Tag: memory
Two Countries
Mom and Dad shouted at the TV in different languages, both of which I understood after spending over five years listening to the differences. A man in a suit was saying something in a third language that was very difficult to follow, something about the Supreme Court and “tapes” the President thought were his.
“They belong to the fucking country!” Dad yelled. “That asshole! This is the reason I don’t vote in no goddamn elections. Fucking cocksucker!”
Mom only paused to take a quick glance back at me, where I sat at the dining room table trying to do my multiplication. Then she went on: “Where does he think we live? Russia? This is not the way an American behaves. Something’s wrong with him.”
“He’s a disease, Joy. You know what you do to a disease? You get rid of the fucking thing.”
As so often happens, what began as a point of unity quickly turned into a point of conflict. Soon my mother accused my father of wanting to “eradicate” everyone he disagreed with, herself included, to which my father responded with a statement illuminating my mother’s naivete. I believe the phrase “shit for brains” was used, of course only in reference to “those people who don’t know the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.”
War came swiftly. I knew they’d achieve detente eventually, but not without a complex ritual of negotiation laced with extracted promises and sexual favors. Having a common enemy – the Mormons across the street or something my teacher had said – usually helped them overcome any residual tension.
I made sure to steer clear, just like Europe, speaking Dad when I was on the fucking playground banging shit out and Mom nearly everywhere else.
*
“Conversations I didn’t hear
[note: best if read on a device that preserves indentation/spacing]
“After everything he’s been through…”
“Sports’ll knock some sense into him. Teach him something.”
“He’s smart – he’ll figure it out.”
“Just don’t say anything. You always say something
and it always lands wrong.”
“Life is going to hit that kid sideways.”
“He says he wants to go to Japan. Live there.
What’s he think he’s gonna find? Big mistake.”
“Football? Right. Cheerleader more like it.”
“You’re one to talk. Exactly how many times you
land on your back?’”
“He’ll find his way. He's gonna be happy.
Gonna surprise everybody.”
“How am I supposed to raise a gay kid?”
“Maybe the swim team? Don’t they like that?”
“You love him, you horse’s ass. That’s what you do.
Every single day of your life. You love him.”
“You always defend him.”
“You’re supposed to be a teacher. Shut the fuck up.”
“You’re supposed to be his father. Act like it.”
“I’m that boy’s Grandma
and I say he’s gonna be fine.”
*
Short on time? Try a micro or four here.
Matches
I watched as Billy tried to light the flimsy cardboard match out on the back porch. It wouldn’t catch and he was crying.
“Think about this the next time you decide to waltz around in your mother’s shoes.”
Billy’s fingers were already a little burned. I was allowed to watch because that’s what happens when you dishonor the family like that. “No son of mine…” Dad began but then noticed Billy was trying to fold the cover of the matchbook back so that he could pull the match between it and the sandpaper strip. “No way, no fuckin’ way.” He grabbed the matchbook and used his thumb to hold the match down while he zipped it.
“Like a man, Billy. Light it like a fuckin’ man. And stop your sniveling or I’ll add another book.”
Billy tried to stop crying. He tried to cover the matchhead with his thumb and it lit but took half his thumb with it. He yelped and dropped everything.
“That’s enough!” Mom pushed past me onto the porch. “He’s had enough!”
Dad turned on her. She didn’t back away but I could tell she thought about it. “You want him growing up a fuckin’ PANSY, Mickey? What’s next? Lipstick?” Dad started prancing around the porch with his wrists pointed down and knees stuck together.
Billy started to laugh. He was still crying a little but then he stopped and picked up the matchbook. Dad got behind him and held his hands and showed him how to hold the match just right so it would only hurt a little.
“That’s my boy,” Dad said. “Another one.”
Mom went inside shaking her head but she was smiling too.
Neither of them noticed I was wearing Dad’s work boots. I really liked the way they felt.
*
More Micros here.
Ray
“You’re just going to have to come with me,” she said as she put the final touches on her eyelashes. She brushed the top ones up and the bottom ones down. “There.”
We left. I sat in the back seat. “I should leave him there to stew.” She always said this and we always got Ray out of jail. Mom would pick up the phone and talk for a while and then we’d get him out.
Ray stood outside the police station smoking a cigarette. He leaned against the brick wall, tall and alone. Mom said, “What the hell?” Ray opened the door and got in. His face was cut. He smelled like cigarettes and something else.
“Fine example for your brother.”
Ray turned halfway and winked at me.
“You stop that right now, Raymond! I have half a mind to march you right back in there.” Ray changed his face and sounded contrite. “You look nice today.” She reached across the seat to hold his hand. I saw his jaw muscles set.
“I’m going in there. Make sure they clear up this nonsense.” She shut the car off and looked at her face in the rear-view mirror. “Back in a sec.” We watched a policeman hold the door for her and keep looking. She walked in with her purse under her arm. Ray turned around to me.
“How’d you get that?”
“Got into a rumble, SmallFry.” He asked if I wanted to go to the pool. We talked about the high diving board. After a while Mom got back in. She checked herself in the mirror and started the car.
“What do you want for dinner, Raymond?”
