Laurie
Chekhov play
Starbucks, November 10, 2008
I am turning into a Chekhov play—the one where the women stand at the window of their provincial outpost and pine for Moscow. Moscow, Moscow, Moscow is all you hear about in The Three Sisters. Moscow is society, surprise, strangeness—all the things a great city is supposed to be. In a city like that, the streets are your arteries and veins.
“You have the look of the last Tasmanian,” Richard says, “the only speaker of your language.” Before I moved to Arizona, he said: “You’ll miss your life, your friends,” I said: “Don’t be ridiculous. I can work anywhere.” When has anything you thought about the future turned out right?
My friend Alan lives in my apartment; technically it’s still mine, but when I see his belongings all around, I’m restless and unhappy. I have traveled far and often but never so far afield and never without knowing I was coming back. Can you hear me Major Tom? Toby has been dead a year. We are all the only speakers of our language.
We visit Kierland Common, an outdoor shopping mall designed to look like a village with a square and fountain in the center. The stores are the usual suspects: Barnes & Noble, Banana Republic, Eileen Fisher. Scattered about are a few expensive restaurants and a place you can get a sandwich and coffee, but this is not a neighborhood where people live; they come and go by car. “It’s based on Main Street, Disney,” Richard says, “rather than an actual town square. It’s an evocation of village centers that in reality have been abandoned.” What a smarty-pants my boyfriend is. He’s wearing a carrot colored T-shirt, and his silvery hair spikes up. The streets are a break from the Valley’s dominant suburban sprawl, punctuated by strip malls and condo communities, and I’m trying not to live in my old patterns. But who am I kidding? Kierland is depressing and not all that different from other shopping sections of the Valley; all have been constructed by developers and aren’t attached in any network. There’s no urban area to get lost in.
Richard asks why I’m sighing, and I don’t know I am, and the air between us starts to get a black, funnel cloud look. I say this place, this place where we live is an indistinct fuzz ball and in it I’m a fuzz ball, too. I have one or two almost friends, but it takes an hour each way to drive to them. I talk about the difference between an urban facsimile and a city that isn’t planned, rather evolves as an emergent system, little by little, and is shaped by the language, and clothes, and art, and food of its neighborhoods. Richard says that all cities are constructed around commercial interests and that western cities and eastern cities are based on different models. He says what eastern cities have is a patina of use and wear. My head goes on fire and I raise my voice a little that sounds to him like shouting and I say: Are you suggesting that the difference between a mall and a city is soot? And he says: You like to fight, you just like to fight. You need to fight. It’s something about you and your mother. And we are thinking: Why did I throw over whatever the hell I had for this hidebound flame thrower, but I am also thinking: I would be just as lost in New York without my love. But my love is pissing me off with his crack about fighting, even though he’s right. I am just like my mother. I am just like my mother in order to fend her off. But why is he protecting Arizona? I say: What’s Arizona to you, huh? Every day when you write, you don’t situate yourself here. You’re in England, wandering down cobbled streets or trucking across wind blown moors. Or you’re in New York, listening to jazz or riding the subway and looking out for muggers. You have hardly any friends here, too! So what’s this defense of Arizona? And he says: There’s something to what you say, but I feel that badmouthing Arizona is snobbish and an easy target for outsiders, and I just hate snobbery. And I say: Well, I’m not a snob, and I want to talk about my experience without you thinking I’m attacking people who live here. And he shoots me a grumpy smile, and I see his even row of top teeth, and he says: What the hell am I defending? And it hits us we’re defending ourselves against being swallowed up in the other, and I think I could talk to this man for the rest of my life. It’s not that rash an idea. I mean, how much longer do I have?
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Taking from nature
Richard
Taking from nature
Stabucks, April 16, 2007
We lope along beside coyotes with extra spring in their steps and quick brown rabbits, creatures who have learned to live in the desert. Laurie is not one of them. With her black umbrella and silk pants, she looks like a variety act in a Vaudeville show. The desert is alien to me, too, but I’ve lived here long enough to look local, kicking up red soil in worn boots, long cotton pants, and a straw hat.
Laurie steals wild-flowers, ocotillo branches, and rocks. She also makes deposits in nature: apple cores, olive pits, and lumps of bread, defying the maxim, “Leave no trace” that I learned from the Outward Bound, wilderness-loving folks I worked for some years ago. Laurie argues that human history is all about leaving a trace—indeed a great dirty, lusty slash.
She has a point. Ideas about the wilderness regularly flip. Up until the 19th Century, the heavenly city was the site of salvation and the wilderness the wellspring of temptation. Jesus meets the devil in the wilderness, and Hawthorne’s Puritans watch their their libidinal fantasies come to life in the forest. With the Romantics and the Transcendentalists, the holy place relocates to nature. People journey to mountains and woods to refresh themselves spiritually, which leads us to Thoreau, the righteous bastard, who throws around lots of cleansing imagery. These days we construct the wilderness in wildlife parks, preserve the pristine. This is just the sort of contradiction Laurie pounces on, and although I recognize the philosophical inconsistency, I’m against her interfering.
“What if everyone took rocks?” I pose.
“The rocks where we walk approach an infinite number. No amount of collecting can diminish the total.”
She has a point. Out here, a path is a place where the rocks have been cleared.
“So, we’re not exactly talking about untouched nature, are we?” She says she’s “relocating” rocks with arresting striations and smudges of desert varish in order to make something of the nothing of our patio. “This ‘don’t move the rocks’ doctrine is pretty essentialist, don’t you think?”
Walking ahead to mount my next argument, I look back to see her inspecting a large branch of dried ocotillo with its beautiful latticed chambers. She approaches me, beaming, and in her smile I see a wildness that sloughs off rules and wakes up a wildness in me. Instead of demanding she put back the branch, I suggest she hide it, thereby conceding the argument. She takes off her shirt (actually my shirt she’s stolen), wraps it around the branch and sticks it in her backpack. She looks like a woman carrying a large branch wrapped in a shirt.
My only victory is turning an open vandal into a furtive one. I credit Laurie with introducing nature rage into our relationship.
Taking from nature
Stabucks, April 16, 2007
We lope along beside coyotes with extra spring in their steps and quick brown rabbits, creatures who have learned to live in the desert. Laurie is not one of them. With her black umbrella and silk pants, she looks like a variety act in a Vaudeville show. The desert is alien to me, too, but I’ve lived here long enough to look local, kicking up red soil in worn boots, long cotton pants, and a straw hat.
Laurie steals wild-flowers, ocotillo branches, and rocks. She also makes deposits in nature: apple cores, olive pits, and lumps of bread, defying the maxim, “Leave no trace” that I learned from the Outward Bound, wilderness-loving folks I worked for some years ago. Laurie argues that human history is all about leaving a trace—indeed a great dirty, lusty slash.
She has a point. Ideas about the wilderness regularly flip. Up until the 19th Century, the heavenly city was the site of salvation and the wilderness the wellspring of temptation. Jesus meets the devil in the wilderness, and Hawthorne’s Puritans watch their their libidinal fantasies come to life in the forest. With the Romantics and the Transcendentalists, the holy place relocates to nature. People journey to mountains and woods to refresh themselves spiritually, which leads us to Thoreau, the righteous bastard, who throws around lots of cleansing imagery. These days we construct the wilderness in wildlife parks, preserve the pristine. This is just the sort of contradiction Laurie pounces on, and although I recognize the philosophical inconsistency, I’m against her interfering.
