To Puke on a Squirrel

I made the mistake of making a movie recommendation. “This is a great movie,” I said. “You’ll love it.” Although I sounded certain, I had a bad feeling about my recommendation. And it was warranted. When Lou spewed a solid stream of puke on the squirrel, blowing him off the side of the hot tub, my mother made a noise in her throat. “Have you ever puked that way?” she said. I didn’t answer. She was commenting on how fake the puke looked. And I knew it looked fake. That’s why it was funny. At that point, I knew she’d hate the movie. No matter that the squirrel would show up later: Once on the ski slopes and then again on the football field, disrupting Elway’s pass play in the fourth-quarter of the famous playoff drive against Cleveland and causing the character named Lou to lose a bet to some douchebag in a bar (the stakes being a pile of money and a blowjob). No matter these fine plot points, my mother would hate the movie. Not because it’s a bad movie, but because I recommended it with such certainty. My mother hates it when I recommend anything with certainty. She feels the need to prove me wrong. So that, over time, in order to avoid argument, when I recommend things, I have learned to do so tepidly. I’ll say, “I saw a movie. It was okay. A little overdone I thought. The acting was so-so. But maybe you’ll like it.” Then she’ll watch it with an open mind. There is seldom any middle ground with my mother. She will either love a thing or hate it, and if she loves the movie I recommended, she’ll be able to disagree with me vehemently. And if she hates it, she’ll still be able to disagree with me vehemently. Either way, she’ll be happy.  

(My family has always been good at being against things, dismissing things that, in most cases, shouldn’t be dismissed. In this way, we give ourselves the illusion being on a higher plain. It’s reassuring to dismiss something and thereby transcend it. And it takes very little effort. When we were kids, my mother was disgusted by Tom Jones. (Not the book; the singer.) So, of course, we kids hated him too. Just as we hated Elvis and New Yorkers and being winked at and being called “pal” or “buddy”. I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to dismiss all these things. Tom Jones is okay. And Elvis is awesome. And I don’t mind being winked at or being called “pal” or “buddy.”)

There was one scene, when Lou is about to get some ménage action and he and this teenage dude are waiting for the big-hair eighties chick to come back from wherever she is and Lou is explaining to the teenage dude how you can’t have a “full on rager” when she comes back, how you have to be somewhere in-between, “like this,” he says, gesturing toward his junk, “see that? That’s perfect,” my mother glanced at my father and said, “Are you smiling?! Don, are you actually smiling?”  

I get the feeling that I don’t have any choice. That the future is closing in on me. Just like the characters in Hot Tub Time Machine before they went back in time and changed everything.

Okay. Maybe it wasn’t the right movie to recommend to my parents. Maybe it was my fault. 

I had a hard time with my mother’s running commentary, which ruined my movie experience and I decided, halfway through, to leave Vermont that very night. I had done what I needed to do. I had applied for a job and driven around pricing up real estate and spent some time with my parents. It was time to go. “I’m going down to Dave and Kate’s,” I said after the final credits were rolling. This was a bold thing for me to say. I was a little bit afraid that my mother would become extremely angry and start shouting at me, but she didn’t. She said, “You can go if you want. You can do whatever you want. But I just need to say this, Joe. . .” She leaned against the kitchen countertop and paused for effect. “. . .anyone who likes that movie has got to be a complete idiot.”

It’s three hours from Williston, Vermont to Conway, Massachusetts. It was a nice, quiet drive. When I got to my brother’s house, at eleven o’clock, everyone was asleep. I crept inside and lie on the couch. Someone had left playoff basketball on the large, flat-screen, so I lay on that large, leather couch and watched Golden State and Houston and I was very happy. In fact, those few moments after I told my mother that I was leaving, and then leaving, and then stopping in at the gas station and picking up a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and pulling onto the highway heading south, I experienced a giddiness I haven’t had in months. I was leaving. I was going away. In the night. With those bright, Vermont stars overhead. And that hot coffee. Nothing was written in stone. There was no reason to dismiss anything or embrace anything. We are all moving through this life of ours. Just moving through. Nothing is all that bad. And there are many things that are pretty fucking good. And these choices we make, between staying and going, and liking one thing and disliking another, don’t mean all that much. We will do what we do. We will start in one place and end up somewhere else. Where, if we’re lucky, there’s a basketball game on. No matter that it’s between two teams you don’t follow. It’s a basketball game, which is a beautiful thing. Especially when it’s on a high def. screen. And we will sleep. And we will wake up again. No matter that it’s at two o’clock. No matter it’s because the idiot dog won’t stop his idiot barking. It doesn’t matter. Morning will come. And, once again, we will leave.

