It's Like the Military Without Honor
One of the first times I watched MTV was at my grandmother’s house in St. Louis. My Uncle Donnie had just killed himself. We were in town for the funeral. I rode in the back of a pickup truck for eighteen hours. Borrowing my friend Vince’s cassette recorder, the kind you used in speech class or borrowed from the library, I planned to hedge the wind and boredom with some music. I had two tapes-One was Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” and the other was a comp of Otis Redding, Def Leppard, Black Flag and other little, poorly recorded nuggets. Over the ride, I remember sitting semi-prone and semi-fetal, a hybrid of both poses, really. My rear was numb by Greenville. By the time we hit the Knoxville traffic, I couldn’t feel from my neck down.
So over and over I listened to these tapes. I still know the sequence and every lyric to the Billy Idol record. The mix tape seemed short, like it ended too abruptly. During a break on the ride, for some reason, I recited the entire screenplay to “Stripes” outloud. It was comforting. For some reason. Don’t ask me why.
Pulling into St. Louis is like the beginning of any tv show, there’s the cruddy bridges and the hood, the huge factories and stripmalls. Of course, there’s the obligatory Gateway Arch montage, compounded by the rapping of the grates on the bridge as you cross into the seedier part of town, from where my ancestors rained. Eventually, we found the depressing street that my grandmother’s house was on. It was the kind of street where the dogs looked desperate and the kids looked old. All of the adults in the neoghborhood just seemed empty, like life was still waiting to happen for them, almost in a sad way.
My grandmother’s driveway was long. It was made of chubby gravel, a clean, bluish gray stone. My face was windburned and chapped. I wished for two days of sleep.
My mother told me I had to clean up Uncle Donnie’s house. I don’t know why. I remember some scuttle about the other adults in the family. I remember my grandmother hugging me, in the driveway. It was a long hug, the kind where you think about things other than the hug itself. I tried to smell her. I noticed that lupus, or what I was always told was lupus, was starting to win. She was worn. But still, I remember her as my grandmother, the lunch lady when I was a first grader. She gave me and my retarded friend Darryl extra tater tots and we thought we’d won the lottery. As I stood above the moving, rubbly rocks, I told myself to record that embrace, to log it in the book of my mind where special hugs and caresses are stored. She asked me to go look after Donnie’s place.
This part gets gross. Its even harder to try to relate as I never have really spoken about it.
I took the Buick over to the house. I had some cleaning supplies and mops. I even think I had gloves with me, for the blood.
I opened the door, tore the tape off the jamb and stepped in. There across the floor, in the center hallway, was a mural of blood. It was a huge violent spraying canvas of redness. The main fulcrum of the sanguinity was on a cubby-type shelf, where the phone stayed.
It was sad to me. There I was sponging off a wall, trying to delete the last moments of my uncle’s sadness. It was his transubstantiation into oblivion. There was no reason for it. He could have stayed. Instead he shot himself in the head and bled to death alone.
I never read the report or anything official. I just remember what my grandmother told me as she made me a pizza really late that night from one of those chef Boyardee kits.
My Uncle had walked in the house and found his wife with her boss. He freaked out and left. A couple of days go by and my uncle becomes more erratic and distraught (this was his high school sweetie). She took the two kids, time has erased their names, forgive me. Heck I cant remember her name. So Donnie comes home from a huge bender, high as a kite. He somehow gets his wife, my former aunt, on the phone. He also has a gun to his head and is threatening to kill himself. I think what happened next is pretty obvious. She broke his heart and he checked out. I thought about it as I tried to clean the mess. I’d never seen blood, except my own cuts or when someone ate a rare steak. This stuff was dried and hard to remove. I worked and worked on the spots, trying different concoctions of chemicals. The fumes were dangerous I am sure. Blood is different when you are handling it, dealing with it as a scourge. I can’t really elaborate more on what I did or saw. I do remember my knees hurt from scrubbing. Also, I threw away the clothes I wore that day as soon as I got back to grandma’s house.