“What if everyone took rocks?” I pose.
“The rocks where we walk approach an infinite number. No amount of collecting can diminish the total.”
She has a point. Out here, a path is a place where the rocks have been cleared.
“So, we’re not exactly talking about untouched nature, are we?” She says she’s “relocating” rocks with arresting striations and smudges of desert varish in order to make something of the nothing of our patio. “This ‘don’t move the rocks’ doctrine is pretty essentialist, don’t you think?”
Walking ahead to mount my next argument, I look back to see her inspecting a large branch of dried ocotillo with its beautiful latticed chambers. She approaches me, beaming, and in her smile I see a wildness that sloughs off rules and wakes up a wildness in me. Instead of demanding she put back the branch, I suggest she hide it, thereby conceding the argument. She takes off her shirt (actually my shirt she’s stolen), wraps it around the branch and sticks it in her backpack. She looks like a woman carrying a large branch wrapped in a shirt.
My only victory is turning an open vandal into a furtive one. I credit Laurie with introducing nature rage into our relationship.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Johnny Folkes
Richard
Johnny Folkes
Starbucks, Jan. 12, 2008
Johnny Folkes was the most talented and graceful athlete at Humphrey Perkins. We were on the same teams for soccer and rugby in winter, cricket and athletics in summer, and basketball all year round. He had the well developed muscles of a man, not, like me, the slender physique of a fifteen-year-old boy. He was beautiful, too, with a fringe of curly blond hair that gave him the look of a Greek statue. The girls all eyed him, but he didn’t go out with any while we were school friends. Other people, even girls, hardly registered on him.
I don’t remember him bullying anyone off the sports field, but a streak of cruelty surfaced in competition. Playing soccer, he’d trip an opponent making a run, or grab a player’s shirt when the referee wasn’t looking. He’d attack the man not the ball. It was unnecessary. He had the skill and poise not to foul, but he liked to. He’d rise from a nasty tackle wearing a grin of malice, and it helped create a protective shield around him. No one wanted to be his target and wind up carried off on a stretcher. In the wilder game of rugby, he was even more dangerous. Routinely, he’d lead in points until the referee sent him off for gouging or stiff-arming. Mr. Williams, the sports master, would look despairing; he’d been handed the most gifted athlete he’d ever seen, but he was unable to reform him. Johnny couldn’t grant people space even in his reflected light.
He qualified in trials for the national teams in rugby, soccer, and cricket, but each time he’d miss the final pick or be dismissed early for unsportsmanlike conduct. I studied him, looking to carve a safe place in his proximity, and instead of giving him a wide berth as most did I became his friend. I passed to him so he could score. I specialized in events he disdained, among them, long jump and high jump. We were easy allies in sprint relays, and being Johnny’s friend meant I was protected, too. It wasn’t a calculation, rather a role I’d practiced while trailing my willful, older brother, Roy.
I didn’t question Johnny’s cruelty, rather treated it as a force of nature like his larger, stronger muscles. I would have avoided him if I could have, and my friendship, for that reason, felt inauthentic. I competed with him openly only in displays of wit, winning his confidence, in part, with fast putdowns of people he despised, i.e. everyone who appeared smarter than him, except me. Telling jokes about the teachers and talking out of turn earned me as many detentions as Johnny got. We bonded as kings of sport and fellow rebels, although I felt his cruel streak was a sleeping cobra that, once awakened, would strike. I was brought up in a family where physical violence wasn’t threatened. Even raising your voice was disapproved of. I was fascinated as well as repulsed by Johnny’s freedom to lose control.
It’s summer vacation, 1966, and out of the blue he invites me to spend the day in Loughborough, fifteen miles north of Syston. He’ll meet me at the bus stop by the market on Saturday morning. I feel flattered and obligated. I don’t wonder if he likes me, really, any more than I like him. I don’t wonder if he’s lonely. He has an impulse to reach out that matches mine to say okay. We’re boys, thinking with our reptilian brains.
He asks if I’ve got money when I step off the bus. I have a pound. It won’t be enough, he says, to buy beer and pie at the pub. We can go to his dad’s and he’ll ask for a fiver. It’s the first time Johnny has mentioned his family, the first I know he doesn’t live with his father. In the market, sellers hawk fruits and vegetables at open stalls. It’s colorful and noisy, a scene that has played in the square for hundreds of years. We turn onto a side street lined with red brick terraced houses. They lack gardens, and the front doors open directly onto the narrow pavement. Halfway down, Johnny stops and knocks loudly at a door, and after some time an angry looking man in his fifties appears. “What the fuck do you want?” The resemblance between father and son is unmistakable. This is how Johnny will look if a god in a machine doesn’t snatch him up to safety; Johnny’s looks were once squandered by the man with the blotchy face and body gone to flab. He wears a string vest. The fly of his trousers is unbuttoned. He’s been awakened from a drunken sleep, reeking of cigarettes and stale beer.
“I want a fucking fiver,” Johnny says, and their eyes lock.
“Fuck that.”
“You owe us, so ‘and it over.”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Don’t give me that, you bastard.” Johnny inches forward, his right hand balling into a fist. Next door a baby cries, and no one tries to soothe it.
The man looks back at his son and sighs. He’s too tired to fight, or he knows that Johnny could hurt him, or he has a change of heart. He digs into a pocket, withdraws a clip of bills, peels off a fiver, and hands it to his son. “Tell you what.” His voice is a bit softer. “Go down to the off license and get me some fags, and you can keep the change.” A half-smile crosses his face, or it could be a wince.
Johnny grabs the note and walks off, on his face the look of grim determination he wears on the sports field. He doesn’t turn as his dad calls, “Don’t forget. You promised.”
I’m invisible. Johnny doesn’t introduce me, and his father doesn’t ask who I am. I am a fly or a spy, and I’m excited and embarrassed, for I’ve never seen a father and son dare to speak to each other with so much raw emotion, and although part of my embarrassment is for having a dad who treats me kindly while Johnny has never known this, I can’t help wondering how it would feel to see my father in the grip of such emotion, to see him flare with feeling rather than stamping it out, like lit matches dropped on the kitchen floor, whenever someone cries or speaks with passion.
We don’t stop at the off license but spend the money drinking at the pub the next few hours before I board the bus back to Syston in a beer-infused haze. Thick as it is, I know that Johnny will never be picked for a national team—no god from a machine is going to lift him up. What will I become? Someone who neither shrinks back from violence nor feels entitled to explode. Along the way, I’ll encounter many violent people—Hell’s Angels, muggers, a pack of pub brawlers who follow me and a friend back to our flat—but somehow their full fury doesn’t come my way. Looking back at the boy on the bus, I see him discovering the unavoidability and poignancy of brutality in men’s lives—and finding a way to sail through it in one piece.
Johnny Folkes
Starbucks, Jan. 12, 2008
Johnny Folkes was the most talented and graceful athlete at Humphrey Perkins. We were on the same teams for soccer and rugby in winter, cricket and athletics in summer, and basketball all year round. He had the well developed muscles of a man, not, like me, the slender physique of a fifteen-year-old boy. He was beautiful, too, with a fringe of curly blond hair that gave him the look of a Greek statue. The girls all eyed him, but he didn’t go out with any while we were school friends. Other people, even girls, hardly registered on him.
