I was surprised that it was my sister on the phone.
"Hey."
"Hey, what's going on Janet?"
"Oh, not much."
Right. She hadn't called me in San Francisco in nearly a year. And never on a weekday morning. Something was definitely going on.
"I just wanted to tell you that Dad is back in A.A."
I hadn't seen or spoken to my father in nearly ten years. Things had finally just sort of petered out between us. There was no final denouement, no cataclysmic blow-up, suitable for a made-for-tv movie. I just didn't appear at his house one year for Christmas. And he just never called to see where I was. Ever again.
And that's where we left it. A non-discussed, not-agreed upon, agreement.
For 10 years or so, holidays in Orlando had followed the same pattern. Early Christmas day, presents would be exchanged at my mother's house, her tiny bungalow festooned from end to end with the Christmas detritus of my childhood. Tree ornaments I made in grade school, cut out of greeting cards. Tattered felt stockings, on which I'd written my name with glue and glitter. That ridiculous cardboard fireplace that Mom put out every year, saved from our trailer in North Carolina.
Mom's portion of the day was at once comforting and melancholy. She'd get increasingly manic as the day went on, realizing that her time with my sister and I was growing short. She'd rush out story after story, and zip around the house grabbing at pictures we'd seen many times.
Finally, late in the afternoon, my sister and I would begin discussing "The Plan".
Our travel mode over to our father's house was always a big component of 'The Plan'. I preferred to follow my sister in my rental car, to maximize my departure options. She always wanted me to ride in her car, to maximize the impression that we were still some sort of cohesive family unit.
Another critical element of departing for my father's house was the advance reconaissance. That involved calling our step-mother and ascertaining how drunk my father was already, how drunk SHE was already, who was there, who was coming, when they were expected, and whether they thought they'd be going anywhere after dinner.
From all of that we'd lay out various strategies, excuses and escape plans...should the evening turn ugly. We were kidding ourselves, of course. The evening always turned ugly.
We'd be greeted politely at the door, cheek kisses from my step-mother, and a non-comittal wave thru the kitchen porthole from my father.
The house would be a madhouse of activity. At the front door, a steady stream of smashed ex-Marines trailed by a steady stream of bitching third wives. In the back yard, customers from my dad's saloon, gathered around an explosion of free booze, which my father had extorted from his suppliers.
At some point, there'd be an argument, usually about the food and where it went. My father would take the plate in question and smash it against the closest wall. My step-mother would wail and flee into the backyard, sobbing.
Standing barefoot in her rock garden, cigarette hanging from her lips, the ash nearly burned all the way down, swaying in a Johnny Walker haze, supporting herself by holding onto one of her plaster garden gnomes, she would scream at me.
"You know what, Joseph? Hey, you know what? The only pershun in thish whole FUCKING WORLD that understands what I am going through ish YOUR MOTHER!"
She'd punctuate each sentence by jabbing her finger at me, her gaudy Shopping Channel bracelets sliding down her stick-like arms.
Inside the house, my father would turn his Vicki Carr record up to maximum, treating the entire neighborhood to a scratchy performance of "It Must Be Him." My sister would be on her knees, cleaning up the smashed food, tears silently sliding down her face.
So.
One year, as the time to leave for Dad's house came, I walked into my mother's kitchen and said, as I did every year, "I don't want to go over there."
"So don't go."
That suprised the shit out of me.
"Oh, you know I have to go, it's just that.."
Mom turned away from the sink and lifted a soapy hand to stop me.
"Every year you say you don't want to go. And every year it turns into a horrible nightmare. If you don't go this year, will you feel any worse than you do every time you DO go?"
Bingo.
I didn't go. And they didn't call. Ever again. And I felt like I'd just been paroled from some prison, the kind that specialized in emotional abuse. Bad metaphor to be sure, but pretty close to what I felt.
Now, fast forward back to my sister's phone call to me in San Francisco.
"Dad is back in A.A.? Whoopee."
"Joe, this time he really means it."
Right. This time he means it.
This is the same guy who'd get smashed and yell: "It's the easiest thing in the WORLD to stop drinking, I've done it a HUNDRED times!"
"He's already gone through seven steps, Joe. He's never made it to step THREE before."
"Well, give him a gold star for me."
"And Step 8, which he's on now, is where he apologizes to the people who have been harmed by his alcoholism."
Fuck. The REAL reason for this phone call.
"Janet, are you trying to tell me that Dad is going to be calling me?"
"Um..."
"JANET! Did you give Dad my phone number? Does he KNOW I'm living in San Francisco??"
"Well, now Joey..." She only called me Joey when she was scared.
"Fucking GREAT! Thank you very much! Do I get to know when he's going to call?"
"Well, I gave him your San Francisco information yesterday."
Shit.
I got off the phone with Janet and went for a walk to calm my nerves. Just down the hill, in the Castro, I dove into Radio Shack and bought a Pacific Bell caller-ID unit. Back at the house, I got PacBell on the phone, had the thing active within an hour. For the rest of the week, everytime the phone rang, I'd jerk my head over to the caller-ID, my stomach already knotting up.
Monday morning, I was sitting at my desk when the doorbell rang. FedEx. I hardly glanced at the thick envelope when I signed for it. I was home officed, I got packages from the various delivery services all day. Later, after lunch, I scooped up all the mail and packages and sat down in the living room.
The first thing I picked up was the fat FedEx envelope. The return address caught my eye at once, my last name was on the return address as well as the delivery address.
"What could Mom be sending me?", I thought.
Then I realized that the zip code on the return address was NOT my mom's.
It was from Dad.
I ripped the tab on the cardboard, and out fell.....a videotape.
"Oh, you fucking coward. You piece of shit BRAVE MARINE!," I said out loud to no one.
My Dad couldn't even fucking face me on the phone, so he fucking VIDEOTAPED his Step 8 apology to me. My hand clenched so hard on the tape, it popped out my hand and clattered under the dining room table. I got on my knees and was reaching for the tape, when the phone rang.
I grabbed the tape and walked over to the desk. Even with the tape in my hand, I was afraid it was Dad on the phone.
It was Mom.
"I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just going to say it. Your father died this morning."
Dad had gone on one of his famous Las Vegas golfing expeditions with his buddies. He didn't drink the entire weekend. That morning, picking up his clubs from the baggage carousel at Orlando International, he collapsed. He died in the ambulance.
Putting the phone down, I turned the tape to read the spine. In my father's familiar crisp block lettering: FOR MY SON.
I've never watched the tape.
The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Lesbians
Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next.
The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating.
Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven.
Beat. Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.
Worlds collide on the main floor.
The tourists gawk up at the gloriously ornate ceiling and uselessly flash their digital cameras at objects hundreds of feet away.
The commuters rush up to the track displays to determine their track number, then dart across the terminal floor, dodging the milling tourists like a running back heading for the end zone with two seconds left on the clock.
