he will always be with you; he left himself in everything he created and in all of those he knew and loved. that action, the act of his creating, of his loving is a continuous loop of film, a helix of time through which we make contact here, and here, and here (and forever. each time we touch it, we may weep, we may flail about in frustration, we may love, and we may choose to speak of his talent, his friendship, his wit, his life.) the confusion of the sudden loss seems unfathomable, it is a question without an answer; it just is. i won’t tell you that it gets better, that time makes it bearable, why should i lie to you? it scares you, his loss is a worry now, a nub, a bead that can be rolled between your fingers, picked at, murmured to; you’ll catch yourself with it at the oddest times. and then, you’ll see him in the crowd at the ________ just out of the corner of your eye, missing him when you look directly in that direction; he’ll cross in front of you and all you’ll see is his shadow, coattail, hair, black eyes flashing. those moments will startle you and calm you. you’ll appreciate their appearance (not that you’ll hope it’s true, but that he was there for just that heartbeat–from his to yours.) although i do not know what took him from you (and you may not either, truly), the actions of the past, those ongoing activities, emotions, events are still alive though and as imperfect as they may seem now, they will always continue to exist in the past and that is the gift he left for you.
Posts Tagged ‘death
untitled (the past imperfective)
wislawa szymborska, 1923-2012
A Cat in an Empty Apartment
Wislawa Szymborska
| Die? One does not do that to a cat. Because what’s a cat to do in an empty apartment? Climb the walls. Caress against the furniture. It seems that nothing has changed here, but yet things are different. Nothing appears to have been relocated, yet everything has been shuffled about. The lamp no longer burns in the evenings.Footsteps can be heard on the stairway, but they’re not the ones. The hand which puts the fish on the platter is not the same one which used to do it. Something here does not begin |
All the closets were peered into. The shelves were walked through. The rug was lifted and examined. Even the rule about not scattering papers was violated.What more is to be done? Sleep and wait. Let him return, |
translated by Walter Whipple
'sunday morning' graphite on paper by mike tracy
Like this:
late in october 1982
here i am now, at the middle again, although this time i’ve slipped quietly into the future side of the middle of the story even though i am still looking backward. i’m holding my breath, sleekly gliding under the surface of memory, the imperceptible movement beginning at the hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle, arch, heel, toe, propelling me forward (a shudder, a spasm), the noise of the outside world muffled by the time above and the depths below; i’d dived in from the river bank unnoticed as you passed by on your raft, a hand dangling, your rudder; my eyes closed at first, but now open, the distortion of viewing life filtered through the cleansing waters of time causing not the slightest disturbance on the surface. if you’re looking down into this story, all you’ll see is the slick shadow of my passing, the light glinting off my skin, hair, bone, a trout among the river rock and shadow.
i close my eyes again, the water streaming through the hair on my head, flattening my eyelashes, rippling through my mustache and over the stubble on my chin, across in a caress of the hair on my chest, slowing down and tugging gently at my swim trunks, their soft pink color in contrast to the tan of my legs and the golden hair glimmering in the palm-diffused sunlight. i don’t even think i’m holding my breath any longer, the pool too short to drown in, the first time in months that i’ve not been afraid to breath and surely not ready to surface yet, i flip around and push off from the stucco, a torpedo with my arms at my sides, as aerodynamic (if you’re in the water, shouldn’t it be aquadynamic?), the parentheses a breath at the surface, and sleek as an otter, a seal, sade murmuring from the poolside speakers, the throb of music like the blood in your temple, chest, groin.
how do you know when you’re in love? it’s the question you ask your mother/father (whichever is available) when you’re a teenager. you look closely at them as they answer, divining the truth from the arch of their brow, the tremor in their voice as they search for a long ago feeling that they can communicate to you, the smile on their lips as they remember their first love, “you’ll just know,” they say, but what if you never asked that question? what if you never fell in love as a teenager because you were afraid to expose yourself, your secret loves locked away, buried treasure, you the count of monte cristo, blackbeard; the call of the wild thrumming inside your head, your lovelife (a fiction, but as valid as the truth.)
as it turns out, “you’ll just know” is as perfect an answer as there ever was.
late in may 1982
death does you no favors. when my mother died on the 23rd, my friends and i were yet unaccustomed to what was required, i am so sorry to hear about your mother. i was so sorry to hear about your mother. i am so sorry to hear about your mother. i was so sorry to hear about your mother, from the present tense to the past tense, she was a wonderful woman. she is a wonderful woman, what is correct? at the news, should you consider it a past event (which it is), but for the person whose mother has died, it is still a present event, ongoing, without end, but not occurring in the future, what to do then?
to ignore it risks offending the bereaved, but talking about it is uncomfortable and requires, at this stage of your life, skills that may be beyond your capabilities (haven’t we all gotten much, much better at this now? just a few years later we were able to negotiate the rocky shoals of death of close friends taking the hands of their lovers, parents, sisters, brothers, stroking an arm, looking them in the eye, smiling in understanding of their grief. after all, it was not unlike your own.) but before then, experience lacking, my friends were worthless to me. they could not understand my grief or if they did they did not have the words to express it–not that i would have heard them, my hearing impaired by the loss. (it was as if all sound had been blocked by cotton stuffed in my ear canals. it remained so for weeks.)
two nights after her funeral, back in the city, i could not sit alone in my apartment and instead of turning to my friends, i forced myself upon two men whom i’d met a couple of weeks earlier. i walked over to their apartment and insisted that they love me. they did their awkward best to calm me; we smoked a joint, we drank a few beers, they touched me, stroked me, undressed me, swallowed me, ate me (little bites of nipples, armpits, necks, ears, thighs, balls and cock) grabbed me by the hair, a push-me pull-you of sweating, groaning, release. they fell asleep on either side of me, a hairy arm thrown over my chest, the scratch of leg hair, a puppy pile. but i could not sleep and quietly extracted myself, dressed and slipped back into the night. i never saw them again or if i did i never recognized them nor they me. i never thanked them for their hospitality, the love, a poultice, with which they tried to heal me (if they even knew what was ailing me.)
i went to work, hungover, distracted, anxious to be done with the day(s) so that i could start the night(s) all over again. everything accomplished in daylight was by rote (lessons learned) without enthusiasm, shell-shocked by the hole of loss (an echoing cave), all of this time erased, wiped away, unremembered, eager to leave, cocktails on the way home, drunk and out again in the dark (do you see a pattern here?) once, during these 29 days i thought i’d fallen in love, spending hours of my night life and days off in his bed, the noise of the street coming through the open window, but i gave him up for you.
late in june 1982
“how do you know when you’re in love?” was not the question i was asking myself one early evening during cocktail hour at a halsted street preppie dive. i’d displayed myself on a stool, ragged levis pulled tight against my spread legs, elbows propping myself up on the bar, leaning back, sucking on a bottle of beer or holding it against my crotch (subtlety not my strong suit) in a display of abject wantonness, still on this course of self-immolation, the fuse lit, doused in alcohol, ready to go up in flames without a thought of self-preservation; the future inconsequential, non-existent, illusory, a mirage.
but there you were, all business suit, vest, tie, beard, drink in hand, standing across from me and then standing between my legs, touching each other (was there a kiss?) and i thought i’d hooked you, but you slipped away, a card pushed in my pocket, “call me,” and out the door, gone. if i’d lost in the past 22 days i didn’t recall, but losing you that night propelled me out of the bar, walking home in the late spring warmth, west on diversey to my apartment where i may have seen it for the first time with my eyes open and my head clear. i did call you, we made a date for dinner a week later (29 days) and met cute (it does happen) at my friend’s restaurant.
we’ve told this story often enough, but it still charms me…my friend, the owner’s wife, sits down with us and acts as if we’ve known each other forever, including you in our stories as if you knew them already, acting as if our past had been completely reconciled with our future. did she know even before we did? or was it already apparent and only the participants were blind/deaf/dumb to the fact that we had fallen in love, always the last to know?
you just know.