There are a few highways that run east to west. And they will lead me to the place I love more than any other place – the place where my love lies waiting silently for me. Just like Paul Simon, a musician my mother always loved, has been singing about for the past forty years.     

Life in Dassel

When Ralph Peterson returned to Dassel, Minnesota after World War II, he took over his father’s pharmacy. It was rumored that he had a thing going on with a pretty young thing who worked the counter, a girl they called “Chirp.”  

“Was that her real name?” I ask my mother.

“No. But that’s what we called her.”

“Why did you call her that?”

“I don’t know. Everyone had a nickname.”

“What did they call you?”

“Don Moe called me Rutabaga.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But he said it like, ‘Rooootabega.’ One guy, they called him ‘Red Eye’. And one guy, they just called him ‘Ch.’”

“Why?”

“I think he sneezed one time,” says my father.  

“What’d they call you, Dad?”

“Mean Donny.”

“Why?”

“There was a guy from another school they called ‘Mean Donny,’” says my father. “He was supposed to be this big, mean guy on their football team. And when we played them, they had to double team me because I kept getting to their quarterback, so they started calling me Mean Donny.”

My mother says, “My father called that pharmacist? Ralph Peterson? He called him ‘Peavey.’”

“Why?”

“It was from a radio show back then,” says my mother. “Peavey was the druggist in a radio show.”

“The Great Gildersleeve,” says my father.

So, everyone said that Ralph Peterson had a thing going on with Chirp. But he never married her. “And then,” says my mother, “one day, she ran off with some guy who came to town.”

“Ran off?”

“Yes. She ran off with him.”

I love this expression. I think of Chirp running off with the new guy from out of town.

“Why didn’t Peavey marry her?”

“I don’t know,” says my mother. “Maybe she didn’t want to.”

“Or maybe he didn’t want to,” I say.

“She used to do that rock garden? The one you can see from the road? It says ‘Dassel’.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Every year, she’d re-paint the rocks and take out the weeds and everything. But now it’s all gone to pot. One year, I think the boy scouts painted the rocks and made it nice again, but that was a long time ago.”

I think about Chirp having such civic pride. Being so proud of her hometown. And then running off and leaving Peavey and the pharmacy and the rock garden. The one that read “Dassel.” The one you could see from the road.  

Always Right on Time

It’s a sad little diner and almost abandoned. The TV is on and Katy Couric is interviewing the cast of Mad Men. John Hamm is being coy and charming. I think about the hubbub regarding the large size of his penis, as observed through the trousers of his suit pants, and how it became a big issue whether or not he should wear underwear. I ordered the chicken parmesan, a dish I almost always order if it’s on the menu.

“The meal?” says the waitress, a tired looking blonde woman who used to be beautiful, “or the deluxe?”

I open the menu again, uncertain. “This right here,” I say, pointing at the eight-dollar lunch special.

“That’s a sandwich,” she says. “Do you want a sandwich?”

A chicken parmesan sandwich doesn’t sound so good, so I order a hamburger instead. There are three pretty women on the TV screen. Katy Couric is asking a blonde actress about what it’s like playing someone who was, at one time during the series, much heavier, wearing a “fat suit,” says Katy Couric, “or whatever you call it.” The blonde actress begins stumbling through some kind of response before John Hamm interrupts, informing Katy Couric that the blonde actress in question had, those years ago at the start of the series, been pregnant and what a fantastic job she has done. I’m sitting at the lunch counter of the sad, nearly-abandoned little diner in upstate New York. I look at the guy at my right and then at the guy at my left. Three of us at the counter. Three older dudes. At the counter. Watching Katy Couric. And I’m filled with a sudden desperate sadness, seeing myself this way, as one of us three lonely older guys and I wonder what the fuck it is that impelled me to drive for two solid days across this familiar stretch of country when I could have, for a fraction of the cost, flown.

In the parking lot, I open the map section of my phone and discover I’ve taken what I believed to be a wrong turn. I had 87 North when I thought I should have stayed on 90 all the way into Massachusetts and then up 91 North. There seems to be no good way, judging by the tiny map on the screen of my tiny phone, to go from where I am, across to Vermont. Everything is tiny on the screen of my phone. And it seems like no big deal to drop back down to 90, so I get back on 87 and head south through a corner of Albany and then east again. At the Mass Pike toll booths, I call my mother. “Mom,” I say, “I took a wrong turn. I’m going to be later than I thought.” It’s about seven thirty now, and I’m zoned out. I’ve listened to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men in its entirety and I’m begun Les Miserables on cassette. I needed to get cassettes from the library because the CD player in my car doesn’t work anymore. It’s kind of a head rush to remove the cassettes and turn them over and to fast forward them at the end of each one like the authoritative voice asks me to do. I remember feeling all full of goodwill many years ago, and very responsible for making the cassettes all ready for the next listener. “No,” says my mother. “You didn’t take a wrong turn. You need to take 87 North and take exit 20. Then you take—”

“It’s too late,” I say, removing my ticket from the toll booth machine.