It's mesmerizing. It's majestic.
And sometimes, like tonight, it's magical.
I'm walking through the massive main room just as the holiday laser show begins on the ceiling. To the tune of "Take The 'A' Train" the laser depicts two trains arriving from different directions. The trains stop opposite each other, and a reindeer leaps out of each one and crosses over to the opposite train.
The laser traces the outline of one of the zodiac constellations painted on the ceiling, and the Cancer crab leaps to life and becomes the Crab Conductor, waddling down the center aisle of the car, punching the reindeers' ticket stubs with his claws.
I move over to the edge of the room, near the entrance for Track 25, so I can watch the reaction to the show. As usual, I'm more entertained by watching the audience than by watching the actual show.
At the ticket windows, standing in front of signs that say "Harlem Line" or "Hudson Line", commuters tilt their heads painfully back to view the show directly overhead. The tourists cluster in delighted circles, holding each others' elbows for balance as they nearly bend over backwards.
Some people move to the edges of the great hall, as I have, to remove themselves from the traffic flow while they watch. Among those that come to join me on the perimeter of the room is a lesbian couple. They stand quite close to me, the taller woman behind the shorter one, with her arms wrapped around her, supporting her a bit, as they both lean back on the marble wall.
The shorter woman is stout, with a large firm chest. Her hair is short and brushed back into what might have once been called a ducktail. She has an ornate tattoo on her left forearm, and she has a leather wallet protruding from the rear pocket of her jeans, attached to her leather belt by a short silver chain. She has more than a passing resemblence to Tony Danza, her big boobs nothwithstanding, so naturally (in my head) I name her Toni.
Toni's girlfriend is blond, her short ponytail dangles just above her collar. She is wearing long Christmas tree earrings, which nearly brush her shoulders. Her lanky, sinewy limbs are bound in a tight running outfit, over which she is wearing a school athletic jacket. I imagine that she might be a coach at Yale or Harvard, perhaps a girls lacrosse coach, or maybe track and field.
Coach is squeezing Toni tightly, and they bounce together to the music a bit. Coach looks over at me and catches me smiling. She nudges Toni, who looks over at me too, and we all grin goofily at each other for a moment.
Overhead, a new show begins. The familiar opening notes of Tchaikovsky's "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies" ring out as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building sprout arms, bow to each other, and begin waltzing across the ceiling.
I look around the room and it's as if time was frozen for just a second, every person stopped in mid-stride, eyes cast upward, mouths open in silent joy.
Toni pushes away from Coach, turns around and delivers her a bow as deep and as elegant as the one just depicted overheard.
"Madame, may I please have this dance?," she asks Coach.
Coach looks around a bit awkwardly, "You are TOO much!" And she giggles.
"Madame, I must insist!," says Toni, as she takes Coach's hands into hers.
Coach relents and she and Toni begin a beautful, slow waltz, moving in half-time to the music. As you might have guessed already, Toni leads.
As they dance, their eyes remain locked on each other. Toni is giving Coach an intense look, her lips tightly curled into a satisfied smile. Coach is grinning from ear to ear, and again she giggles.
All around Coach and Toni, the tourists, the businessmen, the students, the conductors, even the guy with a broom, they're all watching. Some are expressionless, but more are smiling, and some of them...some of them are frantically fussing with their cameras, eager to capture this magical New York Moment.
Serendipity prevails, the tune ends, and Toni dips Coach backwards with a dramatic upsweep of her free arm as a firestorm of camera flashes erupt around them. Toni pulls Coach up and close to her, and they hug. There's another camera flash, and the crowd begins to move along.
Then.
"Hey, look!"
The laser show is being concluded with giant sprigs of mistletoe appearing over our heads. This time, it's Coach who bends down and plants a long tender kiss on Toni's non-lipsticked mouth. There's another flash of cameras from the delighted audience.
Toni takes Coach's hand, and they begin to move off towards the exit.
"Oh, don't stop yet!," says a disappointed woman, still rumaging for her camera.
Toni looks back over her shoulder and says, "I never will."
The mechanical heart of New York City, Grand Central Terminal, beats again, but this time I hear a different rhythm. This time I hear a double beat.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!
The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating.
Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven.
Beat. Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.
Worlds collide on the main floor.
The tourists gawk up at the gloriously ornate ceiling and uselessly flash their digital cameras at objects hundreds of feet away.
The commuters rush up to the track displays to determine their track number, then dart across the terminal floor, dodging the milling tourists like a running back heading for the end zone with two seconds left on the clock.
It's mesmerizing. It's majestic.
And sometimes, like tonight, it's magical.
I'm walking through the massive main room just as the holiday laser show begins on the ceiling. To the tune of "Take The 'A' Train" the laser depicts two trains arriving from different directions. The trains stop opposite each other, and a reindeer leaps out of each one and crosses over to the opposite train.
The laser traces the outline of one of the zodiac constellations painted on the ceiling, and the Cancer crab leaps to life and becomes the Crab Conductor, waddling down the center aisle of the car, punching the reindeers' ticket stubs with his claws.
I move over to the edge of the room, near the entrance for Track 25, so I can watch the reaction to the show. As usual, I'm more entertained by watching the audience than by watching the actual show.
At the ticket windows, standing in front of signs that say "Harlem Line" or "Hudson Line", commuters tilt their heads painfully back to view the show directly overhead. The tourists cluster in delighted circles, holding each others' elbows for balance as they nearly bend over backwards.
Some people move to the edges of the great hall, as I have, to remove themselves from the traffic flow while they watch. Among those that come to join me on the perimeter of the room is a lesbian couple. They stand quite close to me, the taller woman behind the shorter one, with her arms wrapped around her, supporting her a bit, as they both lean back on the marble wall.
The shorter woman is stout, with a large firm chest. Her hair is short and brushed back into what might have once been called a ducktail. She has an ornate tattoo on her left forearm, and she has a leather wallet protruding from the rear pocket of her jeans, attached to her leather belt by a short silver chain. She has more than a passing resemblence to Tony Danza, her big boobs nothwithstanding, so naturally (in my head) I name her Toni.
Toni's girlfriend is blond, her short ponytail dangles just above her collar. She is wearing long Christmas tree earrings, which nearly brush her shoulders. Her lanky, sinewy limbs are bound in a tight running outfit, over which she is wearing a school athletic jacket. I imagine that she might be a coach at Yale or Harvard, perhaps a girls lacrosse coach, or maybe track and field.
Coach is squeezing Toni tightly, and they bounce together to the music a bit. Coach looks over at me and catches me smiling. She nudges Toni, who looks over at me too, and we all grin goofily at each other for a moment.
Overhead, a new show begins. The familiar opening notes of Tchaikovsky's "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies" ring out as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building sprout arms, bow to each other, and begin waltzing across the ceiling.
I look around the room and it's as if time was frozen for just a second, every person stopped in mid-stride, eyes cast upward, mouths open in silent joy.