Like this:
i woke this morning in the middle of a sentence. i was unable to complete it for what it meant fled with my waking. it could have been angel wings (or crow’s wings) that pulled the rest of it aloft, the flap-flap flutter of their beating the only aftereffect i can recall with any clarity.
an unfinished sentence is a building under construction and then abandoned. you may have watched the workers as they laid the bricks, the architect standing on the sidewalk pointing at his renderings and then at a window on the 2nd floor, the crew foreman taking notes as the cement truck rumbles up and lets its air brakes release in a whoosh of harsh air. they’re busy for weeks, maybe even years, consulting, constructing. and then one day, no one shows up for work. the quiet alarms you, its sudden silence disturbs. the next day it’s the same and the day after, a year goes by, the building crumbles, weeds grow up around it, the structure nothing but a faint shadow now.
i wish i could begin that sentence again, maybe pick up where the verb exhaled, the real action set to begin. perhaps it was about love just found, happiness abounding, the joy that propels our lives, perhaps it was none of those things, it could have been just a simple declarative sentence, “i am alive.”
a pictorial example of this sort of sentence is often found in photographs you have taken that don’t always turn out the way you had hoped they would. they’re dark at the edges, obscuring part of the scene (and sometimes other people, the ghosts) and if we were only better able to divine the future, perhaps foretelling of the blackness that would wash over your subject, closing the door, the book, leaving the sentence incomplete, then we might be able to write the rest of the sentence.
that’s the sentence i’d like to write for mark and his lover martin, dead within weeks of each other in 1987. if i had really looked at this photo of him from 1976 and thought about its meaning, would i have been able to do anything to stop what happened or did i just see a crappy photo of a smiling boy who was my friend and not the ominous nature of his life closing in on him? i wish i had an answer.
have you ever seen so many mustaches in one photo? even the photographer had a mustache. it never occurred to any of us in 1981 that we might want to distinguish ourselves with a cleanly shaven upper lip. of the seven of us only three are still alive, two are h.i.v. positive, i am not. how i slid through the war on homosexuals without becoming infected is a mystery. but it happened (a miracle? genetic? dumb luck? fate? pick one or all.)
it wasn’t until i scanned this photograph that i realized how blurry it is, our faces smudges without structure with little raisin eyes, some smiling, others unsure of the pleasure of the occasion. jimmy and dick (on the floor) so in love with each other it was palpable, you could taste it, it was that rich a love. michael, the host for this soiree (standing left, his lover the photographer) the first of our friends to die. he left something in his will for jimmy which i delivered a few weeks after michael left us (unfinished, dangling); jimmy and dick died a few weeks later, dick first, then jimmy. lee (sitting next to me on the right) dissolved sometime in the late 1980s and i wish i could say he was still alive with something approaching conviction, but i cannot.
the winter afternoon i delivered michael’s ______ to jimmy and dick’s apartment, cold sunlight slanting through the windows, dust motes and cigarette smoke a mask hiding the truth, jimmy couldn’t even get up to greet me he was so sick; i went over to him and hugged him, sat down beside him on the sofa, held his hand; all we could do was look at each other and
i never saw him again after that last sad day. there, i finished the sentence.
(please note that it does not give me a sense of accomplishment this finishing, this end; i would have rather woken up, the sentence complete, but the story still unfinished.)
Like this:
untitled 3 (time stands still)
it may not bother you, but every now and then i worry about the lives i might be stopping, for just the briefest moment, when i click the button that activates the shutter on my camera and makes it open and close. that somehow during that briefest of moments, time stands still. it stops the mother at the kitchen window watching her children play in the backyard; it stops the young couple walking along the beach holding hands, discussing their dreams; it stops a plumber on a saturday emergency call or the policeman in his cruiser as he turns into a vacant parking lot.
it may be that because i mostly photograph plants and landscapes, i don’t think of the consequences of stopping time, but when i look out at the world below i know that life is moving forward and it worries me that i’ve stopped all these lives that i can’t see by pressing the shutter button and that by doing that i’ve captured their moment, just like i’ve captured my own, but without their knowledge. that seems a heavy obligation. (it’s true, time has only stopped for the itsy-bitsiest of seconds–an atomic second, let’s say–and no one felt it, their lives did not end, obviously, although i imagine with 7 billion people on the planet, someone did die at the exact moment i pressed the shutter button and stopped time here in ______ ______ and their time did stop then too. this image then is a memory of their last breath, even though they may have never seen this landscape in their lives. do you understand my concern now?)
it’s a little frisson of anxiety at the activities of man (and other living beings on the planet) that i have no control over even though i have captured this moment — and now i’m sharing it with you, the viewer, making you culpable for the moment of stopped time and responsible for those lives as well. sharing does not alleviate, nor ease my guilt. i hope you’ll (you the viewer as well) understand and forgive me for taking a moment of your time and saving it (and sharing it) with the world (regardless of how many people might actually view it–i still stopped time on sunday, november 13th at around 3:21 p.m. pacific standard time and that is a memory of the world at that moment.)
the week began with the yellow rose and the week ends with the yellow rose, but from a slightly different angle; parentheses to this week of flowers.
it can’t be easy accepting that death has come for you. some may respond with a sigh, others with a shout of rage, many may just expire (that final use-by date having passed.) when the doctors shrug and say, “there’s nothing more we can do, we’ll have to release her to home care, it’s time for her to die,” (“,but she won’t” is the unspoken part of their bedside homily), you bundle her up and bring her home — without much expectation that she will agree to do as she should and let go. (i don’t mean to sound cruel, but i hope when it’s time for me to die, that i’ll accept it with some equanimity and not struggle against the inevitable.)
this is where we find a friend of ours, at the threshold of dying, refusing to step over and disappear behind that door. it’s not that we wish she’d die, or even want her to, but the quality of her life in these last couple of years (she’s over 90) has deteriorated and her last hospital stay (a month!) was mostly comatose, a feeding tube, ivs, and monitors all a-beep.
complicating her passing, at least from our point of view, is her avaricious son, and whether or not the rest of this statement is fair, has expressed his disdain for her life and his desire for what she’s leaving him is more important than the time she has left.
if we were to look back at their relationship, as little as we know, it has been ever so. he rarely acknowledged any love for her, showing up with his hand out, on which she would lay a golden check, and without a thank-you, he’d be out the door. then she’d turn on us (we worked together) and the next few days would be filled with her anger and disappointment filtered through manipulation and despair at this failure.
we were too circumspect (and respectful of other people’s lives) to ask what had happened that she would have a son who loved her so little. (at this time, there was another son, her obvious favorite, the youngest, the one she lavished her affection on, and in his way returned–although the transfer of money was also an integral part of their relationship. her great loss was his death in a motorcycle accident, leaving her with the ungrateful and cruel older son as her legacy.)
our working relationship deteriorated over time until she moved away and we stopped talking, for a decade or more, until in some odd twist of fate (aren’t they all odd?) we came back together through a mutual friend. and since then (with an exception, which i’ll get to) we have had a most wonderful relationship with her. she, as she’s always been, is sharp-witted, sharp-tongued (in a funny, pointed way), highly intelligent, well-read, au courant, artistic and a delight to be around. she turned out to be more generous than she had been and her circle of friends adored her.
