GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #982: MOM'S PIANO

 

Of all the things I left behind at my old house, the one that hurts the most is Mom's piano. I remember her trying to teach me how to play when I was a kid. I just don't have any musical inclination, so I sucked and never got any better at it. Although I can play a really simple stripped down version of the Star Wars theme. It would probably make John Williams guts roil, but I can do that much, at least.

But Mom was a great pianist. My brother, Alex, knows how to play and play well, and I wanted him to have it. However, he is living in his own hotel now, so I can't get it to him. I tried to give it away on Facebook, and I got nothing. I thought one of my friends, who used to work giving musical lessons, would at least know someone who might want it, but nope.

So I had no choice but to leave it in the house now owned by, essentially, the State of Illinois.

But I've been back a few times. It's very weird being inside the house now that it's fairly empty. The toilet tank upstairs is still leaking, so whenever I stop by I empty out the garbage can I put under it. It stinks in there. It's clammy. It no longer feels like home.

But at the same time, as far as I can tell, no one has been in there since the house got sold at the courthouse. No new locks have been added. My neighbor says that no one has been over here, as far as she can tell.

(She also noted that the neighbor on my other side just moved out. Now that we're dropping like flies, I'm pretty sure the government is ready to pull some eminent domain bullshit, so maybe I got out just in time.)

So I might have another chance to save Mom's piano. Do you want a free piano? Or do you know someone who does? Do you live in the Chicagoland area? If so, it's yours. Two conditions: you (or someone) must actually play it on a regular basis to keep my Mom's shade happy, and you must pick it up from my old house. I can't transport it myself.

You'll also get the bench and Mom's collection of sheet music, which is considerable. There's also a painting above the piano that, wherever the piano was in the world, was always on the wall above it. I think I'll throw that in, too. They go well together.

If you want it, speak up fast. I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to have access to that house. When I go in, I'm technically trespassing, so if you're cool with that risk (and it's a low one), then let me know. You can comment here or contact me on social media or however you know me. This is probably my last chance to save it. I can't stand the thought of the state owning Mom's piano.

(Her ashes are in my hotel room, and I imagine the portrait next to the urn is looking sternly at me . . .)

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #894: THE APPLE TREE

 I went for a walk today, which is a big no-no for me. I've been told that I have to stay off my feet because of a hole in the sole of my bad foot. I didn't walk for long. I can only do a block, anyway. But that block is one I've walked around my entire life, starting when I was a little kid with Mom.

We used to go for walks all the time. I don't think I was even in school yet, I was that young. We'd head out from where we lived at the time, which is two blocks from where I am now, and we'd head toward Jefferson Elementary because there was a park there I could play at.

The neighborhood has changed a great deal. Almost none of the houses are the same. But there was a house that had a beautiful garden that we liked to look at all the time. It lasted quite a while until the old couple who lived there moved out. That was maybe 20 years ago. One of the first things the new owner did was wall in the garden. Although I'm pretty sure they also ripped it up, and that there's nothing to look at even without the fence. It's a shame. It was very beautiful.

But there was another spot we used to stop at, and I thought about it today as I walked past. There was an old man who lived in a cottage that had an apple tree in the backyard. If he was there, he'd give me an apple, freshly picked. And I'd eat it on the way to the school park.

Wait, li'l John Bruni eating fruit? Yes. To this day I can tolerate apples. I can also stomach corn (and not just as liquor!). While in the psych ward I learned that I can stand pears, too. So me eating an apple at that age isn't that far afield.

I was attending that elementary school when the old man moved away. I remember asking Mom if the new owner will keep giving me apples. She said she hoped so.

But the new owner didn't. One of the first things he did was uproot the tree. There is a piece of sidewalk now where that tree used to be, a stone path through his backyard. At first I thought, with a child's simplicity, that the new owner just didn't like me, but that guy probably had no idea of all the walks Mom and I took through that neighborhood, and he certainly had no idea of the enjoyment a simple apple could give a small boy like the one I'd once been.

I miss that tree. I even had a taste for apples today. As Vonnegut used to say, "So it goes."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #680: NOT MEANT FOR MY EYES

Dad and Mom, prom night 1975

 So I've been looking through a lot of stuff, and if you follow me on social media you know that I've been finding a lot of my old toys. You'll also note that I found a bunch of pictures, and here are some more of them. I was born in 1978, so this was before I was even a twinkle in their eyes. I don't know who that shadow belongs to, but it looks kind of like Gramps.