Toni pushes away from Coach, turns around and delivers her a bow as deep and as elegant as the one just depicted overheard.
"Madame, may I please have this dance?," she asks Coach.
Coach looks around a bit awkwardly, "You are TOO much!" And she giggles.
"Madame, I must insist!," says Toni, as she takes Coach's hands into hers.
Coach relents and she and Toni begin a beautful, slow waltz, moving in half-time to the music. As you might have guessed already, Toni leads.
As they dance, their eyes remain locked on each other. Toni is giving Coach an intense look, her lips tightly curled into a satisfied smile. Coach is grinning from ear to ear, and again she giggles.
All around Coach and Toni, the tourists, the businessmen, the students, the conductors, even the guy with a broom, they're all watching. Some are expressionless, but more are smiling, and some of them...some of them are frantically fussing with their cameras, eager to capture this magical New York Moment.
Serendipity prevails, the tune ends, and Toni dips Coach backwards with a dramatic upsweep of her free arm as a firestorm of camera flashes erupt around them. Toni pulls Coach up and close to her, and they hug. There's another camera flash, and the crowd begins to move along.
Then.
"Hey, look!"
The laser show is being concluded with giant sprigs of mistletoe appearing over our heads. This time, it's Coach who bends down and plants a long tender kiss on Toni's non-lipsticked mouth. There's another flash of cameras from the delighted audience.
Toni takes Coach's hand, and they begin to move off towards the exit.
"Oh, don't stop yet!," says a disappointed woman, still rumaging for her camera.
Toni looks back over her shoulder and says, "I never will."
The mechanical heart of New York City, Grand Central Terminal, beats again, but this time I hear a different rhythm. This time I hear a double beat.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!
Clouds And Miss America
I had just hung up on Gary a few minutes earlier, and was about to leave the house for work, when he called me back.
"Joe, um...something has happened." Gary's voice was quavery and high.
"What? What's the matter?"
Gary's voice came rushing back. "I'm at Wendy's. I'm mean, I'm in the drive-thru. I can't see anything. I don't why I'm calling you in San Francisco...I just hit the redial I guess."
About six months earlier, Gary had lost all the vision in his left eye. He had CMV. He was taking oral gancyclovir in the hopes of staving off the loss of his right eye. And he seemed to be doing great.
Just that week, the local early evening newsmagazine show had done a feature story on Gary. Their newly hired reporter was the most recent Miss America, a local girl done good. Miss America and Gary had been close friends in high school, and when she chose AIDS awareness as her 'platform', despite strong dissenting advice from her advisors, Gary was ebullient.
Gary spoke of his 'good friend, Miss America' so often, sometimes we teased him about it. Miss America had done some photo ops, with 'her friend with AIDS' during her reign, and naturally she came back to Gary when it was suggested that she do a story on the new hope being offered by the just introduced anti-retroviral cocktail. There was no mention of Gary's eye problem during the story, and Gary told us the next day that he was disappointed that the scene of Miss America sitting on his bed, hugging him, didn't make the story.
"What do you mean you can't see?" I asked, hoping that I sounded strong and confident.
"I mean, I just ordered some food, and I pulled around to pay...and I ..I thought that the sun was going behind some clouds....but it just got worse and worse. I can't see a fucking thing, Joe."
Just then, I could hear some talking. A Wendy's staffer had come outside to see what the hold-up was. I told Gary to hand them his phone.
"Hello, I think your friend needs help." It sounded like a young girl, with a strong Cuban accent.
"Yes, he does. Is he still blocking your drive-thru?"
"Yes, he needs to move."
"OK, yes...I understand. He's having trouble seeing right now. Is there any way you can help him move his car?"
"I can't drive the customer's cars, no way I can, sorry."
By now, I could hear the angry honking of cars backed up in the drive-thru. The manager was summoned, and he reached in thru Gary's window and steered Gary out of the lane, and into a parking spot. Gary's phone began that annoying, almost out of juice, beeping that early generation cellphones made, then went dead.
I picked up my landline and called another friend in Orlando. He called another friend who lived close to Wendy's, and within 15 minutes we had 4 people there. Gary's roommate arrived from work, and they took him directly to the hospital.
Gary never regained his vision.
And with his vision, went his hope. Gary began a rapid spiral down, lost more weight, got a fungal throat infection, pneumocystis.
Eight weeks after the Wendy's incident, he was dead.
We scattered Gary's ashes off Pas-A-Grill Beach, near St.Petersburg, as Gary stipulated. We then went directly to T-dance, as Gary stipulated. We got spectacularly drunk, as Gary stipulated.
Miss America did not attend.
.
"Joe, um...something has happened." Gary's voice was quavery and high.
"What? What's the matter?"
Gary's voice came rushing back. "I'm at Wendy's. I'm mean, I'm in the drive-thru. I can't see anything. I don't why I'm calling you in San Francisco...I just hit the redial I guess."
About six months earlier, Gary had lost all the vision in his left eye. He had CMV. He was taking oral gancyclovir in the hopes of staving off the loss of his right eye. And he seemed to be doing great.
Just that week, the local early evening newsmagazine show had done a feature story on Gary. Their newly hired reporter was the most recent Miss America, a local girl done good. Miss America and Gary had been close friends in high school, and when she chose AIDS awareness as her 'platform', despite strong dissenting advice from her advisors, Gary was ebullient.
Gary spoke of his 'good friend, Miss America' so often, sometimes we teased him about it. Miss America had done some photo ops, with 'her friend with AIDS' during her reign, and naturally she came back to Gary when it was suggested that she do a story on the new hope being offered by the just introduced anti-retroviral cocktail. There was no mention of Gary's eye problem during the story, and Gary told us the next day that he was disappointed that the scene of Miss America sitting on his bed, hugging him, didn't make the story.
"What do you mean you can't see?" I asked, hoping that I sounded strong and confident.
"I mean, I just ordered some food, and I pulled around to pay...and I ..I thought that the sun was going behind some clouds....but it just got worse and worse. I can't see a fucking thing, Joe."
Just then, I could hear some talking. A Wendy's staffer had come outside to see what the hold-up was. I told Gary to hand them his phone.
"Hello, I think your friend needs help." It sounded like a young girl, with a strong Cuban accent.
"Yes, he does. Is he still blocking your drive-thru?"
"Yes, he needs to move."
"OK, yes...I understand. He's having trouble seeing right now. Is there any way you can help him move his car?"
"I can't drive the customer's cars, no way I can, sorry."
By now, I could hear the angry honking of cars backed up in the drive-thru. The manager was summoned, and he reached in thru Gary's window and steered Gary out of the lane, and into a parking spot. Gary's phone began that annoying, almost out of juice, beeping that early generation cellphones made, then went dead.
I picked up my landline and called another friend in Orlando. He called another friend who lived close to Wendy's, and within 15 minutes we had 4 people there. Gary's roommate arrived from work, and they took him directly to the hospital.