“No,” she says. “It’s not too late! Take 87 North. And then take exit 20. And you can take Route—”

I can tell that my mother has had a few. Her voice has that slightly lost sound to it.

“No,” I say. “It’s too late. I’m on 90 now. I’m in Massachusetts al—”

“No!” she says. “It’s not too late at all, darling! What you need to do is, you need to take 87. Get on 87! You need to go back and get on 87! Take that north. And then—”

“You don’t understand,” I say. “I’m in Massachusetts now. I just got here! I’m going to take 91 up.”

“That’s the wrong way,” she says.

“I didn’t know,” I say. “I was going by my cellphone.”

My mother snorts. “You need a map!” she says. “You can’t use those stupid cellphones! Everyone uses those stupid cellphones! What you need is a map! Everyone uses those G. . .whatever they are and they don’t work!”

“I had my GPS turned off,” I admit. “I just looked at that little map. And it looked like there weren’t any, like, real roads going across.”

“There are,” she said. And she begins telling me the different routes I can use to get across. I sigh. I’m very tired.

“Mom,” I say, “It’s like eight o’clock now. It’ll take me another forty-five minutes or so before I’m at Dave’s exit. And you’re three hours north of there, so. . .”

“So you’re trying to go to Dave’s instead of coming up here?”

“No. I’m not trying to go to Dave’s. I’m just saying, I talked to Dave and he said you were three hours from there.”

“So you don’t want to come here?”

“I do. I do want to come there. I just thought I’d call it a day. It’s too late. You and dad will be in bed by the time I get there. I think I’ll just stop at Dave’s and. . .”

“It’s not too late!” she says. “I put the sheets on the guest bed! I have the pinto beans ready for you! We want you up here, mister!”

“Okay,” I say. “It’ll be awhile.”

After I get off the phone with my mother, I call Dave.

“I have to go up there,” I say.

“That’s stupid,” he says.

“She started doing the Blade Runner freakout thing. You know how it is.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s what started the big fight last time I went up. I told her I was going home that night instead of staying up and she got pissed off. Not at first. It took a while. It was a slow burn. But then she got really really pissed off so I started to leave and that’s when she disowned me.”

“But she owned you again.”

“I guess. I haven’t really been up there since. But it’s stupid you going up there. It’s going to be, like, midnight by the time you get up there!”

“I don’t have any choice!” I say.

“Yes you do!” he says.

“No I don’t!”

“How old are you?” he says.

I leave a message for my parents. I tell them that I’m staying in Conway for the night. I’ll see them in the morning. I drive to my brother’s house and his son, Cam, and I tee up golf balls in his side yard and hit them into the adjacent field. Neither of us hits it very well. Then Kate, Dave’s wife, and Dave and Cam and I all try again. None of us hits one well. So we try again. Then Cam and I go walking off into the field to look for the balls we hit. The weeds have been mown close, so we can spot the golf balls, like little Easter eggs nestled down between the clumps. The sun is settling down behind the trees and the moon is rising and it’s warm, the first warm day of spring, and I’m walking with my nephew through a field.

“Were these the five irons, or the drivers?” he says, stooping to fetch one of three balls we can see in the same area.

“I think these must be the five irons. Don’t you think?”

We walk on. We find ten or twelve of the ones we hit and then we see Kate back the car out and then up the country road to pick us up. We all drive to Rowan’s baseball game. When we arrive, Rowan’s team (the blue team) is up by four. The bases are loaded. Rowan gets pulled from third base to the pitcher’s mound to close out the game. Rowan strikes out one. Then three runs score. Then he retires the next two batters for the save. Then we drive to the best bar in the world, The People’s Pint, a micro-brew place in Greenfield that serves killer beer and also great food. Cheese plates. Homemade sausage. Pickled eggs. It’s very dark outside when we enter the bar. Still warm. The stars poking through. Scotch ale on order. This is what life is about. This, I’m thinking, must be why I’ve come. Then my parents call. I don’t answer.

“Where are you?!” says my mother to my voicemail. “We’re waiting for you!”

I call back. My father answers.

“I’m not coming up tonight,” I say.

“Okay,” says my father.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I say.

“Okay,” he says.