My uncle was a low level weed dealer and a repeatedly unemployed guy. He was nice to me, though. I remember he came to see me in the hospital. His big beach ball afro scared me.He was a music nut. I liked when he played air instruments, be it guitar or drums. It was all about rock for him.
I remember my uncle playing the Velvet Underground for me. He told me Lou Reed was as cool as Ultraman. My uncle once met David Bowie on the Ziggy tour. He would sneak me Kiss trading cards. He even told me that punk was going to save my generation, one day. It was hard to get to know him over the years, other than little snapshots of things. I know I was usually afraid of him, with his stache and his weird odor. My mom always told me he was on drugs and that scared me. I was frightened of drugs. Its funny now, because I realize that the only sober, straight people in my life were other kids at school. Everyone I knew or in any position of authority was polluted as a routine of normality.
Thinking back to Donnie and his last minutes or seconds, I wonder what the soundtrack was. I wonder if he was playing anything. I bet he was. Sabbath? The stereo was always on when he was awake. I know it was a few feet away from where he gave up. Iggy? I like to think he was listening to something soothing, something comforting, like Neil Young or one of those Eric Clapton records he liked. I don’t know. Grand Funk Railroad? I guess I am just riffing myself, I mean, what was he thinking? I know he was depressed and freaked out by his lot in life. Who isn’t? He gave up and I think that was strange. He didn’t seem the type. When the Talking Heads show was sold out and he couldn’t afford to scalp, he got in. Same for Blondie. Ditto on the Allman Brothers. He took me to see some bands, boy howdy. I saw all the great facial hair of the ‘70s. He was just learning to dig “new wave” and subsequently turn me on to it.
I hate that he wasted his life. I bet we would have argued about music when I got older. I think he would get the joke that I have a job in the business and he would see the hilarity that I am in charge of a large rock band. I bet he would laugh. I never imagined he would do what he did. And I cleaned it up. I think about that all the time. Or at least when I let myself.
“ “
It was raining on the field. I was in Belgium. In the distance, I could hear three different bands playing at three different locations. The harder I pressed the phone to my ear, the sweatier the earpiece became. It didn’t help the connection though. She was on her way to a funeral in Connecticut. A friend’s husband had expired after a long bout with cancer.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.” I could hear her remaining strength evaporate with the last couple of words.
“well, I can. I don’t give up. And you said-“
Cutting me off she remarked, “I know what I said. Its too hard. You have too many issues that you won’t deal with. Besides that I never see you. And besides that, I never see you. Don't you get it!” Her last sentence almost seemed to be screamed at me, at the distance between us.
“I know, one day soon, I’ll stop this,” I was running out of promises at this point. I’d been telling her since the day we met that I was stopping the touring life.
I could hear a dearth of cars and traffic noise in her background. Her words with swirled with tears for the rest of our talk.
“I didn’t expect to run out of gas. My heart just can’t handle the distance.”
Hearing those words, the last three, “handle the distance,” made me go cold.
It made me give up, no more words, no more eleventh hour promises.
“OK. I’ll step away. It won’t be easy. I can’t imagine not knowing you as my love, my life.”
The tears burned. The stinging salt had its own sting. My hear weighed a million pounds.
I continued on, not really thinking as much as just speaking whatever was next on my tongue.
“Hudson, for three years you’ve been my life, my morning to night. Its like I won’t be able to go certain places or say certain words out loud.”
On the other end, I could hear her long sobs, counting down to a hangup.
“I feel like I can’t breathe. It hurts. It hurts beyond pain. When we’re old, I’ll still wonder about you and what could have been, like an unfinished story that-“
“I know, I know,” she cried. Each word a little louder than the last.
“My dear, my heart, I lo-“
And the phone went dead.
I stood on the field for what seemed like hours. I don’t remember leaving Belgium.