however she has been particularly cruel to her closest friend, the one who has helped her the most in her declining years, the one who loves her the most of all her friends, the one the rest of us defer to in the matters of her health and well-being. if this object of her derision and abuse were any less loving a friend, there would be no doubt that she would have died much sooner, for her son (who lives in another city) does not care at all what happens to her.
it comes as no surprise that she is angry. it hurts us that she is being so cruel to her one dear friend. what, though, can be done? all that we can do is shower her with love and stand by her, and hope that she’ll accept our love with grace and at last find the strength and the peace to let go of this life.
the sky report (and obituaries)
this time now, if i hadn’t lived through the 80s/90s/aughts as a gay man in the time of the plague, is when my contemporaries will begin to drop like flies. the paper is suddenly filled with the death notices for ____ _____ who died at 5_ of __________ and leaves behind his loving wife of 35 years and 5 kids, numerous grandchildren and the odd spinster aunt or the occasional widowed uncle. it gives you pause.
when your heart skips a beat (and whose doesn’t, i ask you?), you think to yourself, “is this it?” and of course, it isn’t, but you think it regardless, because now is the time for all good men (especially the men at this age) to come to the end of their lives.
when that escalade swerves in front of you on the freeway going god-knows-how-fast and you think to yourself, “is this it?” and of course, it isn’t, but you think it regardless, because now is the time when you find yourself contemplating the end of your days. (and here, particularly, in southern california, my one fear is dying on the freeway, anywhere lord, but on the 5, i pray–and i’m not one who talks that often to god, but should there be one — or a goddess — please deliver me from death on a freeway at 75 mph. is that too much to ask?)
when you stand up too fast these days and all the blood drains from your head and you think you’re going to drop to the ground in a heap of limbs — and will you wet yourself, you always have to pee these days anyway, it would only be fitting that as death claims you, you would piss all over it. who’s laughing now, you black-hooded, scrawny, scythe-carrying bag of bones? well it won’t be you because you’ve died. that fucking last laugh.
this time now is when i start to think about my obituary. should i prepare one, of course, is the top concern–it just seems more practical that way–this from someone who has spent the majority of his working life manipulating language to sell something. i know i could trust m. to do right by me, but what if he’s gone too, would there even be one?
what would it say–”robert patrick died yesterday after a long battle with life, his own as well as that of others. he leaves no survivors (as if it had been a ship-wreck of a life, all lost at sea.) patrick leaves a considerable legacy of prickliness, obsequiousness and the bad habit of speaking the truth. it is known that he loved several dogs during his lifetime and at one time a parakeet. his career in the arts was his passion and his last request was to be cremated with his beloved 1400 page copy of paintings in the louvre. no flowers please (he was allergic) instead he requested that donations in his name be made to father flanagan’s boys town.”
“if the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined past is not worth possessing; it bears fruit only by being held continuously up to the light, and is as changeable and as full of surprises, pleasant and unpleasant, as the future.” –brendan gill via this link.
don’t be surprised if one day i say, “i told you so.”
Like this:
- uncle in question asleep on the chaise, watched over by nephew (far left) and son (center, sitting on ground)
i recommend reading part one before embarking on this journey.
pulp fiction, part two
snapshot: it’s winter, but no snowfall yet, rodney and i are standing in the courtyard parking lot of the “corner motel” in gillette, wyoming, which our grandparents own. in this black and white photo we’re both bundled up in parkas and caps, i may have my mittens clipped to my sleeves; rodney has no gloves. we’ve been interrupted by an adult (my mother, uncle, grandmother? it is definitely not my grandfather, if it were up to him there would be no record of the people in his life) as we’re playing with parachutes that we’ve made out of handkerchiefs, string and a stone. i don’t remember who knew how to construct such an object, but once we had them made, out we went to see who’s would work the best. we can’t be any older than 6 or 7 and you can tell by the look on our faces that whoever thought a picture would be a good idea is living on another planet. we have that particular glow that children surround themselves with when they are deeply involved in playing. it is always best to leave them alone then.
my mother’s mother and step-father, through hard work and their tenacious character, scratched a pretty decent living for themselves out of the red dirt of gillette, wyoming. my grandmother had homesteaded with her mother and brother outside of rozet in 1924, moving from the fertile farmland of southwestern iowa to what is still considered the godforsaken plains of northeastern wyoming. the land was cheap and new beginnings were all the rage. my grandmother was divorced with two children (a daughter–my mother–and a son); once in gillette and only 28 she soon fell in love with my grandfather, who owned a gas station. they went on to become respected citizens and business owners, you might even say pillars of the community. they lived frugally, the one conspicuous display of wealth was a new car every year (paid in full with cash). they had one son, my uncle (see photo above), who had one son (my cousin, also an only child, just two days older than i). when my grandfather died he left a considerable sum of money to my uncle, as his natural born child, and left nothing to my mother or her brother. my mother was hurt by this but said nothing, what good would it do to complain, she loved her half brother and money does have a tendency to spoil things, why let it get in the way of their relationship.
snapshot: there is no photograph from this excursion rodney and i took with our grandparents, at least one that i know of, so this memory photograph, like the previous one, is in black and white. my grandfather was a rock hound, an amateur lapidarist, a tinkerer with stones–in his garage he had a tumbler to polish them, a saw to cut them and if he was in the mood, he would make a piece of jewelry out of the stone for my grandmother. i have a pair of agate cufflinks he made for me one christmas, it was his hobby. they’ve been visiting us in rapid city, a holiday, a birthday, a religious celebration (although only i among all of the other relatives, actually attended a church on a regular basis. my mother insisted that i have the experience of belonging to a church. when i would complain about going alone, she’d say that when i was 18 i could make up my own mind about god, but until then i would be going to church.) they’ve picked up rodney and i — we are probably a few years older than the last snapshot — in their nash rambler and we’ve headed southeast out of town, looking for a dry gulch that my grandfather had heard was so full of agates that you could just pick them up off the ground. we’re walking down a dirt road, rodney and my grandfather ahead of me and my grandmother–the two of us much less interested in this past time than we let on. there are huge cottonwood trees shading the road and they separate it from the dry gulch my grandfather is now searching. this particular scene is filled with dust, the warmth of the dirt road seeping up into my canvas shoes, my hand in my grandmother’s.
my step-father, however, was of a different mind about this, he knew the slight had hurt my mother grievously and so he spoke with my uncle (what i would have given to have been there when that conversation took place!) about the distribution of grandpa’s money. a few weeks later, i received a check with a 1 and several zeros after it with a note from my mother saying that it was my share of the inheritance and to invest it wisely. although i believe my uncle would have eventually (as he did) let this change of plan slide by, his wife, that paragon of everything housewifery, was furious. ”we stole that money from them, it was rightfully theirs, and we had no reason to have interfered, we were (my step-father particularly) horrible people and deserved their opprobrium.” whew. that was all subtext though, because she continued to plaster over any bumps or flaws in her life with her perfection. we only knew the truth because my uncle told my mother.
snapshot: this photograph, also a memory only, is in color. it carries with it the smell of a school cafeteria and the thrum of kid’s excited voices as they move between classes, sliding down the terrazzo flooring, the noise bouncing off of the metal lockers. rodney and i are sophomores in high school and i, because of my height, have spotted him a few yards ahead of me in the hallway, surrounded by his friends/classmates. i call out to him, “rodney”, and he turns to look and see who is calling his name. when he sees that it’s me his animated expression turns to a stony glare and in the split second that this happens, i realize that we will never be friends. we did not speak to each other again (unless at a family event and then it would be routine, formal replies to “how are you?” “fine.” “how’s school?” “fine.”). my friends who knew both of us had no idea we were even related.
before you think, “oh robert, why, why are you telling us this? it’s so personal, surely there’s another side to the story,” i want to share with you two letters that i received shortly after my mother’s death. one is from my stepfather and enclosed with it was one my aunt had sent him a week after my mother’s funeral. let’s listen to aunt marilyn first, shall we?:
Sat A.M.