Gary never regained his vision.
And with his vision, went his hope. Gary began a rapid spiral down, lost more weight, got a fungal throat infection, pneumocystis.
Eight weeks after the Wendy's incident, he was dead.
We scattered Gary's ashes off Pas-A-Grill Beach, near St.Petersburg, as Gary stipulated. We then went directly to T-dance, as Gary stipulated. We got spectacularly drunk, as Gary stipulated.
Miss America did not attend.
.
"Aunt" Susan
UPDATE: Go away, perverts. There is NOTHING about incest in this story.
My mother's sister, Susan, was eight years younger than my mom.
She was everything my mother wasn't.
My mom was married and pregnant and living in a trailer in North Carolina within months of high school graduation.
Susan was a hippie. She was THE hippie.
She wore tie-dyed clothes, and fresh flowers in her waist-length jet-black hair. She called the cops 'pigs' and the government 'The Man.' She taught me how to string beads for necklaces, which my father would immediately throw in the garbage. She taught me the words to Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone.'
Once, she let me hang out while she and her friends sat around and set dry cleaning bags on fire. I was a kid, thinking 'Cool...FIRE!'....and it was many years before I realized that they were all tripping on acid, watching the plastic curl and smoke.
While my mom seemed smart and prim and restrained, Susan (and we were NEVER allowed to call her 'Aunt') was foul-mouthed and wild and entirely fascinating.
Shortly after she finished high school, she married for the first time. Bad Billy was his name, I don't think I ever heard his last name. He had wild eyes, a bushy beard and he never wore shoes. He left Susan to go live in a commune.
In 1969, a bunch of Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay, in protest of how the government was treating them. By then, Susan was an art student at NYU, spending all of her time throwing pots and weaving giant macrame 'hangings'.
That year at Christmas dinner, Susan announced that henceforth she would be known as 'Sioux', in solidarity with her oppressed red brothers.
My grandfather shouted: 'Jesus H. Christ!' and stomped out to a bar.
Sioux's present to my mother that year was a huge glazed urn, with her new name scratched into the bottom.
Sioux married a couple more times, hippie-style free love arrangements. Both husbands evaporated to Canada after being drafted for the Vietnam war. I don't think I ever met either of them.
Sioux then began a pattern that would define the rest of her life. Through one of her husbands, she landed an apartment at the top of Stuyvesant Town, on the Lower East Side.
Rent control had already been in effect on the apartment, for decades. She got the place for dirt. Sioux illegally subdivided the sprawling two bedroom into four small bedrooms, and took in tenants...turning a healthy profit. Most of her tenants were art students or musicians.
In the mid-70s, Sioux immersed herself in the burgeoning punk scene. She began to wear only black clothing, something she did for the rest of her life. She hung out at CBGB's with the Talking Heads and Blondie. She fucked half of the New York Dolls and ALL of the Ramones. She got arrested at CBGB's, in the can, for giving a joint to a cop...at least, that's how she told it.
She became the quintessential New Yorker, the black clothes, the smoking, the cursing. Anybody who lived above 23rd Street was a 'fucking idiot'. My mother was clearly depriving her children of the real world by raising them outside of New York. It was 'abuse' she told my mother once, that we had to ride a school bus.
Sioux became Susan once again, sometime around 1977, due to some bitch in a band having the same name. Siouxsie Sioux. Of 'and the Banshees'.
My family had moved to Florida by then. Susan was visiting us, during spring break. She was still going to NYU...a professional student.
Susan sat on the floor in my bedroom, flipping through my albums.
Star Wars soundtrack..'Ugh'.
Stevie Wonder....'Hmm'.
Sister Sledge...'Spew'. Yes, she really SAID 'spew'.
Then she came to Village People.
Now, the first Village People album didn't look like any of the subsequent albums. Yes, it had the same giant art deco 'Village People' logo at the top, but the photograph of the 'band members' was a steamy, black and white photograph of young men, models assembled purely for the album cover. No Indian, no leatherman, no cop. Just a half-dozen young men wearing punk-ish clothes in an alley.
Susan looked at the cover. 'This looks like it has possibilities'.
For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to play it for her. Part of me wanted her to, because I f*cking LOVED that album. But I also knew that she was expecting the music to live up to the artwork.
She flipped the album over and read the song titles out loud.
'Fire Island'....'Key West'...'San Francisco'....she stopped there.
Susan slowly put the album back on the stack, and looked at me.
I was only 18 years old and had never come out, not to a family member anyway. I steeled myself for what I knew was coming next.
'Are there any good titty bars around here?'
I nearly fell off my bed.
'Um...what?'
'I wanna find some dive bar and watch chicks dance and maybe score some blow...any place like that in Orlando?'
I turned bright red.
'Well, there's a place called 'The Bottom Drawer'...I've never been there...but from the outside it looks.....um....dive-y.'
Later, I heard Susan call information and get the address.
Back in New York, Susan continued to careen through the local music scene, dating musicians, writers, bartenders. She finally finished NYU, with an art degree, nearly 15 years after she started.
From then on Susan's daytime life was a long series of temping jobs with various media companies. Viacom. Time-Warner. NBC. Chrismas gifts were always a huge box of assorted swag, stolen from her employers. One year, it was all things Beavis & Butthead.
In 1995, Susan was diagnosed with pervasive esophageal cancer. She'd smoked heavily for nearly 30 years by then, so no one was really suprised.
Even after chemotherapy, radiation, surgery...Susan showed no improvement. My mother and my sister spent every weekend shuttling up from Orlando, to St. Vincent's Hospital to visit her.
At the end, Susan was confined to an oxygen tent. She'd withered away, skeletal is the only word to use. Her hair gone, tubes in both arms, not even the energy to chew food....she STILL found the energy to use that famously foul mouth.
Her final coherent words to my mother: 'Fat fucking lot of help YOU'VE been!'.
My mother fled the room, never getting the will to return.
The next day, as my sister walked in, Susan pulled her mask off and rasped: 'Those shoes with THAT skirt? You MUST be joking!'
After Susan died, we went to her Stuyvesant Town apartment to go through her things. The vulture grapevine had already been alerted to her death, there were two dozen notes on her door, inquiring about the disposition of the apartment.
By then, she'd stopped taking tenants, and the place was a rabbit's nest of paintings, albums, full ashtrays and piles and piles of art books. The spare bedrooms were littered with boxes and boxes of junk. Shoes. Winter coats. Hundreds of copies of the Village Voice.
I found a huge pile of spiral notebooks. I picked one out and sat at the kitchen table and began flipping through it. It was filled with drawings, abstract doodling, non-sensical words, and lists. Lots of lists. Lists of bands. Lists of artists. Lists of people I'd never heard of.
Then I came across a page that was different.
In huge bold strokes, the sentences moved directly from the top of the left page and over onto the top of the right.
