Once a Boy

“You look good boy. Where you been?”

It has been many years, many roads. Aimless, weaving lines of trying.

“She told me you'd be coming home. Said you'd be here.”

This 'she' is my mother Gloria.

Henry walks up to me and wraps me on the chest.

“Huh!“

“You look great....you really do! Where you been?”

“Yeah, Dad, I don't know...it's been awhile.”

Not used to my father's interest. Not used to his gaze at me. These eyes are sparked. They are buried inside this old man.

“Dad, I'm going to put my stuff in my room.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Sure.”

I turn and I see a stack of papers. She must have been looking at them when she spoke to me the other day.

“Hal”, mom said, “there's a whole stack of papers we need to go through. And Hal, I need you to show up this time.”

There they are. The bundle. The stack. The story. The end. It took that to bring me back to this place, back to Henry and Gloria.

“It's a miracle.”

“What's that Dad?'

“You. Here. Talking. Standing here. A goshdarn miracle.”

Am I smiling or is that a bus driving through my mouth?

I kind of bump into the counter with my bag.

“Need a hand Patrick?”

Blood just floods me whole.

“Patrick?”

Am I even breathing?

Is he messing with me?

I manage an “I got it.”

I walk up the stairs. Missing all of the details a homecoming deserves. Missing smells and objects and memories pasted on a banister, a lamp, a door jam. Open the door to the room. My room. Even here with SO MUCH SHIT TO TAKE IN....my mind flat-lines to a box on the bed. I open the box immediately. Because you see, I already know what is happening here. This box is labeled Patrick and in it are the matchbox cars, the string, the blue foamed cat-water stained and crusty from that day. A favorite shirt she liked on him. And the stupid mittens he always ate with.

Henry has dementia. The stack is all about that. The firmness in her voice the other day that grabbed me by the scruff and shook me home was steeped in her finality with whatever he was or is. And now I have stepped in it. And I am not even me. I am the other. I am that ache and strain of that autumn day in my 12th year of life. That day a 7 year old boy dropped into the muck. That day made this box. Once a boy, now a box.

He is a tricky bastard, Henry is. She said so herself.

“How bad is he?”, I asked. “Well Hal”, she clipped, “sometimes he's in and sometimes he's not.”

He is a tricky and manipulative bastard. Always has been. Was that day. Wasn't watching us...wasn't even around.

“It all happened so fast” - that's what he told them that day.

“Couldn't save him...just couldn't.”

Wasn't even there.

“Patrick?”

He is calling me.

“Patrick, you in there?”

He is outside my room.

“I got you some ice cream.”

I sit on the bed. I stare through the door. I feel the point flipping and twisting on the little dial, my life. I reach into the box. I pull out the blue cat. I hug it to my chest. I open my mouth.

“I'm in here dad. I would love some ice cream.”

I'm aware of how much time I'm not here.  I think a lot of us just drop our shit off, roll to the table,

then the tube, and then the rack.  Stagger back when the rooster crows and close the door to it. 

Back later to assume the cycle of it.  It matters not I sit in it now all bundled.  It is cold here.  And it

is expensive to heat.  It matters not that the children have a place here.  And their place collects bags

and books and mementos.  They really live in this dream I have.  This dream rests on a shelf in my

heart.  There I collect and nourish them.  It matters not that I want this to have resonance and sound.

I fill the rooms with song - my voice rambles through it sometimes.  I may even stop and stare at a

thing.  It might be my likeness now or from long ago somewhere else, another's life entirely. But

when I exit it. When the door closes so heavy behind me, the weight and measure of this cube

creates this undertow. It shifts me out to insecurity, to what I cannot really know.  And I can look

back and beg for an assurance.  Plead I will for this to make sense.  Badger it all for meaning.  Ask at

least if I'm going to all right. And the cube will not say.  It will not even hint.  It will stand in its

usual manner and tell me it will be here when I get back.  And if that is all I get - what we all can at

least expect - it should be enough.  For the connection, the joy, the joining....all that is what the love

in you allows.  And you may choose one day to walk back in and inject that sweet light into all its

 corners.  And maybe then, maybe, you can say you are home.

