Off and On Track

I was not articulate in my youth. My speech when I spoke at all was mostly monosyllabic. My penmanship too lacked finesse. It resembled scratches rendered by a sharpened stick in the sun baked earth. So I was not all that surprised when I was informed that I would be undergoing testing for my handwriting. This was in 7th grade. I was led into a small room in the suite of offices used by our guidance councilor, nurse, and principal. To my surprise two other kids were already in the room. I knew them both. They were retarded.

Looking at the test I knew right away that something wasn't right. If they were testing my handwriting why was I about to take a fill in the bubble quiz? I read the first question: You are seated at a table. In front of you is a plate with a fork and knife. Laid out on the table is a cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and butter. Are you about to A. wash your hands, B. watch television, C. eat a thanksgiving meal, or D. fly a kite? They weren't checking my penmanship. They were trying to see how retarded I was. Fuck that. I got up from the table without answering one question and went into a bathroom and had a smoke. Later that night I told my parents all about the test and my refusal to take part in it. They told me not to worry about it, and that was the end of my testing.

But it was not the end of pegging me. In the school system of our town at that time, as I understand it, they used a tracking system. Each student was assessed and assigned a track. There was the college track; the blue collar track; the dummy track; and the retard track. The one I was on was the dummy track. And it was the track I wanted to stay on. Thank you very much, retard track. Not much was expected of me. I was expendable. And I probably proved the system correct when I jumped the rails and dropped out of school in the spring of my tenth year.

Regardless of my derailment or the earlier testing that had assigned me my track I had within me a notion that I could write. This was due in large extent to praise I'd earlier received in the sixth grade for a poem I'd written about a lion. It was with echos of that acclaim that upon my dropping out of school I set out my portable Olivetti typewriter and hunkered down with thoughts of writing poetry. Within no time at all I had a couple poems, one of which compared rain on a windshield with poor wipers to vaseline smeared against glass by a seated elephant's ass. I promptly sent off my poems to Rolling Stone magazine along with a note informing them that I had set out to live my life as a poet. For some reason they neither published my poems or wrote back to me.

Daunted and crestfallen I returned to school the following September. In the course of an assignment that year I wrote a poem with a deftness not associated with my track. This led to my home room teacher mentoring me for several months the year after my schooling came to an end. Her freely given attention would lead me in time to brave a destination that was for me heretofore without rail service. College.

With skills that were rudimentary at best my initial course within those semi hallowed halls of community college was fortuitously English Composition. Our first assignment in that class, which I found in a box of school memorabilia years later, was to write a paragraph on any subject. My efforts resulted in one run on sentence and two fragments with no discernible subject. I had far to go.

After a foolish year pursuing a management degree I set my sights on creative endeavors and my writing flourished. It turned out I had raw talent. The truth of this came to the surface the more I wrote and augmented my skills through avid reading. The results drew praise from my instructors. They encouraged me to pursue writing as a career move. And off I went with a desire born in my sixteenth year to write a novel. No longer did such an aspiration seem so farfetched. I ventured on to Emerson College in pursuit of a BFA degree in Creative Writing.

Twenty years later I finally sat down and wrote that (first) novel. That it was turned down by every literary agent I approached for representation was I'll admit frustrating. But it did not diminish the joy of my accomplishment. Hot damn; I wrote a novel. And now I'm a 1/4 way into novel number two. I have also found in blogging a realm of writing rewarding to me. So I write. And as my experience has shown there's just no telling where these long traveled rails might lead me.

Ninth Grade Class Night

With an hour to go before the ceremony was to begin the four of us dropped hits of acid. This was in early June when I was fifteen and in ninth grade and gobbling LSD upwards of three times a week. We were at that moment huddled in the woods in a pot smoking circle not far from our school. Ahead of us was Class Night, an evening that was both fanfare and rite of passage. For we had reached after three years of tutelage a point of demarcation. The following year we would be attending high school in another part of town. Giddy and giggling we left our place in the woods and headed for the night's activities.

When we entered the school and headed for the gym we needled one another mirthfully to act straight. Just inside the gym doors was an easel on which sat a mammoth white greeting card that sparkled with glitter and sequins and had a red heart in the center of it. One of the matronly chaperones guarding the door urged us to sign the card. We snickered at the idea and stood in the doorway somewhat dumbfounded. Laid out before us in the sparsely peopled gym were two dozen tables. Each one had seating for eight people. The tables were set with paper table cloths and plastic place settings. Against the back wall was a projection screen. The other three walls and ceiling of the gym were festooned with red, white and blue bunting, and silver and gold helium filled balloons. Off to our left was a rostrum and a six foot long banquet table bearing a punch bowl and cups and a monstrous vanilla cake. With a bit of effort the four of us prodded one another and ventured forth to claim a table. We chose one that was out of the way and off to the side.

Soon the gym was filling up and buzzing with voices and laughter that ebbed and peaked and receded symphonically. No one joined us at our table. We were the only ones among the gathered who were dressed in denim. Our class mates in contrast were garbed in clothes I associated with weddings and funerals and sunday mass. There were gown clad girls in high heels, and guys in suits and ties that they'd probably borrowed from their older brothers.

