walking.my.rabbit

Miss Kitty

It was an hour before my mother noticed the cat was missing.  It was nothing out of the ordinary.  Cats do that.  Disappear.  I once tied a helium balloon around our cat’s tail, imagining how cute she would be sauntering around the house trailing a red balloon.  Of course the cat assumed that the balloon was attacking her and fought back viciously.  She fled, disappointed to learn that her attacker was, in fact, tied to her.  The possessed balloon zipped back and forth across the house a few times before I could grab it and end the assault.  Two weeks passed before we found her festering between books on a shelf in the backroom.  Cats are the only creatures that can survive on hate alone. 

            We had a series of cats in our family, nearly all of them Siamese, a breed roundly accepted to be the meanest on the planet.  Inherently, whenever you tell someone that you’ve purchased a Siamese cat, they will ask why.  Why in the hell would you ever buy a Siamese cat?  The only possible answer is some kind of weird Siamese cat fetish.  There is absolutely no other reason for owning one of these horrendous creatures.  My mother was afflicted by one of these fetishes. 

            Samantha Gaileen Peterson was around long before I arrived.  She had been some sort of present to my mother in the early 1970s.  I caught the tail end of her reign of terror and we quickly developed a healthy dislike for one another.  As a small child, I would follow her around on all fours, alternatively eating her food or her feces.  I was looking for a friend.  She was not.  Despite my good intentions, she would try to escape and often I was forced to grab her tail merely to keep her close.  This usually resulted in biting and scratching.  Well into her golden years, my parents actually told us that they took her out to a cat farm.  My father still swears it existed, but we were never allowed to visit. 

            A long cat-less stretch ensued after Samantha went out to the farm.  They were happy times.  Then, like the worst clichéd abusive relationships, we went back for more.  My father surprised my mother with a Siamese kitten for Christmas one year.  My mother named her Lady.  I was both furious and elated.   Years of heavy lobbying on my part had netted meager results: a gerbil and a hamster.  A cat was much more substantial.  I would make it my friend.  Then, came my trick with the helium balloon and Lady never forgave me.  If held firmly, she would allow me to pet her, but she never purred.  The moment I stopped, she would make a break for it.  If cats were allowed, I wanted my own. 

            One day, when I was sixteen, I came across a family handing out free kittens outside the supermarket where I worked as a bag boy.  They were extremely cute calico kittens.  When compared to a Calico kitten, a Siamese cat has all the charm of a piranha.  I took one, covered it in dirt, and took it home with me.  My story about finding this poor animal on the side of the road was both heart-wrenching and plausible.  They didn’t question me for a second and we took in the only nice cat our house ever knew.  If my mother’s cat was Lady, my gravel-covered kitten born in a web of lies would be Tramp.  That’s what I named her.  Tramp was the most loved and loving animal to ever live in our house.  Lady was determined to get rid of the competition.  How would she do this?  Chemical warfare. 

            As it turns out, cats, while smart enough to be vindictive and horrible, lack the brain capacity to crap outside, thus every cat comes complete with the most magical of all household items, a litter box: every cat’s favorite joke.  Look over your shoulder the next time you bend over to scoop out a fresh one.  The cat is laughing at you.  Lady’s litter box was perhaps the most foul smelling square foot of real estate on the entire planet.  The urine soaked kitty litter would mold together into huge cement castles.  Shredded pieces of white plastic liner would peak through ever-shrinking grey beach of litter that constituted the “floor”.  And the turds!  Oh, the turds!  They went unburied and stayed wet.  On a hot summer day, the fumes would creep across the house in a cloud of concentrated ammonia.  Your eyes would water and your throat would burn.  This is where poor Tramp would be forced to do her business.

 The most important question every cat owner must face when getting a cat is: Why in the hell would I ever want to get a cat?  The second most important question is where to put the litter box.  My mom took some time with this decision, walked around the house and picked the perfect spot.  There was no more logical place for this Tupperware septic tank than right in front of the dryer.  No matter how quickly you reacted, this arrangement insured that any dropped article of clothing would instantly transform from clean shirt to urine infused dishrag.  We carefully unloaded the dryer one sock at a time, holding our breath all the while, fighting the stench wafting up from below.  Poor little Tramp would weep before stepping inside her filthy latrine.  While still in high school and living at home, I tried my best to clear away the most toxic debris from Tramp’s toilet, but Lady was relentless in her waste production.  Two years after leaving for school, Tramp succumbed to a series of urinary tracts infections and was put down for the big sleep.  Unfortunately for Lady, it was a suicide mission and she, too, fell victim to the putrid chemicals seeping forth from her holes.  She bathed in her own fountain and rotted from the inside out.  She was put to sleep after a series of infections. 

Here a brief silence.  In the post-feline mourning period, my parents reflected upon the two creatures that had blessed our house.  Tramp had been a delight.  She slept in the bathroom sink and drank straight from the tap.  Tramp even played fetch.  The best dinners always ended with my father throwing balled up shreds of napkins for Tramp to retrieve.  She was the best cat ever.  Lady was the Siamese cat that killed her.  Of course my parents bought another Siamese. 

This one didn’t even get a name.  Cats never respond to their names anyway.  They don’t care what you call them.  They’re not listening.  This new Siamese cat was simply called, Miss Kitty.  We all thought it was a place-holder name until they thought of something better, but they never did.  Miss Kitty.  Two words. 

Before the accident, my mother claims that this Miss Kitty was a pleasant, affable creature.  As time went by, stories of Miss Kitty’s first few months reached legendary status.  Before the accident, she was sweet as can be (which is not too sweet if we’re talking about Siamese cats).  But every story about Miss Kitty hinged around that one afternoon in September.  Miss Kitty would never be the same. 

It was an hour before my mother noticed that the cat was missing.  It was nothing out of the ordinary.  Cats do that.  Disappear.  But something about this afternoon struck her as odd.  Normally, Miss Kitty would sit next to her in the bed as she ate her lunch.  Miss Kitty purred loudly throughout the meal and when my mother was finished eating, she would get a treat.  But this time, my mother had finished her entire lunch and there was no sign of her.  If Miss Kitty were a dog, she might have been able to call his name.  This was not a dog.  This was a miserable Siamese cat.  My mother rattled the small tin of cat treats, a noise that would normally rouse every cat within a three block radius, but not today.  Increasingly panicked, my mother got out of her bed and searched the house, checking all of Miss Kitty’s preferred tanning spots.  She was nowhere to be found.  Another trick that always worked with greedy cats was running the electric can opener.  Cats always assumed it would be a can of tuna and they would be getting their share.  I was never generous with them, but my mother would often split the can evenly between cats and humans.  The electric hum was sure to get Miss Kitty to reappear.  It didn’t.  She retraced her steps around the house.  What had my mother done that afternoon?  She had watched television while she ate lunch.  There was a period of about ten years when my mom consumed more frozen Welsh Rarebit than anyone on the planet.  Welsh Rarebit is basically just melted cheese that you put pour over toast.  It was her lunch almost everyday.  Today was no different.  Then, it hit her.  Welsh Rarebit is a frozen dinner.  This meant there was one very specific location, in which this cat might be currently trapped. 

My mother most likely ran to the freezer.  

She threw the door open.  The light flicked on behind the cloud of freezer fog that seeped out.  Rows of frozen dinners in identical orange boxes lined the shelves.  Near the bottom of the freezer, between an extra Butterball turkey and five backup loaves of bread, sat Miss Kitty, freezing to death.  Here, I like to imagine my mother crying out, “Miss Kitty!  NOOOO!!!!”

In any other instance, my mother’s first instinct would have been to swoop in and grab a kitten in distress, shielding it from further harm, but this was something else entirely.  When coming across a frozen cat in your pantry, you don’t necessarily want to pick it up right away.  The texture of it could be mildly disturbing.  It’s best to let it thaw out a bit lest you end up hugging a furry block of ice.  My mom thought Miss Kitty was dead.  Things might have been different if, believing that, my mother had just closed that freezer door and planned a memorial service.  But she didn’t. 

Against all odds, deep within the frosty tundra of my parents freezer, Miss Kitty still drew breath.  A kitten had gotten locked in the freezer.  A monster would come out.  She looked up at my mother and knew that she had forever found her minion.  My mother would go along with any evil plan Miss Kitty concocted.  The guilt was too much to do otherwise.  Miss Kitty hopped out of the freezer and ran off. 

If a cat has nine lives, Miss Kitty had just used eight of them.  The ninth would be for one thing: sweet, merciless revenge. 

Away at school, I didn’t get a chance to meet Miss Kitty before her accident.  I cannot vouch for the claim that she used to be different.  I can only speak of the demon I came to know and fear.  She hated everyone and erased all doubt to the contrary.  One night, while sleeping at my parents’ house, in my childhood bedroom and I was woken by a sound.  It was a low growling sound.  I opened my eyes.  Miss Kitty was standing on my chest, staring at me and growling.  Loudly.  Sleeping is widely regarded in the animal kingdom as being fairly non-aggressive.  If nothing else, a sleeping person/animal poses no immediate threat to anyone else.  This didn’t matter to Miss Kitty.  I was not welcome.  I began to sleep with my door closed.  But this wouldn’t stop her.  Upon entering any room, she would pause and look around for you.  When she spotted you, she would hiss loudly and bear her teeth.  After a day or so, I took note of other guerilla tactics employed by this feline menace.  It seemed odd to me that my father was always wearing heavy jeans around the house, even after dinner.  Then, I made the mistake of watching television in my boxer shorts and learned Miss Kitty’s terrible game.  She would wait until your back was turned, then attack your ankles, battering the back of your calf like a possessed koala.  Don’t believe for a moment that my parents were exempt from this behavior.  It didn’t matter that they fed this creature.  Miss Kitty made no friends.  She didn’t distinguish between humans.  She hated them all.  She attacked everyone, all the time, including my parents. Still, they insisted on feeding her.  Miss Kitty had them under her spell. 

There was no more disturbing trip home.  I had stumbled into the last act of The Shining.   My mother had recently undergone shoulder surgery.  Some complication with the medication rendered her catatonic for about four months.  There she sat, silently petting this Siamese cat that continually bit and scratched her.  Miss Kitty had taken possession of the house and my parents.  I made it my mission to exorcise the demon. 

Cornered, my father sounded like an abused woman.  He would look down and make excuses when I pointed out scratches on his arms and legs.   “Those are from a while ago,” he would say, even though the wounds were clearly fresh.  “She’s not like that anymore.”

I pressed him on the issue, demanding to know why he insisted on keeping this feral cat despite the constant threat of physical violence.  “Well, your mother really likes it,” he would finally admit before quickly changing the subject. 

My mother liked the cat.  Or did she?  Like I said, she was fairly catatonic in these days, so it was hard to ascertain her exact feelings on the subject.  I went into her bedroom to do some investigating.  My mom lay in her bed, typing on her computer.  Miss Kitty was curled up next to her.  She hissed when I opened the door.  “Mom, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure.”

She closed her laptop computer and began petting Miss Kitty, who immediately clawed and bit my mother’s hand like a piñata.   My mother would pretend not to notice as Miss Kitty’s sharp teeth and claws sank into the flesh of her hand.  She kept a decent poker face, but her petting hand would flit about in search of a better angle that might result in less biting.  It was amazing to watch.  “This can’t be enjoyable for you,” I said to her.

            “What?”

            “Your hand is bleeding.”

            “She’s just playing.”

            “What game is she playing exactly?”

Of course, I understood that my mother tolerated this cat because she felt bad for locking it in the freezer.  She had created this monster, so she would keep watch over it.  But this was getting dangerous.  “Dad’s hands are all scratched up.”

“They get along just fine.  Leave me alone.”

That was pretty much all there was to say about it.  I went back into my father in the living room and started tell him about the conversation when—  “Shhh!  Brian, I don’t wanna talk about the cat right now.”

He turned the volume up on the television, but something else was bothering him.  I turned.  Miss Kitty was watching from the hallway.  In her presence, he could never articulate his true feelings on the subject.  She had his woman. 

Miss Kitty continued to torment our house for the next few years.  During this time, my visits to their house almost stopped entirely.  When in Houston, I opted to stay with my sister downtown.  When I did visit, it was understood that Miss Kitty was to remain locked up.  Inherently the same conversation would come up.  “I can see your scratches, Dad.  How’s Miss Kitty?”   My father would sigh and make excuses.  My mother would cling to her feral cat as the only one who came to visit.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Miss Kitty drove us all away, then staked her claim as the only one left.  Despite trying to engage my parents in logical conversation about their bloodthirsty cat, they could not be convinced.  They needed to come to this decision on their own.  Eventually, they did.