And we hang up, and a great relief washes over me. It’s okay. Everything is okay. It’s fine. I didn’t need to do the thing I didn’t want to do! I could do what I wanted to do! Which was much, much more fun.

When I arrive at my parent’s house in Williston, Vermont, the following morning, I find my father lying on the couch. He looks very old. He does not sit up when I walk in.

“Is that Joe?” he says.

“It’s me!” I say.

He remains lying down. I pull up a chair and look at him. He looks like an old man. Nothing at all like I remember him looking, a man from the Mad Men generation. He begins to move his legs so I can sit on the couch.

“No!” says my mother. “Don’t do that, Don! Just keep lying down.”

“He can sit here,” says my father.

“No he can’t!” says my mother. “See? He has a chair. He’s fine in the chair.”

“I’m fine in the chair,” I say.

“Tell him what happened on Sunday,” she tells my father.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re not fine!” says my mother. “He fell in the backyard. I was using that electronic thing to clip some bushes in the garden and it didn’t work and your father said it must be the plug and he was fixing it and I wasn’t looking at him because I was clipping with the hand clippers and I heard a big noise. Whoomp! And I turned around and he was lying on the concrete patio. He had fallen and he hit his head. I thought he had a concussion, but he didn’t. And he also hurt his tail bone. That’s why he can’t walk.”

“I can walk,” said my father.

“You just lie there!” said my mother. “Maybe you can help me with the clipper, Joe. It won’t work.”

“It’s probably a tripped GFI on the outlet,” I say.

“I pushed the button,” said my father, “but nothing happened.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I say. “So, what happened? Why did you fall down? Did you pass out? Or. . .”

“I can’t remember,” said my father.

“And I didn’t see him,” said my mother. “I was using the hand clippers and I turned around and he was just lying there.”

It’s clear what why I have come. What I must do. I must reset the GFI on the outlet, which I do. And then I must use the electric hedge trimmers to trim the  pushes, which I do. And then I must move my family to Vermont, where my parents live. My father, a very old man for his 74 years, watches from the window. My mother gathers the severed branches from the little shrubs I’m trimming and places them in a plastic container. She is wearing a large sun hat. She moves in that measured way older people move.

“Look,” says my father. He is pointing to the sky. “You can see some blue.”

My mother and I look.

“It came back,” says my mother.

Having paused in our working, we all take a little break, looking around at the new buds and the newly green grass. Then, it being not too late, we return to our work. 

Moonlight in Vermont

It’s raining hard in Toledo and everyone is going somewhere. Everyone on the highway is going somewhere. Otherwise they wouldn’t be on the highway. I, myself, am going somewhere. As I often seem to be doing. I go somewhere and then I go somewhere else and then somewhere else. Last week, I was walking down the hallway of the Country Inn Motel in Grinnell, Iowa. The carpet was maroon in color with a pattern that suggests coats of arms set on a field of ribbons laid out in a diamond pattern, which recalls the 1970s, a time when I lived in Westford, Massachusetts with my mother and father and sister and brother until we moved to Richmond, Virginia. This is a part of my past. I participated in it. I didn’t have a choice, at the time, about where we lived. Or much else. In Richmond, my Junior year in high school, I fell in love with a beautiful, artistic, unattainable hippie chick named Betcey Ventrella. And somehow she allowed me to date her. And then, the following year, she went to college and fell in love with someone else, a beautiful, artistic hippie dude. Senior year, I moved with my family back to Massachusetts where I also fell in love with someone else. And then someone else. And so on. And, as I walked down the hallway last week at the Country Inn Motel in Grinnell, Iowa, I recalled these past two years, a time when I flew to New York City a number of times and Los Angeles once. These things were also a part of my past. I participated. I had book readings and book signings and one meeting with movie producers and, at the same time, at the moment of attaining my dreams, I never felt like such a failure, my potential having become kinetic. But I found that my kinetic was somewhat lacking in potential, book sales lagging as they did. People asking, “How’s it selling? How’s it selling?” “I don’t know,” I'd say. “How can you not know?” “I don’t look,” I'd say. And it's true. I don’t look into that dark closet. Why would I want to look there? And, as I was walking down the hallway, I was considering how, when I was younger, I had dreams of someday being a “writer” and having something published and I thought that, in the future, I would be a different person. A better man. And I was recalling how, just last week, I drove with Deb and my son, William, and his girlfriend, Mary, and my twins, Lucy and Michael, down to Saint Louis and how we went to the Saint Louis Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Zoo. And how, just weeks before that, we drove down to Baton Rouge to visit our first son, Sam, and his girlfriend, Abbie, and how we ate po boys and drank margaritas and then drove back to Iowa. Did we really do these things? Yes. I think we did. But last week, walking down that hallway, on my way to the little workout room which features a tread mill and a TV, I was in a motel in Grinnell. And my past might have been nothing. I might have never gone anywhere. And if I had never gone anywhere nor participated in any way, what difference would it have made? And, having gone somewhere and having participated, what difference had it made? And I thought about the coming week, when I would drive to Vermont. And I considered the possible outcome of the trip: the possible job offer by the air conditioning contractor in Williston. The possibility of moving my family, once again, toward the East Coast, this time for the ostensible purpose of helping my father toward his ultimate destination. And then, helping my mother toward hers. Isn’t that what a good son would do? But, is it what a good father would do? Or a good husband? And who am I to think I’m good at any of these things? Nor has anyone, as my brother reminded me last week, asked me to come out. My parents hadn’t asked me to “help” them toward anything.

