Don’t turn your back on me baby
Don’t turn your back on me baby

1990. I was 12. It was hot and sticky and my father’s car didn’t have air conditioning, but it did have a tape deck and one cassette. The tape was a blank one he’d filled both sides entirely with Santana’s Black Magic Woman, and the deck kept auto-flipping so that we’d been listening to it nonstop from Philadelphia to wherever it was he lived back then.

Yes, don’t turn your back on me baby

At one point he pulled up to a gas pump and shut off the car, and then gave the key a slight twist to keep Black Magic Woman going. “No!” I shouted over it, but he was already inside paying to fill up.

Stop messing round with your tricks

I hit the eject button and flung the tape into the bin between the pumps. His radio was, of course, tuned to the classic rock station and when he got back in the car Black Magic Woman had just started again. As it finished I side-eyed him, watching his mustache twitch before he turned to me.

“Did you take my tape?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to give it back?”

“I threw it out of the window.”

“What?”

“I didn’t litter. I tossed it into the trashcan back at the gas station.”

“That doesn’t make it ok!”

“I won’t do it again. You don’t have anymore tapes.”

“They’re just at home.”

“More tapes of just that one song?”

Don’t turn your back on me baby

I didn’t see him again after that, but I did get an email right after I’d left school, about a month before my university account was purged. I refused to listen to his bullshit. Six years and not even a birthday card from him? (Let alone years without court ordered child support checks.) And now he was blaming his long, silent absence on my mom? I replied with the coldest, meanest dismissal I’ve ever produced. He fired back an angry reply and I told him to leave me alone. He did.

Turning my heart in to stone

Several years ago my stepfather had a heart attack, and a bit later spent an entire night on the telephone with me telling me all of the things he would’ve done differently if he could do it all again; none of it included my mother, me, or my step brother. He insisted I promise him to not repeat his mistakes, to do what I want, and not be miserable like him. A few months later, or maybe even then — who knows? — he was cheating on my mother. They’ve been separated for three years now and he lives in their house with his girlfriend and her kids –a replacement family younger than the one he’d had plus one more kid. (I don’t really get it either.) I’ve tried to be civil, but it’s easier to just leave it alone.

His almost-dying and turning into a completely different person made me wonder how often people do change. Does everyone? And if one can change from a relatively decent person into a complete ass, is the opposite also true? Could I be less of a jerk to my own father now? Could he have also grown up a bit over the years? I started looking for him, and the closest I came was discovering that my grandmother had passed in 1998 — not very long after our ridiculous email argument.

I can’t leave you alone

Last week it occurred to me that perhaps my search was too narrow. As soon as I checked the social security death index, I found him; he’d died in 2008.

How do you lose two fathers at the same time and not know it?

Ten years? Really? It seems so much longer, and like that kid wasn’t even me. Here’s a quick mix of 8 tracks that would’ve been on that kid’s iPod if such a thing were a thing back then. (Launched in October 2001 –I looked it up so you don’t have to.)

I’m packing up to move again this weekend, this time New England. Once I get there I’ll make a follow-up post with a current state-of-affairs for comparison –should be good for a laugh, at least.

I figured I would repost a note I made a few years ago in my old journal about my feelings on good people being taken in by charlatans — this will assist those who want to say I’m being closed minded by asking for serious evidence to back up their outrageous claims. See how generous I am? Here goes:

* * *

I get a bit offended when people bullshit me, whether it is intentional or not. I, wrongly I suppose, feel like people should be able to tell right off that I’m not down with faeries or divining-with-chicken-bones or fertility enhancing navel rings and just not bring these things up around me (and expect polite nodding). How should they tell? My aura Just giving me the benefit of the doubt that I’m not stupid, I suppose. (Much in the same way that writing this to you, my friends, means that I assume you do not believe in the healing powers of powdered endangered animal parts or communications from “The Beyond”. An assumption that should be taken as complimentary.) Or go ahead and mark me down as “close-minded” if you must — that’s cool with me too.

I’m stunned on a regular basis by how many people feel that Montel Williams’ support of Sylvia Browne makes her credible. — People I generally respect (but question my ability to continue doing so) saying things like “well, maybe she can!” I mean, mind reading? Dialogs with the dead? Really? Why would anyone want to invite that sort of violation of privacy into their world view? So you’ve nothing you can keep to yourself and an eternal hereafter complete with intrusive pestering by thrill or money seeking people? Screw that. Sign me up to be Tillman Brand worm food.