In the Dark

 

There could be something under the bed

 

There could be so many stars...so many I can't believe how many there are

There could be a soft sweater and soft flesh if she would let me

 

There could be a bumbling, flashlight scouring, over-turned clothes caddies and racks that would obscure the crouched and frightened girl hiding from the intruders

 

There could be the smell of pine and a piercing yowl as I slammed my bare foot into an uprooted root

There could be the 'shoosh' of the door opening against the pile in the carpet.  A slice of light from the hallway and the sounds of her sad feet shuffling in towards my bed.  She says she is sorry for my whole life.  Her lips blubbering in stark contrast to how tightly my eye lids are shut.  Forcing my whole into the darkest hole I can find

 

There could be a meal behind two sets of thick curtains.  We all trained into the black each holding the shoulder of the one in front. The first shoulder, a truly blind person, leads us into a Parisian meal that we will never glimpse...thus the blind leading the blind or the blind feeding the blind.  Taste buds heighten, hands wander unseen, things squish between the fingers and find there way into our mouths

 

There could be an area, oh about 4 feet in width, between a sink and a bed.  In a small apartment in then Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, the boy who lives there steps back and forth over the visiting boy laying in that space inside his sleeping bag.  He washes a glass, brushes his teeth, sets up for the morning and then turns off the light and gets into his bed.  In this dark there is no light to readjust to, no 30 or so seconds later when you can make out the window, a chair or anything at all.  There is no street light, porch light or sign or even the passing lights of a car driving by, no there is nothing but black from the outside - no stars even. This city can't afford any of that. This will be darkness.  The boy has offered the traveler his bed in what seemed a wonderful selfless gesture.  The traveler is now uneasy in the bag on the floor.  And once again comes the offer above him to share the comforts of the bed

 

There could be a city known as a beacon.  Truly can be seen from the outerworld, the world where the sky lives.  There you can look back to us on earth and you will see this city as it lights up its portion of the planet.  It encounters though a storm.  One of the new kind.  The ones now come hard and heavy.  They hover, create havoc and fucking destroy shit.  They have the swagger of being let out to show off their stuff.  And they do.  And this city is one of the playgrounds. This city of stages adds a howling to the streets and a drenching prance to pavement.   The city loses half itself to deepest of darkness.  The height of its buildings cloaking out any possible luminescence that might be.  As told to me by my friend who worked at one of those stage once you dropped past mid town, you were off the planet.  His bike lamp would bump and turn the only light as he found his way out the lower half of the city.  Frightened and elated at the same time, he would ride this theme park adventure out to Brooklyn.  His heart might shoot out of his body when and if he paused to hear the quiet of this darkness and suddenly a match would light up a face maybe 3 feet away from him.  Very dark but hardly alone

 

There could be a trail to dark against the cliffs of the great canyon.  And you are a lucky one.  You get to be part of a traveling group centered on a German television project shooting in the great Southwest of America.  Delivering our magnificent landscape back to it's hungry to wander people.  And you are at the bottom of the world.  You are at the side of a river.  You are not even a needle in this haystack of rock and mountain.  From down here you watch light leave the planet.  It is indecisive somehow.  It jumps about on the various crags and hinges that tower over you.  Shows itself out the door in slivers and great splotches and wide bands that illuminate and shut down the canyon at the same time.  Light is leaving the planet.  A slide show, a game of chance, the light shifting as the little cups hiding the ball in a flurry of hands that would relieve you of $100 in one hot minute.  Where is the ball?  Point at the cup! The light moved out like that.  Like a trick.  God's show.  And the actual darkness that followed:  ahhhhh that was certainly heaven.  

 

Then there could be a dark place in your head.  Many rooms in the house - the brain.  And then one day you have a child.  A lamp in a table in a room in your brain comes on.  There there will never be darkness.  There the light will always remain.

Sure Darkness

We were pretty high. Kind of typical high. Always afraid of a drug story. Does it indicate a fallen being? No. In this instance just a young couple stoned. At night. In the country. Maine specifically. And it was warm. And the stars of course were unfucking real. I wonder now if I thought I was set. I wonder if I had her already cast her for the duration of my life. Being stoned put us assuredly in a real vulnerability toward each other. Free to just express whatever. Free to let our intimacy, the warmth and dazzle of the sky, the shelter of dark and certainly the electrical impulse palm to palm as we walked, free to let it escape. Free to say whatever manifested – silly to deep. I used to find a time stoned to work on my text. It was usually with the heavyweights: Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, etal. Say their words in a high brain – all kinds of ideas would suddenly come to for. Once I taped my thoughts. Probably 85% was some kind of 'huh' – so fucking obvious or so fucking stupid. But maybe I would get a 15% ROT (return on toke). But the thing is I would go into the darkness and fearlessly pull whatever seemed slightly related and in tune. And it felt like I was talking to God or with Shakespeare maybe. And the connection really washed me clean. And I'm sure holding her hand that shrouded and twinkling night, I'm sure I caught a glimpse of what it would be like to give my soul to another. I'm certain I did. I believe I must have. I'm 15% sure.