I don’t remember him bullying anyone off the sports field, but a streak of cruelty surfaced in competition. Playing soccer, he’d trip an opponent making a run, or grab a player’s shirt when the referee wasn’t looking. He’d attack the man not the ball. It was unnecessary. He had the skill and poise not to foul, but he liked to. He’d rise from a nasty tackle wearing a grin of malice, and it helped create a protective shield around him. No one wanted to be his target and wind up carried off on a stretcher. In the wilder game of rugby, he was even more dangerous. Routinely, he’d lead in points until the referee sent him off for gouging or stiff-arming. Mr. Williams, the sports master, would look despairing; he’d been handed the most gifted athlete he’d ever seen, but he was unable to reform him. Johnny couldn’t grant people space even in his reflected light.
He qualified in trials for the national teams in rugby, soccer, and cricket, but each time he’d miss the final pick or be dismissed early for unsportsmanlike conduct. I studied him, looking to carve a safe place in his proximity, and instead of giving him a wide berth as most did I became his friend. I passed to him so he could score. I specialized in events he disdained, among them, long jump and high jump. We were easy allies in sprint relays, and being Johnny’s friend meant I was protected, too. It wasn’t a calculation, rather a role I’d practiced while trailing my willful, older brother, Roy.
I didn’t question Johnny’s cruelty, rather treated it as a force of nature like his larger, stronger muscles. I would have avoided him if I could have, and my friendship, for that reason, felt inauthentic. I competed with him openly only in displays of wit, winning his confidence, in part, with fast putdowns of people he despised, i.e. everyone who appeared smarter than him, except me. Telling jokes about the teachers and talking out of turn earned me as many detentions as Johnny got. We bonded as kings of sport and fellow rebels, although I felt his cruel streak was a sleeping cobra that, once awakened, would strike. I was brought up in a family where physical violence wasn’t threatened. Even raising your voice was disapproved of. I was fascinated as well as repulsed by Johnny’s freedom to lose control.
It’s summer vacation, 1966, and out of the blue he invites me to spend the day in Loughborough, fifteen miles north of Syston. He’ll meet me at the bus stop by the market on Saturday morning. I feel flattered and obligated. I don’t wonder if he likes me, really, any more than I like him. I don’t wonder if he’s lonely. He has an impulse to reach out that matches mine to say okay. We’re boys, thinking with our reptilian brains.
He asks if I’ve got money when I step off the bus. I have a pound. It won’t be enough, he says, to buy beer and pie at the pub. We can go to his dad’s and he’ll ask for a fiver. It’s the first time Johnny has mentioned his family, the first I know he doesn’t live with his father. In the market, sellers hawk fruits and vegetables at open stalls. It’s colorful and noisy, a scene that has played in the square for hundreds of years. We turn onto a side street lined with red brick terraced houses. They lack gardens, and the front doors open directly onto the narrow pavement. Halfway down, Johnny stops and knocks loudly at a door, and after some time an angry looking man in his fifties appears. “What the fuck do you want?” The resemblance between father and son is unmistakable. This is how Johnny will look if a god in a machine doesn’t snatch him up to safety; Johnny’s looks were once squandered by the man with the blotchy face and body gone to flab. He wears a string vest. The fly of his trousers is unbuttoned. He’s been awakened from a drunken sleep, reeking of cigarettes and stale beer.
“I want a fucking fiver,” Johnny says, and their eyes lock.
“Fuck that.”
“You owe us, so ‘and it over.”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Don’t give me that, you bastard.” Johnny inches forward, his right hand balling into a fist. Next door a baby cries, and no one tries to soothe it.
The man looks back at his son and sighs. He’s too tired to fight, or he knows that Johnny could hurt him, or he has a change of heart. He digs into a pocket, withdraws a clip of bills, peels off a fiver, and hands it to his son. “Tell you what.” His voice is a bit softer. “Go down to the off license and get me some fags, and you can keep the change.” A half-smile crosses his face, or it could be a wince.
Johnny grabs the note and walks off, on his face the look of grim determination he wears on the sports field. He doesn’t turn as his dad calls, “Don’t forget. You promised.”
I’m invisible. Johnny doesn’t introduce me, and his father doesn’t ask who I am. I am a fly or a spy, and I’m excited and embarrassed, for I’ve never seen a father and son dare to speak to each other with so much raw emotion, and although part of my embarrassment is for having a dad who treats me kindly while Johnny has never known this, I can’t help wondering how it would feel to see my father in the grip of such emotion, to see him flare with feeling rather than stamping it out, like lit matches dropped on the kitchen floor, whenever someone cries or speaks with passion.
We don’t stop at the off license but spend the money drinking at the pub the next few hours before I board the bus back to Syston in a beer-infused haze. Thick as it is, I know that Johnny will never be picked for a national team—no god from a machine is going to lift him up. What will I become? Someone who neither shrinks back from violence nor feels entitled to explode. Along the way, I’ll encounter many violent people—Hell’s Angels, muggers, a pack of pub brawlers who follow me and a friend back to our flat—but somehow their full fury doesn’t come my way. Looking back at the boy on the bus, I see him discovering the unavoidability and poignancy of brutality in men’s lives—and finding a way to sail through it in one piece.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Sugar times
Richard
Sugar times
Coffee Plantation, March 16, 2007
I’m alone one night watching Field of Dreams on TV. As my blood sugar drifts down, the movie becomes more and more profound. Death isn’t the end! We’re too bounded by reason to catch the shafts of light all around! I look up from the screen and see the living room through a fish-eye lens. The bookcase is swaying, the arm chair mumbling quietly to itself. My hands are attached to extremely long, rubbery strips, and the hairs on my arms, light brown and silky, are beautiful and mysteriously meaningful. A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, splashes onto my thigh, and ripples like a droplet on the surface of a pool. And I think—very slowly and with a smug smile that signals danger—I’m having a really low blood sugar.
I find myself in front of the refrigerator with the door open. Cold air moves across my skin. I’m slick with sweat, just sweating all over, and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to eat. I bite off some cheese (bad idea, it has no effect on blood sugar), and I grab a container of orange juice and gulp (good idea, sugar galore). Ten minutes later, I feel normal again and watch Kevin Costner meet his dead father in a cornfield. He’s stiff, and James Earl Jones is a blubbery fool encountering dead baseball players. I, too, feel wooden and spent, ejected from my field of dreams.
In one rather precariously low sugar, while Suzanne, my wife at the time, was handing me a glass of orange juice and waiting for my jumbled speech to mean something, I was convinced that time was running backwards. I could swear that everything had already taken place—a sustained sense of deja-vu. I said, “I've just drunk the OJ” and “How come time is going in reverse?" If you've seen the film Memento you'll remember that the main character goes around without any operating memory and has to piece together what’s happened to him from notes he leaves on his body. As he constructs and reconstructs this knowledge, the story is revealed to him (and us) in reverse. My experience felt like this, and the odd sense that it engendered—you feel ahead of the game, hence the oily smile—stayed with me for days.