I wasn’t brought up with science, mind you. My father’s mother read tarot cards and tea leaves, taking it very seriously as had her mother before her in “the old country” (Shamokin, Pennsylvania). She also believed that a piece of green glass she stepped on as a child continued to travel through her body for decades causing all of her ailments. (Until a brilliant doctor “removed it” and presented the offending shard to her in a specimen vial when she was in her seventies — when suddenly her pains all disappeared.)

I’ve also had several close friends who are prone to fits of imaginative derailment. Occasionally I’ve been distracted by the whimsical fun of spooky stories and their Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown Collections. Shockingly, this coincides perfectly with my youthful painkiller abuse. I won’t knock anyone for past silliness — as we’ve all had our fair share. It’s the continued insistence on kowtowing to convenient omens and supporting questionable businesses with hard-earned money that they have better uses for that I will knock into the ether and back without assistance from the disembodied gloves of 1919 to 1926 world heavyweight champion, Jack Dempsey.

Basically, I’m just noting that whenever I see Contacting Your Spirit Guide on an Amazon wishlist it is always for someone that I would rather give a gas or grocery giftcard to — someone who is less fortunate than myself, and needs some real assistance, not spiritualist crap, and certainly not to be scammed out of what they do have. However, if you don’t want your grocery card I put in your holiday card, I am likely out of limes and tonic so I’ll trade you these magic beans for it.

I cannot wait until this story becomes “the time the former Vice President made me late for work.”

On a Saturday morning in the middle of summer I returned Orwell’s 1984 and you said, “That’s some heavy reading for an eleven year old.” I said, “Maybe.” You asked what was next and when I shrugged you said, “I’ve got something for you,” handed me Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and changed my life.

This gratitude is 18 years overdue, but I want to say it anyway. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Elizabeth.

I look at trends and subcultures as a cycle of rebellion. That makes it sound much more negative than I intend. — Rebellion, to me, is not limited to aggressive upheaval of norms; I’m talking about even the smallest acts that teenagers commit in their quest for perceived individuality. (I will be the first to admit that my youthful interest in alternative genres of music was actually counter to the goal of setting myself apart.)

I grew up under the rule of my stepfather’s dictatorship. He saw little value in the things I was interested in: literature and art. One evening after school when I was in third grade he spent over an hour looming over me at the kitchen table shouting, “What’s 4×6? What’s 4×6? What’s 4×6?” over and over, without pausing. A year before that he’d broken the clock that my mother and I had had longer than him, pushing the hands around, thumping its face, demanding I tell him “What time is it now? And now? And now?” My best friend, Melvin, who did his homework at our house until his mother came home from work, shrunk down into his chair, frozen as The Monster (as we called him in secret) shouted at me to stop crying and answer these simple questions in a voice that could be heard. No stammering! No tears! Wipe that nose! It didn’t matter that I was at the top of the grade in reading and writing and got As in social studies and Pennsylvania history. The stars on my book reports and “Elizabeth is a joy to have in class” comments in letters from teachers meant nothing if I couldn’t memorize the multiplication table as fast as everyone else. Math was the most important thing and if I couldn’t get with the program I was a failure and always would be. I believed him.

“Great. Someday you can write a book about how mean I was to you.”

School became a nightmare until the principal of the arts magnet school came to see us in junior high. A whole high school with four different types of English every year! I was determined to get in and threw myself into preparing for my writing audition, and an application/sample for a summer arts program at the university I would eventually attend. Both accepted me. “Great. Someday you can write a book about how mean I was to you,” I remember him saying. “You’re not going to get anywhere else without math.” As if taking longer to solve algebra equations than some people meant I couldn’t do them at all.

Fortunately, when I was in high school his job as a cop kept him out all night and asleep most of the day. Keeping my distance, I focused on friends, novels, and my sketch and notebooks. Anything math or science related scared the shit out of me. (Not having books thrown over my head when I ask for clarification on things I don’t understand has definitely helped me get over that.)

My brother, eight years younger, got it worse. He was a happy kid and quite a ham on stage at Sunday school holiday programs. Today, I don’t think you could get him to open his mouth in front of more than one stranger. There can be no other word than abuse to describe the afternoons that poor child spent trying to catch footballs and not fall off his bicycle because “a real son” just could. Imagine a six year old who can stay composed and unflinching as a large chunk of glass is taken from his bloody knee, but pales and starts quaking when he hears, “Don’t worry, here comes your dad.” This was my brother’s childhood. He made friends with two physically and mentally handicapped boys and became another target for the neighborhood bullies that threw rocks and insults at them. Woe, woe be upon him if he didn’t win the resulting fights. (I had my fair share of tussles with their older sisters when I got home from the magnet school downtown.) Eventually we moved to the sticks of Western Pennsylvania and our differences, and our new seclusion escalated the bullying at home and in school. My brother snapped and went from a gentle giant into a rage fueled storm-in-a-can getting into fights at any provocation from his classmates. I graduated and moved on to campus. He got into computers, and video games – things that don’t require getting other people involved. We ran out of things to talk to each other about. I eventually was kicked out of the house and moved to Los Angeles. When I returned to this side of the country, my brother was unrecognizable – painfully shy and socially awkward.

