2004-09-07 - 11:09 a.m.
Some Things Have Happened
Liz called from Alaska on Friday. I wasn’t around, but she called twice, left a couple of messages, and e-mailed. She said she felt the overwhelming need to talk to me. It’s always great to hear her voice.
“You need to come to Alaska and lighten up. There is plenty of space—you become enormously small and insignificantly huge all at once here. You could live in a tiny village, you could live in the city, you could make a decent living and not worry too much about finances but instead devote your energy to explore the inner world of thought and abstraction, or art, or something...”
She called on Saturday night and we talked about what’s been going on in our lives. I didn’t know that she married her boyfriend Gunter (three years ago!). As we spoke, Gunter looked online for airfares, and they booked a flight for me to Alaska. It’s exciting and scary at the same time.
Cher says she’s not sure if I could deal with moving to Alaska, “just the cold and lack of light….” She said visiting with friends in Alaska might be better for me than going to Italy alone.
I’ve been thinking of going to Italy to get away. I mention it to Joey, but he always says something such as, “Yeah. Maybe one day.” On Joey’s list of things to do for September is “Get a passport.”
Speaking of Joey, spent Saturday with him and his Pops getting wine-making supplies. It was interesting to observe their interaction. Joey’s father is from the old country and grew up during World War II. “He’s mister negativity,” Joey says. “I don’t think that guy has ever had a positive thought in his head! Everything he says is negative.”
Watching Joey interact with his father makes me think that my relationship with my father is normal. Maybe that’s just the way it is between blue-collar fathers and sons. There are times when I blow up after my father asks, “Where are you going?” Or “Where were you?” They are questions that seem innocuous enough, but somehow I take them as an affront.
Joey is the same way with his father. One of things I’ve noticed, however, is that Joey’s father dotes on him. After, say, a heated debate, where they shout back and forth at each other and use the word “fuck” almost as an article, Joey’s father is there to pick bird shit off of Joey’s car window. This upsets Joey. “Will you just leave it ALONE!” Joey yells. And on and on.
I think that, somehow, we see ourselves becoming our fathers and are fighting hard to not go that route. Being around them is almost like looking into a mirror and seeing that part of our psyches. We don’t want to cross over to the dark side, but in the backs of our minds we see ourselves doing it. I don’t know.
Last night one of my brothers got into an argument with our drunk father. Father told him, “If you don’t like it, get your shit and get out of here.” He’s already said the same thing to my sister and me. (Sister got even with him though. Because she’s having marital problems, she, her kids, their dog, and their hamster have taken up residence in the basement.)
Brother is extremely angry and hurt and ready to beat the piss out of our dear old dad. “I’m going to go to work and I’m going to think about this all day,” he said this morning. Brother can’t wait to buy a place and move out of here.
I think last night’s argument had a lot to do with the woman who attended father’s barbecue yesterday. He sort of hung on her every word as if she were God speaking to him with heavenly breath of hops, malt, and barley.
“Is that your new step-mother?” I joked to my sister. “It better not be. I’ll kick that bitch’s ass,” she replied.
“She’s just a friend,” my father snapped. “Funny. She never visited when my mother was alive,” I said.
Father’s new vice is gambling. There was no food or toilet paper in the house when I went home last weekend, but he was in Mississippi gambling. Drinking, gambling, and women—the tired, lifestyle accoutrements of the desperate. He’s becoming such a wonderful cliché.
Father and his female friend were the last people in the yard last night. From my room I could, unfortunately, hear their conversation. He asked her to go gambling with him at something called the Ho Chunk casino. “We’ll see,” she said. “I have to see how the house is coming along.” “Don’t bullshit me,” he said forcefully. “No. I’m not....” she replied. Goddamn! His new lifestyle comes complete with cliché situations and conversations.
“He said that!?” brother said when I told him this morning. “Goddamn! He doesn’t have any fucking money to fix his fucking house that’s falling apart, but he’s inviting some dumb tavern bitch to go gambling?”
“He’s taking a chunk ‘ho to the Ho Chunk,” I said. That made my siblings laugh. For a moment anyway.