 Moving On

I've moved on. I hope you have too. Admittedly I still have all the same haunts and people and habits. If you came back as a guy and stalked me like some PI on an insurance scam, you'd be so bored. You'd get there before me – no need to tail me. You’d place the food order before I even waked in the door. I'd be like 'wow Maria, how did you know?' Jeez Milo, this is great – didn't even have to wait - thanks!' I might like you paving the way for me for awhile. While, as I say, my life is still a routine, it changes. It changes. It does. It has. You are not here. It's what? 19 months. My routine for awhile was doctors, quiet TV, drug store runs, hospitals, hanging out downstairs, changing your bag, a shit-load of evil Sudoku, taking the calls, explaining this and checking up on that. Then for an even shorter time the routine dealt with the finalities: canceling cards, taking your name off of things, untying you, throwing the ashes of your electronic identity into the thin thin air. Releasing you. Releasing. Giving up. Freeing you. Falling down. Letting you go. Sleeping a lot – not answering the phone. Moving on. Sitting in my car not really knowing my place in any of this. I saw a tree and it reminded me of moments in our lives together that specifically revolved around a tree. And I thought of a hammock at my Uncle Ed's. Our weight sagged it down to the big yawning limb beneath us. I thought of the backyard branch that knocked out our electricity. We bumped around in the dark house. Laughing. Looking for a non-existent flash light that I swore I bought. Funny until I split open my toe on the door you opened ahead of me that I obviously didn't see. The felled tree down the street after that freak storm that brought hale for the first time in recorded history. Who the fuck is throwing rocks at the house? For nearly a month we used to love to walk by and enjoy the tree's exposed bottom and routed network. Why the fuck am I thinking about you and trees? This, by the way, happened this morning. Why you and tree? You haven't moved on, have you? You want to linger on with me, don't you? That was way too sudden an exit, wasn't it? You have business still here with me, isn't that true? So let's make a plan then. Come along with me then. I might sleep with that woman who just opened up the garden shop down the street. Why not infuse her with you. I would really like that. And she could use your taste, your sense of focus. She too has had loss and sadness. She too has lived life in gray matter. She too has moved on. And maybe she wants to invite him too. They weren't together as long as we were. Hell, they weren't even married. But I don't mind. Maybe he has some qualities I could use. Maybe he can help me finally learn to play guitar. We could all sit together at the park then. We'll picnic and I 'll noodle on the strings. And we'll love how people will stop by and admire us. See us for the ideal they would like to one day be. And they won't know that it's all been hastily arranged and agreed to. They won't see the patchwork. The duct tape. The dirt under the rug. But that's because you left too soon. You left me too soon. You have moved on too soon.

Hal: The Movie - College Days

EFX – Yearbook opens and we see a college dorm and we are suddenly…

INT – DORM ROOM - AFTERNOON

Two college students in room, guy and a gal – her room. He is skinny and high. She is overfed and hostile

.

Hal: (VO) It was like a toast. Right? To me. Hey, she didn’t like me, I thought, but here we were and I was about to drink from her private stash. She must like me. Right?

EXT – COLLEGE CAMPUS – DIFFERENT AFTERNOON

Two college kids walk through campus. Book bags, bikes, lots of kids moving this way and that. Hal is one of the two kids.

Hal: (VO) I was king of the mountain in college. I aspired to all things no one gave a shit about. You’d have thought I’d really corrected my life. I was so busy. I could walk through campus and say a constant hello from on side to the other. You want annoying? Walk with me.

Friend: Yah, I don’t know… I’m really depressed.

Hal: Oh, you know…

(to boy on bike) Hey Steve

(to friend) …you’re not…

            (to pretty coed) Hi June, yeah….

(to friend)…you’ve got to

…

            (to guy with St Bernard) Hey Scott – did you bring Bandit? –

            (to dog) Hey Bandit!

Hal: (VO) And by this time my ‘friend’ has committed the razor blade to his wrist, blood spurting all over my backpack –

Hal: (to JAP) Hey Shira.

.