Hi Roy,
Just a short note along with the card. I’m so sorry about Evelyn, but guess we all knew this was the way it was to be- We will truly miss her even tho she was so far away.
Ralph and Scrub [my maternal grand-uncle] arrived home about 3:00 yesterday–I’m so sorry that Ralph didn’t have the opportunity to see Evelyn one more time- This was his wish, but for some reason it was not granted [granted has been underlined by Roy]–
Evelyn and I had visited about Bessie’s Jade ring – We agreed Evelyn was to have it until she was finished with it and then it was to be mine – She said she would see to it that i did [underlined by my aunt] receive this ring – Since Ralph didn’t bring it home with him, I trust that you plan to send it to me – I will be watching [underlined by Roy] for it
Ralph tells me you are going to Colo sometime this summer and are planning on coming to R.C. We’ll look forward to seeing you
Sincerely Marilyn
all i can think is that the lack of punctuation and the selective use of the dash indicates a rage bubbling just below the surface of this letter. her cursive writing is like that of most educated women her age…the excellent palmer method, clear, slanted and concise. as it would be.
on the day he received the letter, he sent it to me with this note:
Hi Robert
Just a note for to-day hope everything is ok with you. im trying to stay busy but sometimes the place kind of closes in on me.
I got the enclosed letter from your Aunt to-day. I want you to read the 3rd paragraph carefully. I just couldn’t believe it. I would like to hear your comments on this the next time we talk. Your mother and I had never talked about this ring at all.
take care
Roy.
i do not remember if the ring was sent to marilyn or not; i imagine that it was not. this then is how my uncle and i stopped talking for nearly 15 years. roy and i did manage to make that trip to colorado a couple of summers later, driving from the missouri ozarks across nebraska and into colorado up to wyoming and into south dakota. i had sent my aunt a note that we were on this trip and when we would be in rapid city and that we would call when we got in.
“hi aunt marilyn, it’s robert.”
“rodney [her son] and maggie have photos for you of your grandparent’s grave, you can pick them up at the hobby shop. ralph and i don’t have time to see you.”
o.k. i call the hobby shop–this is what rodney had done with his inheritance (considerably more than i had received, but the amount never really mattered to me and to this day, i’ve tried to be nice to him and his ex-wife, maggie, whenever necessary); friends of his mother’s had owned the hobby shop on main st. in downtown rapid for many years, they were ready to retire, so he bought them out.
snapshot: there is no photo of our meeting rodney and his wife. i will tell you that it was high summer in rapid city; the sun was beating hard on the pavement–there may have been some cumulus clouds on the horizon. roy and i have had a wonderful trip together, we’ve visited friends in colorado (my mother’s ex-lesbian lover mary and her new partner); we’ve gone fishing and generally just shared the vista of the high plains with each other. but now as we walk down the street from the motel where we were staying to the hobby shop, you can almost hear the spurs clanking, faces shaded from the noonday sun by cowboy hats as we draw nearer and nearer to…and were greeted (that may be too kind of a word) by rodney and his wife. by blocking the door, they obviously had no intention of letting us in; rodney hands me an envelope with my name written on it in marilyn’s tidy script and said, “here are the photos of grandma and grandpa’s graves, we’re busy, good-bye,” and turned and went back into the store, closing the door behind them.
i wish i could remember what happened next. i do know that we spent the night in rapid, and we may have had plans to stay a little bit longer and poke around and see the sights (we did drive by our old house up on willsie street), but the next morning, we both got up about the same time and packed our bags and left. i haven’t been back since.
yes, yes, i know, it’s titled pulp fiction, and i know you’re sitting at your computer reading this and wondering how this will all come together and i’m not sure there is a clear connection. i know that my aunt and my uncle hurt my step-father in two different ways: my aunt’s venality is clearly the most obvious, but the worst to me though was my uncle’s silence through all of this.
but i do know this. rodney should have spent some time reading those pulp fiction magazines of his father’s and taken to heart the lessons that were plainly spoken in those pages; about how real men treat each other and how, in spite of differences, everyone deserves your respect.
middles & such things
part one
Spirit lives as body fades. Close, cradled, caressed, kissed with such aliveness; memories fresh, scent, laughter not languishing, dipping her hand in the cool fast stream & gripping the dripping fresh cress pulling hard, head turning to me in triumph.
this middle seems the right place to begin. although when you read this you will think to yourself that it is not a middle, but an end and perhaps a beginning, but it may be too soon to confirm the beginning part, without the rest of the story. you will definitely know it’s an end though, at least a conventional end, one that you are familiar with (possibly, possibly not; it would depend upon your world experience. you may know it as an end only intellectually, but not as an end emotionally. i can’t help you understand the difference. you will need to make that decision for yourself.)
middles come unexpectedly and it is hard to determine, at the time the middle is happening, that it is the middle. you always know when an end happens, you’ll say, “well, that’s the end of that,” or “yes, i’m done with that, thank you very much.” it may be easy to say you are in the middle of a book, just from the number of pages you have read or the ones yet unread; the same could be said about a meal (or any number of everyday occurrences, such as driving to work, or walking the dogs.) lunch-time usually signals the middle of the day and heralds the downward count of time to evening. but isn’t evening a beginning?
and certainly there is no problem determining what constitutes a beginning. we are always saying, “i began this,” and “when that began,” and “life begins at __,” and “in the beginning,” (perhaps the greatest mythologies offer the assurance that there was a fixed beginning to help us place a time constraint on the happenings that swirl around us from birth — another beginning, so says everyone i know.)
you can see how defining the middle of something might cause you to pause in your consideration of how you know it is the middle of anything. that is the problem i have faced in deciding that this is the middle of the story of a mother and her son, also, obviously a story of the son and his mother. of course, that is not now, the now of you reading this, but the now of the time i have determined was the middle of the story. “but,” you might cry, “is that not the beginning of the story?” and i would have to say that it is not. of course, i have the power to decide what is the middle, the beginning and the end; i am, after all, writing this. my fingers are touching the keys and my eyes are following the cursor as it moves across the computer screen; there is a bit of omniscience in that, is there not? i am not playing with you, but trying to help you understand the nature of middles (and by default, the nature of beginnings and ends,) which even for me are fuzzy and ill-defined.
that does give you and i a bit of an equal footing, my indecisiveness on whether or not this is the middle of the story of a mother and her son, although you may think you, the reader, have more control over that decision and who am i to determine what you think (not a question.)
may i backtrack for a moment? re: the nature of beginnings. it is time, our time and our understanding & acceptance of time & our recording of time that determines beginnings, middles and ends. so, you could say that middles are self-imposed, as are beginnings and ends. who could say where in time the universe is? surely that great a decision cannot be placed upon us, for no matter how much we search for the beginning (in order that we may begin the countdown–a point from which all time begins–you can’t avoid it, the beginning, but when you look at all time, all beginnings and all ends — and those middles that would invariably occur — you would have to say that your entire life is a middle, would you not?)
