Thirty-five years from now, some guy would be standing in a similar slice of society—minus the flammable clothing—with his iPhone 6, which at a third of the size could literally answer any question known to humankind and record twenty-four hours of digital audio, or video, and play it, without a wire, through the neighbor’s television or sound system.
Finally, somebody was brave enough to ask the most important question of all. “If you don’t mind telling us, Wayne,” a guy dressed like the cowboy from the Village People asked, “how much did you pay for that little gem?”
“Well, I’m not going to lie to you fellas,” Wayne guffawed, pulling up his pants, embarrassed, but not cheesy, but, well, yes, totally cheesy. “I bought the base unit for about two hundred and forty bucks at Skylark Camera, and then shelled out a few more clams for the accessories.”
“Dang …” the Village People Cowboy said. “That sure is a lot of money, but that little thang sure is purty.”
“Well folks,” Wayne explained, “when you get right down to it, this technology business, well, it’s a pretty neat little deal.”
Seriously? Two hundred and forty dollars, that was like eight-hundred bucks, or two iPhones, in 2014 money. Of course, I couldn’t be sure, because I didn’t have Siri to look it up for me. Pulling out my notebook, I scribbled, “Find out the value of 1978 money today. EBay: Olympus Pearlcorder WTF.”
As I placed the notebook back in my blazer pocket, I noticed a woman watching my every movement, transfixed as if I had just rolled a joint. “I’m a writer,” I said, putting my face very near hers, so she’d have no doubt that I was a vicious mouth breather. “I write about college football, men’s college football. And, I left my husband at home in Ohio, alone, with my kids, and three toilets.”
She walked away, quickly, heading straight toward the half bath.
As the crowd around Wayne began to die down, I was left standing in the haze, alone, at a time of night later than I would have ever imagined, in this time, in this place. I needed a breath of fresh air. Weaving through the crowd, I let myself out the back door to the driveway.
Venturing out past a couple huddled in the shadows underneath the basketball goal, I turned the corner to the long brick wall on the side of the garage that followed the driveway out to the street. This is where I used to throw a tennis ball or kick a soccer ball, trying to set a record for the most consecutive catches or stops. Why was it my kids never practiced like that, just for the sake of doing it?
I had always assumed that it was technology that separated us, me and my kids’ experiences, but perhaps it was personality and circumstances. Catching me by surprise, a heavyset man rounded the corner from the back of the house. He looked equally shocked but decidedly more pleased with his discovery than I was with mine.
“I was wondering where you went …” he said, not so softly. “I noticed you inside, but haven’t met you yet.” He was a big guy. I knew precisely where he lived and who his family was.
Dressed in a tan turtleneck that displayed his man boobs in an unattractive way, he moved closer until I could see the beads of sweat on his forehead. Despite his obvious drunkenness, his swarthiness, and his desire to break my personal space barrier, I felt no real fear from the man we used to refer to as Professor Plum. It was an apt name for the stout, balding man with a streak of Grecian Formula running through his wispy hair. He was no Colonel Mustard … hell, he couldn’t have even pulled off Mr. Green. Though I didn’t get the feeling I should run for my life, I did feel the need to find a polite way back inside, so I moved to my right, which was closer to the wooded side the driveway.
Sensing my desire to flee, he lunged forward, using his sizeable torso to corral me back toward the side of the garage. In a heartbeat, I realized that something had gone terribly wrong. He shoved me against the bricks, bracing each of his fat arms on either side of me with his thick hands on the wall.
I was in trouble. I was in really big trouble.
He was bigger than me, and despite my sturdy, handsome size, he had trapped me. I could smell his perspiration and feel his heavy, labored breath. His thick, sweaty lips came close to mine and he slurred, in an eerie, sick whisper, “I’ve never had a girl from Iowa … but I want you.”
My attempts to wiggle away, moving side-to-side between his arms, only sharpened his resolve. As he pressed against me, I could feel what little manhood lurked beneath his Sansabelt slacks. It didn’t seem like much, but I didn’t want it. Purring softly, or more like drunk grumbling, something about how he was “going to give me an early Christmas present, something I’d never forget,” he put his open mouth on the side of my neck, his tongue wandering wildly. He whispered obscenities in my ear, words intended to arouse one of the two of us.
