A Haunting Memory

Children sometimes say awful things to their parents while they are growing up. I certainly did. I regret a lot of my behavior over the past decade but only a few things weigh on me still.

Thanksgiving weekend 2003 I went out with some high school friends on Saturday night. We went to some apartment, I can't remember whose, an acquaintance of a friend, it was questionable. I played "never-have-I-ever" for the first time and we all got very drunk.

I made it home around 3am. I stumbled inside, fell up the stairs, and eventually made it into my room. The world was spinning. A short time passed which felt like a long time. I dragged myself over to my Chicago Bears trash can and threw up. At some point during my retching my mother opened my bedroom door. She asked "Steve...are you all right?"

I looked up at her- my eyes watering, body shaking, head hovering over the sick filled Chicago Bears receptacle- and replied gruffly "Shut. The Fucking. Door." And she did. It may be the moment I regret most in my entire life.

The next morning my father came into my room. Early. He asked "Did you puke in here?" and I cannot describe the scorn and disgust which my father injected into the word puke. I lied. "No." He looked at the Chicago Bears garbage can, picked it up, got a whiff of it, muttered "Jesus Fucking Christ" and walked out closing the door.

Shortly after I got up my friend Drew picked me up and we drove back to college. I don't think my parents and I ever discussed this particular event.

There were many similar events to follow which garnered much trouble, worry, and discussion. My parents have always supported me, loved me unconditionally, and endevored to help me. They never gave up on me, they never cut me out. I am grateful for them and sometimes astonished by the patience and restraint they showed.

Now I'm in a position to be truly loving, caring, and open with my parents. It's a gift. I can be there for them the way they have always been there for me. 

My folks July 2012 a week before they, along with my sister, helped me get some help.

Boys Become Men

Once, when I was a young I played by a creek. I was with my friend Todd who, as I look back, was not much of a friend. There were many ducks and ducklings playing along side us, enjoying the sunshine and the water. Todd picked up a stone and threw it at a duck. He missed and threw more stones. Seeing him I threw stones as well. We missed all our throws. I did not want to hit a duck or hurt a duck. I did it because Todd was doing it and he was the type of friend who would call me wuss or weak or scared or dumb and tell me to go home if I did not do what he wanted me to do. There was also, I am ashamed to admit, a perverse pleasure I found in throwing stones at ducks, the anticipation of one of them being hurt or killed and I would be the one that caused it. Even so I do not think I actually tried to hit the ducks with my stones. Maybe that is selective memory but I do not think so.

Todd and I threw stones for some time. The ducks were not scared away which puzzled me. Eventually, inevitably, one of Todd's stones found it's mark breaking the neck of a large brown female duck. We stopped immediately, asking each other if it was dead. It floated to the shore, neck bent at an impossible angle. We stood over it staring.

Her eyes were glazed and the water running off her feathers made her look as if she wept. She closed then opened her eyes slowly and repeatedly. There was blood, how much I do not know, it mingled with her wet brown feathers. I had no doubt that she would die, I had no doubt she would suffer until her death.

The bottom dropped out of my world and I was sick. I did not feel powerful as part of me, I think, expected. I felt cruel and was disgusted by my cruelty. I turned on Todd berating him for what he had done. Asking him how he could do such a thing, he calmly reminded me of my compliance and I was shamed. We walked home in silence and never spoke of that day or that tortured duck.

Boys can be cruel and often are. They must learn compassion. If they do not they may become cruel men. And cruel men are fearsome things of little use save destruction.

Pooka

On the way to The Night Shift tonight I realized I needed gas. At the same moment I saw a young woman driving a late 90's Honda Civic. She was slightly hunched over the steering wheel and her long light brown hair was almost brushing it, her face hidden. The image of the woman and the thought of gas brought something up from the past and I momentarily lost the present.

Before I had my licence my high school girlfriend would always drive us around. She had a white two door SUV with the licence plate "Pooka". Whenever we would stop for gas she would religiously, almost ritualistically, open her glove compartment and turn off her phone. If I had my phone on me she would not get out of the car until I had turned mine off as well. After a while it started to irritate and eventually enrage me. I'd sit in the car fuming because of the minute or two she would take to turn off her phone.

She did it because her mom told her to. Her mom had read some article about a cell phone exploding at a gas station or maybe even an article about that being something that could happen. At 16 she didn't rock the boat, never rebelled, got along great with her parents. Me at 15 could not understand her attitude and was constantly exasperated when she refused to stay out past curfew or lie about where she was going. Her obeying her mother in the minutiae of turning off her phone while at the gas station became an emblem for me of her obedience. I frequently instigated arguments about it, needling her until she would engage.