then. there is the story, which we are interrupting in the middle (as i was saying.) the bed seems enormous, but only because her body is so small now, as i lay down beside her, a son with his dying mother. we are in a home that is not our home, but one that she and my step-father have rented for this last bit of time she has, because she is dying. there is no more to be done to stop it and i have come to this house, a brick house in the rolling, wooded hills of the missouri ozarks, from my home in chicago to spend time with her. of course, it is a countdown & everything seems to be underwater or upside down–that is, my perception of time has a wave in it that is distorting my vision as if i’d been caught in the surf and tossed underwater and pushed down by the power of the ocean just long enough to panic.
colors are both more intense and more subdued (all the furniture in this rented home appears to have been washed and dried so many times that the color has been leached out of it–only traces of browns, oranges, reds and blues remain. i don’t believe that description is true and at the time of my being there with my dying mother, i know i never gave it a thought.) but now, when i conjure these memories that is the color palette i see, well-worn, bleached out by the sun, a faded polaroid (a candid shot, not posed–but composed nonetheless, one of those photographs that are perfect for their not being perfect.)
what distinguishes this middle. my mother and i are laying on our backs not looking at each other but staring at the ceiling of this bedroom. she has a shunt in her chest which she has just shown me. it is where the doctors pour chemicals (and morphine) into her (“fill ‘er up, herb,” my stepfather may have said to no one.) i thought i might fall into it, if i looked at it too long (a rabbit hole if ever there one,) so that did happen.
i fell into to it and rolled over on my back to ease the pain of knowing that i was free-falling without any chance of support (no net, no parachute, no one to hold me, that was ending. even though this is the middle there was an end–you could see it in the not too far distance if you squinted and should you be inclined to be that introspective. i was not.) i wish i could tell you what we talked about before she fell asleep and i slipped off the bed and out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me, that click of the <door mechanism> like the snap of a neck or the crack of a knuckle, bone hard and sharp, a retort to my lack of consciousness. (do you not see how sexual it all is? the little mechanism that holds a door shut, a tongue that slips into its waiting, panting hole, fill me, use me, ignore me, slam me, pull me closed so gently that it is a feather upon my breast. but finally and ultimately – redundantly — it is closed to you. like love. like death. but i am, at this time in this story, not thinking of death.)
later (it may have been earlier, time again aggrieves me, i do not remember, all of my visit — was it a week? two? — this month before her death has a cloak over it and even now, as i divine that time spent there and push myself to remember what i did not want to remember then, time has fucked it all up.) it is all snatches of memory, laundry hanging on a line, snapping in the wind, ragged little pieces of cloth not even defined as clothing, sheets, towels, shrouds, windings, all of it just rags and then she, my mother, is having her hair washed and set in the house. the beautician has come to her and confides to me, “she wanted to look her best for you,” which. it was too much then and i know that i excused myself to cry alone in the guest room. there may have been deep hacking sobs, i do not remember. i do remember not being able to watch the beautician make my mother beautiful for me. i cry now <cue lump in throat>, but true.
you see, that is my problem. i am inured to the pain of her passing. some may call it cold-heartedness. others may say, “there was no blood between them” (my birth, a diversion that should be addressed, but not now, “but if not now, when?” they demand and i answer, “soon, soon.”) of course, at the time (not the time of this visit before she died, but the time of the funeral and burial,) i was inconsolable. there were only men around to offer me succor (stepfather, uncle,) which may actually true.
part two
there was also my stepsisters, well. but i am jumping ahead of this, the first part of the story (but not the beginning, it is the middle.) only one stepsister, the other one having been banned from being around me (at my insistence, i could not bear the sight of her for what she had done to my mother, as cruel as if she were the cancer to my mind,) and i am certain, by default the other daughter of my loving stepfather later, rather than sooner, also fell into the trash (not harsh, but true.)
the sisters then: there were two, b. and s. (these abbreviations self-fulfilling, had i but known.) b. lived with her husband & brood in upstate new york; s. with ne-er-do-well husband and three children in southern california. my stepfather began courting my mother (in the true sense of the word,) in 1970 (they were married in september of 1973); his daughters played no role in his life with my mother until they married and i had moved away. let’s jump ahead here as i’m afraid that i will lose the thread of the middle of this story, the one that opened this book (a beginning no doubt, but also an end, with them so closely linked like that i have no choice but to determine it is the middle.)
my introduction to s. went like this when i was visiting for christmas in 197_ and she & her family had been packed up and moved and installed in a home on my parent’s property when their lives took a turn for the worse in california. my mother doted on the children, a relief to me, burden of reproduction lifted, but regardless, i am at my parent’s house, it is christmas and we are about to go over to s.’s house for dinner. mother turns to me and says, “promise me you will not laugh.”
“oh, for heaven’s sake, you can’t do that to me! what do you mean?”
“just promise me you won’t laugh,” she reiterated. “fine, i won’t laugh,” as we put on our coats for the walk across the yard to the house next door. the door opens, it’s a small house and with the kids running to greet grandpa and grandma and their parents big in that way that only happens in the country of canned foods, kfc and tv dinners, taking up space, so there’s some jostling of bodies as introductions are made, and the younger two children pull at my mother in greeting. then i see it. well enough that there was a warning, although i must admit it did not adequately prepare me for the shrine. to elvis. in the corner of the living room. a white plaster bust of the ‘king’, maybe a foot and a half tall, with italian lights circling the base–they were nestled in a cloud of angel hair—and all of that then protected by a plexiglas box. it was not ironic. it was their altar. i should have been concerned then, but i wasn’t (another warning ignored).
the evening and the holiday unfolded without incident. until, well into their life together and i’m down for another visit (this then when i was told she had cancer and before they moved back to rapid city to care for her mother–my psychic grandmother–but still and all,) it is when she began to detail the abuse of s. as my mother slowly faded away, she shared a lot with me, perhaps i will with you as well.)
my mother would say, “i’m going to drive to jeff city for the day, may i take r. (the youngest daughter) with me?” s. would reply, “well, i don’t know, lay-about, out-of-work husband and i were hoping to get a new washing machine sometime soon, r. might be available then.” to make it plainer, she pimped her kids because she knew my mother loved them unconditionally and to have them around her she would acquiesce to s.’s demands. i felt bad for my mother, and at the same time i am surprised that she would stand for such nonsense and where was my stepfather in all of this? it was a scab that i picked at over the course of the next few months as my mother’s health deteriorated.)
in a letter from my mother dated 22 feb 81, she writes,
“dear son–
“wish you were here to help me — i’m putting my pictures in albums — at long last. it’s gotten to be a horrendous project. i’ve let them accumulate for about 7 years. [this note added in parentheses on march 1: didn't get it done - put all back into boxes & will try again later.]
“Thot you mite like to have this one of you & me taken about 17 years ago. you sure were a cute little guy – & look at that hair cut!!
“this macaroni & chicken recipe looks like something you might of conjured up. sounds real good. when you throw a conglomeration of stuff together it usually comes out pretty good – when i do it, it isn’t fit to eat! i just fixed some scalloped potatos – i put some onion in it – cut up some link sausages & put them in – ran out of fresh potatos, so sliced up a can of them & put in. covered whole mess with cream of mushroom soup & cheese & it tastes terrible!!
“1 mar 81.
“don’t know what happened – must of jumped the track somewhere.
“just talked – very unsatisfactorily – with you about your little chair. i’ll do whatever you want, but you should know we are getting rid of some junk we have – we plan on selling this place in a year or so & renting a place to live. roy is getting older & we don’t want the responsibility of keeping up a place–he is going to put the trailer & that 4 acres up for sale 1 april. that will give s. a month to find another place to live–we can’t take this sh__ any longer–Roy has aged 10 years & it just isn’t fair!!