No matter how hard I fought him, the sheer girth of him meant that I would lose. He weighed enough to ruin both my life here and the one in the future. This had happened to me before, most recently about ten years from now, in college, but it was nowhere near as sinister. I had known that drunk guy, and he had ultimately let me win the fight, leaving me in the empty parking lot of an apartment complex.
Bringing his left arm down from the wall to unbutton and unzip his pants, the Professor crushed me against the brick wall. The pressure was so great that I had difficulty breathing. With his cat out of the bag, he latched on to my shoulders and shoved me toward the shrubs around the front of the garage.
As he threw me down to the mulch, my polyester pants sliding through the brown pine needles, he made a series of costly errors. His center of gravity, the same heftiness that allowed him to trap me and get me to the ground in the first place, combined with his inebriation, caused him to lose his balance. Next, his most vulnerable body part was fully exposed and in plain sight.
Acting on adrenaline, fear, and sheer panic, I raised my left leg and bashed his exposed man parts with the bottom of my strappy heeled sandal. Initially he was stunned, staring down at me with a dumb look on his fat face. The fact that he was already wobbling meant that my second counterattack, more violent and accurate than the first, took him totally out.
Across the driveway he went, stumbling, grabbing his privates in his thick hands. Moaning, he continued backward into the dense tree line, stopping only when he slammed against the translucent greenhouse. With his hands still covering his man tool, he slid down the ridged wall, finally landing with a thud. Slumped over, groaning, he began to vomit.
If I could have imagined this scene beforehand, in horror, I’d have pictured myself telling him off as he sat pathetically, bereft of any type of manhood or humanhood. Strong words that he’d never forget, delivered forcefully, preventing him from attacking another member of womankind.
But, in reality, the altered one, I didn’t stalk off like the rape-stopper I was; no, I was no badass, I was lucky. I was fortunate to have gotten out of the situation and I was scared to death. Not relieved, not victorious, and not self-congratulatory. I was in shock.
My dog, apparently, was not. I’m not sure where he came from, but Cecil emerged from the darkness, sauntered over to the aggressor, now laid on his side in front of the greenhouse, lifted his leg and peed on Plum’s wide butt.
Looking on at the scene in shock, my dog urinating on my would-be rapist, I tried to fix the visible, outward damage as I walked hurriedly across the driveway. Gone were the couple I had seen before, leaving nothing but the single light fixture to guide me back to relative safety.
I had thought I would be safe here, in the sanctity of my own home.
Once inside, I turned instinctually left and then right, entering the half bath. Shutting the door and locking it, I sat down on the toilet and began to shake. I couldn’t tell anyone this, I couldn’t accuse this guy, I wasn’t even from here and who would I tell, anyway? Who would be my advocate? My parents, my new friends, my siblings, my younger self, upstairs dreaming of the World Series? That was the way I had always handled things. It was the way of our people, not to tell an
ybody the bad stuff. Not to talk about it, ever. To shelf it, box it, close it up and forget about it. In our world, or at least mine, discussing it and actually dealing with it only made it worse, more real. No, I wouldn’t tell anybody about this. It wasn’t even one of Mary’s imagined questions. It had already been answered.
And, the truth was, there was every chance that none of this was real. And that included Professor Plum, in the front yard, with the pink lead pipe.
Standing up, wavering, I did a half-ass job of putting myself back together. I was dangerously losing sight of my mission. Onward was the only way through this, the only way to get to tomorrow, the only way anybody ever got through anything. I rushed back out of the bathroom, fleeing, I suppose, myself.
The crowd looked to be dying down. I milled aimlessly around the breakfast room. Sitting on the antique wooden trolley bench, I was surprised to see Dad come up the steps from the family room.
“Well, cousin,” he said, “I hope you are having a good time!” Really, he was the last person I needed to see right now, or maybe he was just the person I needed to see. I could tell that he sensed that something was wrong. “You OK?” he said, looking almost puzzled.
