Records
Posted: July 24th, 2010 | No Comments »
When I was six years old, my only friend was a boy named Matthew. Physically, he was my opposite: his blonde hair was the same shade as his pale skin and his eyes were faint and blue. My eyes were so dark they looked more black than brown. My hair was the same color. Maybe that’s why no one else wanted to be friends with us; I’m still not sure. In Matt’s case, it could also have been the fact that he was the only student in our grade who had a single mother. It’s possible that he could’ve been the only kid in the whole school with a single, but I’m not sure. It was a small town and privacy was a rare commodity.
On Halloween, we would all come to school in costume. Halfway through the day, classes let out and there would be a fair on the playground where we could bob for apples or play carnival games where candy or toys were given out as prizes. Mom never made me a costume like the other kids. Instead she’d buy me a plastic costume in a bag from Thrifty. Matt showed up in a metallic gold jumpsuit with big fake gold chains around his neck and sunglasses. I asked what he was supposed to be and he answered, “Elvis Presley.” It was impossible to make the connection but it seemed like a good-natured tribute since the King had just died the year before. I felt bad for Matt since he had to explain to everyone that he was, in fact, Elvis Presley. I had no such problems because the plastic apron I was wearing had “Casper the Friendly Ghost” emblazoned across the chest.
We were walking home when we passed Speedy Gourmet, a hamburger stand a couple blocks from school. There were four kids in front. I didn’t know how old they were…I would’ve only described them as “big.”
“Hey what are you supposed to be?” one of them asked Matt.
“Elvis Presley.” he answered, smiling.
He looked at Matt and then at me.
“No you’re not. You’re Captain Faggot. And that’s Casper the Homo Jap! Now give us your fucking candy!”
We started running and they took off after us. Matt’s house was only a block away but there was no way we were going to make it inside. I couldn’t run as quickly as Matt could and I wasn’t used to the angry burning feeling in my stomach and chest. I wanted to either cry or vomit. Instead, I focused on Matt’s glittery gold back and pumped my feet. Suddenly, Matt was standing in front of a tall figure.
It was Matt’s half-brother, Jesse. He was older and bigger than any of the kids chasing us and was wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off. Unlike Matt, his hair was a perfectly round helmet of dark curls. He was smoking a cigarette that he threw on the ground angrily. The burning ash blew up in front of the big kids.
“Leave them alone.”
The big kids stopped and looked at him, puzzled. Jesse lunged towards them and they scurried off while he snickered and led us inside.
“You guys okay?”
I couldn’t answer. I just looked at him. He smiled and then looked at Matt.
“Yeah we’re okay.”
“Why don’t you guys come in and settle down a little.”
In retrospect, Jesse was a pretty serious burnout. He was about sixteen but didn’t go to school or have a job. It didn’t matter because he was always nice to us. When we were home, he’d watch cartoons with us and would let us hang out in his room and listen to records while he just sat and smoked cigarette after cigarette. He’d pour us Shasta in plastic cups and fix us plates of salami, cheese, and Ritz Crackers. It didn’t seem odd to me that he seemed to have no friends besides two six year olds. I realized some years later that he was so mellow because he was probably bombed out of his mind. This was apparent when I would later read about him getting arrested in a huge pot bust in some barn outside of Santa Maria.
But when I was sitting with Matt and Jesse and looking at the album covers while the music played on his hi-fi, it was safe. And the music was magic. We’d listen to the Sweet, Mott the Hoople, KISS, Black Sabbath, Queen, the Beatles, or the Stones. The music was loud and catchy and flashy. The covers were magic. I’d open gatefolds and look at the pictures inside. They were like National Geographic to me only instead of showing you wildlife in Borneo, they would show pictures of rock stars and the world they lived in. I wondered about the robot on the cover of Queen’s “News of the World” and wondered why he picked up the members of Queen and why did he pierce Freddie Mercury’s belly with his metal finger? Was that a demon watching the party in the gatefold of “Hotel California?”