I was thinking the other day. Someone was admonishing me at work for a mistake I made. So I went to my place. I thought about my best friend of years ago and why people drift. and what people do or don't do when they drift. its just pieces.
Seven times I tried to call him today. He wasn’t home. We used to be friends. I am only in town for the night and I really wanted to get up with him. Back at home, we were together almost every day for three years. I take many of my secret names and such from his real name. I really liked hanging around his house. His Dad, beercan in hand, would stumble from the shed outside to the stove, mumbling out of both sides of his mouth. He never really said anything of purpose. He told me that his Dad was just a drunk, never really voicing in on anything except the lack of beer. I think I remember one time he mentioned his Dad having a rough time during the Vietnam war.
His sister, Joyce, was this small puppet of a girl with a huge shaggy head of brown hair. She darted throughout the house, never really sitting still or making much discernable conversation. She drew these pictures, these lovely feasts of color. Like a trail, sometimes, there would be five or six of them littered from one end of the house to her spot in the middle rear part. I still have one of them in a box in my spare room. When he would disappear or we’d suddenly be alone, in the awkward living room I’d joke with Joyce about taking her to prom in 8 years. We never went but it was that fun teasing that little girls chuckle and protest almost gleefully. I remember that about Joyce. She seemed to just humour whatever hot air I was pushing. I liked her for that. I always wanted a sister. A real one. Not a half or one by marriage. I wanted a sister that would have been a marginal, diluted version of my mother except she would be smart, well-groomed and not be attracted to men with moustaches.
So we, me and him, would retreat to the rear corner of his house to listen to music. I remember we talked about this one record for almost six hours. We dissected the lyrics, the cover, the titles, everything about the album. I won’t divulge it or say its name out loud. It bothers me too much. It shuttles back a time that I can’t really process. I can think about my friend and the time we burned up and it doesn’t hurt. Thinking about everything else does. I think about how we lived. How I grew up. It seems that everyone is wrecked by their childish years and I concede that maybe my skin is a little thin about some things from back in those days. No, screw that. It seems painful, even more so, that I am in his city and if we saw each other out in public, he’d probably duck out or turn face and skulk off into the edges of light.
So where was I, where was this discourse on a lost friend taking me, taking you? I just heard one of those songs from that record on the radio. It bugs me to hear it. My eyes burn cross with sad anger. Taking a swig of water, I resolve to call again. I figure that he’d be glad that I figured out where he lives.
This stuff tends to fall out of me on planes. I have ideas for things-books, stories, cut up fiction, sometimes a movie, though i doubt i have the stones for such a thing. The stuff i throw up here is like excercise. The next thing is something i just started fiddling with, sort of an idea that a woman marries a guy who isn't the most truthful, he appears to be callous and simple. Its only in his passing that she truly finds our who he was afraid to be. And I think thats something most of us can learn from. the fear. I mean, I sit in my 20 story five start hotel in Tokyo and I am afraid. i am lonely and confused, even though i can see the japanese eiffel tower. Yes, i know it makes little sense. What do you want from me? its been a country each day for a week. Anyhow, this is one of the excerpts from the thing, one of the things. forgive the punctuation as always. Pretend one of those well accessorized women with a house that has everything just so is reading this..
I will make more words. I think.
The idea that you one day will read this is making me tipsy. If you are indeed holding this piece of paper in your small, well looked after hands, then that means one or two things.
I am gone and not coming back, OR-
You are snooping in my stuff and should burn in a tiny little hell. Since this is in my safe deposit box, I seriously doubt that you found the key or bank (First National) and made it in the vault.
However, let me say that whatever time we have post me writing this I appreciated a million times more than the most gracious of all gestures. I truly shall, from when the ink dries, try to swallow you, your aura, your essence-wholly and constantly until my arms stop working.
We’ve been in and out of each other’s visual space for over five years. Most of the things wrong with us I have been able to Jedi mind trick you into thinking it was you, but it was really me.