Ray raised his eyebrows. Mom hummed a song. I sat in the back and hoped for macaroni and cheese.
*
Power
Montecito. Atascadero. Paso Robles.
Monterey. Santa Cruz. Your smile.
Places more magical than real,
more past than present,
traveled through.
They live in my memory.
I write them because I miss them.
And I was told naming something
gives you power over it,
fixes it in place.
Well, then:
money wealth recognition words
anonymity hands night sky
ocean breeze sage and iceplant
arches
Redondo
quick intake
you.
*
I went looking
I went looking for a feeling today,
that one special feeling I once caught
somewhere, maybe a river in Wyoming
slipping by wild grass or a night when,
still studying philosophy, I looked up
from my book and noticed the soft-light
of my little dorm lamp and loved it.
I hunt this feeling, trap it with
Grandma's plastic tablecloth that was
padded so no waterglass could be placed
on it without almost toppling over
and her tossing a tennis ball to a dog
in the backyard, the distant sound
of a train rolling down dark tracks
as I slept.
I surround it and demand its name.
It smiles at me and slips through the
gaps and the hunt is on again for that
feeling I'm looking for today,
maybe walking down a dusty road in
Sacramento and seeing a lizard dart
off into the bush and then my shoes
seemed quiet under the hot-white sky and
for a moment I forgot where I was going.
*
Wagons
You and I pretend to keep the extra heartbeats and moods that follow — wagons loaded full of words to pull against the bright sky empty because we cannot fly.
*
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Redondo RV
for KG
The air smelled all Georgio and ocean in LA and my body worked so well I felt nothing, nothing, which is what health and vitality are, feeling nothing but heat on the bed, body on the sheets, the summer smell of my body in that not-new crusty motorhome parked outside Aunt’s house at the top of a street on a hill on a curve. It shouldn’t have worked parking on the ridge between Torrance and, over there, Redondo. The street was too small but she loved that RV and parked it in front of her house after she picked me up at Beck’s, my other grandpa, the one I hadn’t seen in so long. He didn’t know where I’d been or why, how I hitchhiked across the Utah desert and Nevada and slept with a truck driver in a cheap motel with shitty beds because I was fourteen and my step-dad threw me out of the car in Salt Lake.
He didn’t ask and I didn’t say. She knew but didn’t say anything. We had that in common.
I sometimes go back to that hill but nothing’s there anymore except I am in that bed over the cab, my own little place because there was no room in Aunt’s house. She acted embarrassed but to me it was heaven and I told her I couldn’t think of a more-fun thing to do. I ran to it that first night to fuck around because I was only fourteen and didn’t know how to pick up sex then and the whole thing was mine so I jammed myself thinking about the missionaries that used to come knocking on the door and the new nylon shorts I was wearing, the blue running shorts she bought me with the slit up the leg so high, and I couldn’t be stopped and nobody was around and they probably couldn’t see even though the little cab-light was on and they probably saw, or saw the camper moving, but I didn’t think about that too long because it felt so good. Nobody said anything the next morning, not even her son, even though he looked at me weird and they’d have to be blind not to see.
I was a nice boy everyone pitied because I was not strong and who my step-dad married. Someone once said at his church “For what he’s been through…Heavenly Father sure made him smart.” Skinny arms and twig legs and desire for those missionaries, desire so wild I yelled the first time I came and then it became a contest to see how far it could go until I knew I was gay and not just friends with guys and my first thought was “Cool.” Then all hell broke loose again and I’m almost fifteen in an RV parked on a curve at the top of a hill. I want so many guys I feel like a whore back when being a whore was dangerous because AIDS was out so I’m fucking around above the cab amazed at how I smell and happy. Aunt drives me to Universal Studios the next day and says she thought she washed the sheets but evidently not and opens the windows as she drives up the 405 freeway. This is the first time I feel like a man. Everything changes. I didn’t think it would — I wanted time to kiss Bryce and use my body with him and have someone beautiful take me away. But she smelled the sheets and I was proud and didn’t need Bryce or mom or a dad because I was sure.
It’s all good now. There’s no need to go back to my glorious skin or dream other whores out there waiting to be touched and taken and left so they can go to work the next day and then home to kids and husbands who know nothing. I go back to that bed over the cab that smelled of sweat and cum because I love how the story began and I watch everything that’s happened and say:
“Fuck you were a skinny whore.”
I feel good. I feel fifty while I sit at the table, stay up for the words because they are strong and true and because this is who I want to be, where I want to be, writing under a crap light while people wonder what the fuck I’m doing parked on this goddamn hill.
Photo by Sebastian Huxley on Unsplash
*
Lake House Memory
The coffee pot sticks a little to the warming plate. Sliding-glass door’s a bit rusty. I love it cracked open, lake-smell gets in, grass and summer rain, trees on the breeze — maybe the morning doves will come again. It’s good to feel stiff old shag, see stacks of books we’ve partly read, stacks and stacks. Your grandpa’s kitchen table, Ruth’s worn chair, dusty Mantovani on the player. Paintings hang crooked, curl on paneled walls, fading in memory and slow-days, that other house, the city one, already forgotten.
*
Greg Beckman 