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Jul. 14th, 2007 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deelaundryLet us climb into the wayback machine, all the way to 1989, when a young Dee wrote this original short story.
"The Way It Went"
(2921 words; warning for language and drug use)
"The Way It Went"
(2921 words; warning for language and drug use)
Sandy singed his long black bangs while he was hunched over, attempting to light the pipe. “Shit.” It was not an exclamation, but an exhalation, a tired comment on his hair, his day, his life.
He dumped out the pipe and then threw it and the lighter in a drawer. Ska was what he needed. The fast, bouncy beat of the music always cheered him, but Anita had his tape. Anita had half his possessions squirreled away at her house. She probably thought if she accumulated enough of his stuff, she would get him in the bargain. Sandy laughed at this thought.
“No thanks.” He shuffled through the papers under his desk. Where was that dopey letter she had written him a few years ago? Ah, here…Sandy’s favorite chuckle inducer.
But today he just didn’t feel like reading it again. The gushy words seemed not humorous but pitiful. Anita had been such a puppy in those days, so enthusiastic and full of pep, so willing to please everyone but herself. Time had worn away her optimism and strained her soul.
“Time strains everyone’s soul,” Sandy thought and then cursed himself for the melodrama. He turned his chair to stare out the window at the blue-grey twilight-tinted view. At least Dick had already left. Richard Evan Michaels, Junior, Richie to his friends and Dick to his roommate. Jock frat boy, but then “diversity makes the college experience what it is,” said the college handbook.
Sandy was going home for winter break today. “Home,” he said out loud. The word tasted vile, sounded stale. “You can’t go home again.” A complete cliché, but like all clichés it was true to the point of ridiculousness.
He pulled the pipe out of the drawer again. There was no way he could face the old man straight. Grabbing his blue duffel bag, his only luggage, he left the room, locked the door, and headed for Jerry’s.
“Go away,” Jerry cried when Sandy knocked on his door.
“Fuck you, man, I need another bag.”
The door opened a crack. “I just smoked the last of it.”
“Yeah, right.” Sandy pushed Jerry out of the way and stepped into the room. As always, it was a mess. Sandy picked his way among the dirty clothes, papers, and beer cans to the closet. “You always have a stash here in the pocket of your red jacket.” Bingo. “It’s not that good. Stems and seeds, and it probably doesn’t even weigh. Here’s twenty bucks.”
“You know you’re only getting this bag because you’re my best friend.”
“Yeah, me and anyone else with cash. Have a good Christmas.”
“Fuck you, I’m Jewish.”
“I know.”
Sandy hated Jerry. The man had no sense of perspective. His brain was a huge conglomerate of THC, PCP, LSD, and many, many other initials. Anything so Jerry could avoid dealing with actual words.
***
The train was late, as usual. Sandy had never actually seen a train arrive on time. If he thought hard enough, he could probably relate it to life, how nothing got to you when you needed it. But what would be the point? With phony philosophy you gained nothing but a headache.
He stared at his boots for lack of anything better to do. Big black “shitkickers,” as his friends would say. His mother had called them “motorcycle boots.” She had been a very literal person, grounded in her routine and the here and now. Sandy’s father had taught her that. “Dick,” Sandy muttered under his breath, startling the timid-looking businessman next to him. The man peered at Sandy through his glasses and, apparently frightened by what he saw, inched away slowly.
Sandy got a kick out of that and began to laugh, causing the businessman to move away even more quickly. He supposed he was An Imposing Figure. A six-foot burly teenager with straight black hair to his shoulders and three earrings in his left ear, wearing “shitkickers,” faded black jeans, a white t-shirt bearing a black skull and crossbones, and a large black leather jacket could intimidate some people. If only they knew what the real troublemakers looked like, then they’d be scared. Sandy had learned that clothes revealed almost nothing people’s beliefs, ideals, tendencies – nothing about their proclivity towards hurting others.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the train approaching. Its silver body slid into the station, screeching and grinding, like a baserunner diving for home, not wanting to overshoot the plate but aching to make it there. Sandy imagined great clouds of orange dust flying up into the air and had a quick desire to yell “Safe!” Instead he climbed on board and handed his ticket to the conductor.