Deb continues to talk of our future in Iowa. She will join the artistic co-op so she can make use of the kiln and also get cheap clay. And she will continue to take her yoga classes. And when was I going to do it with her? I’d love it. She knows it. And she talks about when Sam moves back to Des Moines. And when my nephew, Connor, moves out to Iowa and takes the apprentice job with Havlorson Trane. And how I can help him and we can look out for him and set him up with a place to live. And maybe, in the future, how we can start that business we’ve been talking about so I can write more and we can make more money for Mike’s future, so he’ll be able to have a good life after we’re gone or unable to look after him anymore, growing, as we are, older. And I was thinking of all these things while walking down that hallway toward that workout room, the carpet so maroon and the pattern so knightly, and I got that familiar feeling of vertigo, that dizzy feeling that I’m very high up and the past is very far down, such a very far distance. So distant that it doesn’t even exist. As if I could fall and fall forever and I’d never land anywhere. The past, I’ve read, is all we have. And, I know, at the same time, it is nonexistent. So, if it’s true that the past is all we have, then we don’t have anything that exists. This thought bolsters me and renders foolish all the worry about what job I might or might not be able to get or might or might not be able to do and how we might or might not survive in the future. And now, having taken the week off, I’m in Toledo. I’m driving toward Vermont, where my parents are living. This is the choice I have made. I am participating. I am driving. It is raining hard. The rain is beyond my choice.

Deb calls. Jazz piano riff. I answer. She wants to remind me to be home for some event that is happening next Saturday. I’m being auctioned off for a charity. And if I am to be home Saturday, it being Sunday today, and me being in Toledo, which will, God willing, put me in Vermont Tomorrow evening, which will leave me Tuesday and Wednesday to interview for a job, find out what’s happening with my father’s health, do some driving around and pricing up real estate, visiting my brother and his family, visiting my sister and her family, and deciding what my family will do in the future. Where we might live. Where our responsibilities might lie.

I tell Deb I’m not coming home for that thing. “That’s embarrassing,” I say. “Who would want to show up for your own auction? What if nobody bids at all?”  

“Well,” she says, “you will be home by Sunday, though, right? I mean, that will be enough time, right?”

“Enough time for what?” I say.

“I don’t know,” she says. “What are you planning to do?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” I say.

“I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“I don’t know when I’m planning to do. I don’t know.”

This is my answer to most things. I don’t know. And, although it’s the only answer I have ever given that I know to be, absolutely and without doubt, the truth, it’s not satisfactory. It leaves us all undressed for the future. And, I wonder, what if there is no reason for us to move? No reason at all? What if it’s all a smokescreen? An auxiliary maneuver. A distraction. Something that keeps us from something else. Something more difficult. Something we want to do even less than moving to Vermont and inserting ourselves in my parent’s lives. And making even less money than we do now. And living in an even more humble home. And what might that more difficult thing be? Could it be that we were meant to simply press on? Simply repeat the same steps week after week? Continue to provide? Until we can no longer provide? With this for the frame of our future, I can see the structure of our time ahead. It goes in seven-day increments. Two weeks vacation a year. Five sick days. Holidays. Lilacs. Then dog days. Then autumn. Listening to Sinatra sing “Indian Summer” again. And then the dark days of Iowa winter again. The gym. Kornheiser and Wilbon. Warm, dry mechanical rooms. And then lilacs. Then dog days.

“You know how there are some people who are, like, corporate raiders?” I said to Deb last night. We were on our way downtown to hear a friend play his guitar and sing. “Like, they’re good at getting companies running profitably and making the investors money? But they’re no good at actually running a company? Like, the day-to-day running of a company? That’s me. I'm not saying I'm a corporate raider. I'm just not good at running a company.”

“Do you think?” said Deb. “Do you think that's true?" 