I received a phone call from my father one day.  He just wanted to let me know that they had taken Miss Kitty to the shelter and I shouldn’t mention it to my mother.  I pried him for details. Did she know what was coming?  Would I be allowed to make the injection?  I imagined the witch melting at the end of The Wizard of Oz.  I would fly in to perform the operation myself.  It should have been done years ago.  Instead, my father gave me an even better piece of news.  It seems that before putting her down, they would give Miss Kitty a chance to be adopted.  So, the nice people down at the animal shelter gave Miss Kitty an “adoptability” test.  I can only imagine the poor bastard who dangled a fake mouse in front of that demon.  He most likely lost his face.  On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me if Miss Kitty passed the test with flying colors.  She might have played nice for the men in white coats, knowing they could facilitate her escape.  The humiliation of the test would be overwhelming, but it would be worth it.  She was an evil genius.  And now she had a score to settle. 

As it turned out, she did rather poorly on the adoptability test, drawing blood from two shelter employees.  Not long after arriving at the shelter, Miss Kitty was put down for the big sleep.  I hope she finds the peace in the next world that she never found in my mom’s freezer. 

Berlin.

Exiting the toilet, I cowered, apologizing profusely, trying to play the dumb tourist, but she was having none of it.  Finally, I reached into my pocket and gave her every coin I had, assuring her that it would more than cover my illegal trip to the urinal.  I hurried for the door, hoping to get out before she realized that I had given her about twenty-five cents worth of Dutch coins.  It worked.  I was already out the door when she launched a handful of coins in my direction.  A few pelted me in the back, while others ricocheted into the throngs of innocent travelers hurrying to catch their trains. 

Despite stellar reviews from Let’s Go Europe, the hostel I checked into was yet another series of mattresses on the floor.  I claimed the cleanest of the bunch, locked my backpack in a locker and set out to see the sights.   Berlin is quite a city.  Patently historic, yet always on the cusp of modernity.  When the Wall came down, a huge tract of land opened up in the heart of the city.  No Man’s Land was set upon by the world’s most forward thinking architects.  Not to claim that I know the slightest thing about modern architecture, but there was a huge glass building shaped like a fish.  The Brandenberg Gate was impressive and I came across a memorial to the books burned by the Nazis.  A small glass window on the sidewalk looked down into a vast library below.  It was totally empty and all white.  But let’s be honest.   I had not come to Berlin to see buildings. The film Run Lola, Run had come out a year before and had instilled in me a rather serious fetish for German girls.  The actress in the film, Franka Potente, possessed a bedraggled (homeless?) sexuality about her that erased forever any negative associations lingering from countless WWII dramas.  The German girls had won me over whether they knew it or not. 

         I headed out that night with an American that I met at the hostel.  He was down for a couple of days from Hamburg where he was studying abroad. He spoke a decent amount of German and knew his way around the city.  I estimated him to be an excellent guide for my tour of the Berlin nightlife.  We went to a couple bars and drank some beer before heading out to a nightclub.  The music was good.  Thumping electronic music, fog machines and occasional strobe lights that illuminated a sweaty mass of Germans.  It was in this crowd that I first made eye contact with a stunning German girl who was just as ragged as I was hoping she would be.  Streaks of pink ran through her short hair, matted down with sweat.  I liked it.  She left the dance floor and wandered over by the bar to have a smoke.  I found my buddy on the dance floor and asked him how to ask for a cigarette in German.  He told me and seconds later, I sidled up to the bar and gave her my best, “As tu einen Cigaretta?” 

         I never knew that such a simple question could elicit such a verbose response, but she began talking at length in German as she reached into her bag and handed me a cigarette.  I slipped it between my lips and she lit it for me.  A pause.  I took a drag of the cigarette and tried to break the news gently.  “I don’t speak German.”

“Wass?!  As tu einen Cigaretta?”  She slapped her forehead and slumped down onto the barstool next to us.   I was a terrible disappointment.

“Yeah.  As tu einen cigaretta, but that’s it.  I don’t speak German.  My friend taught me that cause I needed something to say to you.  Do you speak English?”

“Wass?”

Shit.  “Sprechen si angles?”

“Nein!”

“Not even a little?”

“Nein!”  Then she grabbed my hand and dragged me across the dance floor, stopping at her group of friends.  They all looked at me, sizing me up.  I waved.  She finished speaking with one of the guys and then gave him a nudge in my direction.   He leaned over to me and yelled over the music, “My friend thinks you’re cute.”

This translation was apparently unsatisfactory because the young woman again grabbed my arm and pulled me across the dance floor towards the front of the club where there was a lobby with a couple of leather armchairs.  She pushed me down into one of the chairs and sat on my lap.  She pointed to herself and said, “Ria. What is you?”

“Me.  Brian.”  I didn’t know how long I could keep up this Tarzan/Jane courtship.  Frankly, I was hoping we could skip most of the formalities.  I tried to say something else to her, but she stopped me.  She reached into her purse and pulled out a pen and paper.  In red ink she wrote a phone number down.  Then she said, “You.  Telephone.  Morgen.”

Me.  Telephone.  Morning.  Simple instructions.  She hopped off my lap and made me understand that she was going to find her friends.  It was getting late and I was ready to head back to the hostel.  The lights came on and people shuffled out.  I swam through the smokers on the sidewalk and found my American friend.  He was the only one who knew the way back to the hostel, so I was dependent on his sense of direction.  “Any luck?” he asked me.

I showed him the paper with her name and number.  “She wants me to call her in the morgen.” 

         “That means morning.”

Berlin took a sinister turn around four in the morning.  The streets were empty and the sidewalks were dark and shadowed.  My friend pointed out buildings that still had bullet holes from WWII.  I was glad to have a companion and even more glad that he actually knew the way home.  We passed by a large city park that I remembered from my tour of the city, but now in the moonlight it seemed much more ominous.  Whereas before the open space had been a respite from the congested urban sprawl, it now seemed the surface of a murky swamp, the brick walls hiding all sorts of terrifying and ghostly attractions.  I naturally assumed that my companion harbored the same fears regarding this park and the same desire to get home, so I was quite surprised when he turned to me and said, “How much you think a blow job costs?”

“What?” I said, “You mean from a hooker?”

“Yeah.”

I looked at him.  “I have no idea.”

“Huh.  I’ll be right back.”

Then, he disappeared into the park.  My jaw hit the pavement.  I tried to appear calm.  My guide had left me.  I was alone.  Then a cry rang out from the park.  “Twenty bucks!  You coming?”

“No, thanks!”  I yelled into the park.

I sat down against the brick wall and waited for the blow job to finish. 

The next morning, I awoke with a renewed sense of purpose.  Having fulfilled my tourist obligations yesterday, I felt comfortable seeking out other forms of recreation.  I downed my coffee, found a pay phone and dialed the number that Ria had given me.  She answered immediately.

“Hallo?”

“Hey.  It’s Brian from last night.  You told me to call you in the morgen.”

If I had forgotten exactly how little English she spoke, I was now reminded.  She went into another lengthy German monologue, none of which I understood.  She seemed to be repeating some words, which I thought might have been places, but every time I tried to interject, she interrupted me with a loud, “Wass?”  I was growing to dislike that word, that wall of misunderstanding that stood between me and my German concubine.  Eventually, I told her that I would call her back.  Not that she understood, but I hung up anyway.  I needed to think.   I needed….

I flagged down a taxi.  He stopped and rolled down his window.  “Sprechen si Ingles?” 

“A little.”  He was an older man with a thick mustache and a thicker accent, but he tried. 

“Please.  I need your help.”

He sensed a genuine emergency.  “What is the trouble?”

“I need you to make a phone call for me.”

I paced outside the phone booth while the taxi driver spoke to my new German girlfriend.  The essential part was that he get good directions, but I hoped he was talking me up a bit as well.  After a few moments, he emerged from the phone booth, gave me a once over and shook his head in a way that experience always will in the face of determined youth.  “Is far,” he said.  “Cab is very expensive.”

         I had little money and never planned on getting in a taxi.  “Subway?  U-bahn?”  I asked him.

         “Yes, U-Bahn.”

Then I gave him the only other German sentence that I knew.  “Wo ist der U-bahn?”  Where is the subway?  Again he shook his head and started drawing me a map.   He listed a U-Bahn station, then drew a web of streets, pointing to one and saying, “Bridge.  Go left on bridge.” 

         I had to cross a bridge?  I was never going to make it.  He handed me the map and said, “Good Luck.”

         Then he got back into his cab and started his engine.  But before he pulled away, he rolled down his window and said one more time, “Is far.” 

         I didn’t care.  I was absolutely determined.  Almost sprinting back towards what seemed to be a major street, I shouted to my fellow pedestrians, “Wo ist der U-bahn?”  People pointed and I followed their directions.  An hour later, I exited the U-Bahn at the station the taxi driver had indicated.  Here is where I needed to follow his map.  Despite his best intentions, the gentleman was not a cartographer.  Upon exiting the train, I saw a bridge and remembering that I was supposed to cross one, I deemed it to be as good as any.  That’s where everything started to unravel.  This was deep into East Berlin.  The buildings were different.  No more fancy modern architecture.  Stark grey Soviet era apartment buildings rose up all around me like tombstones.  No tourists ventured out here.  In fact, there were barely any Germans.  I wandered into a bakery and showed my map to the man behind the counter.   For whatever reason, I annoyed the man and he was more than happy to point me in any direction so long as it was away from his bakery.   I stopped a few blocks down and a hairdresser sent me the opposite way.  Finally, I sat down on a bench and lamented my navigational/linguistic shortcomings.  I would never meet my German lover.  This burgeoning relationship would be aborted by circumstance. 

Then, I saw her.

She walked right past my park bench, a loaf of bread protruding from a bag she had over one arm.  “Hey,” I said.  “Ria?”

Her daily routine did not change at all in my presence.  She continued shopping and I found myself in the same stores I had been in not a half an hour before.  Some of those same shopkeepers who had dismissed me so rudely were taken aback that I now stood a friend of the family.  It was a pleasant feeling of redemption even if I understood nothing of what transpired around me. 

Later that afternoon, I sat at her kitchen table as she unloaded groceries.  She lived in a Soviet era apartment building and while I’m no expert, it’s fair to say that the distinguishing characteristic of Soviet architecture is that is relatively depressing.  The building itself was a slate grey catacomb of uncovered concrete.  Everything was vast, but everything was empty.  We climbed three flights of stairs under dim, caged light bulbs past walls scrawled with graffiti.  I recognized the word “Fuck” every now and again and it made me feel at home.  The apartment itself was a gargantuan three bedroom affair.  A single hallway led past the bedrooms, the floor of which was lined with colorful, abstract paintings set out to dry.  Open bedroom doors provided a window into the lives I was now investigating.  Sleeping bags on the floor.  Clothing strewn about.  Paint and candelabras everywhere.  I was beginning to understand that she didn’t so much live here as squatted here.  Nevertheless, she kept a tidy kitchen and tried to engage in conversation as she arranged her affairs.  She set a pot of tea to boil, then looked at me and said, “You.  Story.  Life.”

Where do I begin, I thought.  More importantly, why would I begin?  Despite the fact that she seemed genuinely interested in my life story, our total lack of any common language would make for a rather frustrating telling of this epic tale.  But any conversation would have been a stretch, so I opted for my life story, embellished to include super powers and orphan saving.  She didn’t seem to mind.  After I finished, I pointed to her and said, “You.  Story.  Life. “

She exited the kitchen briefly, then returned with a cigar box of photographs and laid them out in front of me.  She had grown up on a farm in East Germany before the wall came down.  Even without a common language, I understood.   It was a small town and she had gotten out.  I could identify. 

She took me into her bedroom.  A mattress sat on the floor, sheets twisted into a rope.  And there was paint.  Everywhere.  Cans of paint.  Tubes of paint.  Paint brushes.  Specks and splotches of every color streaked the room while mismatched planks of wood leaned up against the wall, one on top of the next, either drying or waiting to be painted.  She couldn’t afford to buy canvasses, so she painted anything that she found in the street.  The result was that her room resembled a sort of psychedelic scrap yard.  Bright colors swirled around me.  But as she tried to explain her life and work, she grew frustrated and reverted back to German. 

Then, a pleasant surprise.