I understand these moments are tricks of blood sugars, but I see them, nonetheless, as special mental abilities. I'm not saying time was really running backwards, rather that I enjoyed the sights and sounds as you might a journey to the Arctic or the Amazon, even though you would not always want to live in these extremes. How many Richards am I? In the rhythm of sudden sickness and rapid recovery, I experience little deaths and rebirths many times, even in one day. The return to a sense of self not shaken in the fist of either a high or low sugar is sweet in the same measure as altered states are illuminating. I feel hopeful as I reassemble the fractured parts of me, languid on a couch, the littlest hairs on my body feeling air moving on them. I am small and excited, ready to evade repetition. Think on!
Sugar times
Coffee Plantation, March 16, 2007
I’m alone one night watching Field of Dreams on TV. As my blood sugar drifts down, the movie becomes more and more profound. Death isn’t the end! We’re too bounded by reason to catch the shafts of light all around! I look up from the screen and see the living room through a fish-eye lens. The bookcase is swaying, the arm chair mumbling quietly to itself. My hands are attached to extremely long, rubbery strips, and the hairs on my arms, light brown and silky, are beautiful and mysteriously meaningful. A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, splashes onto my thigh, and ripples like a droplet on the surface of a pool. And I think—very slowly and with a smug smile that signals danger—I’m having a really low blood sugar.
I find myself in front of the refrigerator with the door open. Cold air moves across my skin. I’m slick with sweat, just sweating all over, and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to eat. I bite off some cheese (bad idea, it has no effect on blood sugar), and I grab a container of orange juice and gulp (good idea, sugar galore). Ten minutes later, I feel normal again and watch Kevin Costner meet his dead father in a cornfield. He’s stiff, and James Earl Jones is a blubbery fool encountering dead baseball players. I, too, feel wooden and spent, ejected from my field of dreams.
In one rather precariously low sugar, while Suzanne, my wife at the time, was handing me a glass of orange juice and waiting for my jumbled speech to mean something, I was convinced that time was running backwards. I could swear that everything had already taken place—a sustained sense of deja-vu. I said, “I've just drunk the OJ” and “How come time is going in reverse?" If you've seen the film Memento you'll remember that the main character goes around without any operating memory and has to piece together what’s happened to him from notes he leaves on his body. As he constructs and reconstructs this knowledge, the story is revealed to him (and us) in reverse. My experience felt like this, and the odd sense that it engendered—you feel ahead of the game, hence the oily smile—stayed with me for days.
I understand these moments are tricks of blood sugars, but I see them, nonetheless, as special mental abilities. I'm not saying time was really running backwards, rather that I enjoyed the sights and sounds as you might a journey to the Arctic or the Amazon, even though you would not always want to live in these extremes. How many Richards am I? In the rhythm of sudden sickness and rapid recovery, I experience little deaths and rebirths many times, even in one day. The return to a sense of self not shaken in the fist of either a high or low sugar is sweet in the same measure as altered states are illuminating. I feel hopeful as I reassemble the fractured parts of me, languid on a couch, the littlest hairs on my body feeling air moving on them. I am small and excited, ready to evade repetition. Think on!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Pee
Richard
Pee
Starbucks, November 12, 2008
Over the years I’ve completed scores of surveys about diabetes. How many pats of butter do I spread on bread? Do I hear voices? Can I feel my toes? I’m in San Diego for my annual checkup as part of the epidemiological study that’s now reached its 25th year. I’m in the white examining room at a small table, pen in hand, filling out forms between medical tests, when I come to a survey about peeing. Long-term diabetes can damage the nerves that control urination.
How often do I pee? How long does it usually take? Is my flow strong? Am I able to stop when I want to? I’m not sure. What’s a normal flow? How do you know how good you are at stopping? Do I dribble? Do I stop and start again? Do I really know when I’m finished?
I have lots of opportunity to ponder the questions, as I’m in the middle of a renal test which has me drinking a quart of water every half hour, peeing into a cup, and pouring the contents into a big plastic jug. The container, embedded in ice, has my name on it and looks like it’s filling with chardonnay.
If I can’t tell I have a problem, I figure, then I probably don’t have one, and so I check no to all peeing issues. During stints at the urinal, though, it crosses my mind that maybe I do have issues. Do I empty my bladder in the preferred-but-curiously-unstated way the survey hints at? Does my pee gush in a mighty torrent but one that can be halted sharply in mid-stream—and without residue? Oh my god, there is a bit of residue, I discover, when, toward the end of my visit, the clinical supervisor asks me to lower my trousers so she can measure my abdomen and compare the numbers to last year’s.
I undo my belt, unzip my fly, and let my trousers bag around my knees. I am holding my shirt up, so she can get the tape measure around, and I am looking down at Susan’s head, which is exactly at crotch level, when I notice a dark patch on my light blue knickers. The stain is about the size of a quarter and seems to be expanding. She is right there with it but doesn’t let on. I mean, what can she say? I keep silent as well, but I am aware now there is empirical evidence that I have a peeing issue, no matter what I’ve claimed on the form. Surely, she’ll be cross checking my answers when I’ve left.
Weeks later Laurie finds a particularly fine pair of pants in a sale at Macy’s. They are Alfani’s: 31 inch waist and 30 inch in-seam. They fit tight and look good, and we buy them, a light fawn color. I’m at work, unzipping myself in front of the urinal, when I discover that the zip is short, by which I mean I have to bring my penis up over the bottom of it to point my member, as they say, at the porcelain. It’s a bit of an effort to get a smooth flow, and as I push my dick back into my trousers and zip up, I suddenly feel a spurt of warm liquid around my middle. I look down with a certain horror: a large, dark shape is forming on the front of my pants, announcing to everyone who enters: This man has peed himself. Fortunately, no one enters. I splash water on the stain and duck into a stall to wait. Next time I fill out a form and come to the question: How long does it take your urine soaked trousers to dry? I will be able to answer: 20 minutes, even after you’ve blotted up the excess.
Do I have a problem controlling those last few drops, or do I merely lack technique? Where is the advice? It’s not as if you can solicit tips in public restrooms. Well, maybe you can, but I’m too shy, and I fear deportation. So I’ve improvised a solution: to dab a bit of toilet paper at the end of my dick after the pee. Since urinals lack toilet paper, I use a stall. Sometimes, I sit down. It’s restful, and the dribble matter, out of sight, is out of mind.
Pee
Starbucks, November 12, 2008
Over the years I’ve completed scores of surveys about diabetes. How many pats of butter do I spread on bread? Do I hear voices? Can I feel my toes? I’m in San Diego for my annual checkup as part of the epidemiological study that’s now reached its 25th year. I’m in the white examining room at a small table, pen in hand, filling out forms between medical tests, when I come to a survey about peeing. Long-term diabetes can damage the nerves that control urination.
How often do I pee? How long does it usually take? Is my flow strong? Am I able to stop when I want to? I’m not sure. What’s a normal flow? How do you know how good you are at stopping? Do I dribble? Do I stop and start again? Do I really know when I’m finished?
I have lots of opportunity to ponder the questions, as I’m in the middle of a renal test which has me drinking a quart of water every half hour, peeing into a cup, and pouring the contents into a big plastic jug. The container, embedded in ice, has my name on it and looks like it’s filling with chardonnay.