“I think it is. But then," I said, and repeated the one and only, unvarnished, unquestionable,  truth: “I don’t know.” 

Not This Kind of Turkey

Everyone is in the art museum. Mike and I were in the art museum a few minutes ago too. Until Mike started shouting, “I want pizza! I want pizza!” the pronouncement echoing off the hallowed tile floors and concrete walls lined with masterpieces. Now we’re sitting on the long incline that leads from the Saint Louis Art Museum down to the reflecting pond. It’s a shame we had to leave because I was feeling smart, recognizing a number of works that I had studied in my one-and-only art appreciation class at U. Lowell with Professor Prendergast. There was one painting, in particular, I remember: a portrait of some innkeeper’s wife or something painted by Gauguin when he was hanging out with Van Gogh. It was painted in those bold Gauguin colors – the oranges and blues – and it lay flat on the canvas in that bold Gauguin way. Mike, however, didn’t appreciate the innkeeper’s wife. He had red ants crawling up and down his spinal column and he had to shout.

Mike’s pants are always falling down. Especially now, since Deb bought Mike some skinny jeans. “I don’t want him to look like a dork,” said Deb. We’d use a belt to keep his pants up, but we can’t do that because Mike has a special relationship with belts. He likes to wiggle them. Sometimes, he needs to wiggle them. He calls my belt a string. “String please,” he says. “String please.” I remove my belt and hand it to Mike, who takes it and begins to wiggle it, watching how the end of it flips back and forth against the grass. He is somewhat perturbed because grass isn’t good for belt wiggling. Not good at all! Not acceptable! Concrete is much better! He wants to be on the concrete! He can’t say it, but I know it. He doesn’t want to sit on the grass. But, the sun is warm and there isn’t much breeze and there are leaves and purple blossoms on the trees and I don’t want to sit in the street, so we stay on the grass.

There is a creosote bush in California that has been alive for close to 12,000 years. I can’t put it out of my mind. Since I read about it, I feel sort of like it belongs to me, this creosote bush, in the same way I feel that certain musicians and painters and writers belong to me. I feel protective of them. If the 12,000-year-old creosote bush were to expire today, one human year would equal about 171 years in creosote years. So that, if I were a that creosote bush, at 50 human years, I’d be 5,572 in creosote years. And if I were a creosote bush that began growing 50 years ago (in human years), I'd be a little over two months old (in creosote bush years). And if the creosote bush were a person, using the same math in reverse, it would have been only about twelve years ago that Christ was on the scene. The bush would have been a newborn baby when the first known temple was constructed, a complex arrangement of T shaped monoliths carved with reliefs of lions and bulls and foxes and cranes which still stands in a place we call, for the moment, Turkey, a place that has been settled longer than any other place on earth – tens of thousands of years.  

“Can I talk to you a moment?” says a young man. I’m startled because I didn’t hear him coming. He’s kneeling next to me. He has two people with him, a young girl (maybe twelve or thirteen), and a young boy (about ten), who seems to have burns or some kind of angry rash on his upper lip. “What’s up?” I say. The girl is holding a large sketch book. She is opening it up to page one. There is a crayon picture of a turkey. “Are you a Christian?” says the young man. “Yes,” I say. Then he turns to Mike and begins to ask Mike if he is also a Christian, but Mike turns away and the young man hesitates. Mike spies something on the ground and pops it in his mouth. “Mike!” I say. “Mike! What’s that? What’s in your mouth! Spit that out!” Mike spits out a small, bon-bon size piece of dog shit. I know it’s dog shit because I pick it up and smell it. “Oh, Mike!” I say. Mike doesn’t care. He continues to wiggle the belt.

“I’d like to talk for a minute,” says the kid. “Um, is that okay?” I turn my attention to the kid. He is Asian. As is the young girl and the young boy. “Okay,” I say. “Have you ever heard of Turkey?” he says. “Yes,” I say. This is the young girl’s signal to begin. “Not this kind of turkey,” she says, pointing at her crayon picture of a turkey. Then she turns the page. “But this kind.” She points a place on a map. I lean forward and look at the map. She flips the page again.

“Incredibly,” she reads, “and unfortunately, 99.8% of all people who live in Turkey are Islamic.” There are crayon pictures of unhappy faces. Then she flips the page again and gives some minute percentage (something like .01%) of Turks who are Christian. “Sometimes,” she reads, “they think that the mountains are their only friends.” Then she goes on to teach me about Allah. “They call their god Allah,” she says. And she says that our lord God will use the Turkey to show his might. Or something along these lines. I don’t really understand exactly where this lesson is headed, and after the young girl, only a couple weeks old in creosote bush years, closes her sketch pad, I’m still not sure. 