I was scared. I hate talking about my feelings. And I did think that skirt made your ass look just fine. I never thought it was fat. Really.
Maybe during the chase for this paper you have somehow forgiven me for leaving, for expiring. It wasn’t my wish but the journey wore me out. (it hasn’t as I write this but its near, the end I mean.)
The constant uphill battles and the sheer magnitude of the effort I had to make to get through a day have just smoked me. I didn’t or rather I won’t give up, I just know that I am running nearly on fumes. But please reflect on the good, the sunny well soundtracked trajectory of our love, the noises, the tastes. Remember those trips? Remember the coming and going? We were dizzy with each other. That reminds me, when I see you next after finishing this, I am going to twirl you like Ricky twirled Lucy. And I will kiss and hug you for no reason. Yes, I shall. So when you rewind the time we shared, our last few months, remember this. Through all of the silly romantic, Notebook styled shenanigans I was aware of the end of the tunnel. I was trying to give you and myself a scrapbook, like one of those really attractive couples in one of those really attractive films that people like us go see and wish we could live in real life. Dear, I am not trying to rub your face in it. I want to make up for wasting time.
I just want some credit for being better than a C plus husband. I want you to know, you MOVED me. You made me go longer, harder. You compelled me to be a better man, cliché as it sounds. I was attempting to be Cary Grant or Mickey Rourke (before his boxing career) albeit not as sexy, rich or well groomed. But that, the effort, perceived or not, was because I felt as if you deserved better than just okay, or just a plain old two megapixel love. You deserve as many megapixels as a nerd can count.
So please, go on. Make it loud. Live in color. For me. Tell me things, just up above your shoulder to the air, like the ceiling will answer-maybe it will. I will watch. I will envy whomever scoops you up, whomever finds the treasure that you are.
So that’s it. Sorry to go. Forever isn’t long enough. I promise to not flush q tips anymore either. Really.
It was as if he never left. Seeing the apartment, almost unchanged, the smell, the old familiar trudge up the squeaky stairs-it all made him miss the years the two of them spent in the borderline hovel. The fact that she was practically glowing and even prettier than the day they met made him nervous.
She stood in the doorway to the tiny kitchen, waiting for him to speak. He inhaled a few times, scratched his head and gasped for air.
“It looks like the day we moved in-except without any boxes. I can’t believe you still-, “ he attempted.
And she lunged for him, grabbing him, as if he was a ladder and the building were on fire.
As her lips slammed into his, they both body choked one another, trying to make one person.
“I missed you,” she muffled out of the liplock.
“Me too, I , I never should,” and she cut him off with her tongue.
Finally, she extracted herself from his arms and they continued to stare at one another.
“How have we not seen each other?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, I wanted to come back, I just felt like I couldn’t,” he ejected, tears lightly forming in the corner of his eyes.
“It’s okay, I dialed your number a thousand times except for the five at the end,” she divulged.
He laughed as they moved to the green couch at once in one fluid movement, sitting as if choreographed.
Time passed as they laughed, cried and made amends. He promised to call her. She promised to do the same and even respond to his long emails.
He looked at his watch and realized it was time to catch his flight home.
Getting up to leave, smiling and nearly ill with a longing for their previous life together, he told her he still loved her. Beneath his grip, under his chin, she let out that she indeed felt the same. They kissed, briefly and slowly. They hugged, hard and long.
He nearly missed his flight.
The embrace/hug lasted for almost two minutes. Years later on his porch, on the day his heart would stop beating, he would watch the neighborhood kids play in the street, and remember her soft lips and her hair.
I think I have told her a million times. Maybe five more. I can't recall.
We first thought about therapy after one huge blowout. Chinese food was the first round. The msg was throbbing in my tongue as I yelled about something. Funny now, sometime on, I don't remember for the life of me what it was. I remember raising my voice and staring at one of the many unpacked boxes in the room. We were eating on "HALLWAY CLOSET FRAGILE" and I think I spilled a trickle of soda on "BEDROOM MISC" but somehow we managed to fight.