“Guess this is enough griping for now. love you very very much, mom”
mother and son, 1964
in the dying house i am about to meet b., the other daughter and she comes in and gives me a big hug before i can retreat from our initial handshake. she is smart and verbal and funny in a self-deprecating kind of way that immediately puts me at ease (and off my guard, another warning ignored). my mother responds well to having her there, i can see it in her eyes and how they brighten when b. is around her, fussing over this doily or that cushion, solicitous and caring, it was not unlike being rocked to sleep. i wish i could remember how long she was there visiting, but as i’ve told you my memory of this time is a series of snapshots without sound, and without much color, and although these images are there for me, it is a challenge to bring them forth (and in the light of self-examination) that is all.
you will forgive me if time is conflated here–the middles collapsing on top of each other–the next thing in this series of recollections is a walk that b. and i took on a sunny afternoon down a country lane and into the fields of scrub that were behind the house that they were using so my stepfather would not have to live in the house after my mother died. he would be able to go back to their own home that was down the road between dixon and vienna (mo) and eat ice cream without the furniture screaming at him that the love of his life had moved on without him.
but i have jumped ahead of my tale: b. and i take an afternoon walk, and yes the sun was out, it being april, possibly warm, i don’t remember having a jacket and we’re walking through hayfields and talking about her family and my life in chicago and she asks me, “are you gay?” so feeling all warm and comfortable with her, i say, “yes”, when normally i might have changed the subject, she was after all, a stranger to me, and my sexuality was none of her business, and i didn’t like being defined by who i slept with <insert angry young gay man still fighting the good fight here>, but it seemed okay with her and i let it go.
we walked and talked and came across an abandoned schoolhouse, weathered clapboard, white paint peeling, shifted on its foundation as if it had suffered through an earthquake or tornado like someone might a sneeze that rearranges their hair (that hard one that lifts the hair on the back of your neck); we climbed into it through a broken window, giggling at each other’s nonsense and the lighthearted tone we took with each other help lessen the burden of my mother’s sadness and decline.
there was a map of the world on one wall, the corners curling up from its fight against nature, its colors as faded as those colors in that house where death lay, that yellowy peeling varnish washing out europe or africa (pink and blue, but so subtle as to only be a ghost of their former glory) and it crossed my mind then that i might not ever get to see the world after my mother died, that that opportunity, whether i wanted it to or not, would evaporate with the exhalation of her last breath. the lens of her life would disappear with her and the world as i saw it through that lens, even on this day in an abandoned schoolhouse, so narrowly focused on this point in time–would, as it must, lose its color and vanish, perhaps its shape faintly outlined by the oceans. this i did not share with b.
part three
i do not know how long i stayed or the exact day i left my mother’s arms to get back on the train in jefferson city, but i know that writing this now, i can feel her warm embrace, it was a challenge for her to hold me tight, there was so much pain in her face and as she often did, she took my face in her hands and pulled me close, nose to nose (our eskimo kiss for as long as i can remember, and one i often asked for no matter how old i was) and said, “son, i love you.” i may have cried in her arms, but i know she would not have any of that, but held me close until it was time for me to leave. it is possible that she made herself see me off at the train station, just as it is possible that she did not and my farewell to her was carried out on the brown sofa in the living room of a house they had chosen for her death.
the month between our last goodbye and her death was filled with the idle gossip of my co-workers (it’s not as if i could not hear them), “how much money will he inherit when his mother dies do you think?” or “will he have enough to leave here and travel?” or “it’s sad to see him suffer so, do you think his family has any money?” and frequent nights out to my local leather & levi bar (italics mine. it is the vernacular, and not unlike a foreign language the words themselves carry an important meaning) where i tried to bury my feelings in the hot embrace of any man that would have me (as sad as i was, i never shared with strangers what was happening, but how could you not know that i was weighted with some impending loss?) the addition of many beers not withstanding (it was as if i could not get drunk), the month passed by as clearly as if nothing had happened, nothing worth remembering.
i had jumped and was free-falling like a <you may insert your favorite metaphor here; parachute not opening, the earth rushing up to meet me; alice skipping and bumping down the dark rabbit hole (which i’ve used previously); the entrance to hell, dante beginning the descent, the screams of the damned closer and louder with each step> stone thrown into the well and as far as i could tell in my waking life there was no end to the nightmare of loss i was experiencing, the only sound i seemed to hear was the whispered chant of “when, when, when”, it was there with me in the morning when i roused myself out of bed, it was there in the metal-on-metal screeching of the ‘el’, the very act of walking down the street seemed to be a rebuke and a time bomb; forget a ringing telephone as it was the signal of my execution.
i know the date of the day my mother died, but i could not tell you how long it had been between the day i last touched her and the hesitant, sad sound of my stepfather’s voice telling me of her death. i know i heard him speak, but i could not have told you then (or even later that day) what words he used to tell me of my mother’s death had you asked me. and it may have been that the words he did say to me, “she’s died, robert. i tried to get her to the hospital, but she died in the car on the way, i’m sorry, i tried,” were the words i did hear but could not make sense of at the time, the comprehension of language had left me then.
i do not know how i got to missouri for the funeral. i believe my uncle, my mother’s half-brother, picked me up at the train station or the airport, but i may be mistaken, it could have been a stranger, a local friend of theirs that volunteered to meet me and drive me down into the back country where they lived. it was may, a month shy of her next birthday, and on the day of the funeral the three of us rode in the cab of my stepfather’s pick-up, all big men squeezed together in grief, that tight closeness keeping us upright. it was not until we were in the funeral home (and suddenly now, because i’ve put off coming to this part of the middle of this story, for it is a middle and not an end, i find myself struggling to adequately describe, to find the right words, the proper grammar, the language i know i possess to share with you how hard, how unfathomable the loss, i am digging deep–digger o’dell-like–and perhaps the best thing to do would be report the time as cold-eyed and steely-tongued as a reporter writing for the local weekly.)
there were a lot of strangers in the visitation room, my vision, even now as i look back on those moments, is blurry around the edges, erasing their faces. there was the smell of farming (horses, sweat, manure); there was the smell of lilies laid over top of that; there was my mother in an open coffin, wearing her favorite red ______ (it was red, as in the photo above, someone, somewhere had told her that ‘red is your color’ and she stuck with that advice even in death); there was a preacher speaking, but his words i did not hear; there were men and women stopping by my chair touching my shoulder or taking my hand, their gentle tenderness and concern is, even now, a cue for tears as i hit the space bar and the back bar repeatedly finding the words i know i have; there was roy and my uncle lifting me up from my chair, my legs too weak to stand and walking me toward the open coffin; there were hacking sobs (they were coming from me, i thought i was drowning); there was a moment then that i thought i could not look at her, i knew that if i did, it would be true, and i did not have the courage to face that; and there was just one quick moment of recognition, that the woman in the coffin was my mother and wisely, prescient as it happens, they held onto me and turned me away from her and walked me down the aisle and out the door.
and outside the funeral home, standing for a moment on its porch, roy and uncle murmuring their thanks to the sorrowful, from that blurry edge lunges s., the ugliest of step-sisters, grasping at me with her pinched face and thin hair and heavy weight, “i loved your mother, robert,” she cried and i know these words, “you had a fine way of showing it,” formed themselves and i may have yelled, screamed them at her or it’s possible i said nothing and only thought it, but she fell back into the penumbra that made up the edges of that day and i never saw her again.
we drove to the cemetery in vienna (home to an americanized version of the wiener schnitzel, i know for a fact because it said so on the side of a barn or a welcome sign as you entered this small town in the rolling hills of the ozarks) and up to the grave site they had purchased a few years in advance with its russet and gray marble headstone, their birth dates already carved into it, a wedding bed for the end of their lives. this time, this here and now, was the hardest for roy, a veteran of and witness to many deaths, but this one, this one stopped him, dulled him (he recovered, as i did,) but there was for both of us a dark, swirling confusion without her right then. as is the case with funerals such as this one, after the burial there was a gathering of mourners and well-wishers (yes, it’s true, they were wishing us well on our journey without her) at the house they had rented for the very purpose of her death. women laid out casseroles and meat platters and sandwiches and salads all the while eying roy, talking amongst themselves what his prospects for life without a spouse would be; the men stood out on the front lawn talking about the weather, a new winch one of them had bought and why seed was so expensive at the feed store these days. i know these things because they were all happening in my peripheral vision; i could not focus on anything but my loss. i may have sat in the living room for a moment, but more likely, i excused myself and went into their bedroom and laid down on the bed, just as i had the month before and stared at the ceiling and wondered if i would land on my feet.
“Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it’s almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.” –James Agee, “A Death in the Family”
part one
when i was told by the youngest sissie that he had died i thought that nothing had changed; he had passed from my life so long ago that any memories i think i have of our time together cannot be retrieved without the assistance of photographs. she and i rarely speak on the phone, our adulthood separating us from the day-to-day minutiae of our ordinary lives; she said, “they found him about a week after he had actually died, sitting in his recliner,” (left unsaid: with the tv on, an empty can of budweiser on a rickety metal tv tray next to a brown & orange plaid la-z boy; bloated with death & gas & probably putrid, no make that definitely putrid.)
this is the kind of story (the discovery of his death) that is usually found on the second page of the second section of your local newspaper, the part that covers goings-on around the towns in your area, a headline such as this: local man found dead in apartment and it would go on to describe how the discovery was made (the building super investigating a ‘suspicious’ smell), a quick quote from a neighbor, “he kept to himself, i don’t recall seeing anyone visit him,” a brief bio provided by a vietnam vet at the local vfw (a snapshot of your local vfw: wood paneling, folding tables, the smell of bad coffee, beer & cigarettes, men unshaven, war stories–the same ones–told again and again, and the loose ends of their lives). his family (a second wife, three children –maybe it was two, regardless, i have step-brothers & -sisters that i met only once — i can’t even remember their names it was so long ago and so briefly), from what i was told, didn’t really care that much. an end to a life passes by with little fanfare (except for the prurient) and there were no tears (perhaps of relief, but now i am being unnecessarily cruel.)
no rest for the wicked, würzberg, germany
my only adult memory of him is exactly what you might expect from someone not involved in your life: he, stiff & uncomfortable, dominant (“you’ve got five minutes to shit, shower & save,” this the day of his father’s funeral & he was marshaling the troops–his 2nd family, me, and grandma. wisely, the sissies–two sisters, my cousins, his nieces–stayed in a hotel.) i was there for two days and left the evening after the funeral (he carried grandpa’s ashes in the trunk to the veteran’s cemetery against the wishes of the rest of us – grandpa should have rode in the car with us, his last car trip instead of in the trunk, alone–should i say “like an afterthought?” But he was insistent, our pleas falling tears in the parking lot of the church, a chill February wind underlining our despair.)
i was 21, he 48; in my mind i believed there would be a spark of recognition, an innate bond that time could not have diminished, some little thing that would say, “father,” “son.” today i do not believe i yearned for that, but i do believe that i held out some hope; who doesn’t want their father to acknowledge them as their child (and to take them in their fatherly arms and comfort them, even after such a long time, this particular eternity?) there may have been flashes of an imagined childhood with a father even. (that particular construct is difficult for me to imagine actually happened in my head at 21. i was, after all, an out gay man, making my way through school and with a job and living on my own. i had not thought of him on a conscious level for, well, forever. an introspective look at my past would have taken a back seat to the current events of my life.)
on the ride to the train station that evening, he, at the wheel, turned to me and said, “do you have any questions for me?” (which was more of a statement than a questioin. i, sitting uncomfortably next to him, thinking only of the escape that was just down the road for me, asked, “why did you and mom get divorced?” his reply: “there are some things, son, that are between a man and a woman and not to be discussed with others.”
and that was it. i think now i should have held onto that “son” as an admission of his failure as a father and perhaps his reaching for some commonality between us, but i was put out that he asked for a question then muffed it, not even any prevarication or stutter, just the implication, a brick wall enclosing him from the possibility of love, the subtext “off limits–i won’t open up my life like that.” me sitting there staring out the window and at the reflection of my angry face in the window, a rebuke to his absence and his refusal (or inability) to be what i wanted.
tickle me, würzberg, germany
our life together. recently when i was having my yearly eye exam, the doctor said to me, “were you hit in the eye when you were a very young child? that might account for the mark on your retina.” from the photographic evidence i was a happy child (except for my first hair cut at a barbershop, but really, that’s to be expected); there was never any discussion of abuse, but the terms of the divorce were severe–no contact, no mail, no telephone calls, never to be seen again. and i spent several summers at his parent’s house and there were never any ‘unexpected’ visits; he vanished as if a magician had pulled the fringed drapery off of the empty cabinet where only moments before he had been hiding.
my mother collected mothers-in-law & this one was no different. even my father’s sister and her daughters (and their father) all played a part in my young life. but it was not until he had taken his mother into his house as she reached her dotage, that he was discussed among us (this after my mother had died). there were tales of elder abuse from my aunt — his sister — (and even from my grandmother, somewhere there are the sad letters i would receive from her, detailing her decline and unhappiness and his cruel behavior.) but, and this is true, everyone was afraid of him and nothing ever happened to ease her suffering until she died. it is hard to conceive that all of her love was wasted on a son like that; this loving, generous, hard-working woman and her delicate, sad husband — how could my father have been who he was coming as he did from such a home?
even when queried by me, my mother would talk about our life in germany & then the boat across the atlantic (me, just three, in a harness with a leash so i would not dive overboard on a childish whim) and our time at fort carson outside of colorado springs and back to fort sheridan north of chicago, but she would do all of that reminiscing without once mentioning my father. the only shared memory where he figures prominently was the day they were picking cherries from a tree in the backyard of our home in highland park and he on a ladder showing off and she, “lee get down from there before you fall and break your fool neck,” i on the lawn watching them bicker/banter back and forth. seems true enough today to reach out and touch them both. that life together. but that is one of only two shining memories of him that i have of my own, the rest are just prompted from these photographs.
mr. & mrs. lee patrick with their son, robert, würzberg, germany
there are facts of course, many a matter of public record: his birthday, his name, his service in the army (3 tours of vietnam, a bronze star), their marriage (i have the license, she ten years his senior) and their adoption of a little boy before he was born, but the facts mean nothing, they are nothing but the wire hanger on which this empty suit hangs. they were a striking couple, i see that in the photographs i have of them before their marriage (their courtship in the service–my mother in the army as well–and a charming photo of her sitting on the grass in the yard of her future in-laws her head in a floral aunt jemima scarf her skirt arrayed around her with an 8 x 10 framed photo of lee & written below in the photograph’s margin in my grandmother’s hand, “for the birds.”) that seemed like love to me. love before i arrived.
what changed? this and other questions plague me still. those who might know all dead now. i grab at ideas (for one, that the ‘house-maid’, my birth mother, her occupation was listed on my german birth certificate, and this father were paramours and i am his son, but that theory vehemently denied by all concerned, except, of course, my mother who would just change the subject when i brought it up. why the evasion, mother?) she did kid me on occasion, “your father was a hick from appalachia with a pimple on his nose and shoes two sizes too big for his bony feet.” which would send me (depending on my mood) either into paroxysms of laughter or an embarrassment so deep my knees would blush.