If I can’t tell I have a problem, I figure, then I probably don’t have one, and so I check no to all peeing issues. During stints at the urinal, though, it crosses my mind that maybe I do have issues. Do I empty my bladder in the preferred-but-curiously-unstated way the survey hints at? Does my pee gush in a mighty torrent but one that can be halted sharply in mid-stream—and without residue? Oh my god, there is a bit of residue, I discover, when, toward the end of my visit, the clinical supervisor asks me to lower my trousers so she can measure my abdomen and compare the numbers to last year’s.
I undo my belt, unzip my fly, and let my trousers bag around my knees. I am holding my shirt up, so she can get the tape measure around, and I am looking down at Susan’s head, which is exactly at crotch level, when I notice a dark patch on my light blue knickers. The stain is about the size of a quarter and seems to be expanding. She is right there with it but doesn’t let on. I mean, what can she say? I keep silent as well, but I am aware now there is empirical evidence that I have a peeing issue, no matter what I’ve claimed on the form. Surely, she’ll be cross checking my answers when I’ve left.
Weeks later Laurie finds a particularly fine pair of pants in a sale at Macy’s. They are Alfani’s: 31 inch waist and 30 inch in-seam. They fit tight and look good, and we buy them, a light fawn color. I’m at work, unzipping myself in front of the urinal, when I discover that the zip is short, by which I mean I have to bring my penis up over the bottom of it to point my member, as they say, at the porcelain. It’s a bit of an effort to get a smooth flow, and as I push my dick back into my trousers and zip up, I suddenly feel a spurt of warm liquid around my middle. I look down with a certain horror: a large, dark shape is forming on the front of my pants, announcing to everyone who enters: This man has peed himself. Fortunately, no one enters. I splash water on the stain and duck into a stall to wait. Next time I fill out a form and come to the question: How long does it take your urine soaked trousers to dry? I will be able to answer: 20 minutes, even after you’ve blotted up the excess.
Do I have a problem controlling those last few drops, or do I merely lack technique? Where is the advice? It’s not as if you can solicit tips in public restrooms. Well, maybe you can, but I’m too shy, and I fear deportation. So I’ve improvised a solution: to dab a bit of toilet paper at the end of my dick after the pee. Since urinals lack toilet paper, I use a stall. Sometimes, I sit down. It’s restful, and the dribble matter, out of sight, is out of mind.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
A setting you recall
Laurie
A setting you recall
Starbucks, February 9, 2009
After Bruce and I separated, I lived on Charles Street in a small townhouse, distinctive for its Tudor facing. It was a few blocks south of the White Horse Tavern, the bar where Dylan Thomas drank himself to his final death. Each month I handed a rent check for $200 to the friendly antiques dealer who owned the building and lived in a posh duplex in the basement and ground floors. Upstairs was an older couple who gave off a messed-hair, black-leather glamor; when I had a mouse in my place the man would help me catch it. Next door to the couple lived a gay hooker whose clients were up and down the stairs. No one minded, as long as people pulled the door shut after being buzzed in.
One night I went to meet George Dennison at the White Horse. He was a writer, a little famous for The Lives of Children, a chronicle of his experiences teaching poor kids in the free-school movement. He wrote fiction, too, and in the fall of 1972, at the memorial gathering for Paul Goodman, he evoked his teacher and friend with poignance and flair. They’d worked shoulder to shoulder in education reform, and in letters to Dennison Goodman confided his ambitions for his writing and fears about consumer culture. I was at the memorial with a man I taught with at Hunter College who would ask me to interesting events. He’d known Goodman, too, and after the memorial we went to a party in a large Village apartment thronged with artists and intellectuals who looked worldly and weathered. That’s where I spoke to George, who was good looking and charismatic. Bruce, my husband, had already met the woman he would marry next, and I was on my own in the tiny flat where only a mattress could fit on the wide planked bedroom floor. The apartment needed work, but I was in love with the tightrope feeling of my life. I was twenty-four and earned just enough money for food and rent from teaching two sections of English lit. I was keeping a journal but hadn’t published much of anything. I must have given my number to George.
My friend from Hunter seemed attracted to me, although he also had relationships with men. It wasn’t the first time I had met a man open to both sexes, and as I traveled on my own I was realizing how unpredictable people could be. I liked this, although it was unnerving. I didn’t know why I was so curious about sex. I still don’t know. But when I reflect on that time—the sexual revolution meets radical feminism—I see a wave of girls trying to claim for themselves whatever boys had considered theirs alone.
At Barnard I studied with Kate Millett, who invited me to join the women’s movement in 1966, when it was bubbling forth with abortion rights activism and bra burning antics. We were out on the streets as much as we could manage. We were attending consciousness raising groups to examine our relationships and the ways we conspired to stay small. But the world of artists and intellectuals I also gravitated to, the Village where I lived was still colored by the Beats and other strains of old Bohemia where feminism was unheard or resisted. It wasn’t so much whether you were gay or straight, vanilla or Boho that determined your openness to women’s equality. It was, for the most part, whether or not you had a penis.
Having read neither Goodman nor Dennison at the time of Goodman’s memorial—I’d only hopped on for the ride—I didn’t know the ways their ideas either supported or opposed the revolutions I was helping to make. I was in agreement with them about ending the war in Vietnam and championing equal justice for the poor, but it was possible then as it still is in some quarters to consider yourself progressive while disreguarding—and in some cases militating against—the rights of women.
Ironically, I would discover, Goodman advanced precisely this view in his most influential book, Growing up Absurd, where he dismissed girls from consideration: “The problems I want to discuss in this book belong primarily, in our society, to the boy: how to be useful and to make something of oneself. A girl does not have to, she is not expected to ‘make something’ of herself. Her career does not have to be self-justifying, for she will have children, which is absolutely self-justifying, like any other natural and creative act. With this background, it is less important, for instance, what job an average young woman works at till she is married. The quest for the glamour jobs is given at least a little substance by its relation to a ‘better’ marriage (1960, p. 13).”
For Goodman, an out homosexual, the goal of education is to make boys virile. He is saying, in a sense, that virility has to be constructed—while also saying that femaleness (about which he has no interest) is biologically determined. Michael Herr, in a conversation with Robert Stone quoted by John Leland in his book about Jack Kerouac, says something similar about the construction of maleness: “There are two kinds of things guys like to do: the things we do because we read Kerouac and the things we do because we read Hemingway.” (Growing up Kerouac, p. 5)
When I moved into my apartment, I pried up layers of smelly old linoleum from the bathroom and kitchen floors and laid down clean, black and white squares. I bought handmade ceramic tiles and set them in front of the fireplace I fed with packing crates scavenged from the streets. The wood floors were stained and uneven. My three windows faced north, and I built shelves on them for plants. Outside was sleepy Charles Street and across the way a wooden house set on a tiny triangular lot, a little country cottage with a fence and garden smack in the heart of the West Village. This was the setting for the life I wanted to lead.