But there were a few pictures that I'm certain were not meant for my eyes. You will not see most of those pictures. However, I thought this one was pretty funny.

By the time I entered the story Dad had put on quite a few pounds, but here he is shortly after his 17th birthday lifting weights in his room. It's kind of surprising because he never struck me as the sort of man who would lift weights. And then I turned the picture over and saw . . .

Ah jeez, Mom.

Hey, wait a minute. What were you doing in his room . . . ?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #676: MOM

Mom and me at Cantigny, 1979

 

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and it occurred to me that I rarely talk about Mom during these GF columns. Gramps is usually the big star, so I thought what the hell?

Mom and I had a strained relationship near the end of her life. I was enraged by her choosing alcohol over just about everything in her life, completely blind to the same thing in myself. So we'll skip that part of the experience and stick with what I remember from when I was a kid.

Sometimes I wonder where I got the writing bug from. Reading? That's easy. Mom and Dad were both big time readers. My first word was "book." But writing? I think I might have gotten it from her. I don't know where she got it from. Maybe Gramps? He had the observation skills of an author, but as far as I know he never wrote a word he didn't have to.

Here is some of the first page of her account of my birth. I found it recently going through a lot of stuff. I knew about the typed up version, which I also recently found, but there is a notebook full of her experience with baby me. She also wrote on other subjects, but I don't think I've ever found a fiction piece by her. She spoke a few languages. French pretty well. Some German, too. And she loved to play the piano. She tried to teach me how to play when I was a kid, but it never took.

Mom's portrait of Dad from their prom night.

Her other great skill was illustration. She would spend hours just drawing, usually with a charcoal pen on heavy stock paper. She never did anything with it. I think it was just something she did just to make herself happy.

She was crazy about British royalty. I think she would have really enjoyed King Charles III's coronation, although I would have made fun of her for it. She was obsessed with Lady Di. Holy shit, I can't tell you how bad a day it was for her when Lady Di, uh, well, passed. She also liked drawing a lot of high class shit like you might read about in a Jane Austen novel.

And she looooooooooooooooooooved the Beatles. Contrary to popular belief, I am not named John for John Lennon. It's for Gramps. But my middle name *is* Paul because Paul McCartney was her favorite Beatle.

It could be worse. I have a cousin named Erik for Estrada. One of my brothers has Cornelius for a middle name because of the Planet of the Apes movies.

Anyway, Mom was a multitalented woman who got the short end of the stick when it came to life. But I'm not going to think about that kind of shit today. Happy belated Mother's Day.

Mom and me today

Eh, let's not end on a bummer of a picture. Here she is in 1975.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #612: MOM'S DOLL

 

As I've been packing my things, I've been making little discoveries about the house. I found this one hidden away in a linen closet. Never mind that Dollygram misspelled my mom's last name. I didn't know she and her parents ever lived at that location in Elmhurst. Weird.

I was curious, so I opened the box and discovered this:

Still wrapped in plastic. If you can't see, it says HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I wonder which birthday that was for, and I wonder if she ever saw it. That it was still wrapped in plastic suggested that she hadn't, or at the very least she never opened it. And now here it is, decades later, hidden in the linen closet.

I felt kind of weird looking at this thing, like I'd opened a coffin. Very few things are sadder than a toy that has never been played with. It's kind of like Hemingway's baby shoes. That's the first thing I thought of while looking at Mom's doll.

I wonder if Western Union still does things like this. Probably not.

Am I the only one feeling creeped out and melancholy about that second picture?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #537: CLIVER BARKER AND MY MOM'S COMA

 So today is Clive Barker's 70th birthday. It's weird because Stephen King just turned 75 last month, still alive despite struggles with addiction and having gotten brutally hit by a van. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm of the firm belief that King is the best he's ever been now, and considering the beloved classics he gave us once upon a time, that's saying something huge.

But it's hard to think of Barker at 70. I imagine (Imajica?) he's more or less retired from writing, considering his ill-received The Scarlet Gospels. I liked it, but I understand why most everyone despised it. I met him a couple of times and enjoyed both experiences. I know he's had some struggles of late what with the toxic shock incident, but it's good to know that he's still around.

So when I was in high school my mom was in a coma. I know that sounds like an odd transition, but I promise it will make sense soon. She was in a drunk driving accident so severe that she lost a year and a half of her life in the hospital.