He sat down next to a window and threw his duffel in the seat next to his. Buses, trains, planes, they were all the same. Everybody who rode them was the same. Sandy was taking no chance on getting a chatter next to him. People not put off by his appearance usually babbled throughout the trip. “Hi!” was the standard beginning, followed quickly by, “I hate riding these things.” Then the person would take off into a recitation of terribly inane facts and anecdotes. He wasn’t up for “It’s Your Life” today. He was going home.
A quick toke, that’s what he needed. Luckily the bathroom was free. He pulled the cover off the smoke alarm and disabled it quickly; it was second nature to him by now. Kill the alarm, pipe from his boot, dope from his inside jacket pocket, lighter from his pants pocket, and inhale… The smoke caressed his throat on the way down to his lungs. Jerry may have been a comatose burn-out, but he knew where to get good pot. Sandy could appreciate this singular asset of Jerry’s personality.
Yes, yes. His lungs were burning now. Another second and then Sandy let the smoke out in a rush, just before it would have made him cough. He spent the next ten minutes in the small bathroom taking hit after hit, finishing the bowl. When he emerged, a haze of smoke wisping behind him, he felt completely refreshed.
“So nice,” he though as he sat in his seat again. There was a clear balloon in his chest filled with helium. It was pulling his chest up, straightening his back. He stretched his neck, and his tension melted into warmth. “So nice.” He sat back, quite at ease with himself and his world.
“Anita should be sharing this buzz with me,” he thought. Anita. God, he’d known her forever. Fourth grade, that’s when they had met. So long ago that he could barely remember. But, somewhere, he had stashed away the valentine she’d given him that year. It was a standard “Be My Valentine,” the kind that come twenty to a box. But she’d written “Please!” on the back in newly-learned cursive, his first hint as to how much she liked him.
Not that she’d ever exactly hinted. She was pretty obvious in her affection for many years. Little giggles, long phone calls, and that dopey love letter she’d written in ninth grade. It went on and on and on with the words only a heart filled with puppy love can produce. But gradually she had come to realize that he valued her as a friend and a confidante, but couldn’t think of her as a girlfriend. It was impossible.
Sandy sighed. Anita had grown up, and for the most part he was glad. She was his best friend now. But sometimes he saw her as a thirteen year-old again in his mind’s eye: her awkward body that she couldn’t quite control, the way her entire face would smile when she was happy, her bright blue sweater with the matching polka dot skirt. He had hated that outfit at the time. Too bright. But now he sometimes wished for a little color on Anita; she was all pale makeup and black clothing.
He laughed sharply. He didn’t exactly favor red or yellow himself.
Actually, his mother had liked yellow. Little drug cells ran through Sandy’s head connecting synapses that were better left apart, killing brain cells dead, dead, dead as a doorknob. Just like his mother. Sleet had pelted everyone all through her burial. Sandy had watched the priest shiver in his thin cotton robes. “Ashes to ashes…” Sandy himself had been quite warm in his brand new leather jacket. Mom’s last present to him. The sleet had stung his face, made his eyes smart, and what the aunts and uncles and fellow PTA mothers had mistaken for tears had only been his eyes’ involuntary reaction to the stinging. He hadn’t cried. Not really. Nothing to cry about there. Just another peasant worker dead. Just another faceless Mrs. So and So with no life of her own and nothing to look forward to but maybe a night when Mr. wouldn’t come home drunk and hit her. Maybe a night when Mr. wouldn’t smack her son around.
“Dick,” Sandy muttered. Oh God. He tried to push away the hatred, tried to not let it come up front and ruin his buzz. He fought to stay calm: clear the mind, chant a mantra… It worked, almost. The anger hadn’t taken hold, but the warm balloon in his chest had deflated. His good buzz was over.
Sandy slept through the rest of the ride, waking up only when the conductor shook his shoulder. “Son, we’re here,” the man said gently, and for a minute sandy was confused. Was he seven? Were they at Disney World? But a quick flick of his head cleared the cobwebs. He was nineteen and at the train station. On his way home.