“And now you know something about Turkey!” says the young man.

“Isn’t that where Troy was?” I say. “In Turkey?”

“What?” says the young man.

“The city of Troy?” I say.

He looks at me vacantly.

“Helen of Troy?” I say. “Wooden horse?”

The young girl says something to the young man. He nods uncertainly.

“Um,” he says, “this might not be right, but. . .can I ask about your son?”

“He has a disease called Tuberous Sclerosis,” I say. “He has tumors in his brain. That’s why.”

The young man is confused.

“Lesions,” I say. I point to my head.

The young girl says something to him quietly. He nods.

“Um, would you mind if I. . .we pray for your son?”

“No,” I say. I thought he meant that, in the future, at some future date, he and his friends would pray for my son, but that’s not what he meant at all. He crawls over to Michael and touches his leg and closes his eyes and prays. The young girl and they young boy follow suit. They are all praying. Michael takes the young man’s hand and brings it to his mouth. He gives his hand a kiss. I think of the dog poo. I can’t help it. I want to stop Michael, but I don’t say anything. Michael kisses the kid’s hand again. I watch the three children praying over Michael and I watch Michael. The wind moves the new blossoms. The surface of the reflecting pool is worried. It’s spring again. Everything is new again and it seems like a miracle. It has been so long. Longer than a year. Longer than I can remember. I’m moved by the children. By their compassion for a thing they know almost nothing about. Even though it is intermingled with hatred for a thing they know almost nothing about. After a minute or two, the eldest child, the one who approached me first, springs to his feet. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you,” I say. Mike has lost interest. I watch him wiggle his belt. When I look up again, I see the young man running full tilt across the width of the hill. The other two lag behind, but they are running too. Maybe they feel they have scored a victory. Maybe they have.

English Leather

We could be rich. I could play chess with Faye Dunaway. You could wear pistachio colored dresses with white collars. We could drive. We could drive an orange dune buggy. You, Faye Dunaway, and I, Steve McQueen. Quiet walks on Beacon Hill. Brunch in the nude. While smoking cigarettes.

“You know what you are?” says Eddy.  

“I know what I am,” says Faye Dunaway. “Don’t put your labels on me, Eddy.”

We watched The Thomas Crown Affair at the drive-in movie theatre with our father in 1969 when Dave and I were seven years old and Rebecca was eight or nine. Our father must have been feeling expansive because he explained to us about the glider. It was an airplane without an engine. But how does it get up in the air? It’s towed by another plane. One with an engine. Why doesn’t he just fly one with an engine? It’s a hobby. It takes a lot of skill to fly a glider. You catch the updrafts. What are updrafts? My father said he was thinking he’d like to buy a glider someday. How much did a glider cost? My father had a lot of dreams. He was going to drink brandy with a beautiful woman. Like Faye Dunaway. Or my mother. And he was going to play golf and make wagers on bunker shots to the green. He was going to do all that stuff that Steve McQueen did. And I believed he would do it too because he could probably do anything he wanted to do. He might even learn to play polo. And why couldn’t he?

“But why?” says Faye Dunaway. “You don’t need the money.”

“It’s not the money,” says Steve McQueen. “It’s not the money. It’s me. Me and the system.”

It’s all very cool. Steve McQueen robbing banks. Selling real estate. Flying off somewhere in a jet while being handed a cocktail. “Why don’t you join me?” says the telegram, “and bring the money. Or just keep the car.” And Faye Dunaway did. She did betray him. Why did she do that, dad? Because he was a bank robber.

We didn’t know what to make of it. All we were left with, as is the case with most movies, was a feeling. An idea of how life could be. Maybe how it should be. And when you’re young, you have grand ideas. You grab on to them and embroider them and you think you invented them. How many of us were influenced by Steve McQueen? And then we’d see Clint Eastwood, and our entire futures would change shape within a two hour period. Who needs the city when there is the desert? Who needs polo when there’s shooting people? And then came Peter Fonda and we were riding choppers and playing pool. So many ways of being a man. So many changing dreams. All boiling down, now, to something we might not have been too excited about when we were seven years old. Of course, we did aim pretty high. And we didn’t take love into account. Sex yes. But not love. Not the kind that demands the kind of sacrifice that involves a rejection of dune buggies and golf clubs. We have put these things away.