I only have a teenager's memories of this, so I might have the details wrong, but she had been partying at a bar and got a ride home from a guy who was also pretty drunk. They wound up crashing into the back of a UPS truck at full speed. I'm told the car looked like an accordion. The driver was OK. Mom was not because she had a lifelong habit of not wearing her seatbelt properly. You know the part that's supposed to go across your chest? She always put that behind her back because it irritated her, she always said.

So instead of protecting her, the seatbelt destroyed her guts to the point that she had to have her belly open for about a year. The doctors had to keep going in for surgeries, and sewing her up would defeat the purpose. She lost a lot of her insides because of this. The nature of her injuries was pretty singular, and the doctors who treated her wrote her case up in medical journals. All in all, it was a pretty grim situation.

I visited her every night with my family. We would spend hours at Loyola, usually in her room, but a lot of times the doctors had to get inside of her, so they asked us to wait elsewhere. The caf was kind of awful, but the waiting room was decent and comfortable enough.

I forget who gave it to me (I want to say my dad's friend, Garth, but I don't recall for sure), but I had a gift card for the local B. Dalton. Remember those? If you don't, they were a chain of bookstores. Not too long after the accident I went into that B. Dalton to cash in the card. They had a bunch of Clive Barker books, and I'd heard a great deal about him and had seen Hellraiser (and possibly Nightbreed, but I can't be certain), so I bought the first three Books of Blood. I would sit in the hospital room and the waiting room and even in the dreaded cafeteria reading those books.

So my earliest memories of Barker's fiction will always be entangled with my mom's coma. See? Toldja I'd wrap it up in a nice bow.

Happy 70th, Clive Barker! And many more!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #525: DAD IN MY FACE

 So yesterday I shared a pictures of my mom and dad, and it reminded me of something that happened a while back, back when I'd just gotten out of the hospital for my second toe amputation. If you saw those pictures, you know that I look more like my mom. A lot more. The last time I saw my dad, I'd been with him in Vegas. His neighbor was also there, and he'd asked my dad, pointing at me, "Does he look more like you or his mom?"

"Oh, he definitely looks like his mom," Dad said. And it's true. Very true.

So imagine my surprise when I was shaving for the first time out of the hospital, and I saw my dad's face in my reflection. It's very odd (although it could have been the oxy I was on at the time). I'm big like Dad was (although I beat him on height). I'm hairy like Dad was (although my back hair never got to the bigfoot-like thickness of his). And I have a giant head, just like Dad's was. It's one of the reasons I don't wear hats. None of them look good on me, and they always look tiny. If I was a dickhead, I'd get one of those giant Stetsons Texans favor. I'm sure that would fit me, but I'd look like a prick. Well, more than I already do.

But seeing Dad look back at me from the mirror was very weird. It threw me off that day, and I couldn't shake the sensation. This has also been on my mind a lot lately because Dad died of not just one heart attack but several all at once. If memory serves, his dad died of the same thing. On Saturday I saw Clerks 3, which has a heart attack at the, uh, heart of the story. And I've always suspected I would die of a heart attack, too.

I guess you have to die of something, and if I've got to go, I'd rather it be something quick like that. As opposed to, say, cancer. A long drawn out illness where your life gets worse and worse and worse until you don't have it anymore at all does not suit me, thank you.

Either that, or maybe I won't die. Maybe I'll be the first person in history to not die. That would be kind of nice, at least until the earth dies in the expansion of the sun. But maybe by then I'll be out in the galaxy. I've always wanted to go to space, but I'm a tall guy. Space is for short people. But maybe by then they will have figured out how space can be for tall people, too. I guess I'll have to get in shape for that.

I have a fantasy, but I won't mention it here. Back when I thought the rest of my life could be measured in months instead of years, I wrote a final Goodnight, Fuckers. One day someone will post that here, and you'll know about my fantasy. And when that day comes, I hope I'm right. I have my doubts, but who knows? The universe is a weird place.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #277: 33 YEARS

My dad read a lot, but he was not a creative. Not like we think of. He was a cook. His mom was a teacher. His dad was a cook. On his side of the family, you were either cooks or teachers. So it didn't come from his side. No, it came from Mom. She was an amazing artist. She could play piano like nobody's business. I knew it came from her. After knowing Gramps for all my life, I know where she got it. Gramps didn't read or write or do anything creative, but he had a way of describing things that convinced me that if he were born in other circumstances, he could have been a creative.


I remember when I was a kid. I wrote my first story, and I was infatuated with myself for doing so. I showed it to my mom, and she was so proud. But she said, "You have to date it."


"What do you mean?" I asked.


