In Which Things Happen, At alarming Rate, and then Cease to Happen, at a Rate of Equal Measure
A retrospective
When I was young I lived in a big house up in a hilly suburban gated community called Dove Canyon. For a place named after a Dove, I always seemed to find myself at war there, and rarely at peace, but in both emotions it was usually within myself that I found the wars to fight and the peaces to accord.
We had a spiral staircase, which was why we all picked the house. It was one of three houses on the street my parents were interested in buying and they asked my brother and I which one we liked the best. Of course the one with the Dracula staircase. What could beat that? My parents bought a black grand piano to go with it. My sisters were later to join us from the ether of wherever they were before they were born, and the house became a home. In those days, it was ordinary for people to buy houses in California.
Our neighbors were an eclectic bunch. Out of respect for them and their ability to tell their own stories, I won’t get into all of that. I’ve told those stories from my perspective in poetry already, I think.
We had dogs, and cats, snakes, newts, turtles, frogs, opossums, rats, hamsters, mice, lizards, and probably a few other pets that I am forgetting.
My parents eventually couldn’t handle each other. The fights were short but virulent to my ears. They eventually split. My Mom remarried a man who was in the Navy, named Dave. He was more authoritative despite being a retired surfer, and he had a particularly Atheistic outlook on things.
My Dad moved from house to house in the general neighborhood. He wanted half-custody and he got it. This invariably helped his mental health but at the cost of mine I think. What ended up happening is that I had two lives, two faces, that I presented to my different parents. In my mother’s laissez faire agnostic/atheist house, I was of one mind. In my father’s creativity-comes-first reform Judaism house (he was and still is a Hollywood screenwriter), I was of another. I think both houses had their merits and their drawbacks. When I was 15 I went insane.
But if we turn back the clock, I’d like to focus on a particular moment of my childhood: A Halloween Party on that big house on the Hill, when my parents were still together.
They had invited my entire class. I didn’t have a lot of friends in the class, perhaps five or six. Still, everyone came. I went to a public school, because my parents had looked at all the schools in the neighborhood, and decided a regular person school was better than the sort of High Society or Mid Society places where the other neighbors sent their kids. What resulted was that I was known as a rich kid. Not so bad. Of course there was invariably some Bullying from Napoleon complexed children (I was rather tall for my age.) There were kids from richer families than me there, but everyone saw my house, so there it was.
I can’t remember, but I think one girl was there who I later developed a crush on, which would be my first crush anyway. She went on to become a porn star when she grew up. Go figure.
Well, things invariably happen in life. And here we are. Existing. Isn’t it lovely?
When all the kids moved out, my Mom sold the house.
But let’s wind the clock to another moment, shall we? Shortly after High School, I took a job at a Grocery Store. I developed feelings for a girl I worked with, we started getting High together. She always had some boyfriend, and I was some sort of confidante friend-zoned putz. It wore on my psyche like no friendship I’d experienced thus far, and we stopped and started the friendship multiple times. We had a few intimate moments, but she was ultimately a Bipolar mess that interfered with my Schizophrenia greatly. It was a match made in Hell, but it produced some art, and that’s the best that can be said of it. I wouldn’t have anything kind to say to her today.
Moving the clock forward, here I am, in Bangkok, with a woman with a body not unlike hers, pushing her arms up my back and giggling. I try to push the thought of red hair and cigarettes out of my mind. When she tells me to turn over and I see her face with a crooked tooth smiling at me, it is not hard to do.
Somewhere outside, a black cat purrs. The Taxi cab darts through the rain, and for whatever reason, it’s driver tries to hit the cat. But the cat is quick, the cat is clever, it darts between the tires, and comes out the other side, unscathed. It struts up to the corner shop. There a man stands, smoking a cigarette.
“Was it all you imagined?” Says the man
“Perhaps.” Says the cat. “Anyway, I would like some milk.”
I wonder when things will start to happen quickly, then invariably stop happening quickly? If things should happen slowly, then I should enjoy them more, and more often.
I watch the man give the cat a dish of milk, and then go back inside. He must cook some Pad Khra Pao for a customer.
Looking up at the sky, I see the storm clouds dissipating. A face seems to smile at me out from within them.
But why is there lightning in my eyes, and not in his?