My father and mother, we thought, were the beautiful people. They were the ones walking through Haymarket and trying the fresh fruit while the venders, the lesser people, played along. My mother and father were of the cocktail generation. My father smoked, for a time, Kents. And played bridge. And held parties with my mother where everyone got smashed. I remember a few of them. We kids were allowed to stay up late and drink Coke. And watch TV. It was very exciting. One time a guy came upstairs and asked me what my name was. “Joe,” I said. “Joe? Joe!? That’s my name too! Hey, wow! Joe. Hey, Joe, why is your shirt all the way buttoned up? You should unbutton the top button. Like me. Go ahead, Joe! Unbutton the top button!” I did it. I was afraid of Joe. I wanted to make him happy so he’d go away. And he did go away. And all the guests went away. And my mother and father cleaned up all the cigarettes and glasses and they played Ahmad Jamal on the hi fi.

My father was going to be Steve McQueen. Years later, he built a glider. But it wasn’t the kind you sit in. It was just a model. He hung it up on the wall. He never flew it. Not even once. He also bought a speed boat and never launched it. Believe it or not. He never learned to play polo. He never bought the sailboat he always wanted, but he did buy a pool table. He’s too weak to play now. And he will never be strong enough to play again. The last time we played golf together was eight years ago in Gold Canyon, Arizona. He rode in the cart while I played. He couldn’t swing a club. He never had a dune buggy. If I were a child, I'd be disappointed in him. He would have let me down in all these ways. But I’m not a child anymore. I guess I must be over that now.    

The Hammer-and-Nail Rivalry

I don’t know why I always hated the Yankees so much. I think it might have been the fans, who seemed to think they were better than we Boston fans. I’m sure it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if their teams weren’t always so good. If they hadn’t appeared in more than one-third of the championships ever played (40) and won 27 of them. While Boston has won. . .ahem. . .7.

So, the Yankees are a much more successful franchise. Does that mean that Yankees fans are much more successful people? Maybe. Maybe so. I wouldn’t know. But I do know that there isn’t one Yankees fan in the world who has ever needed to reassure themselves that just because they are Yankees fans, it doesn’t mean they’re total losers.

Thing is, late at night, I’ve always had to argue some version of this point in my head. Was Bill Lee better than Guidry? No. Was Dwight Evans better than Reggie Jackson? No. Was Fisk better than Munson? No. Was Ted Williams better than Babe Ruth? Um. . .no.   

When I was young and gave a shit, although I loved my team, I was ashamed of them. In the same way I was ashamed of my career path. I was (and am) an air conditioning mechanic. At parties, when everyone was talking about which college they were going to graduate from (Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard etc.), I’d keep quiet. The college I was going to graduate from was the Local 537 Plumbers and Pipefitters in Dorchester. But that’s okay. Right? Everyone doesn’t need to go to college, right? If we did, how would any work ever get done? Right?

“Oh, fuck it!” I’d think. “Maybe I am a loser. Maybe I could have done better in high school. Maybe I should have studied a little bit. Well, it’s too late now! Now I’m an HVAC guy. Okay. I accept it. Maybe I’m a loser in the overall scope of careers, but at least I’m a. . .Red Sox fan.”

Real comforting.

Over the years, although I’ve tried, I have been unable to sustain my hatred for the Yankees. I’d watch them play, and I’d hate Bernie Williams, that shlumpy batting stance. And the way he always hit homers at key junctures against Boston. And I’d loathe Jorge Posada, his big mouth and those fucked up looking ears. And the way he always hit homers at key junctures against Boston. And who wouldn’t hate Mark Tiexiera? What a douche for not signing with Boston! And a switch-hitting douche at that! And how about A-Rod? Who doesn’t hate A-Rod?

But then, I’d listen to Bernie talk. He’s a great guy! And I’d read about Jorge’s son, who is afflicted with a condition known as craniosynostosis. Jorge has started charities for its cure. And I’d watch interviews with Tiexiera and . . .I still don’t like him. But I am tired of hating A-Rod. It seems almost mean at this point. And redundant. Besides, what’s so bad about him? He’s one of the greats of all time. And he seems like a nice guy. And, I must admit, I do miss George Steinbrenner. In the same way I miss Boris Yetsin. He was hard to take in large doses, but he was full of life and vinegar and. . .all sorts of other stuff. And he was interesting.

But I still haven’t warmed up to the fans. At least, I hadn’t. Not until the Boston Marathon bombing the other day. I was scrolling through Facebook and Twitter to see what I could learn about it, and I came upon a laser image projected against the Brooklyn Academy of Music and it had the New York Yankees logo and then a heart and then, below, the Boston Red Sox logo.

I had been nervous about the bombing. And sad. And angry about all the pain and the loss of life. But I hadn’t cried at all. Until then. It’s odd to find myself a fan of Yankees fans. It goes against everything I have held sacred. But I've been wrong. Hatred should never be held sacred. That's the province of love.