'I WANT TO GET F*CKED. I WANT TO F*CK SOMEBODY. I WANT SOMEBODY TO WANT TO F*CK ME'.
My mother walked over.
'Anything interesting?'
Quickly, I flipped the page.
'Um, not so far. Just some drawings.'
My mom leaned in to see. I had landed on another page of lists.
In pink magic marker:
I HAVE THREE THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR:
1) my lesbianism.
2) my emerald green eyes.
3) that I don't have Dorothy's nose.
I looked up at Dorothy.
'Mom, didn't Susan have dark brown eyes?'
My mom sighed.
'Yes, dear. She did.'
(originally posted 5-18-04)
My mother's sister, Susan, was eight years younger than my mom.
She was everything my mother wasn't.
My mom was married and pregnant and living in a trailer in North Carolina within months of high school graduation.
Susan was a hippie. She was THE hippie.
She wore tie-dyed clothes, and fresh flowers in her waist-length jet-black hair. She called the cops 'pigs' and the government 'The Man.' She taught me how to string beads for necklaces, which my father would immediately throw in the garbage. She taught me the words to Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone.'
Once, she let me hang out while she and her friends sat around and set dry cleaning bags on fire. I was a kid, thinking 'Cool...FIRE!'....and it was many years before I realized that they were all tripping on acid, watching the plastic curl and smoke.
While my mom seemed smart and prim and restrained, Susan (and we were NEVER allowed to call her 'Aunt') was foul-mouthed and wild and entirely fascinating.
Shortly after she finished high school, she married for the first time. Bad Billy was his name, I don't think I ever heard his last name. He had wild eyes, a bushy beard and he never wore shoes. He left Susan to go live in a commune.
In 1969, a bunch of Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay, in protest of how the government was treating them. By then, Susan was an art student at NYU, spending all of her time throwing pots and weaving giant macrame 'hangings'.
That year at Christmas dinner, Susan announced that henceforth she would be known as 'Sioux', in solidarity with her oppressed red brothers.
My grandfather shouted: 'Jesus H. Christ!' and stomped out to a bar.
Sioux's present to my mother that year was a huge glazed urn, with her new name scratched into the bottom.
Sioux married a couple more times, hippie-style free love arrangements. Both husbands evaporated to Canada after being drafted for the Vietnam war. I don't think I ever met either of them.
Sioux then began a pattern that would define the rest of her life. Through one of her husbands, she landed an apartment at the top of Stuyvesant Town, on the Lower East Side.
Rent control had already been in effect on the apartment, for decades. She got the place for dirt. Sioux illegally subdivided the sprawling two bedroom into four small bedrooms, and took in tenants...turning a healthy profit. Most of her tenants were art students or musicians.
In the mid-70s, Sioux immersed herself in the burgeoning punk scene. She began to wear only black clothing, something she did for the rest of her life. She hung out at CBGB's with the Talking Heads and Blondie. She fucked half of the New York Dolls and ALL of the Ramones. She got arrested at CBGB's, in the can, for giving a joint to a cop...at least, that's how she told it.
She became the quintessential New Yorker, the black clothes, the smoking, the cursing. Anybody who lived above 23rd Street was a 'fucking idiot'. My mother was clearly depriving her children of the real world by raising them outside of New York. It was 'abuse' she told my mother once, that we had to ride a school bus.
Sioux became Susan once again, sometime around 1977, due to some bitch in a band having the same name. Siouxsie Sioux. Of 'and the Banshees'.
My family had moved to Florida by then. Susan was visiting us, during spring break. She was still going to NYU...a professional student.
Susan sat on the floor in my bedroom, flipping through my albums.
Star Wars soundtrack..'Ugh'.
Stevie Wonder....'Hmm'.
Sister Sledge...'Spew'. Yes, she really SAID 'spew'.
Then she came to Village People.
Now, the first Village People album didn't look like any of the subsequent albums. Yes, it had the same giant art deco 'Village People' logo at the top, but the photograph of the 'band members' was a steamy, black and white photograph of young men, models assembled purely for the album cover. No Indian, no leatherman, no cop. Just a half-dozen young men wearing punk-ish clothes in an alley.
Susan looked at the cover. 'This looks like it has possibilities'.
For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to play it for her. Part of me wanted her to, because I f*cking LOVED that album. But I also knew that she was expecting the music to live up to the artwork.
She flipped the album over and read the song titles out loud.
'Fire Island'....'Key West'...'San Francisco'....she stopped there.
Susan slowly put the album back on the stack, and looked at me.
I was only 18 years old and had never come out, not to a family member anyway. I steeled myself for what I knew was coming next.
'Are there any good titty bars around here?'
I nearly fell off my bed.
'Um...what?'
'I wanna find some dive bar and watch chicks dance and maybe score some blow...any place like that in Orlando?'
I turned bright red.
'Well, there's a place called 'The Bottom Drawer'...I've never been there...but from the outside it looks.....um....dive-y.'
Later, I heard Susan call information and get the address.
Back in New York, Susan continued to careen through the local music scene, dating musicians, writers, bartenders. She finally finished NYU, with an art degree, nearly 15 years after she started.
From then on Susan's daytime life was a long series of temping jobs with various media companies. Viacom. Time-Warner. NBC. Chrismas gifts were always a huge box of assorted swag, stolen from her employers. One year, it was all things Beavis & Butthead.
In 1995, Susan was diagnosed with pervasive esophageal cancer. She'd smoked heavily for nearly 30 years by then, so no one was really suprised.
Even after chemotherapy, radiation, surgery...Susan showed no improvement. My mother and my sister spent every weekend shuttling up from Orlando, to St. Vincent's Hospital to visit her.
At the end, Susan was confined to an oxygen tent. She'd withered away, skeletal is the only word to use. Her hair gone, tubes in both arms, not even the energy to chew food....she STILL found the energy to use that famously foul mouth.
Her final coherent words to my mother: 'Fat fucking lot of help YOU'VE been!'.
My mother fled the room, never getting the will to return.
The next day, as my sister walked in, Susan pulled her mask off and rasped: 'Those shoes with THAT skirt? You MUST be joking!'
After Susan died, we went to her Stuyvesant Town apartment to go through her things. The vulture grapevine had already been alerted to her death, there were two dozen notes on her door, inquiring about the disposition of the apartment.
By then, she'd stopped taking tenants, and the place was a rabbit's nest of paintings, albums, full ashtrays and piles and piles of art books. The spare bedrooms were littered with boxes and boxes of junk. Shoes. Winter coats. Hundreds of copies of the Village Voice.
I found a huge pile of spiral notebooks. I picked one out and sat at the kitchen table and began flipping through it. It was filled with drawings, abstract doodling, non-sensical words, and lists. Lots of lists. Lists of bands. Lists of artists. Lists of people I'd never heard of.
Then I came across a page that was different.