If anything would make me cry right now, something I rarely did, almost never in front of another human being, it was his young face, full of confused concern. It wasn’t the angst he would have shown if he knew who I was, but the compassion was still there.
“Let me get you a drink,” he said, trying to fix things. He swung back through the western doors to the bar and swung back out almost as quickly, drink in hand. I wasn’t sure what he had concocted, but I took a healthy, medicinal gulp of it, trustingly, almost like when he used to give me a shot of white-chalky Kaopectate for a bad stomach.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, stopping myself halfway through the last word. “No … um … I’m sorry, I mean, thanks, Dick.” Luckily, he’d had enough to drink that he either didn’t catch what I said or was operating on the same “don’t ask, don’t tell” MO that I was.
“You’re welcome,” he responded, plopping down next to me. “So, we’re cousins,” he said, with almost a wistful tone in his voice, “and you live in Centerville, Ohio.” Continuing on without waiting for a response. “You know, I loved growing up in Centerville. Things seemed so simple then …”
“It’s still a great place to live, it’s bigger now though, but my boys like it too,” I responded.
“Yes,” he said, “I think our three kids have a wonderful place to grow up, here, in Spring, in Northampton, but I don’t know … you know, what’s the best.
“I wonder how they will turn out,” he continued, looking at me. “Do you wonder that?” Dad was opening up more than I thought he would have, but I was family and that meant everything. And, now that I thought about it, he did tend to become cheesier when drinking. More introspective, open and willing to share his feelings.
“Yeah, I wonder that too, with mine,” I said, the most truthful I had been during this entire bizarre trip. “Who they will be, what kind of adults they will turn into, what jobs they will do … Will they be able to take care of themselves and did we do the right things for them?”
“Exactly.” With an almost comical fist pump on the cast-iron bench arm. “I wonder,” he said, “about all this,” Motioning around the room, sweeping his arm toward the fake banana plant, the red countertops, the harvest-gold appliances and the mustard-colored linoleum floor. “We have so much, so much more than my parents had. That’s what we want for our kids, we want more than we had, but is that good, or bad?
“Is simple better, or not?” he wondered aloud.
“Those are the same questions we have,” I responded, not able to tell him that in my world, in 2014, what he thought was over the top now had gone berserk, materialism overload, everything wanted RIGHT NOW and so delivered.
“You’re lucky to be raising your kids in Centerville,” he continued, as if the picturesque, serene memories of his own childhood had caused the town to freeze in time, remaining ever the same. Maybe that’s what we all did to a certain extent, romanticizing our own childhoods, blurring reality until we were completely convinced that nothing could have been better. The result was inevitable—a strong conviction that “kids today” had it all wrong. “Back in my day …” was something that all of us were destined to say, no matter how much we insisted that we would never participate in such illogical, nostalgic banter.
“My kids are the most important thing in the world to me,” Dad continued. “And to Sue. We love them more than anything. I’d do anything for them, but I want to be careful not to do too much. I never really believed there was a God until I saw our first born, Kimber.” He said, on the verge of what looked like actual tears. “Then I realized that miracles can and really do happen.”
As much as I was touched to the core by what he said, this was the guy who I’d only see cry twice, ever, so, I was equally shocked. He had just explained the underlying reason Kim reigned supreme in the home of Dick and Sue. He had just cracked the mystery of the chip and dip and solved Nancy Drew’s secret of the hidden emotional agenda.
Holy crap! He’d just explained the freaking meaning of life. Apparently, and if I was reading this correctly, Mom and Dad had been so bedazzled by the sight of Kimber coming out of
Mom’s young womb that they literally were knocked out of their senses. It was, of course, done in love, in overwhelming, ecstatic, life-changing and disastrous love.
I could cancel the appointment with my therapist next week. I could call my best friend and tell her I didn’t need to talk about it anymore. I could stop taking that medicine that softened my stool. OK, scratch that, I wasn’t taking stool softener right now, but if I was, I could have canceled it.
It was a whole new world.