It was the first night in the new apartment. Sunburned from the trip and overpacked with things we didn't need, our entry into the one bedroom dwelling was a letdown. No warm h'ors doevres, no welcome back sign. There were just boxes. The ratty sofa had survived the move. So did that annoying set of pillows. I wasn't pleased to get reacquainted with that dusty coffee table.
Maybe the temperature in the apartment was the jumping off point to fight time.It was July. I don't know. Somehow as hot as I remember it being, at this point light years away, I would give a finger or two if I could go back to that night. I didn't appreciate what we had when it was in full bloom. Neither did she. But that's okay. I was the first one, the one with the experience. People are my business, that's what I would say to her, getting out of the shower as I made a cocky judgment on someone we had just encountered. I should have thrown myself a penalty flag and given her the ball. She just wanted me to be happy. And I was. I just couldn't say it, for whatever reason. My mind was boiling. It was hot. Somehow I thought her old furniture would be renewed into brand new modern eames era stuff that would just rise up to hug us as we sat. instead it was the pukey sofa and the thrift armchair dressed in a parachute or something like it.
But I remember, as she yelled back at me, how cute and scrubbed her face was. The time away in the sun with green drinks and fruity fish entrees had eroded the city's pallor. She looked lovely. Fresh. Not even near thirty. And she was mad at me! That should have inspired me to write this ages ago. Someone cared enough to nag me! And I could yell back. No one got hit. I am sure it sounded like something out of a flophouse bum fight but it was jetlag and nerves.
After the flares subsided and we got into the next tubs of chinese food, rational talk began. I was sorry. She was sorry. No. its me. I am a southern guy who is used to living for four dollars a year, I said, I think. Well, I said something in the neighborhood of that. I mean, a pack of mostly oil, orange American cheese was almost six dollars at her grocery store down the block. This isn't about cheese, though. Or is it?
I mostly am just remembering that night. The aggression, its tiresome lurch and the way we made up and even probably had sex in spite of a sunburn and an ill made bed. I cannot recall. She was just lovely, though.
Today I nearly died. In fact, in the past week I have nearly died a dozen times.
She started school today. My little girls first day. Her hand felt so small, yet sticky as we walked from the car. Let me rewind to yesterday. I got her early in the morning. I told her repeatedly that this was her last day as a kid, that after that she would always be graded, scored, judged and measured until she was old enough to start her career or whatever she found. Its hard to remember sometimes that she is just five. I am crying as I type. We measured her height inside the pantry on the door jamb. Since jan ’05 she has grown 6 inches. I know she has grown a huge amount in the past year because its harder to pick her up. She weighs so much, not to give her a Karen Carpenter complex. I took her to get icees and pick out a project for us to do. We go to this craft store, one of those places where you buy the felt animals to glue onto sweatshirts. After much complicated, souk-like negotiations and promises of cleanup help and sweeping, we settled on a unicorn suncatcher. Man, that girl can love pink like her life depends on it. We got it home and started to paint in the blacked off areas with the glittery paint. I noticed that she loves things to be pretty, to be orderly and always glamourous. I find it amusing. I could not be more borne of chaos and mess. As we painted, I watched her, noticing her dark brown skin. Her chubby, nearly watering but twinkling brown eyes. Our arms brushed together, her bombpop-lengthed arm felt cool, but as active as every, brushing and pushing the color all over. She is obviously smaller than me, me being six four. The doctors say that she’ll be five ten. Wow. I hope its not a silly five ten. I remember this girl in sixth grade. Her name was Sarah. She was three or four inches taller than me. She had this party for her birthday- she invited our whole class. This was South Carolina advanced education. It was called a combination class. There were 30 students or so; half 5th graders and half 6th graders.