The songs were larger than life and far more colorful, like cartoons compared to silent, black and white reels. There was no one to take away our Halloween candy and it didn’t matter that we didn’t have friends because we had all the friends we needed in those four walls, covered as they were with velvet black light posters of Bruce Lee and odd colored castles and horses.
Happy Birthday to Me
Posted: July 10th, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The world was a terrifying place on May 20, 1983. At any second, an array of LGM-118 Peacekeeper missiles could erupt from the ground while Russian ICBMs hurtled down from the sky in response. I pictured Yuri Andropov’s face cackling as mushroom clouds decimated dad’s ranch; the barn disintegrated and my goat, Fred Butter, sprinted off before turning into scattered isotopes. Dad stood up holding a can of Budweiser. He looked out the window and suddenly was nothing but a silhouette with a phosphorescent skeleton. Meanwhile, at home, mom looked at me with an expression that screamed, “What did you do now?” Her angrily permed hair ignited. Everything shrieked in white and then was replaced by silent empty black. Sometimes the next thing I saw was grandpa reaching out to me. Usually, though, I just saw that darkness, like at the end of a movie. It wasn’t so bad, but when I thought of it lasting forever, I would think that was a long time to be lonely, and that was much, much more terrifying than the mushroom clouds.
I came home from the bus stop each day counting my footsteps. It was very tedious and exhausting to both walk and count those six hundred forty-two steps so I concentrated very hard. I hunched over, taking slow steps, carefully making sure not to lose count. If I lost count, I walked back to the bus stop and started all over again. If I finished in any less or any more than the six hundred forty-two steps, I went back to the bus stop and made sure to do it again until I hit that magic number. Otherwise I might have looked up to see ICBMs flying over the horizon.
The other kids didn’t understand the gravity of what I was doing. They just saw me stooped over, looking through my thick black frames as I walked back and forth to the bus stop. At first, they’d call me names. Later, they started throwing stuff at me. There were different types of fruit trees all along the road. They would pick green lemons, figs, plums, and apricots off of the trees and chuck them at me. They would bounce off of my face, arms, and back while I counted steps. They were hard and angry and would sting.
May 20, 1983 was my eleventh birthday, and turning eleven, as such, was a bad sign: it was an odd number. And the year was an odd number, too. Being ten was pretty tough as it was, but now my age itself was a number that angered god. I was worried because no matter how many footsteps I counted, I couldn’t change how old I was. And it was very likely that this would be my age when an orange cloud would light up above all of us.
I came home from school and I made it home in six hundred forty-two steps. That was on the second try. I had stains on my shirt and pants from unripe figs. That meant it was already a bad day. Mom said happy birthday and sent me off to Burt’s to pick up the check for my paper route. Burt lived a few blocks from us. We lived at the top of the hill with a view of the beach. He lived in a mobile home at the bottom of the hill next to an orchard and a stagnant brown creek. His road was not paved, just rocky sand and dirt framed by weeds.
Burt managed the paper routes around town, a 45-year-old man with a regular gang of 10-year-old boys. He came to my 5th grade class to recruit us. Mom thought it was a good idea to get me out of the house, and the extra $40 a month bought me all the things I liked the most: comic books, pro wrestling magazines, and Queen LPs. The route wasn’t bad–I delivered papers on six streets around the neighborhood and made it home in time to still watch cartoons. The only hard part was collecting money from the subscribers. They usually weren’t home. If they were, I was so shy I couldn’t really talk to them. Instead I just held up a bill and an envelope with a pleading look on my face.
I went to Burt’s to pick up my $40 paycheck. He answered the door in a stained white ribbed tee shirt stretched over his belly. His brown hair was greasy and combed back from his face. His greedy mustache covered his entire mouth.
“Hey you like rasslin’, right?”
“…sure…I guess…”
“Who’s yer favorite?”
“…I dunno….”
“You like Rick Martel?”
“…I guess he’s good….”
“He’s on the TV right now. Why doncha watch it with me?”