It’s after eleven, and I’m already in bed when George Dennison calls me to come out. He’s sexy, a success, and more than two decades older than me. Maybe I say another time. Maybe he says please come now. I push back the covers, run to the bathroom mirror, and smile. I look at my feet on the bare floor, checking for water bugs, which I can’t get rid of no matter how much I clean. It doesn’t cross my mind to be insulted, or if it does I weigh it against what I want. At the White Horse, I order Campari with a twist. I don’t know how to drink and do not learn. We talk about writing. I’m good at reviewing books and plays, and that’s what I do when I begin to publish, but I’m not there yet. I’m working on my dissertation at Columbia, contriving essays about Charlotte Brontë, whom I love, although I do not want to practice the solemn, measured style of academic prose. George drinks Scotch. We sit at the bar, and his sleeves are rolled up, and we’re in this place suffused with literary history. Maybe he feels attached to the Dylan Thomas mystique, the world of men drinking themselves to tortured ends. I don’t see myself here. George wants to come to my apartment, and maybe he does. Maybe we kiss, but I don’t think more than that. That’s not what I want from him. I want him to show me how to become him, and he does a little. He pays attention to me, and he’s kind and not dismissive, and maybe we have a conversation about the women’s movement and other things I care about. I’m happy on my stool, sipping my red drink, feeling I’m inching toward something.
When I think about Charles Street and the other places I lived in the Village, I see the streets. It is one big neighborhood, stretching from 14th street to Soho, from the East Village to the Hudson River. I walk the streets day and night, and I know every bar and restaurant and shop and handkerchief-sized patch of green. It’s the streets that make me happy to remember, for I was anxious and hungry then, same as now. It was exciting to be published a few years after meeting George and to feel, finally, I belonged here.
A setting you recall
Starbucks, February 9, 2009
After Bruce and I separated, I lived on Charles Street in a small townhouse, distinctive for its Tudor facing. It was a few blocks south of the White Horse Tavern, the bar where Dylan Thomas drank himself to his final death. Each month I handed a rent check for $200 to the friendly antiques dealer who owned the building and lived in a posh duplex in the basement and ground floors. Upstairs was an older couple who gave off a messed-hair, black-leather glamor; when I had a mouse in my place the man would help me catch it. Next door to the couple lived a gay hooker whose clients were up and down the stairs. No one minded, as long as people pulled the door shut after being buzzed in.
One night I went to meet George Dennison at the White Horse. He was a writer, a little famous for The Lives of Children, a chronicle of his experiences teaching poor kids in the free-school movement. He wrote fiction, too, and in the fall of 1972, at the memorial gathering for Paul Goodman, he evoked his teacher and friend with poignance and flair. They’d worked shoulder to shoulder in education reform, and in letters to Dennison Goodman confided his ambitions for his writing and fears about consumer culture. I was at the memorial with a man I taught with at Hunter College who would ask me to interesting events. He’d known Goodman, too, and after the memorial we went to a party in a large Village apartment thronged with artists and intellectuals who looked worldly and weathered. That’s where I spoke to George, who was good looking and charismatic. Bruce, my husband, had already met the woman he would marry next, and I was on my own in the tiny flat where only a mattress could fit on the wide planked bedroom floor. The apartment needed work, but I was in love with the tightrope feeling of my life. I was twenty-four and earned just enough money for food and rent from teaching two sections of English lit. I was keeping a journal but hadn’t published much of anything. I must have given my number to George.
My friend from Hunter seemed attracted to me, although he also had relationships with men. It wasn’t the first time I had met a man open to both sexes, and as I traveled on my own I was realizing how unpredictable people could be. I liked this, although it was unnerving. I didn’t know why I was so curious about sex. I still don’t know. But when I reflect on that time—the sexual revolution meets radical feminism—I see a wave of girls trying to claim for themselves whatever boys had considered theirs alone.
At Barnard I studied with Kate Millett, who invited me to join the women’s movement in 1966, when it was bubbling forth with abortion rights activism and bra burning antics. We were out on the streets as much as we could manage. We were attending consciousness raising groups to examine our relationships and the ways we conspired to stay small. But the world of artists and intellectuals I also gravitated to, the Village where I lived was still colored by the Beats and other strains of old Bohemia where feminism was unheard or resisted. It wasn’t so much whether you were gay or straight, vanilla or Boho that determined your openness to women’s equality. It was, for the most part, whether or not you had a penis.
Having read neither Goodman nor Dennison at the time of Goodman’s memorial—I’d only hopped on for the ride—I didn’t know the ways their ideas either supported or opposed the revolutions I was helping to make. I was in agreement with them about ending the war in Vietnam and championing equal justice for the poor, but it was possible then as it still is in some quarters to consider yourself progressive while disreguarding—and in some cases militating against—the rights of women.
Ironically, I would discover, Goodman advanced precisely this view in his most influential book, Growing up Absurd, where he dismissed girls from consideration: “The problems I want to discuss in this book belong primarily, in our society, to the boy: how to be useful and to make something of oneself. A girl does not have to, she is not expected to ‘make something’ of herself. Her career does not have to be self-justifying, for she will have children, which is absolutely self-justifying, like any other natural and creative act. With this background, it is less important, for instance, what job an average young woman works at till she is married. The quest for the glamour jobs is given at least a little substance by its relation to a ‘better’ marriage (1960, p. 13).”
For Goodman, an out homosexual, the goal of education is to make boys virile. He is saying, in a sense, that virility has to be constructed—while also saying that femaleness (about which he has no interest) is biologically determined. Michael Herr, in a conversation with Robert Stone quoted by John Leland in his book about Jack Kerouac, says something similar about the construction of maleness: “There are two kinds of things guys like to do: the things we do because we read Kerouac and the things we do because we read Hemingway.” (Growing up Kerouac, p. 5)
When I moved into my apartment, I pried up layers of smelly old linoleum from the bathroom and kitchen floors and laid down clean, black and white squares. I bought handmade ceramic tiles and set them in front of the fireplace I fed with packing crates scavenged from the streets. The wood floors were stained and uneven. My three windows faced north, and I built shelves on them for plants. Outside was sleepy Charles Street and across the way a wooden house set on a tiny triangular lot, a little country cottage with a fence and garden smack in the heart of the West Village. This was the setting for the life I wanted to lead.
It’s after eleven, and I’m already in bed when George Dennison calls me to come out. He’s sexy, a success, and more than two decades older than me. Maybe I say another time. Maybe he says please come now. I push back the covers, run to the bathroom mirror, and smile. I look at my feet on the bare floor, checking for water bugs, which I can’t get rid of no matter how much I clean. It doesn’t cross my mind to be insulted, or if it does I weigh it against what I want. At the White Horse, I order Campari with a twist. I don’t know how to drink and do not learn. We talk about writing. I’m good at reviewing books and plays, and that’s what I do when I begin to publish, but I’m not there yet. I’m working on my dissertation at Columbia, contriving essays about Charlotte Brontë, whom I love, although I do not want to practice the solemn, measured style of academic prose. George drinks Scotch. We sit at the bar, and his sleeves are rolled up, and we’re in this place suffused with literary history. Maybe he feels attached to the Dylan Thomas mystique, the world of men drinking themselves to tortured ends. I don’t see myself here. George wants to come to my apartment, and maybe he does. Maybe we kiss, but I don’t think more than that. That’s not what I want from him. I want him to show me how to become him, and he does a little. He pays attention to me, and he’s kind and not dismissive, and maybe we have a conversation about the women’s movement and other things I care about. I’m happy on my stool, sipping my red drink, feeling I’m inching toward something.