VARIOUS EXT’S AND INT’S – VARIOUS TIMES

A collage of shots: Hal sitting with friends on the grass. Sitting lonely at his desk in his room. Some girl talking trash about Hal to another coed. Drinking many plastic cups of beer. Doing laundry and ogling some coed at the dryer. Someone crossing away at the sight of him. Walking at night by himself. Sleeping students in cubicles…

Hal: (VO) Some fucking gene came alive in me through alcohol shock therapy. I woke up partying. Not that I drank or got high in the morning. I did occasionally. No. My drug was my fabulous personality and my fix was everyone’s adulation and hale hellos. And it worked for me. And it ate me alive. It was sound and fury. It was marathon dancing – dancing on air. And like those marathon dancers, when I stopped, my social structure crumbled and I was a fucking mess. Finals were a problem. Everyone got real serious. Other angry people were a problem. They were either envious of me, put out by me or they saw right through me. ‘You’re one of us, motherfucker!’

INT - 4^th FLOOR BUTLER HALL – DAY

The girl’s dorm had that 50’s cubicle building feel. Heavy blocks of painted cement. Hard floors that young ladies adorned with Maxfield Parrish carpets. Rooms with modular furniture. The stuff might allow two configurations in a room. Basically your bed could be here or there. We follow Hal as he moves through the hall and finally enters the room we were in at the open.

Hal: (VO) Marcia wasn’t the prettiest girl on the floor. She added 20 to her freshman 20. Big face. Horsey mouth…that to a drunk guy would count for a lot. I was sober and on her hall hunting Ann or Lorna or Claudia or Leigh. Leigh I remember. She died recently of cancer. But she lives in me as that 18 year old on the 4^th floor with that Keeler Ass. I was wearing the requisite Jeans and a T. I’m sure some band or college name was emblazoned across the front.

Marcia: Who you lookin’ for?

Hal: (VO) Marcia never talked to me.

Marcia: Did you see my new rug?

Hal: (VO) Typical for poor Marcia – her room had the two sides of the track set-up and she definitely lived on the wrong side…trashy messy desk and bed.

Marcia: See this?

Hal: (VO) She showed me a perfume bottle.

Marcia: You know what this is?

Hal: (VO) She told me how this 4 ounce bottle with the white top and the brown liquid was not perfume but rather cleverly disguised bourbon. And this the security guards would never check when she brought it with her to the game,

Marcia: Cool, huh? Try it!

Hal: (VO) Ok. It smelled like perfume, it was brown like perfume, she took the bottle from the generic place in the room for toiletries. But I wanted her to like me. And she was being really nice to me. And I was deep in my fix at this point. I was a mosquito that didn’t want to pull out.

Marcia: Ha Ha. Ha

Hal: (VO) My throat burned and my eyes bugged and she just roared. My taste buds were decimated and my ego sputtered with insight. I still managed eye contact with her and she was so happy. I was mindful of the rug and ran to the basin affixed underneath the mirror in the only place it could be in the room. I blew it out whale-like. She doubled over, crying with joy. I sort of staggered back to her. Her arm extended and pointing at me.

Marcia: chortle…chortle…oink…oink.

Hal: (VO) In the next moment her eyes went really wide and kind of sad as I proceeded to barf and wretch up the faux bourbon and everything else I had consumed in the last day or so onto the new proud rug.

Marcia: No…NOOooooo!!!

Hal: (VO) It was a clean rug so it definitely belonged to her roommate. I don’t recall having had a private moment with Marcia after that. I wonder if she ever did like me.

EFX – Year book closes on image of Marcia’s sad image.

Super Bowl Sunday

Super bowl Sunday came and I didn't care. I wanted to care but my team didn't get in. So I go and pay homage to some other city, to some other fan. And I will root for the team that comes from the other conference because the team from mine played dirty and had a better storyline than mine and so was let in. I guess I am admitting to a fix. That's okay. Congress has given Republicans and companies breaks all along. And they complain about handouts all the time. We all favor. It is in our nature. We want our kids and friends to succeed. Why? Because they are from us. Some of course deeper and more intrinsic than others. But they are a measure of us. And yes we win when they do. Sometimes there is actual gain. And sometimes there is that deep deep satisfaction. And like the bomber in the supermarket, she is doing right by somebody.

So I go to eat and root and join into the average and the thankfully rudimentary. And I bless the great spirit for this. I have enough at loose ends. Like why am I here in the first place. And then this is answered so easily with the super bowl and my witnessing. I am so lucky to have the touchstones of it all. The little markers that allow me to step into the well shorn ruts of my life and the path of those before me.

I will see things as they are. And I will always wonder why I am let to see the things I do. And the fact that someone else will look at the exact same place at the exact same time from the exact same vantage point but will have a complete other association and reaction is not lost on me. Why did we get this nuance to our existence?

I favor not knowing. Though I want to know. Though I want to know. I just hope in the end that it will all fall so sudoku-like into a rhythm and cadence that I can go 'ahhhhhh' to.