"You should write the date on your story. That way, you know when you wrote it."


"That's stupid," I said.


"No, it's not. You'll thank me later."


"No,  won't." I was a stubborn asshole of a kid.


"So rub it in my face," she said. "When you're writing stories for a living, you'll know exactly when you wrote your first story."


"Nuh-uh!" I was only interested in writing the next story.


That was 33 years ago to the day. I know because despite my misgivings, I listened to Mom. I wrote the date on my first story.


My mom has been gone for many years. My dad has been gone for, what, a couple? I want to thank the both of them. You hear all of these horrible stories about parents who tried to lure their kids away from the arts because, unless you're extraordinarily lucky, that's not a good way to make money. My dad got it, and he blessed my course in life. I'm glad I was able to gain his pride before he passed. My mom got to see the beginning of my writing career, and she could not have been more supportive.


I remember when I discovered Mom's journal from when I'd been born. It was interesting to read. I'm so glad I had something that bore her soul. Not a fake bullshit thing that she wanted to censor. It was an honest accounting.


I like to think I'm an honest accounter. That's not a word, obviously, but you see where I'm coming from. That's what I do on these GF essays. Honest accounting. Mom is where that comes from. She would have been 61 by now. She had me at a young age. Dad was 60. I suspect I was an accident. But what the hell. I'm here. I write. I get published.


I am my mom and dad's legacy.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #272: YOU'LL UNDERSTAND SOME DAY

It's easy, when you're a child, to say, "I hate you, Mom!" Or, "You're not listening to me, Dad!" Or, "You don't understand!" And you can't ever swallow the pill you're given. "You'll understand some day." Nope. That's impossible. I'm a child, and I know better. You're just a stupid adult.


Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong.


I remember when I was nine or ten. I was playing ball with my cousin across the street on the Prairie Path. It was time for us to go home, so I got ready to cross the street. I glanced back and forth and crossed when I saw no cars. I came home to my mom screaming at me for not looking both ways. But I did. I didn't turn my head, but I looked both ways. I screamed and cried at her, but she never bought it.


I see her point of view today. She was deranged because of her own perceptions. It's understandable when you look back at it from the ripe old age of 40.


Another time, with my dad, we were at his girlfriend-at-the-time's family reunion (she eventually became his second wife). We were driving around, and I was in the back with my cousin and my soon-to-be stepmom's brother. I was stuck in the middle. I hate being in the middle. It's uncomfortable for me to hold my legs together. I was in physical pain. So when the time came to get back in the car, I begged Dad not to let me be in the middle. He thought it was because I didn't want to be next to his soon-to-be brother-in-law because I thought he smelled. That wasn't even a factor. I was tired of holding my legs together. I tried to explain, but he didn't buy it. I got stuck in the middle again.


I see his point later. Maybe I could have been a bit more subtle. I liked the guy who would eventually be my step-uncle. He played the Simpsons boardgame with me. But perception changed everything. The kids are rude and explicit, and only adults can dictate reality.


It's the whole cops-think-the-teens-are-lying syndrome from 'Eighties slasher films.


But conversely, there are the things where the adults were right. When I was five, my grandparents were having the roof redone, and the roofers just flicked their smokes down below. I found one and pretended to smoke it. Sure enough, Mom cleaned my mouth out with soap. Then there was the time I went camping with Dad. He only ever struck me twice, and this was the first time. Looking back, I totally understand why. I went off on my own. He couldn't find me and panicked. In his panic, he slapped me several times on my bottom. The number one fear of a parent is losing their child. He went crazy, and I completely understand it now. I hated him at the time, but now? I get it.


I went to visit my grandfather's grave recently. I sat down and had a chat with him. Look, I know that he didn't hear me. I don't believe in the afterlife. It just made me feel better. I told him if he ran into Mom and Dad, to tell them I'm sorry for all the times I scared them. It's not about reality. It's about therapy. Aaaaaaaaand maybe just hedging my bets.


But it was 100% about love.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #263: A NOT-SO-AVERAGE MOM

I just finished reading Doug Stanhope's book, DIGGING UP MOTHER. It's a wonderful book, and I recommend it to you all. Here is my Goodreads review of it. I think it will show a side of me that you're unaware of. Most of you. I pride myself on being an open book, but sometimes I forget some of my darkest moments. There have been four people in my life who have been able to get me angry enough at them to be cruel to them. Two of them are dead. One of them was my mother. I wish I could apologize to her, but . . . well . . . she's gone into the big nothing.