the other, should you need the prompt, is abuse. whether vocal or physical, either to my mother or to myself, my gut tells me there were some mean times chez nous. this is only a feeling, a gut reaction based on the rest of his life and the relationships the rest of the family had to him (the fear of crossing him the most prominent and the scariest, to me.) but yet. when i look at these photos of me with him, how could i think anything but love existed between the two of us? and perhaps that is enough. but it is not nor can it be, because there is more.
horsey-back ride at the sissies' home, akron, ohio
what changed? if this life alone had been lived with us what would have changed? what is it like to have a father? how does that fact change your life? would that change your character? i have a hard time imagining this part of my fantasy life, the presence of a male authority figure the rarest of dreams & they never are finished, & sadly there is no difference. i think there should be a difference. not that i would have been a different person, my essence is natural to me, although when you look at how i was raised you might be inclined to raise a glass to the concept of nurture influencing the character of a person.
and of course, i was influenced by all of the women in my life, there is no doubt that i was, but, but, but what if? what if i had had a man around, to teach me to dribble a basketball, or catch a baseball, or for that matter to even enjoy sports? what if there had been a man around to talk to about sex & love & relationships after i had become a stranger to my mother (puberty.) that secret talk that a father has with his son (they do, don’t they? in this fantasia they do.) what else do fathers give their children? do you know? all i can imagine i needed to be an adult i learned from my mother. it was enough.
but from what i have gleaned over the years, like children do; listening, but not, absorbing without prejudice the rumblings of adults & years later those words bubbling up to the surface (not for everyone, i am sure, but for me they are words painted in the faintest of colors on a scrim at the back of the stage, so subtly lit that you must just let them be & that is how you discern their meaning, more a sense of their meaning, an emotional association with vowels and consonants, grammar), it would not have been a loving relationship between he and i. no, what i see (the sense, this psychic retrieval) is a life of discord; my being who i am in contradiction to his idea of what i should be. and that he died alone, his last family unconcerned about his well-being, his whereabouts, his life (how not to be trite here) only drives home, confirms my suspicions, that looking back, that other memory, that it would not have been good for the two of us.
which, of course, depresses me. me, so eager to have that bond, that relationship, but only now, not then, because, and this is the truth, i never gave him room in my head as a child. i was never teased or shunned for not having a father (or for having two mothers, one the perfect substitute for a father), and any questions as to why there wasn’t a man in our lives, the answers, however they may have been formed, accepted as fact and not as an aberration by my childhood friends (god knows what their parents thought about it all, it being the time of perfect family models (the Cleavers, etc.)
the nuclear family (white gloves version)
there is the one other memory, one that is mine alone as i have never shared it. i’ve been reading lately about how, as we grow older, our memories of our early childhood disappear very rapidly and that usually by the ages of 10 or 12 (or younger) those memories of when you were a baby, a toddler, a young child, have vanished. and it is then that you start your memory bank for use later on as you grow older.
so i believe this is my earliest memory: he has taken me with him to the army base where he is stationed (fort carson? possibly because of the sensory truths that have stayed with me), i am possibly three years old (or not much older, this event just before their divorce) and he is showing me off to his buddies. have you ever been around a bunch of young men in the army? that part is more of a feeling. this part is true: he lifts me up onto a tank with its engine running (the intent to take me in it for a spin around the barrack’s yard/parking lot, wherever tanks are on an army base) and he clambers up after me and lifts me up again onto the turret. he slips down into the tank and reaches over the edge of the turret and lifts me up and we drop down into the tank (down there it is all man sweat, motor oil and that peculiar dirt smell that i always associate with the army.) i wail. i struggle for breath, i squirm and scream and slobber, tears racing down my face, hot & claustrophobic in this small space with my father–a rejection. for both of us.
he carries me back up the inside of the turret & lifts me (still in full wail) out of the tank and sets me down outside of the hatch. his buddies staring, their looks a mixture of disbelief, amusement and embarrassment (i imagine now), because he was furious with me, his anger stiffening his back, his voice a sharp rebuke to my behavior (i don’t believe he hit me.)
part two
to understand what this memory has meant to me we must now jump ahead in our story eleven years: i am 14 and in the full bloom of puberty (awkward–clothes refusing to fit– and horny, passionate and aloof, too eager to please, in reality, a mess) and i am spending the summer with mary (my real father) in colorado springs not too far from fort carson. besides going to church, a southern baptist brimstone & fire church with elmer gantry’s stunt double as a preacher (was elmer gantry enough of a description or would you prefer: a floppy mop of auburn hair brylcreemed into a pompadour, ruddy complected, heavy beard (a twice a day shaver), big barrel chest and like his wife a hugger?) and his wife all bosom and talcum powder, forever grabbing you into a hug “bless you, child”ing you until you thought you’d faint from those great ham hocks of wobbly fat arms locked tight around your middle–well, at least my middle–your breathing erratic (and ever so slightly erotic, in spite of your inclinations, for there were definitely inclinations).
preacher man, wife and a confused 14 year old
i am volunteering at the church, helping with kid’s summer camp, but the pressure is on from mary to be contributing to my savings with a job. she decides (as she always did, dominant as she was, a foghorn voice and a laugh that always shot out of her, pellets of sharp guttural guffaws, so distinct you could identify her location even if you couldn’t see her) that i will be cleaning apartments in her complex, filled as it with military and base personnel. i post a card on the bulletin board in the common area and a day later i get my first call (and as it turns out, my only one.)
the mother, son and father (disguised as a woman)
it’s a lieutenant stationed at fort carson; i meet with him that evening and he tells me that he’s never home, always out on maneuvers, but could i just clean up after him. we set a price and a schedule, he gives me a key and that’s that. (except, of course, the that is that i have fallen madly in love with him.) days later and i’ve let myself into his apartment and his smell overwhelms me. it’s in the bathroom, it’s in the living room (he doesn’t use the kitchen), and it’s definitely in the bedroom. it is the smell i remember from my father and the tank, motor oil, male sweat and the red dirt of the plain at the base of the rocky mountains.
the dirt rings the bathtub, caked on the sides and all i can do is sit there on the edge of the tub and fantasize about him naked, me washing him after field maneuvers. i wander from the bathroom without cleaning it (although i did rub my fingers over the ring of dirt in the bath and held them close to my nose, a strong intake of breath) into the bedroom where the bedsheets are in a knot at the bottom of the bed, pillows on the floor, which i pick up and place back on the bed and promptly lay down on my back, hands clasped behind my head, dizzy from all the blood fleeing to my crotch.
i do not fantasize about having sex with him, that would be too much of a leap of faith in my imagination at the time, but i do imagine playing house with him–whatever that would entail–perhaps a cocktail waiting for him when he comes back from the base at night, dinner in the oven, me in an apron, cleaned up and expectant, catering to his whims (only years later would those be of a sexual nature), taking his boots off, rubbing his feet and inhaling that scent–that red dirt, motor oil and man sweat.
after cleaning his apartment i would go back to mary’s and draw a bath and soak until the pads of my fingers shriveled into those little prune faces and masturbate, maybe twice while i had the apartment to myself, but still behind the closed door of the bathroom, my eyes squeezed shut and the images of the men in my life flicking by–my lieutenant, the preacher and my father from that day in the tank, when he held me in his arms while i wailed, with the smell of the earth all around us and the noise of the engine drowning out his love.