Did I ever really like Nurse with Wound or Skinny Puppy?

The writer in me sees an alternative family history. If he’d only left us years ago, my brother would be a successful, beloved television meteorologist. (He had a thing for weather radio.) My mother would’ve gotten back in touch with her bohemian poet and fashion designer friends and would have built a healthy network of support to nurture her creativity. I imagine we would’ve stayed in Philadelphia. I’m not sure who I would be. I feel like my entire personality was shaped by rejection of his authority and prejudices. In my early teens anything that would piss him off became instantly attractive. Did I ever really like Nurse With Wound or Skinny Puppy? Or did I just really enjoy his confusion and frustrated outrage. Not that anyone develops alone in a vacuum, but would I have gone in the same direction without the fear of being even remotely like him urging me farther and farther away?

I suspect most teenage rebellion/subculture trends are due, in part, to some variety of daddy complexes. Which makes me wonder what the children of geeks will do when they want to be different. In the teenage quest for individuality, even if your parents are awesome, aren’t you still going to want to do something different?

Related links to friends discussing labels, identity, and teenage life:

Laura discusses being a gamer and geek.
Mark’s awesome series:

• Because nobody demanded it: Tales of a Teenage Pagan Superhero
• Tales of a teenage pagan superhero: Sarah and the Dragon Mage, part one
• Tales of a Teenage Pagan Superhero: The Cat’s Name Is Sun (an Interlude)

October is passing quickly and so goes my last scramble to move out of the Hobo Alley apartment. I keep finding things that I’m not even sure how I’ve managed to hold onto through years of annual moves. And then, completely unexpected, a bit of the past found me.

The subject line read, “J. K. sent you a message on Facebook.”

“What?”

It said the same thing on the second read. And the third.

“Wait –No!” I’m not usually in the habit of talking to my inbox. The potentially dead aren’t in the habit of contacting me from beyond-the-potential-grave, either. My high school friends, especially the friends from the Philly years, reside in my memories in three categories: Probably Alive, Certainly Not Alive, Likely Dead. After my family moved, when calls home to Skillz had no new reports on our missing friend, I figured like so many people I knew, he was gone too. (This is not commentary on my friend, but on the overwhelming sadness of those years of my life.)

The good news is that my friend is very much alive. The bad news is that I’ve been too busy with the move to sit down and continue proper communication continuation. I have managed to get back in touch with Skillz, to bring him up to speed on these latest, most happy, tidings. We’re the sort who can maintain non-disjointed dialogue no matter how erratic the gaps in our conversations tracks are from year to year. I’m hoping that December brings enough of a slow-down for picking up some of these ties I’ve neglected. Correspondence has never been something I’ve done well with.

This has been the month of reminiscence; while assisting with preparations for her move to Vermont, Mom finally got me to confront the bins in the basement filled with my childhood things.

I found a box of old black and white marble composition books filled with tortured sentences straining to fit all of a week’s spelling words into one questionable line, and a mimeographed form letter from a teacher informing my parents that Elizabeth has been (check box) very good, did very well on his/her book report and (check box) played nicely with the other children this week. I found the adorable soft bodied black baby doll that upset my first grade friend Kelly’s sense of right and wrong or whatever. (I kept this doll in the glass cabinet with the fragile dolls I wasn’t to play with, because I felt she was too nice to crush in bed, but I remember taking her out of the cabinet and hugging her often. Like the special dolls, she didn’t have a name. In my five-year-old logic, once you name something it’s too real to keep behind glass.) An army of stuffed animals, a high school jacket, a few caps and gowns, awards, and a ton of personal ephemera in the form of notes passed in class to ticket stubs from Greyhounds, movies and shows. A menagerie of good times and terrible times all stowed away in a cardboard ark.

Another box held an entire parallel unexplored world in the form of photo albums I’ve never seen –or, as Mom insists –do not remember; the past reaching out and asserting itself, saying “These are the strangers you came from” and humanizing my biological father with snapshots he sent to Mom from Vietnam.

It’s been quite a month, and November promises to be similar. I’ll be driving to Vermont, following D in the moving truck. I haven’t really driven much in the past eight or so years after selling my car when I moved to Los Angeles. But everything old is new again, it seems, and survival is what we do.