He took a deep breath of the recirculated station air. Ah, the fine stench of too many people in too big of a hurry. He took a quick look around. No dad. He should have been there; he knew when the train was due. Sandy found the pay phone and called his dad’s office. It was six thirty. Maybe Leicander Alan Eliopolus, Senior, was still working.
“Nah, kid. He’s not here. It’s company bowling night tonight. I’m heading over to the alley as soon as I finish this damn paperwork.”
Sandy slammed the phone down. “Great welcome home, Dad. Couldn’t even pick your own son who you haven’t seen since August up from the goddamn train station. Well, fuck you!” He said the last part out loud and flung his arm out, narrowly missing a smartly dressed executive-type. The haughty disdain in her glare pissed Sandy off even more. “And fuck you too!” he screamed after her.
Beer. His mind was made up. Danny Boy would pick him up, and they’d head to that little bar in the bad section of town, the one that didn’t card anyone. They would get hammered, and his dad could go to hell, for all he cared.
***
When Sandy staggered in the kitchen door at three a.m., his dad was sitting at the table. “Where you been, son?” The tone of his voice conveyed not concern but annoyance. Sandy had inconvenienced his dad somehow by staying out late.
“Out, Dad, OK? I’m going to bed.”
His dad grabbed his arm as Sandy tried to head to his bedroom. “I deserve some respect. I deserve to have you come home at a reasonable hour. I am your father.”
Sandy managed to pull his arm away and wedge his blue duffel between them. “No shit, Dad.”
“RESPECT,” bellowed Leicander Alan Eliopolus, Senior, as he stood. Sandy was surprised to find that his dad had to look up to glare into his eyes. But now was not the time to push things.
“I’m sorry,” Sandy apologized. “I’m tired, and I’m kind of upset that you didn’t pick me up at the station today.”
His dad took a step back, looking confused by Sandy’s apology and confession of emotion. Usually their late-night conversations were direct confrontations and nothing more. “It was bowling night,” he grunted and sank back into the ugly plastic chair. “Go to bed.”
That was just fine with Sandy. He hadn’t expected anything else from his dad. They never talked, never said how they felt. After Sandy’s mom died, his dad had said, “Well, we’ll miss her, son.” That was it. If his dad had ever cried over his wife’s death, Sandy never knew it.
***
The next few days were long and uneventful. Christmas time at home. “Wheee,” thought Sandy sarcastically. There was no tree, no decorations, and on Christmas Day he’d give his dad a book and his dad would give him a twenty. Yay. His grandparents and aunts and uncles sent gifts every year, too, but they came unwrapped, and that’s the way his dad handed them to him, on the day they came. No suspense, no mystery, no big deal.
He spent his night with Danny or Mitch, drinking, smoking dope, and listening to music: industrial dance music, ska, old punk, hard progressive, some heavy metal. Loud was the sound they wanted, and loud was what they listened to. Sandy needed it in the night, to balance out the silence of his days.
The Saturday before Christmas, Sandy woke up about noon and stumbled into the living room. His dad was watching a football game on television. A tackle threw a particularly good block, and Sandy sat down to watch. They sat in companionable silence through almost an entire quarter. Sandy was thinking back to junior high, when his dad coached his football team. There had been animosity between them even then, but they could always see eye to eye on the football team. “Slam him, Sandy,” his dad would yell across the field, and Sandy would slam him with all his might. At home, Sandy never got anything from his dad but an order or an insult or a smack. But on the football field, his dad would pat his helmet or his shoulder and maybe even say, “Good job.” They’d been able to deal with each other on the football field.
He turned to his dad, to remind him of those days, but his dad spoke first. “You know, son, football is a lot like life.”
Immediately the good feelings Sandy had, dissipated. He was disappointed. “Dad, football is a lot like rugby. Football is nothing like life.” He stalked off to the bathroom.
***
That night Sandy had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. His shoulders and neck ached, and it took almost an hour for him to finally drift off.