I came back to the present gradually. Stunned by the vividness of the memory. Part of me wishes I could go back and do it all over again. Not to relive my youth or the glories of my past.

To put things right.

Ridicule

Easy Target

I was listening to Radiolab on the train ride into work today. It was an episode which tangentially mentioned bullying, during a segment a middle aged woman broke down describing being made fun of by her sister years before in high school. Memories from far away came trickling unavoidably back to me.

I was a chubby weird kid. I got made fun of for being chubby and weird. Kids poking my little belly or pinching my junior love handles. I liked books and had a vivid imagination. Boys called me girly, sissy, gay, would push me down or slap books out of my hands. I was sensitive and so when I was bullied I would cry and be made fun of even more for crying. I didn't, and to this day don't, brush my hair. "You stick your fingers in a light socket?" "You forget your bath?" "Dirty dumby doesn't know what a comb is!" I have a black birthmark on the side of my head. "You rub poop on your head?" "You stick your head in an oven and get burned?" as I got older stuff like "You toast shit and use it as mousse?" back when mousse was a common hair product.

I vaguely remember being chased to the bus. Pinned down. Not attacked necessarily but made immobile while things were yelled in my face. I remember being pushed, thrown, and checked into lockers. I was once chased with dog shit, another time with a squirrel corpse.

These weren't every day occurrences but happened often enough to have a significant impact.

I got older, grew, and these incidents stopped completely. I don't imagine my experiences are singular or terribly extreme but it does breed a certain amount of resentment, anger, and at times strength. People who sailed through their childhoods didn't have the same kind of tempering that kids who've been bullied had.

I don't regret the past, I don't blame a soul. I am the sum of my experiences, I don't know who I would be had the social aspects of my childhood not been difficult.

Sometimes though.

Sometimes I wish I could wrap my arms around that chubby little nerd and tell him he's not alone.

Name Shame

I've been hosting the 8 o'clock show at iO every Sunday for the last five months or so. I enjoy it and I think I do it well. Tonight however I got rocked with a realization during my opening schpeel.

Me: ...but first some introductions- Dave Asher on keys! (applause) We're not only a theater we're also a bar! We have...(I shade my eyes to look behind the bar, I see a guy and realize I don't know his name. I realize that this has been the guy tending bar for the past month or so and I've been calling him the wrong name. I reach for his name and come up empty. I'm hit with a cold bucket of shame and embarrassment. A take a brief pause to let him say his name and he doesn't. I'm left with no other alternative than to say, again, the wrong name I've been saying for weeks now) Devilyn behind the bar and Molly serving you drinks...

The rest of the show I'm in my head and can't shake off the flush in my cheeks. I feel like the utmost asshole. After the show I'm out back with Molly having a cigarette.

Me: That's not Devilyn.
Molly: No silly that's Nate.
Me: Fuck me.
Molly: You've been doing it for weeks. He was going to tell you tonight. We thought it was really funny. People have been coming up to him asking if they've got his name wrong. But no it's been you!
Me: Such a fucking asshole, Jesus...
Molly: No! It's funny!

I tell myself I haven't ordered a drink at iO in two years so I've had no interaction with the bartenders. I tell myself the male bartenders there look similar- big, bearded. There's no excuse. I feel stupid and embarrassed and like a real uppity shithead who can't find out what the fucking bartenders name is. Devilyn worked the bar on Sundays for a while and I never bothered to check to see if the schedule changed. Never bothered to engage or make an effort. It would be one thing if this was the first night but I've been doing it for weeks. It's a mistake and it's mine and I have to own it. Yuck.

The upshot- I'll never get Nate's name wrong again.

The hard lessons are the ones that stick.

Persistence of Memory

This is my friend Greg. For a day and a half last week I couldn't think of his name.

This past weekend my dad and I were in the Verizon store. When we walked in I noticed a familiar woman and her mother at the counter. In less than a second it came to me. Sarah DeWitt. Carlson Elementary. I hadn't seen or spoken to her in twenty years.

Some things I've done or experienced I'd like to forget but can't. Some things I'd like to remember but have forgotten. Details, sights, sounds, smells, names. It's strange what we can recall and what we can't. It seems like the more terrible or trivial something was the easier it is to recall.

I don't remember anything about my first time on stage as councilmen #4 in the Pied Piper. I vividly remember pushing Marisol Ramirez off my desk and her slapping me across the face.

I don't remember the first time I told my high school girlfriend Jessy Melville that I loved her or what her response was. I vividly remember her not talking to me for a week and almost breaking up with me when I smoked pot for the first time.

I don't remember when my college roommate Bob Boehle gave me his guitar and taught me to play. I vividly remember the campus police cuffing us and being traipsed out of our dormitory into the back of a squad car.