“…I just wanted to get my check. Mom wants me back….”
“It’s just gonna be ten minutes. Just watch with me.”
“…okay….”
We sat and watched his old black and white TV. The rabbit ear antenna was held in place with aluminum foil. Rick Martel was about to fight King Tonga.
“So you wanna make an extra five bucks?”
“…I don’t know…”
“C’mon it’s easy. Just sit on my lap and let me kiss you on the cheek.”
King Tonga slapped Martel across the chest. It left a red welt and he winced in pain as I climbed up onto Burt’s lap.
* * * * *
Fortunately, my eleventh birthday was a special day in one way: I was going to be Willy Wonka in our school’s production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We had been rehearsing after school every Thursday for two months and I was so excited. I had no friends at school and was very shy but at the same time I loved performing in front of people, especially if it meant singing and dancing. Mom said it was because I liked showing off which might have been true, but I thought it was because I loved being a part of a happy song.
Life wasn’t so happy in those days. It used to be a combination of unpleasant moments, like when I walked home from the bus stop and kids pelted me with rocks or random fruit while they called me a “chink” or a “faggot”. After that, mom smacked me in the head for getting fruit stains on my clothes. After that I had to force myself to eat dinner while mom simultaneously told me how good the food she cooked was as she reminded me how ungrateful I was. Otherwise she told stories of what an asshole my dad was, all while drinking white wine with ice in a red plastic Solo cup wrapped in paper towels. Then, at nighttime, I climbed into bed and dreamt of crouching in a fallout shelter as the world outside incinerated. Being in a happy story about a candy maker was a lot better than any of these alternatives.
Also, when I went to after-school drama class, I didn’t have to go home at the same time as the kids who bullied me. Instead, I spent afternoons with a group of girls and the other timid boys who feared the walk home from their respective bus stops. Mr. Wise, the drama teacher, was young compared to the permanent teachers at the school. He was handsome and unmarried and all the girls had crushes on him. He was very supportive of them. But I wasn’t a girl, I didn’t have a crush on him, and I lacked confidence and stammered a lot. If I stammered while reading or reciting lines, Mr. Wise would get frustrated with me. He called my stammering baby talk and, if I stammered, he encouraged the other kids in the class to shout out “goo-goo, ga-ga!” Soon, all the kids just started calling me Goo Goo.
I didn’t get the second biggest role in the play because of any talent on my part; it was simply because no one else wanted to wear the Willy Wonka outfit. I was the only one up for the part. Even so, I was very excited to get it. As I pranced out onto stage in matching purple velvet waistcoat, pants, and top hat, I triumphantly waved my walking stick toward the audience and led Charlie and the others into the “chocolate factory”, a huge butcher paper backdrop colored with poster paints. My stammer was gone and, for a moment, there were no ICBM’s in the Russian silos. I pointed out candy trees and a lake of chocolate that didn’t exist. Then I proudly delivered my favorite line:
“Hold your breath, make a wish, count to three.”
And then I sang:
Come with me
And you’ll be
In a world of
Pure imagination
Take a look
And you’ll see
Into your imagination
I felt regal in my ruffled, French-cuffed shirt and swung my walking stick with confidence. I took off my top hat and waved my arm in a big arc. Although I was lost in concentration, I caught a glimpse of the front row and made eye contact with dad. Why, I wondered, did he look so horrified? I had seen that look a few times before. Once, he had walked into the family room as I was singing along to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” on MTV. Another time he had walked in as I was making a soufflé in the kitchen. Each time he had the same wide-eyed frown and would leave the room without saying anything. After the play, I saw him walking out of the cafeteria. He didn’t say goodbye; it wasn’t his style and he tried to avoid mom because she usually made a scene. She was still angry with him for cheating on her.
“Where is that son of a bitch?” she asked me as she walked up.
“I think I saw him leave.”
“GOOD.”
Mr. Wise came up to me.
“You did great,” he said, gripping my shoulder, “you still baby talked the line about the fizzy lifting drinks, but other than that you did great.”