Anita appeared to him. She was dressed in his boots, jeans, shirt, and jacket. She looked at him pensively and asked, “Who owns you, Sandy?” With the end of the question, her clothing changed to his Dad’s Sunday suit. “Who owns you, Sandy?” she asked again, exactly the same. Now she was in the dress in which his mother had been buried. “Who owns you, Sandy?” Now it was her own standard black garb. “Who owns you, Sandy?” A flamenco dancer’s dress, his Halloween costume of the year before. “Who owns you, Sandy?” The bright blue sweater and polka-dot skirt from years ago. “Who owns you, Sandy?” Her clothes started changing faster and faster: a shroud, Jerry’s sloppy sweatshirt and ripped jeans, the timid businessman’s suit, a towel, his roommate’s football uniform, and on and on. Flipping, flipping, and over it all, at the same measured pace: “Who owns you, Sandy?”
He smiled in his sleep because he knew. “I own me,” he declared to the dream Anita. “I own me!” He was jubilant, triumphant, free. “I own me!”
He didn’t realize the dream was erotic until he woke up with an erection. He laid there under the covers, enjoying the pulse of his blood. A quick look at the clock told him it was seven seventeen. Good. His dad wouldn’t wake for another hour.
After showering and getting the Sunday paper from the porch, he went to the kitchen and made coffee for them both. Then he sat at the kitchen table, read, and waited.
His dad’s first comment of the day was “Up a little early, are we?”
“I made coffee, Dad. It’s in the pot.” Sandy waved toward the coffee machine on the counter.
“Well, well, well. The proper little homemaker. Are you coming to church, as well?” His dad shuffled over to the counter and filled his mug.
“No, thanks.” Sandy went back to the paper. He was waiting for it. It would come, he knew.
There was peace in the kitchen for a full fifteen minutes. Then his dad stared at him over the sports section. Sandy’s adrenalin began to flow more freely. Now? “Wearing your hair a little longer these days, I see.”
Sandy let out a breath. No, not yet. “Can I have the sugar, please?” he replied to his dad.
His dad looked at him strangely, passed the sugar, and went back to the sports section. A few minutes later, he put down the paper altogether.
“Now,” thought Sandy and was excited.
“I wasn’t very happy with your grades this year, son.”
“Yes,” thought Sandy, “now.” Now he would fight his father, first with words, then with fists. He would beat the living shit out of his father because that’s the way it went. His dad deserved it, his dad needed it, Sandy needed it. The memory of his mother called for it. Sandy knew, and he was happy.
He dumped out the pipe and then threw it and the lighter in a drawer. Ska was what he needed. The fast, bouncy beat of the music always cheered him, but Anita had his tape. Anita had half his possessions squirreled away at her house. She probably thought if she accumulated enough of his stuff, she would get him in the bargain. Sandy laughed at this thought.
“No thanks.” He shuffled through the papers under his desk. Where was that dopey letter she had written him a few years ago? Ah, here…Sandy’s favorite chuckle inducer.
But today he just didn’t feel like reading it again. The gushy words seemed not humorous but pitiful. Anita had been such a puppy in those days, so enthusiastic and full of pep, so willing to please everyone but herself. Time had worn away her optimism and strained her soul.
“Time strains everyone’s soul,” Sandy thought and then cursed himself for the melodrama. He turned his chair to stare out the window at the blue-grey twilight-tinted view. At least Dick had already left. Richard Evan Michaels, Junior, Richie to his friends and Dick to his roommate. Jock frat boy, but then “diversity makes the college experience what it is,” said the college handbook.
Sandy was going home for winter break today. “Home,” he said out loud. The word tasted vile, sounded stale. “You can’t go home again.” A complete cliché, but like all clichés it was true to the point of ridiculousness.
He pulled the pipe out of the drawer again. There was no way he could face the old man straight. Grabbing his blue duffel bag, his only luggage, he left the room, locked the door, and headed for Jerry’s.
“Go away,” Jerry cried when Sandy knocked on his door.
“Fuck you, man, I need another bag.”
The door opened a crack. “I just smoked the last of it.”
“Yeah, right.” Sandy pushed Jerry out of the way and stepped into the room. As always, it was a mess. Sandy picked his way among the dirty clothes, papers, and beer cans to the closet. “You always have a stash here in the pocket of your red jacket.” Bingo. “It’s not that good. Stems and seeds, and it probably doesn’t even weigh. Here’s twenty bucks.”