When I think about Charles Street and the other places I lived in the Village, I see the streets. It is one big neighborhood, stretching from 14th street to Soho, from the East Village to the Hudson River. I walk the streets day and night, and I know every bar and restaurant and shop and handkerchief-sized patch of green. It’s the streets that make me happy to remember, for I was anxious and hungry then, same as now. It was exciting to be published a few years after meeting George and to feel, finally, I belonged here.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Pete
Richard
Pete
Starbucks, October 5, 2008
Pete was at the kitchen table, his back to me, as I entered, and I could tell from the look of concern on my dad’s face that something was amiss. I didn’t recognize Pete at first. We hadn’t seen each other since our twenties. He was a broad-shouldered man with a mop of greasy black hair, and he looked even bigger than usual in his rough, workman’s jacket, hunched over my mother’s china teacup like a giant at a children’s party. He stumbled awkwardly to his feet, and I placed my hand on his shoulder. “No need to get up.” I feigned friendliness I’d never felt.
It’s 1959 and our family has moved from Liverpool to Syston. My Dad is reopening his father’s tailoring business in a dreary street a mile from where they live now. “Go out and make friends,” my dad encourages, and as I wander the streets I come across a boy on an American bike I have not seen in England, the type with big handle-bars that thrust up like stag’s antlers, and it has fat tires with painted white-walls. He cycles directly at me, and I have to jump out of the way to avoid a crash. He has a crew cut, the first I’ve seen on a live human being. He looks like American kids we see TV, but he speaks Leicestershire and calls me “nipper” and adds “me duck” to the end of sentences to show who’s boss. He says he’s going down the brook and I can come if I want, but I have to run. He speeds off, and I follow. Running is what I do, and no one is faster. I am right behind as he turns onto the Melton Road and cruises into Wellington Street. He races across a scrap of open ground where trees have rooted by a stream that meanders beside an old stone wall and disappears into a narrow tunnel. I am there when he slams on his brakes. He turns, looking surprised. “What kept yer, nipper?”
Not waiting for an answer, he rests his bike against a tree and bolts down the banking where he squats on smooth rocks lapped by dirty water. “Come an take a look then, me duck.” I slide to where he is and squat beside him. He points into the water.
I peer in. “What?”
“Made you look! Made you look!” He stands and pushes my shoulder, and I lose my footing and slip into the wet mud, my shoes and socks disappearing into ooze from which an acrid smell bubbles up. What is being dumped here?
“Made you slip! Made you slip!” He runs back up the bank, jumps on his bike, and speeds away.
My dad says his mother is a good woman. They were neighbors growing up before the war. What is that to a nine-year-old? Dad says life hasn’t been good to her. I don’t know what that means, but in time I learn that Pete’s father is an American GI who’s taken off. Did he send the American bike? His mother works long hours in a shoe factory to support them, plus she looks after her disabled mother who has a cleft palette. Pete’s mum is a gentle woman, and she wants her boy and me to get along, but I avoid their place. I can’t understand his grandmother’s speech, which fills me with embarrassed dread that I might somehow find myself in such a conspicuous, helpless position. The other reason is that Pete’s mean streak doesn’t let up, and I am a person who doesn’t foget an insult. I store them like coals for a cold night ahead.
The night Pete came to my parents’ kitchen, Dad dispensed with the usual warm greeting and moved toward the door. “Your mother and I will be in the sitting room.” He was gone.
“How are you doing, Pete?”
“I’m s-sorry.” He sunk back in the chair. “I came to say summat. There’s been things I need to say.”
He’d been drinking. What did he want?
“So how’s Marylynn?” I asked. He had married her a year after our divorce, and it had come as no surprise. After a visit to see her and Trevor, I’d been waiting at a bus stop on my way back to Leicester when Pete came over to talk. He asked if Marylynn was “seeing anyone.” I said I didn’t know. The phrase sounded coy, or maybe delicate, and I could see he felt something for her, and I minded, even though I no longer wanted her myself. “I think she’s beautiful,” he said, his chin out, protective or challenging. “I’ve always thought she’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said. “She is.” That was ten years ago, and here he was again with something to say.
The year before, the phone rang in Leeds, and it was was Trevor. We hadn’t spoken since he was a toddler, and he was saying he was fifteen. He said my brother Roy had given him my number. Trevor wanted to know what color my eyes were, if I was any good at sport, whether I was right or left handed. I said my eyes were brown, that I’d been a fast runner, and I was a lefty. He said he was nearly six feet tall. He liked BMX-biking. He wasn’t working as hard as he ought to at school. His eyes were blue.
I tried to picture this boy. My boy. The possibility had always floated that I wasn’t his biological father, but I’d raised and loved him during his first three years, and I’d let him go to save myself. I’d tried to take him with me, but no one would rent us a room and I’d had nowhere to live and had squatted for a while with friends. I’d let Pete raise him. I’d left him to Pete. When I thought of my son, I was reminded of my failure, blame the messenger, and I felt stopped in my tracks, but now we were talking on the phone. We talked for an hour, my heart pounding. I could hear his beating, too. Finally, he asked if I’d missed him, if I’d ever thought of him. All the time, I said. It was the call I’d been waiting for, but I didn’t tell him that. He wanted to end the conversation but didn’t know how, so I said he should talk to his mother and Pete about coming up to Leeds for a visit and he should call me again. He said he would and rang off quickly. When I put the phone down I thought a dam had broken and that there was no telling where the waters might run.
In my parents’ kitchen that night, Pete stood and said, “Trevor tells me he played around on a piano at your place.”
“Yes, that’s right. I think he enjoyed it. It’s Kim’s. She’s very good, although she doesn’t practice enough. When Trevor came, they played for hours.” Kim was the woman I lived with after Meg and I split up. I liked seeing her with Trevor, thinking I might still be a factor in his life, not instead of Pete and Marylyn but in addition. Maybe the part of me that had raised him was still there and I’d be able to see it. I could when Kim played Satie, and Trevor sat, rapt. It was music he’d never heard before. I studied his profile, trying to find my face in his sharp features. He stole glances at me, looking for a physical connection it was hard to locate in my slender body and softer features.
“He’s my son now,” Pete said suddenly, slurring the word “son.” He was pained, and I liked it.
“I know,” I said, “he was just wondering about himself. He wants to know who he is.”
“He knows who he bloody-well is. He doesn’t need you telling him.”
“I don’t have any intention of telling Trevor who he is. I wouldn’t know how. I’m sure he’s just a teenager who wants to understand where he came from. I don’t have plans to interfere with his life. I think it’s up to him.”
“It’s up to me, if it’s up to anyone. Me and Marylyn, not you.”
“Whatever you think is best,” I said, wondering if he’d take a swing at me.
The day Pete walked over to the bus stop was the last time I saw Marylynn. I don’t remember if Trevor was home. I’ve told myself he was three when I took my last look, but memory plays tricks. I was about to get on the bus, when Pete said, “I’m going to marry her.”
“Good. She deserves to be with someone who loves her.”
I don’t know why I said that. I’d ceased to wonder about Marylynn. I was thinking of myself.