This is possibly the greatest autobiography I've ever read. I've been a fan of Stanhope's comedy for many years, and I know how brutally honest he is. He is even more brutally honest in this book than ever before. I like to consider myself an open book, but if my mom jerked off cats and dogs just to make 'em feel better? You would never hear about that from me. If I tortured and killed animals, again, you would never hear that from me. You can hear it from Stanhope, though.




I, like Stanhope, am a hearty drinker who despises the idiocy of AA. Also, I am the product of a severely alcoholic mother (she died of cirrhosis of the liver and was as yellow as a Simpson when she passed). As you can imagine, this book hit really close to home for me. It also taught me something about myself.



Stanhope was angry with his mother for most of the last years of her life. I was angry with Mom during that period, too. I never really thought about how much of a jerk I was to her, but reading about him berating his mother for being a burden brought back some memories that I probably shouldn't remember. I was horrible to Mom. I yelled at her. I never called her names, but when I'm driven to the point of no return, I can be an exceptionally cruel man. I know exactly the worst things to say in any given situation, and I will say them if I'm angry enough.



(The only time I yelled at Mom that I don't feel sorry about was the time I came home to find her racing downstairs to the living room, where she lived at the time--ironically in the exact same spot where her father, my grandfather, died--with a glass of what looked like alcohol. Specifically, MY alcohol. I ran upstairs because I had two bottles: a handle of Ten High and a fifth of $75 scotch. Sure enough, she had opened the box and hastily wrapped the paper around the bottle. Almost all of the scotch was gone. The Ten High? Which is a mere $13 (at the time) for a handle? Untouched. I ran downstairs and berated her for a good ten minutes. Why did she have to steal my expensive scotch? The cheap shit was right there! If she had stolen from the Ten High, I wouldn't be upset in the slightest. I ranted and raved. I'd been saving that bottle for the end of my DUI trial because I had a good chance of being found not guilty. I made her cry, and that made me feel good. I know, I know. I'm a miserable human being for it. But that scotch was so important to me. I'm getting kind of heated up thinking about it now. I still think about the absolutely defeated look on her face by the time I was done. It makes me a bit queasy now. No wonder I blocked out the memory. PS: I was found not guilty of DUI. One of the few, the proud.)



This book is amazing. All the wild parties, heavy boozing, hallucinogens, the not-your-average-mom, everything. Even Extreme Elvis makes an appearance. This is the most savage love story I've ever read. It's honest to the point of lunacy. I hope Stanhope checked to see if the statute of limitations was up for all of the crimes he talked about committing. You need to read this book.

Thank you, Doug Stanhope. This one got into my skin as if I'd lived it. Some of it, I did.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #165: AN EMOTIONAL MOMENT REVISITED

I'm going to post something about a spoiler for the new Star Wars movie. I know it's still pretty new, and people are still pretty sensitive, so if you're concerned about The Force Awakens spoilers, turn back now.


I don't fully remember this, but I do have some vague recollection. I'm told that the first time I saw The Empire Strikes Back, I did something. I'd watched the original episode back when it was just known as Star Wars many times. I had it on a Beta tape with scenes that were cut from the theatrical movie. I watched it obsessively.


But the first time I saw The Empire Strikes Back? I freaked out. You remember the scene. Luke and Vader have been fighting for a good deal of the climax, and finally, near the end, Vader savagely severs Luke's lightsaber hand.


I'm told that when I saw this scene for the first time, I screamed. I jumped up and ran into my mother's arms, weeping my eyes out and kissing her face, begging her to let it not be true. It horrified me beyond all belief. It's the second piece of fiction to have ever hurt me. (The first being the end of Night of the Living Dead. But that's a story for another day.)


Fast forward a few decades. I'm watching the new Star Wars movie, and there's a scene that makes me feel like I did when I saw Luke's hand get cut off.


You know the scene. But don't get me wrong: it's not the moment when Kylo Ren's lightsaber goes through Han Solo's chest. No.


It's seconds later, when Han Solo caresses his son's face before he falls off the OSHA-disapproved bridge. That one moment, his hand on his son's face, that I felt the very same as when I was a kid watching Luke's hand fly off into oblivion. The young-dumb-full-of-cum Han Solo we met in episode 4 would never have done that. The aged, knowledgeable Han Solo he became? It hurts my heart just thinking about it.


If my mother was still alive, I probably wouldn't have done the same thing. I would have gone to her and told her about it, though. I miss her. We had a lot of problems, but goddammit. I miss her.