In huge bold strokes, the sentences moved directly from the top of the left page and over onto the top of the right.
'I WANT TO GET F*CKED. I WANT TO F*CK SOMEBODY. I WANT SOMEBODY TO WANT TO F*CK ME'.
My mother walked over.
'Anything interesting?'
Quickly, I flipped the page.
'Um, not so far. Just some drawings.'
My mom leaned in to see. I had landed on another page of lists.
In pink magic marker:
I HAVE THREE THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR:
1) my lesbianism.
2) my emerald green eyes.
3) that I don't have Dorothy's nose.
I looked up at Dorothy.
'Mom, didn't Susan have dark brown eyes?'
My mom sighed.
'Yes, dear. She did.'
(originally posted 5-18-04)
933 Harrison
During my six years of living in San Francisco, I visited just about every gay establishment in town. I'd hit the discos, the bars, the restaurants, the porn shops, the gift shops, the clothing stores, the record shops. I like to give my people all of my business.
Occasionally, I'd even get the notion to drop in at one of the local sex clubs.
Actually, replace get the notion to with 'be insanely driven to'. And replace drop in at with 'stay until closing at.'
Oh, and replace occasionally with 'three times a week.'
My favorite sex club in San Francisco (and the world, for that matter) is the legendary Blow Buddies. I won't go into any lengthy description of Blow Buddies, most gay men in America have been there or at least heard of it. The rest of you just.would.not.understand. Let's just say that even on a slow night, Blow Buddies provided a rich menu, a smorgasbord, an All-You-Can-Eat buffet of hot, willing, horny men. All I had to do was arrive, pull off my shirt, and begin sliding my metaphorical cafeteria tray past a seemingly endless selection of steamy dishes from around the world. (OK, let's end this horrible sex-as-food thing...HERE.)
I didn't have a car for the first few years that I was in SF. That's not so uncommon, San Francisco is one of the very few U.S. cities other than New York, where you can live pretty easily without a personal car. So, I was usually taking a cab when I would go to Blow Buddies.
However.
I had a little problem . It might be hard to believe it, but yes, ME...Joe.My.God. himself, relentless outspoken activist and warrior for gay causes, was embarrassed to tell the cab drivers WHERE I was actually going. Ridiculous, but true.
I'd flag down a passing cab from outside the disco, or bar or party. I'd hop in, the driver would bark his 'Where to?', and I'd LIE.
'Oh, I'm going to the Shell Station on Harrison Street.'
Right, who the HELL takes a cab to a gas station? Sometimes if it was early enough, I'd give the name of a nearby bar. Once or twice, I even pretended I was looking for my car parked on the street near Blow Buddies.
I mentioned my discomfort about this to a couple of my friends. Of course, they used it against me, at every opportunity.
'Hey, Joe. This is Leif. We're going out tonight if you wanna join us. Meet us around 10pm, somewhere on Market Street, in the general vicinity of some, uh...bars.'
Bastards.
One night, I slipped up. I stumbled out of Daddy's on Castro Street and hailed a cab. The cab that pulled over was was an old beat up one from one of the smaller, grungier cab companies, of the many that service San Francisco.
The driver was a huge, hairy, tattooed Rob Zombie clone with a ZZ-Top styled beard that reached the bottom of the steering wheel. He had a pipe clenched between his teeth and huge skull ring on his thumb.
After about a block, he stared into the rear-view mirror and grunted back at me, 'So ya gonna tell me where you're goin?'
I snapped out of my beer haze a bit and sat up.
'Oh, right, sorry. Take me to 933 Harrison Street.'
Fuck and FUCK! I gave him the EXACT address for Blow Buddies. I sank back into the seat in shame and rolled the window down to cool my hot and flushed face.
We rode in silence for another block or two. The driver slowed on Market, preparing to turn. Suddenly, his head snapped up in recognition.
'You said 933 Harrison?'
'Yes.'
We made our turn onto Octavia. The driver looked back at me again.
'You mean Blow Buddies,' he spat with derision.
'Yes,' I repeated, quieter.
At the next stoplight, the driver turned around and glared at me.
'Man, I fucking HATE that place!'
'You do?' I said, putting my hand on the door handle, just in case.
'Yeah, I fucking HATE Blow Buddies.'
'OK,' I said.
His shook his head in disgust.
'The guys in there, they NEVER wanna give me their loads!'
Occasionally, I'd even get the notion to drop in at one of the local sex clubs.
Actually, replace get the notion to with 'be insanely driven to'. And replace drop in at with 'stay until closing at.'
Oh, and replace occasionally with 'three times a week.'
My favorite sex club in San Francisco (and the world, for that matter) is the legendary Blow Buddies. I won't go into any lengthy description of Blow Buddies, most gay men in America have been there or at least heard of it. The rest of you just.would.not.understand. Let's just say that even on a slow night, Blow Buddies provided a rich menu, a smorgasbord, an All-You-Can-Eat buffet of hot, willing, horny men. All I had to do was arrive, pull off my shirt, and begin sliding my metaphorical cafeteria tray past a seemingly endless selection of steamy dishes from around the world. (OK, let's end this horrible sex-as-food thing...HERE.)
I didn't have a car for the first few years that I was in SF. That's not so uncommon, San Francisco is one of the very few U.S. cities other than New York, where you can live pretty easily without a personal car. So, I was usually taking a cab when I would go to Blow Buddies.
However.
I had a little problem . It might be hard to believe it, but yes, ME...Joe.My.God. himself, relentless outspoken activist and warrior for gay causes, was embarrassed to tell the cab drivers WHERE I was actually going. Ridiculous, but true.
I'd flag down a passing cab from outside the disco, or bar or party. I'd hop in, the driver would bark his 'Where to?', and I'd LIE.
'Oh, I'm going to the Shell Station on Harrison Street.'
Right, who the HELL takes a cab to a gas station? Sometimes if it was early enough, I'd give the name of a nearby bar. Once or twice, I even pretended I was looking for my car parked on the street near Blow Buddies.
I mentioned my discomfort about this to a couple of my friends. Of course, they used it against me, at every opportunity.
'Hey, Joe. This is Leif. We're going out tonight if you wanna join us. Meet us around 10pm, somewhere on Market Street, in the general vicinity of some, uh...bars.'
Bastards.
One night, I slipped up. I stumbled out of Daddy's on Castro Street and hailed a cab. The cab that pulled over was was an old beat up one from one of the smaller, grungier cab companies, of the many that service San Francisco.
The driver was a huge, hairy, tattooed Rob Zombie clone with a ZZ-Top styled beard that reached the bottom of the steering wheel. He had a pipe clenched between his teeth and huge skull ring on his thumb.
After about a block, he stared into the rear-view mirror and grunted back at me, 'So ya gonna tell me where you're goin?'
I snapped out of my beer haze a bit and sat up.
'Oh, right, sorry. Take me to 933 Harrison Street.'