It seems that Ria had a roommate.  This roommate would be home any minute and spoke English extremely well.  She would be able to translate for us and end this frustrating series of monosyllabic misunderstandings.  In the meantime, she suggested that we make a painting together.  She sat me down on the floor and found what appeared to be her nicest white canvas.  Then, she gathered up a vast array of paint tubes, pencils and markers.  She sat down cross-legged opposite me, the blank canvas between us.  After spreading the markers across the floor, she selected one and handed it to me.  “Go,” she said. 

I hesitated, holding the marker just over the canvas.  She put her hand over mine and pushed down until the black felt tip touched the blank surface.  Again she said, “Go.”

I streaked the canvas with a black line that curved from one side to the other.  I looked at her.  She reached out and took the marker back.  Then she studied the line and drew her own spiraling design.  We traded the marker back and forth like that for a while until we had created a maze of asymmetrical shapes and sizes.  Finally, she decided that it was finished.  Ready for paint.  She squeezed a few tubes out onto her palette and began mixing the colors.  I watched her for a moment, fascinated by her expertise until she tossed a tube of paint at me and encourage me to watch less and do more.   I did. 

Immediately colors splashed onto the canvas.  The lines and shapes we had drawn were respected, but not always followed.   She went right into a natural rhythm with the paint, attacking the stark black and white surface with abandon, leaving it glistening with thick layers of blues and greens.  Painting had always seemed like such a refined activity, to see someone bite into it with such freedom imbued me with the same intensity.  We were going at it.  And paint was everywhere.  Spattered on our clothes.  Our hands.  Faces.  Under our nails.  It was frantic.  Better than sex.  Almost.  Then she stopped me.  And spun the canvas around.  She worked on mine.  I worked on hers.  Adding colors the other might not have considered.  Finding new detail to caress out of the abstraction.  Holy shit.  Why had I never made a painting with a chick before?  This was getting—

The door slammed. 

“Hallo?”  A deep voice boomed in from the hallway.  “Ria?” 

The roommate was home.  Immediately my mind flashed to a paint-splattered threesome.  Her hot roommate translating exactly what everyone wanted done and undone.  This could be the Penthouse letter I was destined to write.

Then, a large goth chick appeared in the doorway.  There would be no threesome.  Her roommate was not fat, but it is fair to say that she was big-boned.  Looking up at her from the floor, she seemed like a giant or an ogre depending on your preferred mythology.   Waves of dirty curls framed her pale faced caked with an inch of powder and three pencils worth of black eye liner.  Ria and her exchanged a few words, then she looked at me and said, “My name is Helga.”

The truth is I don’t remember her name.  But we’ll go with Helga because it feels right.  She was a Helga if ever there was one. 

It turns out that Helga was only living with Ria because she was incredibly depressed and if she spent too much time alone she would try to kill herself again.  Ria and I had planned to use her as a translator for our blossoming love affair, a German Cyrano, but her Eeyore-like depression weighed heavily and needlessly into every conversation.  Every time Ria was about to tell me something important like whether or not she had a boyfriend, Helga would interject with,  “I’M SO DEPWESSED!”  or  “I’M SO  SAD!”  The first time it happened, I naturally assumed that she was translating something that Ria had said and I inquired, “Why is she depwessed?” 

Helga grabbed me by the collar.  “Not her!  Me!  Helga is depwessed!”  Then she started to cry.  On my shoulder.  This was worse than no translator at all.  Black tears ran from her eyes.  The stains would never come out of my shirt.  Ria took her into the other room.  Wailing and sobbing echoed through the apartment.  After a few minutes, Ria came back into the kitchen with a finger over her lips.  Helga had fallen asleep.    Now was our chance.  She motioned for me to follow her and I did.  She opened the front door of the apartment and we exited.  Quickly, while the giant was sleeping. 

The top floor of the building had no apartments.  It had no walls.  Metal support beams grew sporadically from the floor, but other than that it was a vast empty space.  Large windows lined all four sides.  They extended from the floor to the ceiling.  Despite the sleeping bags strewn about, it seemed no one had been here in quite some time.  Years of dust and grime caked the windows enough that squatters could etch their names in the dirt.  And they did.  Some windows sported tiny holes surrounded by a web of cracked glass.  Others had no glass at all or perhaps just jagged shards hanging onto the sides of the frame like a giant mouth with glass teeth.  She took me by the hand and pushed open one of the windows.  The bottom of it swung out and up, while the top see-sawed down into the room.  A huge rush of wind blew trash around the room.  And we sat.  Hanging our feet over the edge of the building. 

The view was spectacular.  Ria pointed out the various neighborhoods and landmarks that we could see from our vantage point, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.  Fact is, I didn’t really care about the specifics.  It was a great day and I could see forever.  She explained to me the difference between a boyfriend (romantic) and her boy friends that were coming over later to drink beer.  Despite her struggling English, she made herself quite clear that she did not have a boyfriend.  Here was my moment.  High above the city, my German fetish would finally take fruit.  But as she spoke about her lack of a boyfriend, my mind drifted to one inconvenient fact.

I still had a girlfriend back home.  Granted, she was in California and I would most likely never see her again, but all the same we had never officially broken up and my conscience was starting to get the best of me.  I mulled over the dilemma as I looked out across the city.  Every sign was pointing to a raucous sexcapade on the top floor of this East Berlin high rise.  Yet there I was struggling to find a rationale. 

Quite possibly it is during this time that Ria determined that I was gay.  That would be the only reasonable excuse for my hesitancy at this point in the face of such a sweet scenario.  Clothing should have been flung out the window.  It should have floated down from the upper floor of the building onto neighbors returning home.  They’d look up just to see a bra sailing out and perhaps a mascara-stained t-shirt billowing out like a cotton jellyfish.  But instead there was indecision.  And silence.  Finally, Ria got up and asked me if I was hungry.  It was then that I realized just how entirely I had blown the situation.  It was a fleeting moment that had come and gone.  I would never get it back.  At least not with Ria.  Life was on a plate in front of me and though I was hungry for it, I was too dense, too cautious to take a bite.  I promised myself that I would forever eat life like a king. 

We went back downstairs.  Helga had woken from her slumber and regaled me with more tales of her sorrow including the gruesome details of her latest suicide attempt.  Ria’s friends came over and though none of them were officially “boyfriends”, I sensed that all of them now had a better shot at her than I did.  I was cast out by my German lover.  Banished to Helga and a conversation that made my ears bleed.  Eventually, we went out.  Drinking beer in a cemetery.  It was all quite fitting and Helga was right home, talking to the tombstones telling me how lucky they were.  I tried to reignite the flame with Ria, but she would barely even speak to me.  English was too much of a hassle, especially with so little reward.  After a few beers, they all got tired of speaking English and I was alone.  What does one do when you’re the only one who speaks your language?   I proceeded to get absolutely shit-housed.

We wandered down into some kind of street festival and checked out the sights.  I heard random bits of English from American passers-by and thought briefly of abandoning ship, but something made me stay with my group of Germans.  The possibility of reconnecting with Ria lingered in my mind even though each beer I drank made it less and less a possibility.  The last thing I remember was standing on a picnic bench that I assumed would be connected to the table, thus unable to topple over.  I was wrong.  It toppled.  I went down. 

I woke up naked in a Snoopy sleeping bag.  Ria came in with coffee.  I wondered briefly if we had actually had sex and I had blacked it out.  I understood quickly that we hadn’t.  She had slept in another room.  I tried to pull myself together and inquired about the location of my clothing.  She gathered it together from various corners of the room.  It seemed that at some point during the evening I had exploded.  She exited.  I drank my coffee and got dressed.    

When she came back in, she selected three paintings and told me that I could have one of them.  I picked out an abstract cloud of green, pink, and blue slathered thickly onto a small piece of reinforced cardboard.  She signed and dated it for me.  After that, we traded CDs.  I got a mix of German electronica and handed over my (then) favorite BranVan 3000.  A good trade.  But it was getting late.  I had a train to catch that afternoon and I still needed to pass by my hostel in order to gather my worldly possessions and shove them into a bag.  She walked me down the stairs.  Into the street.  She walked me back past the bakery and over the bridge.  To the U-Bahn.  Then, I said good-bye to Ria.  I said good-bye to Berlin. 

I had my painting.  Munich was next.

The Loneliness of the Onside Kicker

Things were starting to come together in the sixth grade.  The first year of middle school was a time for hope and prosperity.  My high-pitched voice had yet to change, so I was cast as the lead soprano in the school musical.  My past year as a safety patrol had engendered a feeling of respect and admiration among my peers.  I was a kid with a whistle.  But besides that, everywhere I looked, there were eighth grade girls roaming the halls, some of them with actual breasts.  I needed a girlfriend. 

After considerable badgering, my father allowed me to join the neighborhood football team, a strategy that was certain to land me the hot girlfriend I suddenly needed.  This was Texas, after all, and I lacked imagination.  The strategy was perfect.  Of course all of my friends were on the team, but more importantly, the team had cheerleaders.  We were the Cowboys, they the Cowgirls.   Never mind that I didn’t know any of the rules of football, I was ready for the big-time.  Sure, I had to give up soccer in order to join the team, but what did I care?  Soccer didn’t have cheerleaders.  After playing a couple rough and bloody games with my friends in my front yard, I felt I had a keen grasp of the basics and was eager to strap on the helmet and pads. 

My best friend and neighbor was the quarterback of the team and had been for the past three seasons.  His brother quarterbacked the high school team, so he had good stock.  He couldn’t have expected that his rookie neighbor would walk onto the field and challenge him for the starting position, yet when the coaches realized that I was left handed, I became the new secret weapon.  Opposing teams would have no idea how to defend against a left-handed quarterback and these wily Pop Warner coaches were looking for any advantage they could find.  This was amazing for me.  Being left-handed was the bane of my baseball existence.  We were lepers relegated to the outfield or at best first base.  Here, I was exotic.  I would be bred into a superstar.  My friend and I competed vigorously for the starting position for about ten minutes until it became abundantly clear that I had no idea how to play football.  I had seen some video and knew what it was supposed to look like, but the specifics of the game continued to elude me.  Other factors held back me back.  In addition to my lack of what they termed to be “football intelligence” was also my newly acquired nickname: Turtle.  As it turns out, I am the slowest person to ever play the game of football.  My coach had been around a long time and seen a lot of slow kids, but he was quite sure I was the slowest.   It couldn’t be helped.  The soccer uniform was light and I raced like a gazelle in hot pants.  Now, sweating under twenty pounds of pads, I could barely stand.  My helmet continuously slipped down over my eyes and with my yellow plastic mouthpiece inserted, my complaints were garbled and incoherent.  To say the least, I was frustrated.  My stint as quarterback came to a merciful end.  I tried my hand at other positions, but again, not being familiar with any of the “rules” assured that success remained just out of my grasp. 

I was relegated to a position where a kid like me could really make a difference: onside kicker.  For those unfamiliar with the intricacies of football, the onside kick is a seldom-used maneuver, especially in the sixth grade.  After scoring a touchdown, the team that scored kicks the ball off to the other team.  Normally, they kick the ball back as far as they can to pin their opponent back deep within their own territory.  An onside kick is used if a team that has just scored wants to try and get the ball back.  The kickoff only has to travel ten yards before it is a live ball and the kicking team can recover it.  This gives the kicking team a chance to get the ball back, but risks giving the receiving team good field position.  Throughout the entire season, we attempted only one onside kick.  It was unsuccessful. 

Nevertheless, throughout entire season, as the rest of the team practiced their offensive and defensive formations, I stood to the side practicing my onside kicks just in case the occasion ever arose.   On the soccer field, I had been a defensive player.  My job was to clear the ball out by kicking it as far as I possibly could.  It was not a finesse position.  An onside kick requires a delicate kick to the top third of the football, which causes it to skip across the ground for about nine yards then pop straight into the air.  Along with finesse, the onside kick requires a good deal of luck.  I had neither. 

At the end of each practice before we started wind sprints, the coach would line up the entire team to watch what I had been doing while they practiced.  They would line up and I would turn the tee upside down and attempt to blow their minds.  Inherently, the onside kick would fail and the coach would rally the rest of his team by saying, “See?  That’s why we’ve got to get on the board early!  Turtle here isn’t gonna save your asses!  Everybody line up!  It’s puke day!”