Fuck. For the most part, I've healed from my mother's death. Every once in a while, though, it sneaks up on me, and it cripples me. I have tears in my eyes right now. It hurts after all these years. I cry uncontrollably. I can't help it.


I miss you, Mom. Thank you for teaching me that endings don't have to be happy with Night of the Living Dead. And thank you for showing me that heroes struggle. They don't always make it through in one piece. I wouldn't be the writer I am today without you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #73: IT NEVER HAPPENED

In my entire life, I never noticed a moment of true love between my mother and father.


I'd never really thought about it before. I don't have the same family values as the rest of America supposedly does. I obviously love my family, but I don't have the same connection, and I have to wonder if that's because I've never seen my mother and father so much as kiss each other.


I'm not the worst boyfriend in the world, but I'm pretty bad. Holy shit, it took me a long time to realize this. No one wants to believe they're the problem in any given relationship, but I know how I am. That's the primary reason I've done my best to stay out of any romance in the past few years. I've had several chances lately, and I'm glad I never took them because it would have only led to disappointment.


I don't want to be bad at this, but until I figure out my own shit, I'm not going to put a woman through the nearly impossible position of being romantically involved with me.


I don't hold it against either Mom or Dad. I know that things were fucked up between the both of them. While they might have been high school sweethearts, they were clearly not meant for each other. I know too many people who blame their parents for their intimacy issues. I'm not that guy. I recognize that what happened between them might have had an impact on the way I handle myself, but when it comes right down to it, I'm in charge of me. Not my parents. ME.


Those of you who have known me for quite some time know I'm not a traditionalist. I couldn't care less about traditional values, because that phrase means nothing. Politicians talk about it but only because they know it's a meaningless phrase that turns on people's thought centers so they can vote for that particular slimeball. If we're really talking traditional values, then we must be talking about guys who have a bunch of wives with a ton of concubines. Clearly, none of these cocksucking politicians mean this. At least not in America.


But there is a part of me that wishes I'd been raised by two people who loved each other. It doesn't matter if those two people took the traditional roles of mother and father. I would have been fine with two fathers or two mothers or whatever. Just so long as there were two people who unconditionally loved each other, who both wanted to raise me to adulthood as an intact individual.


I am a bastard. Traditionally speaking. My mother and father were never married. I lived with my mother, and I got to see my father on weekends. I grew up thinking that was the regular way of handling such a situation.


Do you want to know something horrifying? Maybe--JUST MAYBE--there's nothing wrong with that. If the two people involved no longer love each other, why should they stick together? Just so long as they share the responsibility, it should be OK, right?


I get that. The rational side of me understands that. I just wish that once--ONLY ONCE--I could have remembered my mother and father kissing each other. Like lovers. Like two people who had created a life together.


It's not a deal-breaker. I'll be OK without this. I just want to have this memory in my head.


My mother's dead. My father has his own family. I can never have what I truly want, and that's fine. I just wish things could have been different. I have love notes from my father to my mother, and that's cool. But I have no memories, and that's what's hurting me the most.


I had my problems with my father's current wife, my second step-mom. We're OK now. We've worked it out. In fact, I like her a lot more than I would have thought when I was a kid. She has a certain irreverence which I highly respect. I just didn't get it when I was younger.


I never got along with my mother's husband, the father of three of my brothers. This guy physically abused me for many years. I have scars on my body because of him. When I was a kid, I hated him. I plotted ways that I wanted to kill him. Now, as an adult, I know that he was sick in the head. He had mental problems. It's not excusable, but I understand him now.


But he's dead now. So fuck him.


I'm not traditional in any way possible, but through most of my existence, I wanted that traditional life. It took me until my college years to realize the error of my ways. When you're young, it's easy to hate. You think you're being rational, but it isn't until you're an adult that you realize the truth. You know that things are waaaaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than you thought they were a mere two years ago.


I'm sorry. I had to stop for a moment because I broke down in tears. I couldn't help it. My mother died four years ago. When it first happened, I felt an overwhelming grief. It took me a few weeks, but I got back on track. However, every once in a while, it comes back to me. Out of nowhere, it will hit me, and it will cripple me, at least for a night. This is one of those nights.


Never mind that. What I'm trying to say, even though I've taken the long way around, is that on an intellectual level, I couldn't give less of a fuck about the traditional way of doing things. On an emotional level, though, I wish I had at least one memory of Mom and Dad loving each other.


Just one.