Fuck and FUCK! I gave him the EXACT address for Blow Buddies. I sank back into the seat in shame and rolled the window down to cool my hot and flushed face.
We rode in silence for another block or two. The driver slowed on Market, preparing to turn. Suddenly, his head snapped up in recognition.
'You said 933 Harrison?'
'Yes.'
We made our turn onto Octavia. The driver looked back at me again.
'You mean Blow Buddies,' he spat with derision.
'Yes,' I repeated, quieter.
At the next stoplight, the driver turned around and glared at me.
'Man, I fucking HATE that place!'
'You do?' I said, putting my hand on the door handle, just in case.
'Yeah, I fucking HATE Blow Buddies.'
'OK,' I said.
His shook his head in disgust.
'The guys in there, they NEVER wanna give me their loads!'
Sentences
I was in love with Mrs. Shireman.
Teachers in my elementary school were all stamped from the same mold. They wore an air of resigned imposition. Everything was a chore, a bother. Each child a pestering gnat buzzing around their elephantine legs.
Miss Rose. Miss June. Miss Virginia. They all seemed to be named after flowers, or months or states.
But Judy Shireman, our brand new third grade teacher...she was...different.
The other teachers all wore their hair twisted up into prim buns. Mrs. Shireman had a dyed-blond flip. While her colleagues lumbered through the halls in billowing, shapeless Simplicity pattern muu-muu's, Mrs. Shireman wore mini-skirts with matching jackets or bell-bottomed pantsuits.
She was smart, pretty, funny. When a kid was talking to her, she paid attention.
She was Marlo Thomas. She was Agent 99. She was Batgirl.
And I was in love with her.
I was a difficult student. Way too sharp for your average third grader. Insanely hyperactive.
Mrs. Shireman would be handing out an assignment, "Boys and girls, please put your names..."
"I'm done, Mrs. Shireman!"
She would smile at me patiently.
"OK, Joey. Let's find something else for you to enjoy while everyone else does the assignment."
She was very skilled at using leading words like "enjoy", even when I was driving her nuts with my Ritalin fueled battiness. I was earning straight A's from Mrs. Shireman, except in the category of Conduct, although I should mention that in Orwellian rural North Carolina Conduct was actually called Citizenship.
I guess if you were a talkative 8 year old you ran the risk of recruitment by Soviet agents.
To battle my hyperactivity, Mrs. Shireman would invent things for me to do. She called them "experiments".
"Joey, let's perform an experiment. I want to find out how many times you can walk out to the flagpole and back, until the last student finishes the test."
She would tap on the classroom window to let me know when the "experiment" was over.
Mrs. Shireman and my mother were friends. They were about the same age, both from New York City. Kindred spirits of sorts, each set adrift in the cultural wasteland of Carteret County.
My mom and I visited her at her apartment a few times, where they'd talk about the Beatles and Elvis and I'd wander around marveling at her modern furniture. Eight years old and I was already developing a minimalist aesthetic.
I was the teacher's pet, obviously. I willingly stayed after school to clap erasers, staple papers, whatever. I graded tests, ran the mimeograph machine, anything to earn one of those approving smiles.
The other kids hated me. They knew Mrs. Shireman socialized with my mother, because I bragged about it. They resented her attempts to keep my hummingbird metabolism from totally disrupting their lessons, as favoritism. They'd make kissing sounds whenever I was up at her desk, or write "Joey + Mrs.Shireman" on the chalkboard. I didn't care.
One day, Mrs. Shireman snapped on me. I'd been up and out of my seat several times, and each time she'd return me to my desk with her firm grip on the back of my neck. Then I committed the mortal sin of talking during a test.
"Joey, please come up here!"
The other students exchanged gleeful looks. Hah! Finally!
"Joey, do you think it's fair to the class when you talk during their test?"
"I was just..."
"After school I want you to write sentences. 100 times, 'I will not talk in class'."
I was humiliated. Sentences! Me!
I returned to my desk. The other students found every opportunity during the rest of the day to make fun of me. Mr. Smarty Pants, Mr. Teacher's Pet had to stay after school and write sentences. When the bell rang, the other students filed out the room, taking great care to say 'Goodbye' to me, making sure I knew their pleasure in watching my fall.
Mrs. Shireman brought me 10 sheets of the special 'sentence writing' paper, the coarse sheets with oversized lines meant for first graders to practice writing the alphabet. I didn't even look up at her. I was furious and I had already plotted my revenge.
For an hour, I sat and wrote my sentences. I wrote with strong, angry strokes. A dozen times I had to stop and shake out the cramps in my hand and roll dry the sweaty pencil on my lap. While I wrote, Mrs. Shireman graded some papers, then read from a paperback novel. When I finished, I strode to the front of the class and put the sheets on her desk, face down.
Mrs. Shireman looked at me, sadly.
"Joey, I'm really sorry it had to come to this. You know I love you very much, and all I want is for you to learn and grow up to be the fantastic person I know you can be."
Maybe she said more, it seems like I stood there a long time. I couldn't hear anything else she said, because by then the loud painful buzzing in my ears was drowning out her words. Standing there, unable to meet her eyes, all I could think was: 'WHAT HAVE I DONE??'
On the pages on her desk, still face down, were not 100 sentences saying 'I will not talk in class.' Instead I'd written 100 times, in all capital letters: I HATE MRS. SHIREMAN!
Mrs. Shireman dismissed me, with an affectionate rub of my hair. Wordlessly, I walked out. When I got out of her sight, I raced down the hallway and out of the school doors. Running behind the hedges, so I couldn't be seen, I doubled back along the rows of windows. My mind was racing. I knew how to jimmy the windows to the classroom. Once, when Mrs. Shireman had locked her keys in our room, I broke in for her. All I had to do was zip in and grab those sheets.
It was too late.
Watching from the bushes outside, I saw Mrs. Shireman pick up my sentences. Her head cocked in puzzlement for a moment as she leafed through the pages. Her purse dropped from her shoulder onto the desk, and she pressed the sheets of paper to her chest, slumping down into her chair.
And she began...sobbing.
Her tiny shoulders heaved convulsively, and her head dropped down onto the desk. I could hear her cries.
I saw Miss Virginia walk by the open classroom door. She made a tentative move like she might walk inside to see what was going on. Then she saw me standing outside in the bushes. I jumped back, and fell into the hedge, scraping my face open. On my hands and knees, I burrowed out to the other side, jumped up and ran home.
When I burst through our front door, I was wailing inconsolably. I had blood all over my face from the hedge. I couldn't stop crying to explain to my mother, not that I would have. My mother thought that I'd been beaten up by bullies at the school. It had happened before. She called over to the school, but the principal told her that I'd been kept after class by Mrs. Shireman.
Even though they were friends, Mrs. Shireman never told my mother what I'd done. She continued to treat me fairly, but things were never the same between us. The school year ended a month later.
That was her one and only year as a teacher.