         A puke day meant that we would run until we all puked.  Houston summers start early and finish late and the excessive humidity makes life a soup.  You break a sweat just going to the mailbox.  After few pushups in the sun, I was guaranteed to see old food.  These were days before politically correct nonsense like “water breaks” and “heat exhaustion”, they ran us until we puked or passed out.  Truly, I have never run more than I did as an eleven year old Ponderosa Cowboy.  The only consolation is that one of us actually went on to win a Superbowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  His father was in charge of the running and he was relentless with his son who would often cry rather than puke.  I did both.  And while the running was bad, the fact that it always started with a failed onside kick made it just that much worse.  Perhaps if I had executed a perfect onside kick, we wouldn’t have to run.  In that brief moment of clarity between puking and running, I wondered if I could have saved us all.   

Regardless of my lack of playing time, I had landed myself a girlfriend and she was the tallest girl on the squad.  At twelve years old, she was already five foot ten, which put her a good four inches above me.  Cathy was her name, a beanstalk of a blonde.  From my position on the bench, I could always spot her in the top row, a few heads above the rest of the Cowgirls.  I imagined her cheering loudly for me, telling her friends about the horrific injury that kept me sidelined.  “Untapped potential” are the words she would use.  “Just wait for an onside kick.”

The last game of the season pitted us against the most feared team in the league: The Rushwood Raiders.  Their players fed into our middle school and the next year we’d be teammates, but this year we were sworn enemies.  Their players had beards and children.  We had one kid with a goatee, but he couldn’t save us.  Lining up for the coin toss, the size difference between our teams foretold of injuries to come.  During each game, as a precautionary measure, an ambulance was always parked by the end zone.  Today there were two.  It was a good day to be an onside kicker.  Our first player was knocked out of the game on the opening kickoff.  When two kids are running full speed directly at each other and one of the kids has a mustache, he wins.  The first Cowboy was carted out with a minor concussion.  After the second kid was taken to the hospital, mother ceased to shake their cowbells.  They got worried and whispered amongst themselves.  Normally, the fans would be rowdy.  Empty gallons of milk were brought and filled with beans, whereupon a rigorous shaking would provide the soundtrack to Cowboy victory.  Pom-poms rustled fiercely in the stands, but not today.  Such outward expressions of enthusiasm would seem inappropriate in the mournful wake of the third and fourth Cowboy being carted off the field.  Fear was another factor.  The Rushwood Raiders made no qualms about the fact that they were trying to injure us and took delight in each new ambulance that arrived.  Players on my team began to fake injuries in order to get out of the game.  We were running out of players.  My safety on the bench was coming into jeopardy. 

“Peterson!  You’re in!”

I jumped up and looked at the scoreboard.  We were down thirty to zero.  It seemed like an odd time for an onside kick, but I grabbed my tee and headed over to my coach on the sidelines.  “Holy shit, Turtle!  What’s the tee for?”

“The onside kick.”

“Onside kick?”  My coach grabbed the tee and threw it.  “Pay attention, Turtle.  We’re on offense.  You’re in as tailback.”

“What?”

“Tailback.  Jesus Christ, just get out there.  They’ll tell you where to stand.”

It was halfway through the fourth quarter.  The few players who remained in the game were surprised when I trotted over and joined the huddle.  My friend, Steve (quarterback) asked me what I was doing there. 

“Coach told me I’m a tailback.”

Voices chimed in from the huddle.  “Tailback?”

“Turtle?”

“Why are we doing an onside kick?”

“It’s not an onside kick,” I said.  “I’m in at tailback.  Where do I stand?”

There were rules about playing time in our league.  Registration for the league cost around a hundred bucks, so each kid was guaranteed a certain amount of playing time.  I usually filled my quota on special teams and a few odd downs as an offensive lineman.  Never before had I been in any position to actually touch the ball, let alone score a touchdown.  Forgetting briefly the bearded twelve year olds on the other side of the ball, I felt I was destined for greatness. Today was the day. 

They told me the play and where I was to stand.  I looked across at the defense that had wreaked so much havoc on our team.  They were already lined up and ready to go.  These kids were huge.  One in particular called out my number, “I see you Eighty-five!  Fresh meat!  I like it!”  He hyperventilated through his mouthpiece.  Foamy spit exploded with each breath.  Upon hearing my number called out loud, I instinctively looked down at my jersey, hoping the number might change.  It didn’t.  “That’s right eighty-five.  I’m talking to you!”

At this point, he began to chant “Eighty-five!  Eighty-five!”  He was soon joined in the chant by the rest of his teammates.  Some of them skipped the chant and went right for barking and growling.  The effect was terrifying.  Still in the huddle, one of my teammates patted my shoulder pads and said, “Don’t worry, man.  They’ve been doing that shit to all of us.” 

I looked around the huddle.  Terrified eleven year olds offered encouragement.  “The first couple plays will be bad, but they let up after that.”

“Just stay away from the ball.”

“And don’t try to block anybody.”

Here the quarterback took offense.  “Don’t block anyone?  Thanks fuck-hole.  Then, I get smashed.”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

With that we broke huddle and headed out for imminent doom.  Since they were still chanting my number, I decided it was in my best interest to limp out to the line of scrimmage.  I figured they might think I was a handicapped kid and take it easy on me.  From the field, I could still make out my super tall cheerleader girlfriend in the stands and, more specifically, I could see that her fingers were laced together in front of her and she seemed to be whispering a prayer.  I was not a religious kid, but this seemed like a good idea, so I said my own little prayer and waited for the ball to snap. 

I had never been tackled by someone who was barking, but I guess I assumed they would stop once I was on the ground.  In fact, the barking continued until the rest of his team pried him off of me.  I peeled myself off the ground and limped back to the huddle.  I had not touched the ball.  In fact, the play had come nowhere near me, but still my tackler’s teammates cheered and slapped his helmet as if he had stopped me at the goal line. 

Play after play continued like this.  Steve would hand the ball off to the kid with the goatee, then we would all try to get out of the way.  My strategy involved sprinting towards the sideline after the ball was snapped.  It took me out of every play, but kept me safe.  We moved slowly down the field.   Our poor kid with the goatee had taken about all the abuse he could manage and insisted that we run a pass play.  It was only fair.  He had single handedly managed to get us to the fifteen-yard line, it was time that the other ten of us contributed something.  The goatee kid went to the sideline.  Steve called out the pass play.  We were all terrified, but Steve especially.  He had a fragile constitution and a first half sacked had left him shaken both physically and emotionally.  “You guys better fucking block, okay?”

His blockers looked at the ground.  They were tired and scared. 

“Seriously, I’m tired of getting stomped back there.  I’ll just throw the ball away.”

His blockers were not in the mood to be scolded, “Fine.  Throw the fucking ball away.  We’re down by thirty.”   And we broke huddle. 

I was lined up in the backfield, ready to sprint for the sidelines.  It was my first pass play and I wanted nothing to do with it.  The ball was snapped.  I took off.  The (barking) guy covering me had caught on to my cowardly scheme and no longer deemed it worthy of his time to chase me to the sideline.  I was a conscientious objector and he had more important things to do.  But this play was different.  Normally, by the time I reached the sidelines, the play would be long dead, but this was a pass play and our quarterback was scrambling for his life.  I reached the sidelines and looked back.  The play was still going.  Then, it hit me.  There was no one with in fifteen yards of me.  I was wide open.  My plan worked!  I turned sharply and sprinted up the field headed for the end zone yelling wildly, “I’M OPEN!!!!  I’M OPEN!!!!”

Dreams of glory bounced around in my head.  My tall girlfriend would be jumping up and down in her seat clutching her girlfriends crying out, “I told you!  I told you!  That’s my man!!!”  The other girls would cheer and cry with her, but secretly resent the girl that had taken me off the market.  I was heading for the goal line and no one could stop me.  I turned back just in time to see Steve throw the ball high in the air.  It was coming my way. 

I had never scored a touchdown before, but I had planned meticulously for the occasion.  This was before the modern theatrics of today’s NFL.  There were no pens hidden in my socks and I was too small to dunk the ball over the goal post.  In those days, all you had was the touchdown dance.  I had prepared mine carefully and it combined a number of different influences.  Being a huge Houston Oilers fan, I was a huge fan of the Electric Slide, the preferred touchdown dance of star wide receiver Haywood Jefferies.  Every Sunday, I would wait for him to score and watch that move.  He lunged sideways, dragging his hand across the turf behind him then stand up and convulse in a full body twitch.  The electric slide was badass.  The other part of my routine was decidedly more “old school”.  Steve’s older brother had showed us how to spin the football so that it would remain on one end like a top.  I would spin the ball, then go for the slide.  I called the combination “The Electric Bug-a-Boo”.  Even if we lost, I would show our cheerleaders and those damn Rushwood Raiders that at least one of us had style. 

The ball floated above me as I headed across the five-yard line.  It would be close.  Steve had thrown a good ball, but not perfect.  The rule in our neighborhood was if you can touch it, you should catch it.  This ball was definitely within reach.  I dove and outstretched my arms.  For a moment, the weight of the bulky pads lifted and I was weightless, floating through the air.  Time slowed as I flew towards that football and my destiny.  The Cowboy they called Turtle would own the day.  Coming in late off the bench, this team found its hero.  This was for all the guys that got carted off.  This was for the benchwarmers.  This was for all the guys that never got to have tall girlfriends.  As I reached for the ball, I got a sense that the entire world had shifted in my favor.  Everything was now in reach for everyone that wanted it.  The leather ball landed squarely between my outstretched hands and I held on tight.  My flight was over and I hit the ground hard.  Two things happened at this moment.  I scored our team’s only touchdown of the game and…

I landed on a bee. 

The pain was immediate and excruciating.  Having never been stung by a bee, I was not familiar with such horrific pain.  I assumed I had been shot or stabbed.  I got up weeping and ran for the sidelines, cursing and blubbering through my mouthpiece that my arm was broken.  The highly anticipated debut of “The Electric Bug-a-boo” was postponed so that I could present another piece of performance theatre tentatively titled, “Running to the Sidelines Crying that my Arm is Broken.”   It was less “cool”, but just the end result was just as moving.  Three of my teammates had been carried away in an ambulance, so the audience was on high alert.  Anything was possible.  Perhaps my arm was broken, the jagged bone visible through the flesh.  Other parents helped my father through the crowd towards the bottom of the bleachers.  My wails of pain sent flocks of birds from their treetop nests. 

The coaches and medical staff came running out to meet me and a hush fell over the crowd while they assessed the situation.  Perhaps if they had let me run all the way off the field, their immediate diagnosis would not have been such a public occasion.  I was in the middle of the field with no place to hide.  I sniffled and tilted my head back, so I could see under my helmet.  Our head coach squinted and looked at my elbow.  He was not a doctor.  He took off his hat and went in for a closer look, holding my arm in the air for better light.  Then he scoffed a bit and shook his head, “Shit, Turtle. It’s just a bee sting.”

Not expecting such a weak diagnosis, I asked,  “It’s a what?”

A concerned parent yelled out from the stands.  “What happened?”

My coach turned and yelled to the crowd.  “IT’S ALL RIGHT!  IT’S JUST A BEE STING!”  The lame news quickly circulated through the crowd. 

The operation was done quickly in the field.  My coach took his fingernail and flicked the tiny stinger out of my arm.  He showed me the stinger on his fingertip.  It was smaller than an eyelash.  “See?  It was just a bee.”

“Really?”

Coach slapped the back of my helmet.  “Jesus Christ, Turtle, go sit down.”  

I looked back across the field of play.  Both teams had taken a knee out of respect for my grave injury.   Now, a few players began to rise and point at me.  The once silent crowd had turned on me.  As I walked to the sidelines, I could feel their eyes, quietly resenting the false drama I had put them through.  I was the boy who cried wolf.  My bee sting was not enough pain for them.  It didn’t merit their sympathy.  Scanning the bleachers, I realized it was the only time during the entire season that I couldn’t see my tallest of all tall girlfriends.   As the rest of the crowd remained standing, she sat. 

I reached my usual spot on the bench and sat down, looking up just in time to see the scoreboard change from zero to six.  I had caught the pass.  The touchdown counted.  My one chance to introduce the “Electric Bug-a-boo” to the screaming masses came and went.  I was sorry for that.  It still burns inside me.  Next time I score a touchdown, it will bring down the house.  Guarantee.

The tall Cowgirl dumped me the next week.

Fourth Grade Bulimia or The Price is Right & The Loss of Perspective

I was curled up below my mother’s desk in a yellow sleeping bag designed to look like a box of Crayola crayons.  This was the sick day routine.  She conducted the business end of her psychological practice at the desk above me and saw patients in the next room.  There were multiple therapy rooms, each designed for a different purpose.  All of them had huge puffy couches without sharp corners, but not all came complete with anatomically correct sock puppets.  There was a room designated the “Quiet Room”, which ironically enough is where people are sent to go bat-shit crazy.  It was a small room with carpet on every wall and a one-way observation mirror.  The room was filled with beanbags and batakas, which are padded therapy clubs used to relieve pent up aggression.  You were put in the room with the door closed and encouraged to have a go at it.  The room was totally soundproof and my brother and I would take turns at the observation mirror, watching the other beat the beanbags. 

