Another quick insert for Fragments of Fiction.
It was the night before her oldest turned 25 and she was back where she desperately wanted to avoid and be.
She could hear him through the wire just as he could hear her and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Lizard lips was asleep and unaware how he couldn’t satisfy her. He ticked a few of the buttons but not enough and though she tried to convince herself she ought to focus he just didn’t do it.
That other guy was a major pain her in ass. She didn’t want to hear him make fun of Wolfie, the junkie, beatle or lizard lips.
She wanted him to live in a silent cage where she didn’t have to make a list of reasons to be angry or stay away.
But he would schlatter some of that because he was an uncivilized barbarian who reveled in dancing in the fire and acting as a stormwalker.
Sometimes it made her crazy because she wanted him to do things a certain way and act in a fashion that made it easy to just love him.
But then again she loved him all the more because of everything he did and who he was. She remembered the days in which they had been addicted to each other and knew that it could all come back and that is why she had cut him off.
She didn’t want to be addicted, she didn’t want to think of how safe she felt in his arms and how alive it made her feel.
Maybe that song about the Crossroads was right.
Can you remember who I was?
Can you still feel it?
Can you find my pain?
Can you heal it?
Maybe he could, she wanted to know and just as desperately as didn’t want to find out. Because she had pushed him away with everything she had knowing that he could plant himself like a tree and be immovable.
Unless he so chose to do so and maybe he had…or maybe he hadn’t.
Go Fuck Yourself
And now back in the real world we say tachles and engage in real talk.
I had an occasion to take a picture with two of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and did so in spite of feeling ridiculous.
Took it for fun and in part because they were old enough that I didn’t look like their father.
Later that day I found myself involved in a conversation where I growled Go Fuck Yourself in a voice that sounded far more like my father’s than my own.
Dad died before I turned fifty and it is surreal to think I am much closer to 60 than I am to 55 or 50. I certainly don’t feel my age, not that I know what that is supposed to feel like.
I was working on some stuff in the house using Dad’s tools and had a wave of memories flow through me.
It is close to a decade now since he walked through the cornfields and sometimes it feels like yesterday. I spent time talking with his youngest granddaughter about her grad school program and plans for taking the MCAT and thought about how interested he would have been in hearing about it.
Thought about how his oldest granddaughter is 25 and living in Chicago and how many stories I heard about it growing up.
Thought about a cousin who moved from Chicago to Houston and how long it has been since any of his grandkids were truly little.
Heard him in my head tell Mamdani, El Sayed and the DSA where they could put their Jew hate and laughed.
Every now and then I think about lying on the floor bleeding out and how he held the door shut.
I might actually be stronger now than I was when that all happened, but I suspect he’d still be able to hold that door shut.
I want grab him and say I can stack five 45 pound plates on both sides of that dip machine and make them bounce. I can throw three plates on each side of the bar and bounce that off of my chest and not worry about crushing myself.
“You could have done this.You could have done the same and we’d be having this conversation in person.”
But I can’t cuz he isn’t here.
Sometimes it makes me pretty angry but when it happens I generally let it go because there is no point in holding onto poison.
“Would you recognize your only son old man? Would you be surprised to see who I have become or would you nod in recognition.”
I know the answers and I am good. Life is one hell of an adventure and I am glad to be here, could have been different.
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