Memory can be unforgiving and at times one sided. We are a collection of all the things that have happened to us and things we've done regardless if we remember them or not. Ultimately the only important moment is now. The moment I'm writing this and soon the moment you'll be reading this. I would like to remember some past pleasures with a little more clarity but regardless of my ability to call them up they are a part of me.

Still though. I'd rather remember Greg than Sarah DeWitt.

Street Talk 14

I'm riding my bike on the sidewalk the one block from house to Montrose where I'll get on the street. Up ahead is a woman with a 2 year old boy. He's weaving all around the sidewalk awkwardly walking and delighting in it. I smile and hop over to the grass to ride past them and give them the whole sidewalk to maneuver on. The kid stumbles and sits down when I'm about 10 feet away, it's clear he has not seen me or processed my presence, he stumbled over his own feet. As I pass.

Woman: Gee onm thhh fffeeerr rrrrraaa. diii ssss a chiiiii.

She's not mumbling she's just not talking loudly, I thinking she's talking to the kid and I smile at them. It takes me about 10 seconds and 50 feet to process that she actually said "Get on the fucking road. This is a child." At first I'm hit with a cold bucket of shame. I should have stopped and walked the bike. I didn't mean to frighten her and I clearly didn't frighten the kid. Wish she would have known that I was in total control and I thought I was more than far enough away. I think of going back to apologize.

Then I'm hit with a wave of rage. Who the fuck does this lady think she is? I was six feet away from her and her kid. Does she think she owns the sidewalk? Where does she think she's living? This is Chicago, the big fucking City, if you want your kid to have a bubble of safety around him move out to fucking Winnetka. Not only that, this is Uptown off the Wilson Redline stop, not a consummate neighborhood for safety. I think of going back and asking her to repeat herself, think of intimidating her, telling her to move, asking her if she's got a problem and then letting her know I'm her fucking problem.

Needless to say I don't do either. I realize, while she was saying it, all I did was pleasantly smile at her. That's the appropriate reaction, most likely her overprotective mothering instincts just flared up or she had a bad day or she's going through a divorce or break up or she's hungry or she's tired. Whatever it is it's not me and I have no control over it. I look at the shame and the rage and the different hypotheticals, I realize their utter uselessness, take a deep breath and let them go out into the ether.

I continue riding my bike to meet Tisher where we will in the near future share a small plate of extremely sloppy yet delicious lobster stuffed deviled eggs.

Rage

I was angry for a long time. Not overtly so. Under the surface, simmering. I identified myself as 'the angry guy' and took pleasure in other people labeling me that. It was something to hold on to, something defining. I had a lot of fear, hate, and jealousy. Instead of dealing with any of those emotions I projected it outward towards the world which I felt like never gave me my due. I was alone so I struck back at every opportunity.  I was great at cutting other people down, ranting, and vehemently arguing people into submission.

My dad has a joke about our Norwegian blood and our hot tempers. "I'm just an even-tempered Norwegian: always angry." I didn't see any humor in it, I took it as slogan to live my life on. I've talked a lot of shit. I'm very good at it. I've also had occasion to get very good at dramatically changing a conversation if the person I was degrading walks into the room.

One of the things I regret most was one time in college. I was at a theater party with a bunch of theater people, I was a theater major. At the beginning of every semester the shows were cast for that semester and there were lots of parties the following weekend to celebrate or commiserate. At this particular time I had been cast but some of my female friends had not. I felt I was justifiably angry, righteous even. I proceeded to tear up a girl whom I barely knew to a room of twelve of my peers. I barely knew this girl but I categorically broke down and criticized her talent summing up my argument that she was simply a pretty face and even cast veiled aspersions on her promiscuity. Some people were laughing but in retrospect I'm sure most of them were uncomfortable. Then she walked in, it was like one of those record scratch moments in the movies, utter silence. Without missing a beat I started talking mid sentence in a unrelated conversation.

The past couple months I've let go of anger. It's not that I don't feel it anymore but I realize that for the most part there is no benefit to it. Negative emotions only beget negativity. If I take that energy and put it towards myself, put it toward progressing and furthering my ideas, I'll see my productivity increase dramatically. There's no point in flicking off someone in traffic, there's no point in snapping at someone, there's no point in fighting, there's no point in harboring ill will. There's no payoff, it does nothing for you, it simply occupies your mind and deadens your mood.

I'm not a push over now, make no mistake. But whenever I feel that heat I take a moment and pause. What do I really want? What's the best approach to dealing with this situation? It's usually not yelling and insults and single-mindedness.

There may be a time for rage. But not now and not soon.