Anyhow, Sara invited the whole class. No one showed. It ended up being me, my friend Vince and her grandmother, who I think was drunk. Nevertheless, Granny managed to entertain this sad little soiree. She showed us the new Sears catalog and recited her theories about where Mork from Ork really came from (she swore he was from Michigan) Sara held back percolating tears as Vince and I tried to keep her mind off of the diss with our renditions of Kool and the Gang AND Sex Pistol songs, albeith a capella versions. Back at school, people acted like nothing happened, or they said they were busy, a few even said the date was confusing (we weren’t on an Aztec calendar?) It was funny to watch the manipulative incrowders try to console her by consoling themselves. Truth be told, Sara wasn’t the Kelly Kapowski of our little class. She was a patent wallflower. This isn’t derision. All the other girls were tiny little pinwheels. Sara was more like her party guests. We were fringe dwellers, the veritable plus ones that you see but never see. I forget why I brought this up. Um, it brings me back to the whole school thing with my daughter. I remember not being able to afford those coral blue swooshed nikes. It stunk. My used shoes from the mission never measure up to my classmates footwear. I don’t want her to care about that. This possessive lust that we are all guilty of, it bothers me. I am guilty of it. I notice it all the time. I am counting the days until I am uncool. Or maybe I already am. Kids always know before the parent.
I saw T and M’s new band. It was really wonderful and such an intimate thing to see, like watching two people make out at a movie, or stumbling upon a couple kissing in the kitchen at a dinner party. The songs are broad and melodic. They remind me of head on the door era Cure but in the direction of where there last band was heading.
I discovered this painter that I like. Her name is Audrey Kawasaki. I even emailed her. Its amazing to be able to do that, to break the wall with someone who inspires you. Google her. I remember in college, I had abused the phone in the newspaper office. I must have called everyone in NYC and tracked down the painter Jean Michel Basquiat. I wanted to talk to him, to exchange words with him. I wanted to tell him how his dumb art was smart and his influence on people in small redneck towns. I wanted to talk new wave music, no wave music and hip hop. I begged and called and left message upon message. One night, late night in the office, I took a break, and I remember it clearly, from reviewing a Buck Pets record. I picked up the phone and called one of the remaining five numbers that someone had had something intelligent about where Basquiat was or would be. (I never swallowed the notion that he wouldn’t care about a junior college newspaper writer who lived in a car and painted women he stalked.)
I think I reached a rehearsal space of his. Apparently he had a few that he worked out of and his handlers or whomever they were didn’t know where he was ever and if they did, they weren’t going to tell me.
So its late. I am super tired. The outside dark sky is starting to molt into daylight. I call one number and it rings hypnotically about 35 times. Ring. Ring. On the 38th ring I hear a crashing fumble.
“hello?”
There is a music bed underneath the hello. Sounds like Run DMC being pureed by the Clash.
“um, Hi. Jean Michel?”
“who this?”
And then I began a story about who I was and how important he was and blah blah, weren’t Suicide a great band and what about Rahmelzee…I wanted to interview him for this narrow minded but trying publication-and he interrupted.
“call me on Thursday. We can build” (or something really hip. The years erode his exact words)
“this one coming?
“Yea. Bye”
Bzzzzzz.
That was it. He never answered the phone that next Thursday and I never got him again on the phone. He died of an overdose two weeks later. Check his work out. He proves that a four year degree can be nothing more than four years of schooling in a row.
