Of course, history proves that when very bad people blow up your flying machines, the government penetrators will react by punishing YOU, similar to how in the 1970s, rape victims were often accused of provoking their molesters (Hi, Mark!). This, of course, confused the molesters into doing it again and again and again until they were just so raw from guilt that they were forced to change their names and move to other communities nearby with open school board positions. I think this is called reverse psychosis.
Because I’m smarter than most people, due to my liberal arts degree and a few wise choices (GLUE: NO, LSD: YES pdreslk daldk e!) the fact that I'M being punished because of what some fanatics did makes a kind of clever sense. Punishing the actual criminals is so, I don't know, predictable. What’s clearly needed is some outside-the-box thinking, and whatnot. Whenever I get frisked in the airport security line and asked to pronounce some particularly difficult English language words, like ‘heifer’ and ‘gall dang,’ I never forget to wink at the minimum wage staffer. SOLIDARITY.
But my honest opinion is that most of us are not doing enough to confuse the terrorists by our legal self-flagellation and lurid instant messaging (KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, MARK!). If we really want to bust a rhyme, we need to show the world that we’re not ADDICTED to our freedoms. Really. We can quit anytime. We only do it occasionally. We just do it to relax and to avoid making OTHERS who are TRULY addicted to freedom less uncomfortable. Really.
NOW YOU’RE SOUNDING LIKE A SEPARATIST.
But because I’m willing to put my money ($1,137.45) where my mouth is (ASS), I hereby pledge to give up even more of these freedoms in an effort to confuse those who really want to fuck us over (NOT YOU, MARK!).
Freedom of assembly (Big crowds of people creep me out, especially WTO mobs) Freedom of religion (No church for 16 years and counting!) Right to a fair trial (NOTHING TO HIDE) Private consensual homosexual sex (much)
A Musing We are much different in our longing exercises. I need to watch a girl for a bit of time before I devolve into hopeless romantification, although this period can be shortened somewhat if the girl exhibits any of the following behaviors:
1. Appearance of restive melancholy. 2. While putting hair into ponytail, glasses slip recklessly close to the tip of her nose. 3. Adjusts rack in front of disapproving friends followed by rolling of the eyes and puff on cigarette.
She, on the other hand, needs but one momentary glimpse and is capable of creating a Lifetime fantasy. Honestly, it’s a wise course, because I’ve seen some of the objects of her affection, and looking too terribly long at any would certainly increase the amount of effort needed to satisfy any pre-somnolent urges.
Anachronism Bad news, folks. Apparently One Child Left Behind is too small to be considered a blog by the International Astronomical Union. It has been reclassified as a small solar system body (SSSB).
File Under: Jokes that would have been funny several months ago.
I still get more page views than Mark Foley.
File Under: Jokes that will probably never be funny.
I read about that first small step, and loved the way it felt, the apparent reiteration of a point more transformative that any taken since. Not a tautology, per se, but a reinforcement of an accomplishment both for man and for mankind alike. The differences between the two more subtle than the grays between right and wrong framed on a moonlit sky might otherwise reveal. I don’t like that they’ve somehow found the missing vowel.
Everyone has a missing ‘A,’ but that doesn't mean finding it wraps up all the loose ends. If she had enunciated that missing letter in amoral or asexual, then perhaps I might not even be here to complain. Perhaps my politics might be less so, or my symptoms undiagnosed. Perhaps I’d pay no attention to the people who choose to jump.
I know bridges. I know bridges heavy like the concretization of our stubbornness, years of saying, 'I said I was sorry,' when the words were never actually murmured. I know bridges. Bridges long and elastic like the sensation of a strand of hair in your mouth, the consequences for spitting direr than the swallow. I know bridges. Low enough to the ground that the suicide attempt's in vain, and passersby think you're merely in a hurry. You leap, landing surprised, a few meters below on your feet, and continue on your way. I know bridges. Truthful spans, like the Liar's Bridge in Sibiu, that no matter how dishonest you've been never actually fall.
And I know that to be second in her eyes was as if to be a-visible, and that it if anyone might care, it would take 40 years and a team of scientists to prove I was even there at all.
If I were a stay at home dad, I would not have a blog. Here is what I would have:
A crack addiction An intervention A relapse
Not necessarily in that order.
* * *
Alex is away for the weekend, on her microversion of Sideways, stumbling from one vineyard to the next throughout the Willamette Valley, known in particular for its eclectic fusion of Pinot Noir and Bourbon varietals. I can only hope that when she and her sister get picked up by a tandem of amorous fellows that she gets stuck with the ‘insecure soul-searcher.’ Or the wingman.
Which means for the second week in a row, I am babysitting, when by all rights I should be researching my novel. Well, more of a novella, really. Actually, half-way between a shortstory and a novella. A shovella, titled ‘A Queue of Ducklets.’ I know why the caged bird sings, I said, but how can I get them to have more sex? It’s central to the plot of my shovella.
Any of you who have pets know that at some point in the middle of a long day of ignoring your animals, you have to put down your whiskeys and address the anxiously wagging tails and say, ‘Okay, let’s get in the car so we can DRIVE TO THE PARK FOR A WALK.’