“You know you’re only getting this bag because you’re my best friend.”
“Yeah, me and anyone else with cash. Have a good Christmas.”
“Fuck you, I’m Jewish.”
“I know.”
Sandy hated Jerry. The man had no sense of perspective. His brain was a huge conglomerate of THC, PCP, LSD, and many, many other initials. Anything so Jerry could avoid dealing with actual words.
***
The train was late, as usual. Sandy had never actually seen a train arrive on time. If he thought hard enough, he could probably relate it to life, how nothing got to you when you needed it. But what would be the point? With phony philosophy you gained nothing but a headache.
He stared at his boots for lack of anything better to do. Big black “shitkickers,” as his friends would say. His mother had called them “motorcycle boots.” She had been a very literal person, grounded in her routine and the here and now. Sandy’s father had taught her that. “Dick,” Sandy muttered under his breath, startling the timid-looking businessman next to him. The man peered at Sandy through his glasses and, apparently frightened by what he saw, inched away slowly.
Sandy got a kick out of that and began to laugh, causing the businessman to move away even more quickly. He supposed he was An Imposing Figure. A six-foot burly teenager with straight black hair to his shoulders and three earrings in his left ear, wearing “shitkickers,” faded black jeans, a white t-shirt bearing a black skull and crossbones, and a large black leather jacket could intimidate some people. If only they knew what the real troublemakers looked like, then they’d be scared. Sandy had learned that clothes revealed almost nothing people’s beliefs, ideals, tendencies – nothing about their proclivity towards hurting others.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the train approaching. Its silver body slid into the station, screeching and grinding, like a baserunner diving for home, not wanting to overshoot the plate but aching to make it there. Sandy imagined great clouds of orange dust flying up into the air and had a quick desire to yell “Safe!” Instead he climbed on board and handed his ticket to the conductor.
He sat down next to a window and threw his duffel in the seat next to his. Buses, trains, planes, they were all the same. Everybody who rode them was the same. Sandy was taking no chance on getting a chatter next to him. People not put off by his appearance usually babbled throughout the trip. “Hi!” was the standard beginning, followed quickly by, “I hate riding these things.” Then the person would take off into a recitation of terribly inane facts and anecdotes. He wasn’t up for “It’s Your Life” today. He was going home.
A quick toke, that’s what he needed. Luckily the bathroom was free. He pulled the cover off the smoke alarm and disabled it quickly; it was second nature to him by now. Kill the alarm, pipe from his boot, dope from his inside jacket pocket, lighter from his pants pocket, and inhale… The smoke caressed his throat on the way down to his lungs. Jerry may have been a comatose burn-out, but he knew where to get good pot. Sandy could appreciate this singular asset of Jerry’s personality.
Yes, yes. His lungs were burning now. Another second and then Sandy let the smoke out in a rush, just before it would have made him cough. He spent the next ten minutes in the small bathroom taking hit after hit, finishing the bowl. When he emerged, a haze of smoke wisping behind him, he felt completely refreshed.
“So nice,” he though as he sat in his seat again. There was a clear balloon in his chest filled with helium. It was pulling his chest up, straightening his back. He stretched his neck, and his tension melted into warmth. “So nice.” He sat back, quite at ease with himself and his world.
“Anita should be sharing this buzz with me,” he thought. Anita. God, he’d known her forever. Fourth grade, that’s when they had met. So long ago that he could barely remember. But, somewhere, he had stashed away the valentine she’d given him that year. It was a standard “Be My Valentine,” the kind that come twenty to a box. But she’d written “Please!” on the back in newly-learned cursive, his first hint as to how much she liked him.
Not that she’d ever exactly hinted. She was pretty obvious in her affection for many years. Little giggles, long phone calls, and that dopey love letter she’d written in ninth grade. It went on and on and on with the words only a heart filled with puppy love can produce. But gradually she had come to realize that he valued her as a friend and a confidante, but couldn’t think of her as a girlfriend. It was impossible.