Pete got up from the kitchen table and slowly buttoned his jacket, mulling something over. He was at the back door, his hand on the handle when he turned, and I saw a tear in his eye. “Just don’t try to come between us.” He looked up. “I think I’ve always hated you.” Maybe he felt free to hate me now because I was a runaway father just like his had been. Or maybe he hated me now as he always had because I had a dad who was still in my life.
Pete
Starbucks, October 5, 2008
Pete was at the kitchen table, his back to me, as I entered, and I could tell from the look of concern on my dad’s face that something was amiss. I didn’t recognize Pete at first. We hadn’t seen each other since our twenties. He was a broad-shouldered man with a mop of greasy black hair, and he looked even bigger than usual in his rough, workman’s jacket, hunched over my mother’s china teacup like a giant at a children’s party. He stumbled awkwardly to his feet, and I placed my hand on his shoulder. “No need to get up.” I feigned friendliness I’d never felt.
It’s 1959 and our family has moved from Liverpool to Syston. My Dad is reopening his father’s tailoring business in a dreary street a mile from where they live now. “Go out and make friends,” my dad encourages, and as I wander the streets I come across a boy on an American bike I have not seen in England, the type with big handle-bars that thrust up like stag’s antlers, and it has fat tires with painted white-walls. He cycles directly at me, and I have to jump out of the way to avoid a crash. He has a crew cut, the first I’ve seen on a live human being. He looks like American kids we see TV, but he speaks Leicestershire and calls me “nipper” and adds “me duck” to the end of sentences to show who’s boss. He says he’s going down the brook and I can come if I want, but I have to run. He speeds off, and I follow. Running is what I do, and no one is faster. I am right behind as he turns onto the Melton Road and cruises into Wellington Street. He races across a scrap of open ground where trees have rooted by a stream that meanders beside an old stone wall and disappears into a narrow tunnel. I am there when he slams on his brakes. He turns, looking surprised. “What kept yer, nipper?”
Not waiting for an answer, he rests his bike against a tree and bolts down the banking where he squats on smooth rocks lapped by dirty water. “Come an take a look then, me duck.” I slide to where he is and squat beside him. He points into the water.
I peer in. “What?”
“Made you look! Made you look!” He stands and pushes my shoulder, and I lose my footing and slip into the wet mud, my shoes and socks disappearing into ooze from which an acrid smell bubbles up. What is being dumped here?
“Made you slip! Made you slip!” He runs back up the bank, jumps on his bike, and speeds away.
My dad says his mother is a good woman. They were neighbors growing up before the war. What is that to a nine-year-old? Dad says life hasn’t been good to her. I don’t know what that means, but in time I learn that Pete’s father is an American GI who’s taken off. Did he send the American bike? His mother works long hours in a shoe factory to support them, plus she looks after her disabled mother who has a cleft palette. Pete’s mum is a gentle woman, and she wants her boy and me to get along, but I avoid their place. I can’t understand his grandmother’s speech, which fills me with embarrassed dread that I might somehow find myself in such a conspicuous, helpless position. The other reason is that Pete’s mean streak doesn’t let up, and I am a person who doesn’t foget an insult. I store them like coals for a cold night ahead.
The night Pete came to my parents’ kitchen, Dad dispensed with the usual warm greeting and moved toward the door. “Your mother and I will be in the sitting room.” He was gone.
“How are you doing, Pete?”
“I’m s-sorry.” He sunk back in the chair. “I came to say summat. There’s been things I need to say.”
He’d been drinking. What did he want?
“So how’s Marylynn?” I asked. He had married her a year after our divorce, and it had come as no surprise. After a visit to see her and Trevor, I’d been waiting at a bus stop on my way back to Leicester when Pete came over to talk. He asked if Marylynn was “seeing anyone.” I said I didn’t know. The phrase sounded coy, or maybe delicate, and I could see he felt something for her, and I minded, even though I no longer wanted her myself. “I think she’s beautiful,” he said, his chin out, protective or challenging. “I’ve always thought she’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said. “She is.” That was ten years ago, and here he was again with something to say.
The year before, the phone rang in Leeds, and it was was Trevor. We hadn’t spoken since he was a toddler, and he was saying he was fifteen. He said my brother Roy had given him my number. Trevor wanted to know what color my eyes were, if I was any good at sport, whether I was right or left handed. I said my eyes were brown, that I’d been a fast runner, and I was a lefty. He said he was nearly six feet tall. He liked BMX-biking. He wasn’t working as hard as he ought to at school. His eyes were blue.
I tried to picture this boy. My boy. The possibility had always floated that I wasn’t his biological father, but I’d raised and loved him during his first three years, and I’d let him go to save myself. I’d tried to take him with me, but no one would rent us a room and I’d had nowhere to live and had squatted for a while with friends. I’d let Pete raise him. I’d left him to Pete. When I thought of my son, I was reminded of my failure, blame the messenger, and I felt stopped in my tracks, but now we were talking on the phone. We talked for an hour, my heart pounding. I could hear his beating, too. Finally, he asked if I’d missed him, if I’d ever thought of him. All the time, I said. It was the call I’d been waiting for, but I didn’t tell him that. He wanted to end the conversation but didn’t know how, so I said he should talk to his mother and Pete about coming up to Leeds for a visit and he should call me again. He said he would and rang off quickly. When I put the phone down I thought a dam had broken and that there was no telling where the waters might run.
In my parents’ kitchen that night, Pete stood and said, “Trevor tells me he played around on a piano at your place.”
“Yes, that’s right. I think he enjoyed it. It’s Kim’s. She’s very good, although she doesn’t practice enough. When Trevor came, they played for hours.” Kim was the woman I lived with after Meg and I split up. I liked seeing her with Trevor, thinking I might still be a factor in his life, not instead of Pete and Marylyn but in addition. Maybe the part of me that had raised him was still there and I’d be able to see it. I could when Kim played Satie, and Trevor sat, rapt. It was music he’d never heard before. I studied his profile, trying to find my face in his sharp features. He stole glances at me, looking for a physical connection it was hard to locate in my slender body and softer features.
“He’s my son now,” Pete said suddenly, slurring the word “son.” He was pained, and I liked it.
“I know,” I said, “he was just wondering about himself. He wants to know who he is.”
“He knows who he bloody-well is. He doesn’t need you telling him.”
“I don’t have any intention of telling Trevor who he is. I wouldn’t know how. I’m sure he’s just a teenager who wants to understand where he came from. I don’t have plans to interfere with his life. I think it’s up to him.”
“It’s up to me, if it’s up to anyone. Me and Marylyn, not you.”
“Whatever you think is best,” I said, wondering if he’d take a swing at me.
The day Pete walked over to the bus stop was the last time I saw Marylynn. I don’t remember if Trevor was home. I’ve told myself he was three when I took my last look, but memory plays tricks. I was about to get on the bus, when Pete said, “I’m going to marry her.”
“Good. She deserves to be with someone who loves her.”
I don’t know why I said that. I’d ceased to wonder about Marylynn. I was thinking of myself.
Pete got up from the kitchen table and slowly buttoned his jacket, mulling something over. He was at the back door, his hand on the handle when he turned, and I saw a tear in his eye. “Just don’t try to come between us.” He looked up. “I think I’ve always hated you.” Maybe he felt free to hate me now because I was a runaway father just like his had been. Or maybe he hated me now as he always had because I had a dad who was still in my life.
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