My mother walked up.
“And you must be the master thespian’s mother! Good to finally meet you, Mrs. Lee.”
“Oh no. Call me MISS Lee.”
My mother took great pride in recently becoming single, so much that it was kind of odd that she kept her married name. She began talking to Mr. Wise and her voice starting to take a singing tone. I walked off to the end of the cafeteria. A group of kids were sitting at one of the tables.
“Nice suit, homo.” The kids all started laughing together. When I looked at them, they looked away and continued laughing. One of them said, “Get out of here, Goo Goo, before I kick your ass.” I walked back to the other side. Mom touched my arm.
“Good news!” she said, “Mr. Wise is coming to dinner with us tonight.”
We went out to Clemenzas, the pizza parlor downtown. I had my favorite meal: ravioli and a root beer. Mom and Mr. Wise kept talking and laughing, pouring red wine out of a straw-covered bottle into two tumblers. It was odd to see them talking. It was like the worlds of school and home had collided on a red-checkered tablecloth.
We drove back home and they continued to talk and drink wine as I went upstairs and washed and got ready for bed. I looked proudly at my velvet suit on the hanger. I could tell by the way mom laughed downstairs that she was drunk. It was drawn out and loud, almost a caricature of a laugh: “Aaaaaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” It was the last thing I heard. I got lost in thoughts of god’s favorite numbers and mushroom clouds and Russians and isotopes and eternal black before I fell asleep.
The next morning I woke up early because dad would be picking me up. He had custody every other weekend and, since it was my birthday, he was going to take the day off from work. Mom wasn’t up yet so I went to the kitchen to make my favorite breakfast: Boo Berry cereal with whole milk. Boo Berry wasn’t easy to find: you’d see Frankenberry or you’d see Count Chocula, but Boo Berry would just show up at odd times so it was a special treat to find it.
I heard heavy and cautious footsteps on the staircase. It sort of sounded like when mom would come down when she thought I was sleeping, but the steps were too heavy to be her. It was Mr. Wise. He was buttoning the same shirt he was wearing the night before. We looked at each other. His eyes widened then sharpened. His throat moved as he swallowed.
“The master thespian!” he whispered. He looked upstairs and then back at me. He had an expression as though he were standing in front of a huge crowd. I didn’t say anything and just stared at him. He was still whispering.
“Look, your mom’s really tired. It’s very important we don’t wake her up. But I’m very late for an appointment right now so I’ve gotta head out.”
It was 7:30 on Saturday morning.
“So I guess I’ll see you next drama season?”
I just looked at him without saying anything. He waved while he was smiling with only his mouth and teeth. His eyes were still wide and cautious. He went out the front door backwards while he continued facing me, swallowing again and waving goodbye.
I finished my cereal and rinsed out the dish. When I turned on the water, I heard mom waking up. I could hear footsteps and then her bedroom door opened. She came downstairs and looked at me. I looked at her. She quickly walked back upstairs without saying anything. I heard the toilet flush and the shower started. She didn’t come back down.
* * * * *
Dad picked me up in his 1980 Chevy Silverado. We didn’t say anything the entire way and listened to AM news radio instead. I guess it made sense that dad wanted a son. I also understood that I was a great source of disappointment for him. Instead of baseball cards, I collected Elton John and Bay City Rollers albums. I did not know how to play any sports and had never caught a ball successfully. While other kids were learning to catch grounders in Little League, I was rehearsing with drama class or I was drawing Queen album covers from memory.
Dad was lean and tall, with a wide face. He always wore the same thing: a plaid work shirt tucked into jeans with a belt and work boots. His hair was thin, black, with a careful part held in place with Murray’s Pomade. Ten-hour days as a butcher covered his hands with scars and calluses. He grew up on a farm in Bakersfield and would have been considered a redneck if he were white instead of Chinese. He drank Budweiser from cans and had a locker full of guns. The only cars he bought were American-made, all pickups. Some of my classmates talked about how their parents were hippies back in the sixties who were in the Peace Corps or went to see Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey Pop Festival. I had a father who bragged about beating up hippies and enlisting in the army to fight in the Vietnam War.