Have you ever watched one of those sports films and been sucked into the thing? I was putting this desk together tonight,, failing at said task, and periodically I would glance up at the tv. I like to keep the tv on in whatever room I am in no matter where I am. The rumbly random picks and umbars combined with all the late night talk of promised pound shedding and no money down is a surrogate booty call for a person like me. Even on tour when you think I would need to dust the din off, I still opt for another showing of Road House. It makes a place like Grand Rapids seem, well, Grand. But I have lost my path. Oh yeah. I was using the crate and barrel provided allen wrench (thanks Al) and blowing it big time. The desk is wobbly like Bambi at birth, but I think with enough crap piled on it, the isometrics of the situation might actually precipitate a sturdy desk. As I said, tv was on and I kept looking up at it just to make sure I wasn’t a total loser, putting mcfurniture together on a hot Friday night. This movie about football was on. The one with Billy Bob Thornton. I like that guy. He seems like not so much an actor as a dude they put in outfits and film; that’s not to knock his ability, he just seems so natural in whatever role. I remember I found myself feeling bad for him in Bad Santa and he was more wretched than a pile of stepfathers.
I stopped scarring the pressed plywood long enough to get sucked into the “game.” I even teared up when the lovable, yet religious defensive guy gave the patented “its our time, yo,” speech. The game, like everything except taxes, reminded me of my time playing football. I am sure its at least an amusing story. Especially for a sport that I didn’t really like.
Around 4th grade, it was noted by the people in the house that I was rather tall and, judging by my ability to take the odd beating, I was semi-tough. The fat guy with the beard and corn in said beard, decided that I would join the team. I didn’t want to play. I protested. I disappeared for a couple of days. I came back. I was still playing. The best thing, I figured out years later, mostly by default, was that it was the first time someone bought me a pair of shoes. Ok they were cleats, and they were from the mission (where I met Smitty. That’s a later tale) and if I could smell I bet they were somewhere between crotch and vomit with some thrift store cheetle thrown in on top. So I was picked up from Mr. Porth’s farm and taken to the first practice. I wore these electric blue ‘70s gym shorts with red piping that rode so high in the crotch, if I had pubes it would have looked like Paul Stanley from Kiss trying to escape my balls. Its amusing to think about now. I also pulled my yellow striped white tube socks (I had 3 pairs) as close to my knee caps as possible, as if I were trying to make them into pants.
I also was wearing a t shirt. Don’t recall what it said on it or if it was blank, but I know it was a t shirt.
The other guys were all running around, which told me that I was in some shade, rather late. Hey, parents need smokes and beer. Besides, I was in no hurry to play football.
Getting out of the truck, I ran over to these two men, who looked like the guys I saw on tv on Sundays.
They both had on red baseball hats. One of them has to be the coach, I thought. So I walked over and met the coach. Coach Mattos. Oh, good, his shirt is labeled so I don’t have to guess which one is which. The other guy was shorter and chunky. His hair was greased underneath that hat. I found out later that he was Coach Thompson.
Coach Mattos was tall and had hands as big as ribeyes. Huge man. I swore his knees creaked when he walked.
He bellowed at me.
HI BIG MAN. YOU READY TO PLAY SOME BALL?
um, yeah i guess. no..yes sir
GREAT WHAT DO YOU WANT TO PLAY?
i don’t want to. my “dad” is making me.
ALL RIGHT. FALL IN AND FINISH THE LAPS WITH THE OTHER GUYS.
ok.
And off I went.
I had never run for fun before, well for a sport. I had run away. I had run home when it began raining, but never for an activity. I used the I had cancer card enough by then and my height didn’t make me look sickly. I noticed everyone on the team. There were about twenty or twenty five kids. Some of them I recognized from school. A few I had never seen. I tried to keep up running, to make up for being late but realized I should just maintain. So I kept along. In a matter of moments we were done.
Coach Mattos appeared in the middle of the field.
HIT A KNEE!
So we all ran over and circled around him.
I wish I could remember what was said, that it was some Knute Rockne meets the Wonder Years profound stuff. All I really remember all this time later was that jerseys cost 7 dollars and we should all study hard.
My first ridicule came at the end of practice. We basically ran around the field for an hour or so and jumped and jacked and rolled and fell til the darkness won.
By the lights of the beirutted snack bar and his prize el camino, Coach Thompson gave us our pads and helmets. I got my pads but none of the helmets would fit. One after one I tried.
THIS ONE.