In that same tenor, I stood up from the computer and walked to the truck. The children shortly followed.
WE’RE GOING ADVENTURING.
YAYYYY!*
*Note that this is an ominous yayyy! You should know, if you choose to keep reading, that this will turn out badly. Here’s an excerpt: ‘At that point I turned to my dear children, the fruit of the fruit of my looms, and screamed, WHY DO YOU HATE ME?’
* * *
We have a favorite place for adventuring. It is a creek fed by the lake near our house, a hidden, rocky place sheltered by cedars, alders and cottonwoods. This creek feeds a wetlands known in our community simply as ‘The Meadow.’ In the late summer, the creek drops to such a level that you can follow its rocky course to the beginnings of this meadow, where without fail, a wild animal trail or two will lead you out into its heart. It is a lovely place, whose only evidence of civilization is a solitary patch of mint, the leaves of which we usually chew before overturning the stones in search of crawdads, climbing the lower branches of the alders, and then making our way into the tall reeds and cattails.
I usually have to carry Naya through the meadow, since there is no ground of which to speak. In essence, we are walking atop the rootballs of dense grass, and water seeps through the footprints you leave behind. Tristan started to get a little too far ahead at one point, and I told him to stop. Something didn’t feel right. I scanned the meadow wondering if we were alone.
Naya begged to be put down, to chase after her brother. Eventually I complied, setting her right next to me. The texture of the ground, so unfamiliar to her feet, her body far too light to weigh down the grasses into a suitable walkway, caused her to fall. She started crying, and at first I thought it was from the humiliation of the tumble, but you can tell cries apart just as easily as colors on a palette. I dropped to my knees immediately and lifted her up, knowing that I would see yellowjackets.
I grabbed them all off of her, crushing the ones I could get a hold of, somehow only getting stung one time in the process. I told Tristan to go back because there were bugs, and I took off with Naya. I noticed a wasp on her jacket, futilely stinging at the fabric and wiped it away. Tristan was in a panic behind us, begging me not to leave him, unaware that he had nearly already passed me on the way back to the creek bed.
I set Naya down and patted her clothes, then tried to find out where she had been stung. I saw a solitary pinprick just below her left lower lip, which was now noticeably swollen. She was crying, but not so loudly as if in mortal pain. I asked Tristan if he had been stung, and he said no, but he wanted to leave. I remember an incident a few years back where he took a stinger in his left eyelid, and his eye swelled completely shut for two days, only gradually returning to normal after a week. It was a pity, being as how this was the first summer in 8 years that I had not been stung by a hornet or a scorpion. Tristan’s had nearly as poor a record, but as far as I know, this was Naya’s first time.
Past the patch of mint, Tristan started screaming. A wasp had apparently gotten into his jacket, and only now, so far from the meadow, had it finally found a penetrable surface. Tristan pulled off his jacket and started running around in circles, screaming. I had to grab him and tell him to calm down, because he was panicking Naya. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
* * *
Back at the car, Tristan screamed, “I’M NEVER GOING TO BE A SCIENTIST NOW!”
I rolled my eyes and imagined my 28-year-old son, coming inside for dinner after performing odd jobs around the neighborhood.
I tried to offer a trip to the store for ice cream, but both kids were yelling so loud that the chip in my windshield had expanded to a full-blown $200 fine under Washington State traffic law prohibiting obstructing cracks.
But I found no haven inside my home. In my rusty Romanian, I think I might have accidentally told Alex's mother that we had all been attacked by a basilisk, and would soon pass into the next, hopefully quieter, astral plane.
Naya’s lip had now swollen to 1,000 times its normal size, going from Cute to Novocaine to Botox to Silicon DDD to Hoppity Hop in a matter of minutes.
And I’m convinced the only reason she continued to scream was because both Naya and my mother-in-law grayed-out each time they looked at her face, VUT DEED YOU DO TO CHEELDREN?
On more than one occasion, I was forced to yell at everyone, ‘WHY DO YOU HATE ME?’ Both dogs wisely cowered beneath the couch.
* * *
It was so much easier when I was growing up in the era of the original SAHDs (Stay Away from Home Dads).
There was no adventuring, no concerns that your dad wasn’t doing enough to assuage your pain, no useless explanations that the benadryl was actually going to help you and for the last time I’m not trying to poison you into silence, and here, for the love of god, Daddy will drink another spoonful (8) just to prove that I’m not giving you ca-ca and poo-poo and yucky.
In fact, it took me years before I understood what non-custodial actually meant. In class, when we all talked about what our fathers did, my answer was always. ‘I dunno. I just know he’s not a janitor.’
And dads back then were always so much wiser. They taught us that crying out in pain only led to more pain, the so-called ‘Reasons to Cry.’
Which might explain why our favorite game back in the day was something we called ‘Shhh! Be Very Quiet!’
* * *
After a few hours of children’s cartoons, a hefty dosage of ice cream laced with orange-flavored ibuprofen, and a six-pack of Molson (Hey, I was stung, too, you know. And my tears were silent and internal.), the erstwhile racket had softened to mostly whimpers.
Some scars remain. Tristan was afraid that every room held a splinter cell of hornets, and refused to go into the garage to get me a beer.