Sandy sighed. Anita had grown up, and for the most part he was glad. She was his best friend now. But sometimes he saw her as a thirteen year-old again in his mind’s eye: her awkward body that she couldn’t quite control, the way her entire face would smile when she was happy, her bright blue sweater with the matching polka dot skirt. He had hated that outfit at the time. Too bright. But now he sometimes wished for a little color on Anita; she was all pale makeup and black clothing.
He laughed sharply. He didn’t exactly favor red or yellow himself.
Actually, his mother had liked yellow. Little drug cells ran through Sandy’s head connecting synapses that were better left apart, killing brain cells dead, dead, dead as a doorknob. Just like his mother. Sleet had pelted everyone all through her burial. Sandy had watched the priest shiver in his thin cotton robes. “Ashes to ashes…” Sandy himself had been quite warm in his brand new leather jacket. Mom’s last present to him. The sleet had stung his face, made his eyes smart, and what the aunts and uncles and fellow PTA mothers had mistaken for tears had only been his eyes’ involuntary reaction to the stinging. He hadn’t cried. Not really. Nothing to cry about there. Just another peasant worker dead. Just another faceless Mrs. So and So with no life of her own and nothing to look forward to but maybe a night when Mr. wouldn’t come home drunk and hit her. Maybe a night when Mr. wouldn’t smack her son around.
“Dick,” Sandy muttered. Oh God. He tried to push away the hatred, tried to not let it come up front and ruin his buzz. He fought to stay calm: clear the mind, chant a mantra… It worked, almost. The anger hadn’t taken hold, but the warm balloon in his chest had deflated. His good buzz was over.
Sandy slept through the rest of the ride, waking up only when the conductor shook his shoulder. “Son, we’re here,” the man said gently, and for a minute sandy was confused. Was he seven? Were they at Disney World? But a quick flick of his head cleared the cobwebs. He was nineteen and at the train station. On his way home.
He took a deep breath of the recirculated station air. Ah, the fine stench of too many people in too big of a hurry. He took a quick look around. No dad. He should have been there; he knew when the train was due. Sandy found the pay phone and called his dad’s office. It was six thirty. Maybe Leicander Alan Eliopolus, Senior, was still working.
“Nah, kid. He’s not here. It’s company bowling night tonight. I’m heading over to the alley as soon as I finish this damn paperwork.”
Sandy slammed the phone down. “Great welcome home, Dad. Couldn’t even pick your own son who you haven’t seen since August up from the goddamn train station. Well, fuck you!” He said the last part out loud and flung his arm out, narrowly missing a smartly dressed executive-type. The haughty disdain in her glare pissed Sandy off even more. “And fuck you too!” he screamed after her.
Beer. His mind was made up. Danny Boy would pick him up, and they’d head to that little bar in the bad section of town, the one that didn’t card anyone. They would get hammered, and his dad could go to hell, for all he cared.
***
When Sandy staggered in the kitchen door at three a.m., his dad was sitting at the table. “Where you been, son?” The tone of his voice conveyed not concern but annoyance. Sandy had inconvenienced his dad somehow by staying out late.
“Out, Dad, OK? I’m going to bed.”
His dad grabbed his arm as Sandy tried to head to his bedroom. “I deserve some respect. I deserve to have you come home at a reasonable hour. I am your father.”
Sandy managed to pull his arm away and wedge his blue duffel between them. “No shit, Dad.”
“RESPECT,” bellowed Leicander Alan Eliopolus, Senior, as he stood. Sandy was surprised to find that his dad had to look up to glare into his eyes. But now was not the time to push things.
“I’m sorry,” Sandy apologized. “I’m tired, and I’m kind of upset that you didn’t pick me up at the station today.”
His dad took a step back, looking confused by Sandy’s apology and confession of emotion. Usually their late-night conversations were direct confrontations and nothing more. “It was bowling night,” he grunted and sank back into the ugly plastic chair. “Go to bed.”
That was just fine with Sandy. He hadn’t expected anything else from his dad. They never talked, never said how they felt. After Sandy’s mom died, his dad had said, “Well, we’ll miss her, son.” That was it. If his dad had ever cried over his wife’s death, Sandy never knew it.