Teachers in my elementary school were all stamped from the same mold. They wore an air of resigned imposition. Everything was a chore, a bother. Each child a pestering gnat buzzing around their elephantine legs.
Miss Rose. Miss June. Miss Virginia. They all seemed to be named after flowers, or months or states.
But Judy Shireman, our brand new third grade teacher...she was...different.
The other teachers all wore their hair twisted up into prim buns. Mrs. Shireman had a dyed-blond flip. While her colleagues lumbered through the halls in billowing, shapeless Simplicity pattern muu-muu's, Mrs. Shireman wore mini-skirts with matching jackets or bell-bottomed pantsuits.
She was smart, pretty, funny. When a kid was talking to her, she paid attention.
She was Marlo Thomas. She was Agent 99. She was Batgirl.
And I was in love with her.
I was a difficult student. Way too sharp for your average third grader. Insanely hyperactive.
Mrs. Shireman would be handing out an assignment, "Boys and girls, please put your names..."
"I'm done, Mrs. Shireman!"
She would smile at me patiently.
"OK, Joey. Let's find something else for you to enjoy while everyone else does the assignment."
She was very skilled at using leading words like "enjoy", even when I was driving her nuts with my Ritalin fueled battiness. I was earning straight A's from Mrs. Shireman, except in the category of Conduct, although I should mention that in Orwellian rural North Carolina Conduct was actually called Citizenship.
I guess if you were a talkative 8 year old you ran the risk of recruitment by Soviet agents.
To battle my hyperactivity, Mrs. Shireman would invent things for me to do. She called them "experiments".
"Joey, let's perform an experiment. I want to find out how many times you can walk out to the flagpole and back, until the last student finishes the test."
She would tap on the classroom window to let me know when the "experiment" was over.
Mrs. Shireman and my mother were friends. They were about the same age, both from New York City. Kindred spirits of sorts, each set adrift in the cultural wasteland of Carteret County.
My mom and I visited her at her apartment a few times, where they'd talk about the Beatles and Elvis and I'd wander around marveling at her modern furniture. Eight years old and I was already developing a minimalist aesthetic.
I was the teacher's pet, obviously. I willingly stayed after school to clap erasers, staple papers, whatever. I graded tests, ran the mimeograph machine, anything to earn one of those approving smiles.
The other kids hated me. They knew Mrs. Shireman socialized with my mother, because I bragged about it. They resented her attempts to keep my hummingbird metabolism from totally disrupting their lessons, as favoritism. They'd make kissing sounds whenever I was up at her desk, or write "Joey + Mrs.Shireman" on the chalkboard. I didn't care.
One day, Mrs. Shireman snapped on me. I'd been up and out of my seat several times, and each time she'd return me to my desk with her firm grip on the back of my neck. Then I committed the mortal sin of talking during a test.
"Joey, please come up here!"
The other students exchanged gleeful looks. Hah! Finally!
"Joey, do you think it's fair to the class when you talk during their test?"
"I was just..."
"After school I want you to write sentences. 100 times, 'I will not talk in class'."
I was humiliated. Sentences! Me!
I returned to my desk. The other students found every opportunity during the rest of the day to make fun of me. Mr. Smarty Pants, Mr. Teacher's Pet had to stay after school and write sentences. When the bell rang, the other students filed out the room, taking great care to say 'Goodbye' to me, making sure I knew their pleasure in watching my fall.
Mrs. Shireman brought me 10 sheets of the special 'sentence writing' paper, the coarse sheets with oversized lines meant for first graders to practice writing the alphabet. I didn't even look up at her. I was furious and I had already plotted my revenge.
For an hour, I sat and wrote my sentences. I wrote with strong, angry strokes. A dozen times I had to stop and shake out the cramps in my hand and roll dry the sweaty pencil on my lap. While I wrote, Mrs. Shireman graded some papers, then read from a paperback novel. When I finished, I strode to the front of the class and put the sheets on her desk, face down.
Mrs. Shireman looked at me, sadly.
"Joey, I'm really sorry it had to come to this. You know I love you very much, and all I want is for you to learn and grow up to be the fantastic person I know you can be."
Maybe she said more, it seems like I stood there a long time. I couldn't hear anything else she said, because by then the loud painful buzzing in my ears was drowning out her words. Standing there, unable to meet her eyes, all I could think was: 'WHAT HAVE I DONE??'
On the pages on her desk, still face down, were not 100 sentences saying 'I will not talk in class.' Instead I'd written 100 times, in all capital letters: I HATE MRS. SHIREMAN!
Mrs. Shireman dismissed me, with an affectionate rub of my hair. Wordlessly, I walked out. When I got out of her sight, I raced down the hallway and out of the school doors. Running behind the hedges, so I couldn't be seen, I doubled back along the rows of windows. My mind was racing. I knew how to jimmy the windows to the classroom. Once, when Mrs. Shireman had locked her keys in our room, I broke in for her. All I had to do was zip in and grab those sheets.
It was too late.
Watching from the bushes outside, I saw Mrs. Shireman pick up my sentences. Her head cocked in puzzlement for a moment as she leafed through the pages. Her purse dropped from her shoulder onto the desk, and she pressed the sheets of paper to her chest, slumping down into her chair.
And she began...sobbing.
Her tiny shoulders heaved convulsively, and her head dropped down onto the desk. I could hear her cries.
I saw Miss Virginia walk by the open classroom door. She made a tentative move like she might walk inside to see what was going on. Then she saw me standing outside in the bushes. I jumped back, and fell into the hedge, scraping my face open. On my hands and knees, I burrowed out to the other side, jumped up and ran home.
When I burst through our front door, I was wailing inconsolably. I had blood all over my face from the hedge. I couldn't stop crying to explain to my mother, not that I would have. My mother thought that I'd been beaten up by bullies at the school. It had happened before. She called over to the school, but the principal told her that I'd been kept after class by Mrs. Shireman.
Even though they were friends, Mrs. Shireman never told my mother what I'd done. She continued to treat me fairly, but things were never the same between us. The school year ended a month later.
That was her one and only year as a teacher.
Back In The Saddle
Faithful Readers: Many apologies for my lengthy absence. As some of you know, Joe.My.God. was hacked into and deleted on Saturday, November 20th. As a fellow blogger sometimes says, I am completely compu-tarded, so I truly had no idea what to do. After a couple of weeks of hopeless dithering, a friend suggested that I write the world famous rock icon that we both know, and ask that he send up a flare to his vast readership. Within minutes of his posting, I got lots of kind offers, all of which I am deeply grateful for. The well-known blogger/hottie from Cleveland, Jockohomo went into my account and 'tinkered', and voila....I am BACK! Again, many thanks to Bob and Jim, and anyone else who to endure my whining. There's lots of fun stuff coming up on Joe.My.God., dirty gay sex, fist fights, car wrecks, drag queens, and ....of course...my mother.
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