Just then, as if on cue to thwart my one shining moment, the remaining partygoers burst into the breakfast room, equipped with a box, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, and a few decks of cards.
“OK, everybody!” Mom announced in a high-pitched, excited voice. “Now it’s time to play a little game we like to call Tripoley!”
Mom was animated and unsteady. From the small, shallow box she pulled a dark-green vinyl mat and ceremoniously unfurled it onto the table. It had a center circle labeled in a simple white font “POT.” I remembered that we three kids found that almost as funny as one of the outer sections, one of eight which surrounded the center circle, labeled “KITTY.” Though we never understood the object of the game—or other adult board games like Facts in Five or Probe (did you need a plastic glove to play that?)—it didn’t stop us from getting all the pieces out of the box and playing with them.
Poker chips and fresh glasses of scotch were distributed. “Here we go!” one of the men said. I had learned to play Tripoley as an adult, on a board that was made out of hard plastic, with a series of dishes or trays where the lines on the mat had been. The best I remembered, it was a cross between poker and rummy, but at this point in the evening I was groggy enough that I had no idea what was going on.
Or, perhaps the participants were zapped enough that the rules didn’t really apply.
Though they had asked Dad and I if we wanted to join in, we both refused. Dad liked poker, but that was about it. That is, unless it was a special family gathering complete with the seven grandkids he didn’t know that he had. Mom said that Dad pretended to like games—especially card games—when they were dating, but then miraculously became less enthusiastic after the knot was officially tied. Apparently, card games didn’t seem near as fun, or necessary, after the marriage license was signed and everyone’s clothes finally came off.
Even though I was old enough to have been involved in, and the leader of, a number of adult-content conversations, the dialogue here, at this Tripoley game, was shocking. Maybe it was because I was at least four drinks under the 1978 limit. Maybe it was because I was standing in my childhood breakfast room. Or, maybe it was because I was in direct
view of my second-place soccer trophy.
Mr. Anderson, the man with a green Camaro who liked to edge his lawn shirtless, began to explain why his wife claimed to be “very happy” living here in Northampton. “I’ll tell you what keeps Evelyn happy!” he exclaimed, with a brand of suburban masculinity that accentuated his faux-suede western jacket. “It’s a regular serving of the Golden Sausage!”
If revealing the pet name of his man part wasn’t enough, he backed up from the table, flung his arms aloft and gyrated, making his western fringe fly. The scene was enhanced by his tight western pant, held up by a rainbow-colored, Camaro Z28 belt buckle. It was as stunning as it was dangerous, a drunk man thrusting his man business with a lit cigarette in one hand and a full tumbler of scotch in the other, flicking ashes and sloshing hard liquor in equal doses.
“You know it, baby!” Evelyn screeched back, exuding as much sexuality as a board game, the smoky haze, and her flight-attendant-like scarf would allow.
The room filled with laughter as the others offered their own semi-lewd comments about Mr. Anderson—the neighborhood love machine, wife pleaser and the holder of the permit for the safe operation of the bronzed appendage.
Things just went downhill from there, some players visibly staggering as others began to nod their heads downwards, eyes heavy.
“Hey,” one of the last ladies standing asked, “Does anyone know what time it is?”
“I do!” Mom answered, fumbling toward the desk. Picking up the receiver on the phone, she dialed quickly.
Was she calling somebody, on the telephone, to ask what time it was? It was the middle of the freaking the night. Who did that?
“It’s 1:14 in the morning,” Mom reported, phone still in hand. “And fifty-one degrees outside.”
Oh my Lord, she had just called the automated time and temperature number. Seriously? That was beautiful. I hoped to hell I could remember that.
The party finally started to wind down. As hearty as the welcome had been when they arrived, the farewell was, well, it was emotional. It was the long, drunk goodbye complete with assorted sloppy claims like, “I love you so much,” “You are the best neighbors we’ve ever had,” “You are my best friend in the world,” and “Let’s do this again EVERY Thursday night, only next time we’ll have it at my house and hire a Mariachi band!”
You Cannot Mess This Up Page 16