         And while my sick days would take me on a tour of the various therapy rooms, I spent the majority of my time below my mother’s desk watching a three inch black and white television that only received the three major networks and even those just barely.  Hands down, my favorite show was The Price is Right.  I played along with the contestants, guessing the prices of various household appliances and hoping that the navy guy with all his buddies won the new car.  Audience members bounded happily down the stairs after hearing their name called to be a contestant.  It was the grandest moment in their lives.  I loved participating in it.  And I became somewhat obsessed. 

         Any trip to the grocery store or shopping mall found me wandering off trying to guess the price of random items.  Women’s clothing was difficult to gauge, but I was a champ at the grocery store.  As the cashier grabbed each item from the cart, I stood by the register calling out prices.  After a scan and a double-beep, the “actual retail price” would pop up on the screen behind him.  It was immediate gratification even if I didn’t officially win anything.  I prayed that my appearance on the show would be a grocery-heavy episode.  After hearing my name called, I would run down the stairs and embrace the other contestants.  I would grasp both of their hands and we would all jump up and down, sharing the highest joys our world has to offer. 

         The Price is Right started as a nice distraction in the otherwise boring sick day at my mother’s office, but it quickly took on a life of its own.  Problems arose.  The Price is Right runs at ten-thirty in the morning on weekdays.  A ten year old with a brutal school schedule would never be able to watch.  Using the VCR to record episodes would have led to embarrassing questions from everyone about my viewing habits, so I came up with another plan.  I learned how to make myself throw up. 

         Follow along kids!

         First, ask your teacher’s permission to use the restroom.  Then, go directly to the drinking fountain.  Verifying that the coast is clear, begin drinking.  You might be surprised at how much water you can hold in your belly.  Just when you think you can’t drink anymore, take ten more gulps.  Then return to the classroom.  Don’t forget to give your teacher back the hall pass.  Then sit down and act like everything is normal.  You’re just a kid who went to the bathroom.  Here, you must have patience.  You don’t want to allow any association to form between your recent bathroom trip and the spectacle about to unfold.  Finally, when you’ve chosen your moment, begin flexing your stomach muscles.  Of course, a lot of people will tell you that a finger down your throat is more effective, but when you’re in a packed classroom, the most important element is subtlety. 

         Begin flexing your stomach as hard as you can.  Eventually the two gallons of water in your stomach will become uncomfortable, compressed towards the top of your stomach.  Then, execute what I like to call a “Backwards Cough”.  It’s kind of a mix between a cough and a swallow, which will turn you into a human geyser.  The water pressure having built up behind your diaphragm, each “Backwards Cough” will allow the water to creep higher into your esophagus until you pick the perfect moment and flood the entire classroom.  Screams and eeewws will fill the class, but remember that you’re the victim here.  You’re the sick kid.  Stumble to the front of the class and get ready for a trip to the nurse’s office. 

         A fair question here might be that throwing up is such a radical option for faking sick, clearly I must have had other dramatic skills that could have won me that much desired trip home to watch The Price is Right.  Perhaps that’s true.  I might have developed a nice coughing fit or learned how to fake a seizure, but I learned early on that any sort of feigned illness would only lead to a temperature being taken and a round trip ticket back to class.  You can’t argue with a thermometer. 

But vomit?  Vomit is the ultimate trump card.  Once you throw up, no one takes your temperature.  They send you home.  Immediately.

         The same kids always hung out in the nurse’s office.  All the nerdy kids found a brief port of refuge from the bullying.   They faked physical maladies in order to avoid swirlies and other tortures, but they would all be sent back to class.  Like a death row warden, the nurse would eventually call each of their names and say, “Andrew.  It’s time.” 

Andrew would roll over on the plastic cot, trying to convince the nurse that he was sleeping, but she would not be fooled.  At least, not by him. 

         “Andrew!”  Andrew sat up on his cot.  Fear in his eyes.  “Go back to class!  There’s nothing wrong with you.”

         Andrew protested here.  “But—“

         “But nothing.  Brian just threw up and needs to lie down.  Come get a hall pass.”

         I stood in the doorway as Andrew was booted from his bed.  I tried to look deathly ill, but he saw through it.  I wished I could have told him my secret.  I wished I could gather the weakest in the herd and tell them about the nauseatingly easy path away from the schoolhouse trauma, but I didn’t.  My secret technique could never be shared, lest all the nerds started throwing up everywhere and they would have us all quarantined.  Life was hard enough without people thinking nerdiness was an actual, contagious illness. 

         Alone, I waited for my ride home and alone I enjoyed The Price is Right.  My technique enjoyed unparalleled success and I began heading home most Monday mornings.  For the most part, if I watched one episode per week, I was satisfied.  It gave me a healthy three-day weekend at least twice a month.  This lasted from fourth grade through sixth grade.  Three solid years of sneaking home to watch Bob Barker and no one ever doubted my act.  I was invincible.  The doors of my elementary school were no longer locked for me.  I could leave at will.  The only chink in my armor came in the form of one nagging question.

         I had never seen another student throw up.  I always arrived at the scene too late and witnessed only the aftermath.  This is where my confusion began.  In my school, whenever a kid threw up in class, the janitor came by to scatter a bunch of kitty litter over the puddle to absorb odor.  It was a step in the process that I had never observed and the questions it raised would plague me for years.  Having never seen the original throw up, I assumed that other students were vomiting up this kitty litter substance.  I began to freak out that my puke looked so different.  There was something wrong with me.  Granted, my puke was always five gallons of water, but even when I had actually been sick, it was never so dry and granular.  It was a mystery I needed to solve.  I sought out vomit around the school to investigate.  Upon hearing of a new puking, I ran over to check it out, but word travelled slowly around the school and inevitably I found that mysterious kitty litter.  It was years later before I discovered the truth.  I was in high school when I finally saw the janitor spreading the kitty litter over some puke in the hallway.  It was like stumbling upon Santa Claus filling a stocking.  I stopped in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Wow,” I said.  “All this time.  Thank you.” 

A weight had been lifted.  A question answered.  The janitor was confused. 

Eventually, I tired of The Price is Right.  Once I craved the attention of female classmates, puking in class didn’t seem like such a good idea.  I didn’t think I could kiss someone after seeing them throw up and I imagined they felt the same.  That combined with the fact that I have never been good at keeping things to myself and this was one whopper that was about to explode.  I had to tell someone.  In hindsight, that someone should not have been my mother. 

She was (to put it gently) unhappy with my confession, but still treaded gingerly on the subject as it almost fell into the category of eating disorder.  I chose not to mention my obsession with The Price is Right, instead telling her that my sole purpose was to escape the relentless bullying of my classmates.  I judged correctly that it would put me in a more favorable, if not pitiful light.  This confession took place a couple of years after the last incident and the statute of limitations had passed, so I was let off the hook fairly easily.  The school never knew.  It was just between my mother and me.  For the moment.

One day during my sophomore year of high school, I was feeling overwhelmed.  I was in a play that evening and had been up at six o’clock in the morning for basketball practice.  All I wanted was to go home and rest before the show.  So, I dusted off an old trick.  I excused myself from science class and went straight for the drinking fountain.  Twenty minutes later, I was in the nurse’s office and fifteen minutes after that my mother pulled up out front.  As we drove away from the school, my mother asked me if I was truly sick or if I was faking it. 

By that time, I had realized that faking sick in order to go home and watch The Price is Right was questionable behavior, but this was different.  I was genuinely exhausted and needed some rest, so I decided to be honest with her. 

Mistake #672. 

The tires squealed as my mother made a U-turn and headed back to school.  I was confused and terrified.  It had quickly gone from trusting confession to caught in the act.  She parked in the fire lane in front of the school and got out of the car.  “Let’s go,” she said.

This was unprecedented.  My act had gone undetected for so many years yet now here I was, a high schooler facing the consequences of a charade I developed as a nine year old game show fanatic.  I couldn’t believe what she was doing.  She would ruin me I told her.  She didn’t care.  I was just trying to be honest I said.  Not listening.  She dragged me by the arm over to the front office.  I had just bid these nice ladies farewell and they were more than surprised to see me back, much less in the vice grip of this angry woman that none of them had seen before.  “My son is cutting class.  Where’s the truant officer?”

The ladies in the office didn’t know what to say.  “Truant officer” was such an outdated term that it gave us all pause.  No school I ever attended had a “truant officer”, but given enough time, I knew my mother could find one.  “Umm…  Okay.”  The ladies at the front desk shuffled their papers around and tried to figure out what to do.  These were my friends’ mothers.  They recognized the panic on my face.  “I’ll just go back to class,” I told them.  “We’ll just pretend like nothing happened.”

“But something did happen,” my mother said.  “Where is the truant officer?”

My friend’s mom looked at me and said, “Let’s see if we can’t find him.  I think he’s back in his office.”

I couldn’t believe it.  There was a truant officer after all.  I was supremely fucked.   Kids still got paddled at my high school.  My ass began to throb preemptively.  “Brian, come with me.”

I looked at my mother, hoping for a last minute reprieve.  It didn’t come.  “I’ll be waiting right here,” she said. 

“What?  Why are you waiting?” 

“I thought you wanted to rest up for your show tonight.”

“What?!”

“Brian,” the office lady interrupted.  “He’s waiting.”

They buzzed me into the office and I stepped inside.  I took one last look at my mother through the glass.  The hour of my execution had come.  Years of bad karma were coming to a head, but I never thought my own mother would be the one to set it in motion.  “Let’s go, Brian!” 

I followed my friend’s mom into a back office and she closed the door.  I was surprised to see a number of vending machines and a coffee maker.  The truant officer’s lodgings were not as terrifying or private as I had imagined they would be.  There were other teachers there, sitting around tables drinking sodas and eating chips.  Then, I realized.  This was no torture chamber.  This was the break room. 

The office lady was concerned.  “Brian, I don’t know what this is all about, but I’d just as soon not have to deal with it like this.  You’re a good kid and if you wanna go home from school some time, just tell me.  We can let you go home.  You don’t need to fake sick.  We all have bad days.  Just talk to us.  We are reasonable people.”

My circuits were blown.  All I had to do was ask nicely and they would let me leave school.  “Now let’s just wait in here for a little bit, then we’ll tell your mother that the truant officer read you the riot act.”

“Okay.”

“You want some chips or something?”

We waited around in the break room for about five minutes, then, I summoned all of my theatrical ability and limped back down the hallway towards my mother, tears streaming down my cheeks.  I wanted her to think I had been in a Turkish prison.  “Can we go now?” I asked her, my voice cracking with emotion. 

“Have you learned your lesson?” 

“I’m sorry,” I told her.  And I was sorry.  Sorry that I had ever told her about my trick.  All I wanted was to go back to science class and be pissed off, but she insisted that I come home with her and rest up for my show.  I took the path of least resistance.  We headed outside together where we found my mom’s car had been ticketed for parking in the fire lane in front of the school.  I couldn’t help but smile.  She couldn’t help but notice. 

Post Script:

Years later, I found out that the contestants on The Price is Right are not drawn at random.  All of the audience members are pre-screened while waiting in line for the show.  Producers pick the contestants based on a brief interview conducted with each audience member on their way into the taping.  It’s hard to determine what answers might earn you one of those prized spots, but they seem to always pick the craziest fans of the show.  When I was an undergraduate at USC, some friends and I went to a taping of The Price is Right and while I tried to mask my excitement, it was for me a pilgrimage.  Our group was big enough that they guaranteed one of us would be a contestant.  I was determined that it would be me.  We waited in line for three hours before we got to the front where a screener asked me one question: “How much do you like The Price is Right?”

I told him point blank that as a child, I was such a huge fan of the show that I used to make myself throw up at school in order to go home and watch it.  Judging by the reaction of everyone within earshot, I immediately sensed that I had over-shared.  I was not picked to be a contestant.  And while I was never told the official CBS policy regarding childhood bulimia, I can only assume that they are against it.

The Mysterious Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Bubbles Peterson

The police were already at the house when my bus stopped at the corner.   I got out of my seat and headed to the front, hunching to look out the low, spotted windows, struggling to decipher the scene.  Wanting to know.  Not wanting to know.  Moments earlier, I had been victorious in a heated game of pencil break, now things were suddenly amiss.  I wished that they weren’t. 