Grunt. Pause.
nope. no sir.
THIS ONE?
Erg. Pause.
no. unh unh.
ALRIGHT. LEMME TAKE THE PADS OUT. BOY, YOUR HEAD IS HUGE! YOU BETTER BE SMART. YOUR HAID AINT GONNA BE A HAT RACK IS IT.
The othe kids giggles behind and around me. I turned red.
no. i make ok grades.
Push. Grunting. Squeak.
THERE IT KINDA FITS. IF YOU PLAY, I’LL GET YOU A HELMET FROM THE MIDDLE SCHOOL.
So there, my pumpkin head was already a punchline not even two hours into my sports career. ( I wore a helmet 1 and a half sizes larger than anyone, come to find out)
bye coach thompson. see you tomorrow.
The next day, I put the gear on about two hours earlier than needed and went in the yard to run into stuff. I hit trees, one of the “project junkers” in the yard (this is before pimp my ride) and I even practiced falling down the walkway to the doublewide. The sketchy helmet and grass stained pads worked. I was very excited.
Once again, late to practice. I got around this later when the coach would come and get me from work or school. I think he thought I was going to be a good player at some point. Maybe.
I had never met a man, except Mr. Porth, who had a real job AND clean hands. At pizza hut once, I noticed he kept his money in a clip! Wow.
So I get to practice and its time to use the pads. I hadn’t hit anyone. Ever. Not with all my body.
They paired us up. We were in two lines and the lines faced each other, as each pair squared up and hit one another. The coaches blew their whistles and made comments after your hit.
I was put with Ben Brazinski. He was this stocky kid who wanted to be a comedian. His idol was Mork. We had made fun of each other at some point one morning sometime ago. But he was nice. So I am there watching the stance we were to get into. I started to think about the act of hitting. And be a white trasher in the south, you learn about hitting and how to get hit. I can’t say that I knew how to hit. But I wanted to get a cool remark from Mattos or at least get some distance from the comment about my head.
I bent my legs, weight on the balls of my feet, butt back shoulders down and head up. One hand dropped to the ground, then the other fell in the same fashion. I grabbed at the graying turf, rubbing the dirt in my hands.
ON THE WHISTLE. DIG IN AND HIT YOUR MAN. LEGS PUMPIN’ STAY LOW.
I looked at ben. I was almost smiling. I had the ok to inflict my weight and inertia on someone. I could get back at those that I couldn’t get back at. Or those that I couldn’t fight fair with. Here I could pretend that the other guy was whomever had transgressed against me. Sounds puerile and base, but I never surmised that about the game. Not until we were told, ordered to hit the other guy.
Ben was smiling , sorta. He squinted his eyes, wiggles his lips at me and scooched his rear. I dug in, and lowered my torso closer to the ground. It now hurt to be such a spring, such a bundle of potential energy.
ONE TWO..bleeeaart!
And in that second, that pea rattling in the whistle, I saw what I needed to do, where I needed to be.
I pulled up about two inches, feeding the images in my head of things I hated, that hated me, that made me cry or made me grow up too soon. I scraped my arms up, with those feelings and baggage and barreled hard for ben. Adult voices megaphoned at us both. In a half of a hair of a second, I was through him and stapling his body to the ground, yelling something, pounding and kicking like we were going to fall out in china on the other end. I heard a huge wheeze and didn’t know until they took his helmet off and started icing his groin that I had “knocked the air out” of him. I rolled over and saw that he was down and not getting up. Wow. I did that. I got up, not smiling, straightened my wobbly helmet and trotted to the back of the opposing line for round two. I don’t think the coach said anything about that. It would be a few more practices before I got one of those fabled pats on the butt.
In a few minutes, ben was back up and we kept on practicing. After practice and even for the rest of the year, ben was different to me at school. I didn’t care, we weren’t friends. I barely talked to anyone at that school.
More football stories next time. Maybe. Did I mention that I hated football?