Instead of going to Vietnam, though, dad was sent to Korea where he was assigned to drive a mail truck. He met mom there. After they got married, they moved back to the middle of California where I was born. When I was nine, an odd number, she caught him cheating with a string of white women and filed for divorce. On the weekends when he had custody, dad would drive me to his ranch to stay with him and his pregnant girlfriend. It was a five-acre ranch in the hills covered in dry yellow weeds and fine brown dirt. It seemed like the weekends would go by without any of us speaking to one another, aside from his girlfriend calling me in for meals. I would spend the time watching television or reading comic books. Otherwise I would ride my bicycle on the dirt roads around the ranch and visit with my goat, Fred Butter. His first name was Fred because that seemed like a good name. His last name was Butter because his fur was a yellowish color. He was my best friend because he was never critical of me and I was never critical of him, even though he did eat my jacket one time.
When we got to the ranch, dad disappeared into the barn and came out with a box.
“Happy birthday.”
Dad said it the same way he said almost everything: dismissively yet mildly exasperated and disgusted. He handed me a long box that was bright red and yellow and had a picture of a gun on it. It read “POWERLINE 880 MULTI PUMP AIR RIFLE: DUAL AMMO: BB OR PELLET.” He had gotten me the best air rifle at Kmart for my eleventh birthday. He didn’t bother to wrap it or take off the price tag. He also handed me what looked like a small copper milk carton. It was full of BB shot.
“Now get some cans from the pile.”
I wasn’t sure, back then, if I was hearing everything wrong or if I was just stupid. Nothing anyone said to me made any sense unless they repeated it. I instinctively answered everything by asking, “What?” It was a good thing that hardly anyone ever talked to me. Dad was a different story, though. If I answered dad by saying, “What?” he’d slap me in the head for being stupid. If I hesitated, he’d call me a shit head.
“I TOLD YOU TO GET SOME CANS FROM THE PILE, SHIT HEAD! QUIT STALLING.”
He led me out to the grain. Behind it was an old sawhorse. Dad took the cans and set them up on it: Mello Yello, Shasta, Budweiser, Budweiser, Budweiser and Budweiser. He stood to the side and nodded toward the air rifle box. I pulled off the cellophane, opened the case and took out the gun. It was black metal and dark brown wood and smelled like oil. He took it from me and poured some BB shot into the cartridge then handed it back to me and gestured toward the cans. I held the gun up and pointed it towards the cans.
“You’re holding the gun like a cunt. Ease off a little.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. I just scowled and tried to look tougher.
“Look‚ don’t hold your front arm so tight. And look at your elbow; don’t hold it to the side like that. Just lower your shoulder and relax your arm. Let the rifle rest on your hand.”
I did what he told me but it felt much more awkward than before. Maybe I was more comfortable as a cunt.
“Don’t think of it as shooting, think of it as pointing to the cans. Now go ahead and fire.”
I squeezed the trigger and the Mello Yello can popped and fell off of the sawhorse. Dad both winced and smiled. I managed to hit the Shasta can, too, and then hit two Budweiser cans but missed the last two. Hitting four was good: it was an even number. Missing an even number of cans was good, too.
“That ain’t bad.” He took a long drink of beer.
“Remember the most important rule.”
I looked back at him. His eyes and face were red. That meant he had drunk about four beers.
“The most important rule is to never shoot anything but cans. Not just with that gun, but with any guns.”
“Okay dad.”
“Yeah, just cans. You know, Mexi-CANS, Afri-CANS, Puerto Ri-CANS!!!”
He started laughing. I pointed the gun towards the ground and looked at him and realized I wasn’t sure if I had ever seen him laugh before.
“Hahaha! You GET IT? Goddamn CANS!!!”
I didn’t get it but I pretended to–with all of my heart–just to be able to laugh with him that one time.