I paused at the back door.  The police officer was standing in our kitchen listening to my mother.  He had a notepad, but wasn’t writing anything down.  My mother was speaking with wildly animated gestures.  Enough stalling.  I entered. 

         “Brian!  Thank God you’re back!  Someone killed Bubbles!” 

         “What?”  I looked at the police officer for some sort of confirmation. 

“We’re trying to figure all this out.”

Bubbles was my rabbit.  The never-ending quest for a pet had finally culminated in a grey lop-eared bunny.  The bunny was not my idea.  Having worked my way down the pet hierarchy from dog to cat to pot-bellied pig without luck, I finally asked my parents what animal they would be willing to have in their house.  The answer was a rabbit and he would not be staying in the house.  My father and I built a large cage for my soon-to-be best friend and found a great spot for it in the backyard.  I wasn’t thrilled about the prospects of owning a rabbit, but I was desperate and would agree to anything with fur.  I picked him out and took him home in a cardboard box.  My parents were thrilled, believing that it would be the end of my constant badgering.  They were wrong.  It was boredom at first sight. 

My grandmother’s technique of naming a pet based on his personality only works if the animal has some sort of personality.  Otherwise, every single rabbit on the planet would be named Hoppy because that’s all he ever did.  Scratch that.  He also wiggled his nose and ate lettuce, but breathing and eating could hardly be considered personality traits and neither exactly screamed a specific name at me.  My brother had his own ideas.  He hid my new rabbit inside a pot on the stove, suggesting that I might call him “Dinner”.  I later realized that one good bowl of rabbit stew might have been preferable to the three boring years I owned this fluffy piece of livestock. 

I grew up watching Lassie reruns on Nickelodeon and longed for the companionship that Timmy felt for Lassie.  Bubbles and I never shared a bond like that.  In fact, that’s the reason he ended up with the name Bubbles.  He wasn’t a particularly bubbly animal.  He wasn’t particularly anything.  After two days, I gave up on locating his defining/name-worthy characteristic, so I named him after my sister’s boyfriend.  For whatever reason, this high school kid was nicknamed Bubbles.  He was a tall red-headed kid who played on the varsity basketball team.  I have no idea how he got this nickname or how he ever endured hearing it over and over again.  Regardless, I thought it was a nice tribute that might bring us closer if we were ever to become in-laws.  We did not.  I also hoped it would serve as an incentive to my older brother and sister to be nicer to me, so that they too might have animals named after them.  It was an honor they would never receive. 

         My mother sensed my immediate boredom with Bubbles the Rabbit.  Play dates between the two of us grew increasingly less frequent.  I could hardly be blamed.  Bubbles wasn’t putting much effort into our relationship.  He would spend most of his time inside eating magazines and hiding under chairs.  I tried to put him into a plastic hamster ball, but he wasn’t catching on.  He quickly became less of a friend and more of a chore.  Barefoot after dinner, I squished through our muddy backyard with a scoop of rabbit pellets for his evening meal.  I’ll freely admit that my standards for an animal greeting its owner were set impossibly high by Lassie bounding towards Timmy after school, but it’s safe to say that Bubble never even recognized me. 

         In an attempt to bring her son and his rabbit closer together, my mother suggested that I might take Bubbles on a walk around the neighborhood.  She even bought me a leash and harness for him.  I can’t imagine it was actually designed for a rabbit, but she presented it as the most obvious solution in the world.  I laid it out for her pretty straight.  Perhaps she didn’t understand.  This was a suburban neighborhood in Houston, Texas.  There were redneck kids who would sit in their windows with B.B. guns waiting for us to pass by on our bikes.  I had my tires shot out more than once.  If my mother thought I was going to walk this rabbit around the neighborhood she must have lost her mind.  We would both be shot.  If there was ever a book written on how to get your ass kicked at recess, the first chapter would undoubtedly be titled “Walking Your Rabbit”.  I explained the situation to her and expected to be let off the hook, but she insisted.  The rabbit was my idea she claimed and I was refusing to take care of it.  This was exactly why she and my father had not wanted to get a pet in the first place.  Inherently, it would be them who took care of it.  It would be her walking the rabbit.  But of course, it was not. 

         I took Bubbles from his cage and attempted to fit him into his new harness.  We were both confused and annoyed.  My mother knocked on the back window and waved to us.  I didn’t wave back.  Finally, I got Bubbles into his harness and clipped on the leash.  He didn’t exactly sprint off anywhere.  He didn’t move at all.  After a few moments, he hopped once and ate some grass from the back yard, but the leash remained decidedly limp.  “Take him out front!”  My mother yelled from inside.  “Take him for a walk!”

         I could no longer handle the peanut gallery, so I scooped Bubbles up and took him around to the front yard where I attempted to walk him.  He was not helpful in the least.  I would take three steps.  He would remain eating grass.  If I yanked on the leash, he would hop two steps towards me, then continue grazing.  Less fun was never had.  Neighbors walked their dogs down the street, each dog going nuts upon seeing Bubbles the rabbit lazily munching on St. Augustine.  I would gladly have fed Bubbles to any passing dog in exchange for one hour of playing fetch, but the owners never stuck around long enough for me to make the offer.  It was the last time Bubbles was ever walked. 

         This is not to say that Bubbles was not loved.  I loved Bubbles as much as anyone could love a rabbit, which is about as much as anyone could love their favorite folder or houseplant.  In times of trouble, Bubbles proved to be a good listener.  But when trouble found Bubbles Peterson, none of us were there to stop it. 

         My mother was a psychologist that specialized in multiple personality disorder.  For a time when I was a child, she was one of the leading national figures on the treatment of multiple personality disorder and most of our family vacations were to conferences in far away cities (like San Francisco) where she spoke about new methods of treating patients.   Multiple Personality (or how I understood it as a twelve year old) is caused by abuse, which causes a person to create another personality that is more able to cope with the abuse.  The personality splinters over and over again, often with each personality having his/her own voice, handwriting, and mannerisms.  The therapist’s job is to put these pieces back together again. 

         As her practice grew, my mother became more and more involved with this very specific (and horrific) field of work.  The more she learned about the abuse suffered by her patients, the more she became increasingly paranoid, convinced that her children would become victims of abuse if we strayed too far from the house.  She always had concerns about our safety.  One of the first books that made it to the back of my toilet was a terrifying collection of short stories entitled, Never Say Yes to a Stranger.  It included a dozen or so accounts of creepy men luring kids into their vans with candy or fraudulent stories about lost puppies.  Now the paranoia escalated.  My mother stopped allowing me to spend the night at friends’ houses convinced for a time that they might slip drugs into my food and molest me in my sleep.  These were families that we had known for years, but suddenly everyone was a suspect.  It was a strange time in our house.  While having dinner with my friend’s parents, they asked me why I was no longer allowed to sleep over.  Thinking my mother’s recent paranoia to be downright hilarious, I told them exactly why.  It was the last time I was invited over for dinner. 

This is not to cast a cloud of doubt over everything my mother said or did in these years, but we came to see life through a distinctly jaded lens.  There was no objective observer to tell us any different.  These were the facts of our situation and there was no room for doubt.

         Most of my mother’s patients were members of the same cult.  This was a satanic cult that engaged in ritualistic abuse, the purported details of which still bring vomit to my throat.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll give you the $25,000 Pyramid description: Sheepdogs, Car Batteries, Genitals.  Anyone care to buzz in?

         These were sick people and my mother was not making any friends by treating their relatives.  An emergency family meeting was called after my mother found a note on her car that read: “We’re watching you!”  The note was written in red ink on yellow paper and signed “The C”, ostensibly meaning “The Cult”. 

Below the signature, a huge bloody eye was drawn to reinforce the whole “We’re watching you” theme of the note.  It does seem odd that they referred to themselves as a “Cult”, but when confronted with crazy notes with bloody eyes, questions of semantics are thrown out the window.  We were not allowed to come home after school anymore.  For a few months I rode a different bus home and stayed with friends until my parents got home from work and determined the house to be safe.  Bubbles didn’t ride the bus and had no other friends.  In my parents haste to save their children, they had forgotten about my rabbit.  The “C” had not. 

         My mother continued speaking with the police officer while I ran outside to see what she was talking about.  Someone killed Bubbles?  The whole scenario seemed implausible.  Bubbles had no enemies.  He was just a boring grey rabbit who ate magazines.  But there he was, in his death throes.  Earlier that morning, he was normal, hopping around his cage, but now his head seemed to weigh twenty pounds and he couldn’t lift it off the floor of the cage.  His body contorted and he rolled onto his back.  He had lost all control of his muscles and his equilibrium was seriously out of whack.  The sight was disturbing. He looked like the control panel of an airplane as it nose-dives into the ocean.  Every light was blinking and every arrow spinning, but there was no information.  The only clue to his rapidly deteriorating condition was found in his food bowl where remained a fair amount of a suspicious white powder.  I was in charge of Bubbles’ diet and was quite certain that I had not sprinkled anything on top of his breakfast that morning, but there it was: white powder and a dying rabbit. 

         I raced back into the kitchen to find my mother pleading with the police officer to investigate the murder of my rabbit.  I was on the verge of tears, but still trying to find my bearings.  “What’s wrong with Bubbles?”  I asked her. 

“They killed him.  Did you see the powder?”

“Ma’am.  Let’s not rush into any assumptions here.  Who would want to kill your rabbit?”

“It’s not her rabbit.  It’s my rabbit.”

“I understand that son, but your mother here—“

“I’m not crazy!  Don’t treat me like a—“

“No one said you were crazy.”

“I want a full investigation.”

“Into the murder of your rabbit?”

“He’s my rabbit.”

“I understand that son. It’s just that—

“Yes.  A full investigation.  You’ve got a crime lab don’t you?

“Yes, ma’am, we do.”

“And my tax dollars pay your salary, don’t they?”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“Good.  Take the powder in for testing.  I want to know who killed my son’s rabbit!  Brian, get a Ziploc bag and collect some of that powder.   In fact, grab the entire bowl.  There might be fingerprints on it.  I don’t know why I’m doing your job, Officer.”

“I don’t know either, ma’am, but you’re doing a great job.”

“Don’t get smart with me.  Brian, what are you waiting for?  Get the bowl.”

“But Bubbles isn’t dead yet.”

“What?”

“He’s not dead.  He’s just rolling around and stuff.”

“I’m so sorry honey.  He shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

My mother put her hand on my cheek and tried to come up with a plan.  Then, she had an idea.  “Officer?  Clearly my son’s rabbit is in quite a bit of pain.  Whether you believe me or not, he’s been poisoned by people who don’t like me very much.  And he is suffering.  Please.  Do the decent thing and help us get this over with.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.  What are you asking me to do?”

“End his suffering.”

“End his suffering?”

“Please.”

“You mean kill him.”

“Yes.  Mercifully.”

“With what?”

“You’ve got a gun, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but—

“It would mean a great deal to me and my son to know that Bubbles didn’t suffer needlessly at the end of his life.”

“You’re asking me to shoot your rabbit?”

“Do you need me to sign something first?”

The police officer didn’t shoot my rabbit that day.  He took the Ziploc bag of evidence and promised to take it down to the crime lab for testing, but I could sense that it wasn’t a top priority.  His top priority was not solving the murder of Bubbles Peterson.  It was getting the hell out of the Peterson house.  He said he would call if he got any leads on the case and left us his card.  We never heard from him again. 

We went out to the cage and watched Bubbles writhe around.  A few times, we thought he was dead and my mother would mutter a prayer, then he would start moving again.   Neither of us wanted to get close enough to check his pulse.  Finally, we took him to the vet.  We sat in the waiting room while they administered the shot.  My mom held my hand.  We both cried and mourned his passing.  

Bubbles the Bunny led a quiet, unassuming life until his last day.  Then, it was satanic cults, intrigue, and murder.  Hopefully, somewhere up there in Bunny Heaven, Bubbles is telling his story to a bunch of lame bunnies who never had such grand adventures.  I hope he tells the story well.  I bet he does.  And I bet the other bunnies are jealous as hell that no one ever murdered them.  

An Insufficient Jungle Gym

After seeing the Karate Kid, I wanted to be in karate.  After seeing The Great Mouse Detective, I wanted to be a mouse detective.  I got home from my first trip to the circus and walked out into my backyard.  We had a jungle gym behind the garage.  It had seen better days.  The swing was rusty and I had not crossed the monkey bars since the previous summer, but no matter.  It would have to do.  It had the only thing that mattered: a trapeze. 