***
The next few days were long and uneventful. Christmas time at home. “Wheee,” thought Sandy sarcastically. There was no tree, no decorations, and on Christmas Day he’d give his dad a book and his dad would give him a twenty. Yay. His grandparents and aunts and uncles sent gifts every year, too, but they came unwrapped, and that’s the way his dad handed them to him, on the day they came. No suspense, no mystery, no big deal.
He spent his night with Danny or Mitch, drinking, smoking dope, and listening to music: industrial dance music, ska, old punk, hard progressive, some heavy metal. Loud was the sound they wanted, and loud was what they listened to. Sandy needed it in the night, to balance out the silence of his days.
The Saturday before Christmas, Sandy woke up about noon and stumbled into the living room. His dad was watching a football game on television. A tackle threw a particularly good block, and Sandy sat down to watch. They sat in companionable silence through almost an entire quarter. Sandy was thinking back to junior high, when his dad coached his football team. There had been animosity between them even then, but they could always see eye to eye on the football team. “Slam him, Sandy,” his dad would yell across the field, and Sandy would slam him with all his might. At home, Sandy never got anything from his dad but an order or an insult or a smack. But on the football field, his dad would pat his helmet or his shoulder and maybe even say, “Good job.” They’d been able to deal with each other on the football field.
He turned to his dad, to remind him of those days, but his dad spoke first. “You know, son, football is a lot like life.”
Immediately the good feelings Sandy had, dissipated. He was disappointed. “Dad, football is a lot like rugby. Football is nothing like life.” He stalked off to the bathroom.
***
That night Sandy had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. His shoulders and neck ached, and it took almost an hour for him to finally drift off.
Anita appeared to him. She was dressed in his boots, jeans, shirt, and jacket. She looked at him pensively and asked, “Who owns you, Sandy?” With the end of the question, her clothing changed to his Dad’s Sunday suit. “Who owns you, Sandy?” she asked again, exactly the same. Now she was in the dress in which his mother had been buried. “Who owns you, Sandy?” Now it was her own standard black garb. “Who owns you, Sandy?” A flamenco dancer’s dress, his Halloween costume of the year before. “Who owns you, Sandy?” The bright blue sweater and polka-dot skirt from years ago. “Who owns you, Sandy?” Her clothes started changing faster and faster: a shroud, Jerry’s sloppy sweatshirt and ripped jeans, the timid businessman’s suit, a towel, his roommate’s football uniform, and on and on. Flipping, flipping, and over it all, at the same measured pace: “Who owns you, Sandy?”
He smiled in his sleep because he knew. “I own me,” he declared to the dream Anita. “I own me!” He was jubilant, triumphant, free. “I own me!”
He didn’t realize the dream was erotic until he woke up with an erection. He laid there under the covers, enjoying the pulse of his blood. A quick look at the clock told him it was seven seventeen. Good. His dad wouldn’t wake for another hour.
After showering and getting the Sunday paper from the porch, he went to the kitchen and made coffee for them both. Then he sat at the kitchen table, read, and waited.
His dad’s first comment of the day was “Up a little early, are we?”
“I made coffee, Dad. It’s in the pot.” Sandy waved toward the coffee machine on the counter.
“Well, well, well. The proper little homemaker. Are you coming to church, as well?” His dad shuffled over to the counter and filled his mug.
“No, thanks.” Sandy went back to the paper. He was waiting for it. It would come, he knew.
There was peace in the kitchen for a full fifteen minutes. Then his dad stared at him over the sports section. Sandy’s adrenalin began to flow more freely. Now? “Wearing your hair a little longer these days, I see.”
Sandy let out a breath. No, not yet. “Can I have the sugar, please?” he replied to his dad.
His dad looked at him strangely, passed the sugar, and went back to the sports section. A few minutes later, he put down the paper altogether.
“Now,” thought Sandy and was excited.
“I wasn’t very happy with your grades this year, son.”
“Yes,” thought Sandy, “now.” Now he would fight his father, first with words, then with fists. He would beat the living shit out of his father because that’s the way it went. His dad deserved it, his dad needed it, Sandy needed it. The memory of his mother called for it. Sandy knew, and he was happy.