Someone might have told me that one does not just become a trapeze artist.  Normally you are born into it.  You are a member of a Romanian or Italian family with six other children and your family has been on the trapeze for the last three generations since your grandfather moved over from clowning to impress his first wife the bearded lady.  Someone might have told me that a youngster in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, didn’t have much of a shot at making it to the Ringling Brothers circus as a star trapeze artist, especially when his only training facility was a single rusty trapeze not four feet off the ground.  But they didn’t.  And the dream flourished.  I just needed a coach, a Mr. Miyagi of the trapeze.  My sister would have to do. 

By the time I slipped out of my mother’s womb, my sister was the ripe old age of five.  Thus, it came as no surprise that my mother deemed that she was to have a hand in raising the youngest child.  My mother had changed more than her share of diapers, so she began to outsource some of the more undesirable work to my sister.  My sister (still needing the food and shelter that my mother provided) took on the tasks. 

I wasn’t always the easiest child.  I often refused to eat or bathe.  My sister found my weakness.  When bath time rolled around, my sister put me inside of a laundry basket, and then placed the basket inside the bathtub.  We called it an old-time bath.  This was because it looked like a barrel into which one might dunk the head of a supremely drunk cowboy.  I was never cleaner.  My old-time baths were forever sullied when my brother threw a sock puppet unicorn into the bath with me, then claimed I was having sex with it.  At six years old, I wasn’t certain what “sex” was, but I was fairly certain that the unicorn and I had engaged in no such behavior.  Regardless, my brother continued to propagate this salacious myth for years to come. 

         My sister was also in charge of my bed-wetting.  This unfortunate habit had continued so long that I was old enough to put on my own diapers before bed.  My sister’s method was simple.  She gave me candy.  More specifically, she gave me watermelon-flavored candy.  The method worked and within a couple of months my bed was dry as a bone.  She was a guru.  Indeed, when teamed with my brother, my sister could be the vicious, evil genius of the upstairs, but alone, she was (and always has been) an excellent life-coach.

I told her the plan.  I asked her if she would be willing to coach me on the trapeze.  She admitted that she didn’t have much experience, but agreed to move forward with the project on a provisional basis.  First, she wanted to see my current skill level.  She wanted to see what raw acrobatic clay she had to mold, before determining whether or not she could turn me into a star.  I thought this fair, so I took her behind the garage and showed her my still nascent routine. 

I gripped the trapeze tightly and swung back and forth a few times.  Then, I flipped over and draped my legs over the bar, hanging by my knees.  This made the back of my legs burn.  The steel of the trapeze was no longer smooth.  The rust irritated the skin.  I pulled myself up and sat on the trapeze.  I looked at my sister expectantly, and then jumped off.  After I got off the ground, I dusted myself off and looked at my sister.  “I think we’ve got something here,” she said. 

My future was set.  I could already see it.  It would take at least a year of training, but eventually I would be able to leave home and join the circus.  I could leave behind these scandalous rumors regarding my sexual escapades with a unicorn.  The circus would set me free.  We set upon our training regimen with discipline.  Obviously the first problem was our meager training facility.  I could learn the basics on the jungle gym, but if I was ever going to make it to the center ring, I was going to need better equipment.  That was our first idea.  We would spend the next month working on the best routine we could possibly create on the jungle gym.  Then we would present this amazing routine to possible investors, otherwise known as my parents.  Upon seeing the potential in their son’s new talent, they would hardly be able to refuse buying a new ultra-modern training facility to be housed in the backyard.  It couldn’t fail.  All we needed now was a super sleek and amazing routine with which to wow my parents. 

In hindsight, this is where my sister’s lack of trapeze experience took its toll.  She took a seat next to the jungle gym and watched me swing around.  I hung for as long as I could on the trapeze, my knees bent to keep my feet off the ground.  She suggested incorporating some of my monkey bar skills into the routine, which added a dynamic element to the routine.  Yes, I would use all of the jungle gym in my routine, not just the trapeze.  They would see that we were serious in our pursuit of acrobatic excellence and they would buy me my training facility and I would be able to run off with the circus.  A month went by.  It was a trying month for my coach and me.  She grew frustrated with our lack of progress and found only limited relief in the prospects of our new training facility.  Still, I held the team together as best I could, but could feel the deck stacked against me as the day of the performance approached.  I needed something special that would set me apart in my routine.  I needed something magical that would show my potential to them.  I found that in my underwear drawer. 

  I had not told my parents the exact nature of our presentation, but assured them that it would be mind-blowing.  My sister escorted them to two well-placed patio chairs in front of the jungle gym.  I was hiding along the side of the garage.  My sister remained standing next to them.  “And now,” she announced, “The Amazing Brian!”  I did not consult my sister before changing my costume for the routine.  We had nothing set in stone, so I assumed that she had no feelings one way or another.  I soon found out otherwise. 

As a youth, I was a huge fan of Underoos.  These were brightly colored underwear that coordinated their color schemes with well-known superheroes.  My favorite was the red and yellow Superman ensemble. The problem was that when worn traditionally with Superman pajamas, the matching underoos would be hidden below the pajamas where no one would see them.  I needed to make a change.  The acrobats in the circus wore colorful tightly fitting clothing.  The color made them visible from high on the platform and the spandex served to reduce wind resistance they incurred flying through the air.  If my parents were ever going to believe I could be a trapeze artist, I needed to look like one.  I pulled my Superman pajamas on moments before the show.  I tied the red cape loosely around my neck.  Then, cognizant of the artistic risk I was taking, I pulled the red and yellow underoos on over my pajamas. 

When I heard, “The Amazing Brian!”  I ran around the corner and leaped into the swing, landing on my stomach, swinging back and forth.  The cape whipped around in a heroic flurry.  It was the closest thing to flying that I have ever felt.  After a few swings, I somersaulted forwards and stood up in front of my parents and coach.  I attributed the look of shock on their faces to my amazing talent.  They were putty in my hands.  Here, I delivered the sales pitch. 

“Mom and Dad,” I paced back and forth hands on hips.  “Ever since we went to the circus, my mind has been roiling with one idea.  I have found my calling.  That calling is the trapeze.  I know what you must be thinking.  I’ve never even seen my son on a trapeze.  How can he be good enough to join the circus?  I’m gonna be honest with you.  I’m not yet.  A few short weeks ago all of this was just a dream.  That is until I enlisted Heather as my coach.  Please, Heather take a bow. 

My sister stared at me, then asked, “What are you wearing?”

I ignored her remark and knelt in front of my parents, taking one of each of their hands.  “Now I need your help.  This jungle gym you see behind you cannot raise a champion.  It might be good for learning the basics, but if I’m really gonna pursue this, I’m gonna need a commitment from you guys.  I’m gonna need you to spend some money and install a much larger and more professional trapeze system here in the back yard.  I understand you might be hesitant.  This won’t be cheap.  What’s more you might be asking yourself, is my son really that good at trapeze?  I could tell you that I am.  Or… I could show you!”

At this point, there should have been some kind of light show announcing the start of the act, but we had no such effects, so I hustled over to the monkey bars in silence. 

Every trapeze routine begins with the same ritual.  I would be no different.  I scaled the monkey bars and raised one arm high in the air.  My mother clapped a few times and I began.  Crossing the monkey bars was not a spectacular feat in and of itself, but it was the way in which I crossed them that would solidify my preeminence in their minds. I went back and forth a few times, sometimes skipping bars, sometimes hanging by one arm and casting a glance to my parents to verify that they were sufficiently impressed.  I completed my final pass and made it safely to the other side.  Now, it was time to shine.  I climbed on top of the trapeze, to start my routine from the seated position.  First, I took a break to catch my breath.  Then I faked a fall backwards.  My mother gasped.  I caught myself with my knees and then went into the meat of my routine. Perhaps if I had a coach with more experience my routine might have developed differently.  As it was, I realized halfway through the routine, it had not changed much from that very first day of practice except, of course, my costume.  I had the sinking sensation that my routine wasn’t going as well as I had hoped.  They didn’t seem as amazed as I thought they would.  I began to realize that this rusty trapeze was most likely the only one I would ever know.  But as long as the routine was not over the dream was still alive.  I climbed up onto the trapeze and stayed there planning my next move.  “Is it done?” My father asked. 

It wasn’t.  I improvised a new trick.  I improvised many new tricks and after each one, my parents would start to clap and I cut them off with—“I’m not done yet!”  

Eventually my father went inside to cook dinner.  My sister went upstairs to do her homework.  Only my mother stayed outside for the remainder of the show.  The sky grew dark, but I continued to do tricks.  I took longer and longer breaks, sitting on the trapeze, trying to figure out what went wrong, where I lost them.  I looked down at my Superhero costume and an odd embarrassment swept over me.  One thought was that I probably looked silly in my underwear.  The other was that I had let all superheroes down by failing in my mission.  I felt unworthy of my underoos.  Then, she said it.

“One more trick!”

My mom was still watching.  That was all the encouragement I needed.  I summoned all my remaining strength and went back to the trapeze for one last trick.  It wasn’t my best move, but I was exhausted.  I finished, landed on the ground and put both arms in the air.  By this time it was so dark that I could barely see my mother in front of me.   Still, as always, even when she can’t distinguish me from the shadows, my mother always knows when to clap.  And she did.

The First Time I Got Struck By Lightning

Lugging that suitcase up the mountain was no easy task.  All the other kids were smart enough to bring backpacks, but not me.  I was thirteen years old and I was dragging a suitcase up a hill.  And we’re not talking about a roller bag.  This was a genuine suitcase with one handle and no wheels and it was jam-packed with all sorts of random stuff I imagined I might need at my first summer camp.  One glance at the Rocky Mountains is ample evidence of the bland taste pioneers had for naming things.  I stumbled constantly over jagged rocks that scratched white engravings into the dark blue vinyl sides of the bag.  The mountain was taking its toll on both of us. Granted, summers in Colorado were not as humid as Houston, but Houston had air conditioning and I was never forced to drag a suitcase up a mountain.

Being a Boy Scout was one of the best things about growing up in Texas.  My father had completed his PhD in geophysics and spent literally hundreds of nights in the great outdoors studying glaciers, but he wasn’t inclined to go camping.  This was Houston after all.  One could be forgiven for not wanting to sleep outside.  Aside from the crushing heat and humidity, there were all sorts of terrors awaiting the courageous camper.  Describing Texas insects to an outsider can make it sound like Jurassic Park.  Four inch cockroaches that fly.  The non-native will raise their eyebrows, “Cockroaches that fly?!”  Yes, cockroaches that fly.  The mosquitoes in Texas are so large that they cast shadows and have facial expressions.  They dive bomb your arms in a never-ending quest for blood.  Even if you’re quick enough to smash one, you’re greeted with an explosion of someone else’s blood like a cheap Hollywood squib.  The fire ants are another problem.  They don’t like people, but they don’t feel inclined to let you know immediately.  After stepping in mound of fire ants, the little red bastards will crawl imperceptibly up your leg until the entire colony is onboard, then one of them gives the signal and they all bite at once.  Then you understand.  It’s not an itching.  It is truly a burning sensation.  Hence the term: fire ants.  Newscasters always warned of killer bees that would chase you for miles.  Fear of such bees was the main reason I joined the track team.  Anything was possible in the Bayou City.   

The Boy Scouts offered a great opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge.  Of course there are a lot of stereotypes about the typical do-gooder that would join the Boy Scouts, especially the kids (like me) who remain in the troop until they are booted out at eighteen.  With every summer promising a camping trip far from the oppressive Houston heat, my friends and I signed up and stayed in.  The Scout Troop was split into two factions.  The first group was super-duper kids who didn’t curse and always wore the complete scout uniform including knee socks and short-shorts.   The rest were juvenile delinquents who used scouting as an excuse to get away from their family situation on the weekends.  The first time I saw pot was in the Boy Scouts.  We were given instruction in woodworking and sent in to the woods to whittle some time away before dinner.  Five minutes later, I looked up and realized that I was the only one still carving an owl.  Pipes of all shapes and sizes were the rage and a few kids had brought some grass to smoke.  I was in shock.  I had heard about stuff like this, but my family was rather straight-laced. Convinced of the true dangers of illicit drugs, I chose to abstain and judge. 

         I balanced my time between the two groups of scouts and tried my best to avoid any Lord of the Flies-esque drama.  Primitive law reigns between boys in the forest.  Games of war were a constant.  A favorite assault technique was filling someone’s sleeping bag with rocks.  This unsavory practice ended when rocks were thrown into a sleeping bag whose occupant was still inside, balled up in fear at the bottom of his bag. 

         The snipe hunt is another popular form of scout hazing.  For the uniformed, a snipe is a small mammal about the size of a chicken, but it’s got quills and he can shoot them at you.  The best way to catch a snipe is to wander through the woods at night tapping an empty paper bag with a stick.  That tapping sound replicates its mating call.  Upon hearing the call the snipe will run straight into the paper bag whereupon you beat the snipe to death with the stick.  The new guy holds the bag.  Everyone else holds the flashlights.  You enter the woods tapping that bag and fearing for your life.  Here there are a couple different options.  Option one: after a bit of terrified bag-tapping, they shove you to the ground and run off, leaving you holding the bag, fumbling around to find your way back to camp in the dark.  Option two is a shade darker.  You wander through the woods alone, scared.  Tapping the bag.  Instructions come from the shadows as to the best way to catch a snipe.  Instructions that when shouted cover up the sound of everyone leaving one by one until you’re left there alone, tapping in the dark, wondering what happened to all your friends.  That’s the purist’s option.

         I had passed most of these tests, or at least survived and I was looking forward to my first big camping trip.  The most compelling piece of geography in Houston is a freeway exit ramp, so in order to see anything even remotely interesting we had to drive for quite some time.  Colorado was a two-day drive from Houston and was the destination of most of our summer camp adventures.  We were headed to Camp Ben de la Tour just outside of Fort Collins and we were headed there in style. 

Sleeping was always risky in a bus full of boy scouts.  Inherently, you would get grapes dropped into your open mouth, or warm soda poured down your throat.  It was not restful sleep.  There were only so many seats on the bus and a number of us were forced to sleep on the floor.  This became problematic when a kid threw up and the driver hit the brakes.  A river of puke came rushing towards us.  The force of the braking had woken us up, but we were disoriented and not prepared for the oncoming flood.  I was one of the lucky few who hopped up in time to avoid getting drenched with Dr. Pepper and bile.

         Eventually, we each partnered up with another scout and took turns guarding while the other slept.  This person was usually your tentmate.  My tentmate was a kid named Jeff.  He was a nice kid that  (like me) ran with the mean kids in order to avoid their wrath.  At that time, a rumor had been circulating that his older brother had sex with a cat.  It was one of those dastardly and unshakeable middle school rumors that took its toll on him socially.  

         Tents at our campsite were first come first serve.  Both scouts had to be at the tent in order to claim it.  So, even though Jeff and his backpack raced up the mountain with the rest of our friends, my enormous suitcase insured that tent options would be limited when I finally arrived.  Sure enough, even our one-legged scoutmaster beat me to the campsite and the only tent that remained was even further up the hill.  It was the highest tent on the hill and Jeff was already unpacking.  I sat on top of my suitcase and tried to catch my breath.  Some of the fathers were already sitting around the fire pit, sipping “adult” canteens.  “Keep going,” one of them told me.  I did. 

         Who do you blame when lightning strikes you?  Surely there is more than enough to go around.  An easy target would be my father, the person who might have purchased me a backpack instead of pulling my mother’s suitcase out of the attic.  The suitcase had slowed me down and gotten me the worst/highest tent in the camp.  If any tent was to be struck by lightning, it would be that one.  Yes, my father could easily be blamed for the lightning strike, if not for one other fact. 

I had recently won a hard fought election in our scout troop.  In order to move up the ranks, each scout needed to hold a “leadership” position.  Most of them had already been filled, so I rallied my friends and made a last ditch effort to win the one office still up for grabs: troop chaplain.  I wasn’t raised in a religious household.  Despite the fact that my father was raised in a house literally next door to the Presbyterian church where my grandmother attended everyday, we had been raised with virtually zero religion.  Of course we attended church, but it was mostly to avoid the suspicion of our neighbors and I was an ill fit from the start.  Monday through Friday, I was the nerdiest kid in class and prepared for all that entailed.  Come Sunday, I was peppered with mysterious questions about a subject I knew absolutely nothing about: the Bible.  I had no idea what to do with myself in the wake of this glaring hole in my knowledge base.  In the Christmas Pageant, despite a stirring audition for the role of Baby Jesus, I was cast as the tax collector.  I was operating under the assumption that Jesus existed around the same time as cavemen, so I was surprised to learn they had taxes.  I was seriously confused and too bored to figure it out.  My only theological accomplishment was memorizing the Books of the Bible after being promised a slice of pizza.  Nevertheless, I aligned my interests and waged a successful campaign against the current chaplain of our troop, a super religious kid named Ryan.  In a showing of good sportsmanship, I kept him on as a consultant.  With my theatre background, I figured I could give rousing sermons that would stir the masses.  I just needed some material.  He would be my Cyrano.  Over the next few months, I delivered sermons on the weekend camping trips.  Adults were free to attend, though, for whatever reason, they rarely did. 

My sermons were well scripted and moving, though rarely scripture based.  I spoke a lot about the wind and how it was like God because you couldn’t see it, but you knew it was there.  That was my favorite metaphor and I used it often.  Other sermons dealt with trees and litter.  Sometimes, Ryan (my consultant) would find passages in the Bible that related to things he thought I should preach about, but reading directly from the Bible felt like plagiarism.  I preferred to make up my own stuff and did so.  My point here is that if anyone was annoying whoever or whatever is in charge of hurling lightning bolts at people, it was me and my sermons about wind.

Safety always came first in the Boy Scouts.  Upon arriving in Colorado, we were bombarded with all sorts of information about first aid and bear attacks.  Through it all, no piece of information was less useful than what is known as the “Lightning Strike Position”.  Yes, in addition to teaching us how to use a bear bag, the staff at Camp Ben De la Tour also felt it necessary to teach us what to do if we are about to be struck by lightning.  Obviously the first question is: how do you know if you are about to be struck by lightning?   There are a couple of different ways.  The first is that the hair on your arm stands up and the air begins to smell like caps from a cap gun.  Another precursor to a lightning strike is giving unlicensed sermons about the wind.

 In any case, should you fear that lightning is about to strike, don’t run.  That’s what the lightning wants you to do.  Instead, crouch down and grab your ankles, right hand to left ankle and left hand to right ankle.  This provides the shortest path for the lightning to travel through your body.  The unintentional benefit of this position is that it also allows your lips to be closer to your ass so that you might kiss it goodbye if lightning does strike.  We all laughed heartily when we were taught the lightning strike position.  The laughing stopped abruptly a couple days later when we were out hiking and our trail guide yelled out, “Everyone!  Lightning strike position!” 

The rain had been pouring down on us for some time and we were all in our garbage bag rain suits, but this was the next level.  A heavy storm had rolled into our valley and wouldn’t let up.  We all crouched down and crossed our hands over our ankles.  Coming from Texas, we were accustomed to tornado drills that usually came to nothing, but this was starting to get hairy.  Besides the torrential rain, each streak of lightning corresponded immediately with a deafening clap of thunder that echoed back and forth across the valley, barely fading out before the next would begin.  Texas has impressive thunderstorms.  We had all seen branches of lightning flash night into day, but we were never outside and never so close to the source.  The ground shook below us.  And we waited, crouched down on that path, drenched.  A half hour passed before the trail guide decided that it was safe enough to continue.   Five minutes after that, the sky was clear and blue, all sense of danger totally vanished.  It was the most terrifying aspect of the storms.  They could appear out of nowhere.  All of us suburban kids had a newfound respect for lightning.  But in the end, it doesn’t matter if you respect it, that’s why you do. 

We hustled back as another storm battered the camp.  Hail bounced off plastic tarps and pelted us as we ran (uphill) to our tent.  Between the storms, we had managed to shovel down some camp food and we were exhausted.  Our tent was a standard Army issue canvas tent raised off the ground by a six-inch wooden crate.  Wooden beams extended vertically from the corners of the crate where ropes attached to the canvas tent, pulling it taut.   Unfortunately, Jeff had been drying his clothing on those support ropes and they were soaked.  He paused to grab the wet clothing.  I yelled at him.  Our two metal cots made the tent claustrophobic enough.  There was certainly no room for wet clothing.  He agreed and jumped into the tent. 

Again the thunder boomed off the hillsides, echoing all around us, but this time we didn’t crouch down into the lightning strike position.  We had shelter this time.  The canvas tent would keep us safe.  We were certain of it.  After all, we had tied the door closed.  I laid back on my cot and tried to read while Jeff rummaged through his backpack searching for something dry to wear.  The ground shook.  As the lightning grew ever closer, we learned a new sound.  Before the lightning explodes into thunder, it slices through the air like a plane hitting super sonic speed.  The air around you is ripped in half.  You don’t want to hear this sound.  We heard it a few times, each followed by that never-ending rumble of thunder.  It was useless to keep reading my book.  The distraction was no longer working.  A particularly close explosion forced us to reconsider the strength and protective qualities of our tent.  Jeff was still rummaging.  I started writing a letter home. 

Then, our tent exploded. 

Obviously this all happened in an instant, but I distinctly saw it.  A neon light in the shape of a meat thermometer rose up from the floorboards of our tent like a charmed serpent.  Then ka-boom.  It might as well have been a bomb going off.  We both went flying.  The canvas tent held together but the force of our bodies knocked it off the frame.  Fortunately for me, I had been insulated by my rubber sleeping pad, so while I got the force of the explosion, I avoided the electric shock.  Jeff was not so lucky.  He was sitting up, going through his bag and his legs happened to be touching the metal cot.  The lightning burned a hole through three layers of clothing.  But we didn’t know that yet.  We didn’t know anything.  It was just confusion.  My ears were ringing.  I tried to piece it together.  After you’ve been struck by lightning, your first thought isn’t necessarily, “I’ve been struck by lightning”.  Your first thought instead might be “Why did my tent just explode?  Where am I?”  Jeff was screaming out that his legs were burning.  I told him to take his pants off.  It was all I could think to say.  It seemed logical.  The scene was chaotic.  Two older kids ripped our tent open and asked if we were all right.  Jeff was still screaming that his legs burned.  One of them picked him up.  Still dazed, I asked what had happened.  “Your fucking tent got struck by fucking lightning!” one of them told me. 

“Really?”

“Go get help.”

Wow.  Lightning.  It all started to make sense again.  We learned later that the lightning had first struck a tree then travelled through the ground water until it reached our metal cots where it released the remainder of its electrical charge.  The lightning that struck us actually came from below and had lost most of its strength along the way.  Needless to say, if we had been hit directly from a cloud, I wouldn’t be around to type out the story.  But we didn’t know any of that then.  All I knew was the explosion and the burning legs.  My hearing started coming back to me and I heard the older kid say again, “Go get help.” 

This I could do.  All that was required was that I run like hell, which is definitely my preferred technique when trying to avoid being struck by lightning.  The lightning strike position, regardless of crossing hands over ankles, leaves you a sitting duck for any pissed off deity.  Sprinting through the woods, I would be much harder to hit.  It didn’t matter that I was barefoot and only wearing boxer shorts, I had wings.  I scampered down that hill like a coked out hobbit.  Other kids took shelter in one of the diseased latrines I passed along the way.  I felt sorry for their decision making.  Those latrines were foul wood sheds constructed over deep holes, putrid with unspeakable horrors.  They were a terrible option for shelter under any circumstance.  I continued to the main dining area and banged on the door.  The lights were on inside and there was loads of activity.  Eventually, the door slid open and I recounted my harrowing tale.  Adults raced off in golf carts to help the injured.  They took me back to see a grief counselor. 

She was the first girl I had seen in a week.  That sort of celibacy can do a number on your standards for physical beauty, but as far as I remember, she was a knockout.  I was thirteen.  She had a sweater on and the sweater looked soft and well filled.  I was wet and shivering after my nighttime sprint through the rain.  She took me into her arms.  The sweater was very soft indeed.  She made me hot cocoa.  I called my parents.  Things were looking up again. 

When school started the next fall, the counselor called all of us into her office individually to ask us about the lightning.  Her sweater didn’t look so soft.  I’m not sure if she thought I was going to breakdown or have some traumatic flashback, but I didn’t.  I thought the story was pretty cool and was disappointed that she was not more impressed with my telling of it.  Maybe my friends and fellow scouts were different in their meetings.  A few things changed in our troop after that.  I resigned my post as chaplain.  A better opportunity opened up for me as the troop librarian and I figured it might be a less offensive position for me to hold.  And another thing happened.  Or continued to happen.  Every camping trip after the lightning struck, whenever it rained, half the boys would start to cry.