By then I was hallucinating vividly and had a serious case of the giggles. I felt as tho I was bathing in a warm light. But soon I had to take a leak. On unsteady legs I headed for the bathroom. The walk across the spongy floor of the gym was a challenge that put a smile on my face. Man was I tripping. When I got to the facilities I was glad to find I had the room to myself. I stepped up to the urinal and my right leg began to shake uncontrollably. After a moment or two I smacked it with my balled up right hand. As I did so the door to the bathroom opened and in walked Brad Davis, a local radio personality. He looked to me like a puppet with too many freckles and a shock of red hair. He stepped up to the urinal next to mine and looked over at me and my shaking leg. I gave him a weak smile. He said something banal about the niceness of the evening, flushed, and departed. My leg continued to shake and all I could think was that Brad Davis must have thought I was a spastic weirdo.

I returned to the gym. Soon a head master was rapping on the rostrum for attention. Once he had it he launched into a speech about our constructive time at his school and the wondrous years we were sure to have in high school. There was mention made too of college. But I paid it no attention. I cared little about furthering my education. (In fact I would the following year drop out of school and work a succession of menial jobs; it was an experience that led me to reenroll in school the very next fall.) His words of good luck were met by hearty cheers. A slide show with humorous commentary followed. Our table's laughter was full of derision.

Afterwards with the lights kept low Brad Davis manned the turn tables. He played the latest hits on his am station. It drew the popular kids out on to the make do dance floor. Suddenly Lynn Weeks a warm and friendly girl who easily straddled the various cliques in our school was standing before me. She told me that someone wanted to dance with me. Chemically stupefied I beg off. But she was insistent. Against my better judgement I acquiesced. And presto, there before me standing at Lynn's side was a studious, prim and plain looking girl who had no doubt gone out of her way that night to look her best. I laughed in her face and doubled over guffawing at the ridiculous notion of our dancing together. Such were the cruelties I sometimes inflicted.

The evening ended with me hitchhiking home. When I entered the house my mother was in the living room reading. I joined her there and turned on the television and took a seat across the room from her. A moment later our dog Toto came into the room and sat aside the television and stared at me. Instantly I was aware that she knew I was tripping. I did my best to stare her down and I sent her a message telepathically to not somehow alert my mother that I was high. Sensing tension between Toto and I my mother marked her place in her book and looked over at me and asked is everything was alright? I assured her that everything was fine and I bid her good night. I went to my bedroom, put Electric Lady Land on my turntable, turned off the lights, and slipped on my headphones. I lay down upon my bed and was mesmerized by the liquid patterns that morphed and undulated on my darkened ceiling. My only concern was that Toto might some how betray me.

Lake Days

One of the perks of my father's job as a corrections officer at the Somers, Ct, maximum security facility in the early to mid sixties was the use of the lake on prison farm land. My father worked third shift and following his after work nap we three kids who were barely in our teens would all load into the 1950s black coup that served as our family's second car and with our father behind the wheel we would make our way to the lake. It was a couple of miles from our house and located down the end of a dirt road that snaked its way pass unsupervised laboring inmates, grazing dairy cows, rows of carrots and lettuce, and acres of corn fields. Around one tree lined bend in the road there were numerous coops twice the size of dog-houses where inmates and trustees raised pheasants that would later be used to stock hunting grounds. We would hear the pheasants gurgling and cooing as we passed by.

At the final bend in the dirt road the land opened up to reveal a volleyball net, two baseball diamonds, a basketball court, picnic tables and plenty of tree shaded parking. My father would park beneath the pine trees and we would pile out of the car and head for the water. There was a sandy shore some fifteen yards wide that bisected two picnic areas featuring grills and picnic tables. Thirty yards from shore was a floating raft constructed atop eight empty fifty gallon drums.

As we kids attacked the water my father would have a go at his pipe and shoot the shit with other off duty guards. An hour or so later he would take a dip, peacefully floating on his back as if he didn't have a care in the world.

I was an imaginative boy and one afternoon I practiced swimming with only one hand in case later on I became a lifeguard and had to rescue someone from drowning. The next day at school this cute girl told me she saw me out at the lake the day before. Her father was a prison guard too. She asked me why I was swimming with one arm. When I told her why she said I was weird. It made me wonder if I was.

Another afternoon as we three kids and the Shea brothers waited in the coup for our father to come out of the house Crazy Alice happened to be walking by. She was a neighborhood teenage eccentric who once kidnapped the fiberglass Big Boy Bob from the front of the Abdow's Big Boy restaurant. We taunted her and she snapped into attack mode cussing and hollering and clawing at the car doors. Feeling perfectly safe with the doors locked and the windows rolled up we teased her some more. This ticked her off royally. She threatened to kill us, and smacked at the car. When my father appeared Crazy Alice turned her attention his way. They exchange heated words before Crazy Alice stormed off. When my father got in the car he said we should know better. We shouldn't make fun of crazy people. We said we were sorry and off we went.

On weekends my mother who worked during the week joined us at the lake. She would pack a voluminous picnic basket and we would at dinner time cook up hamburgs and chicken on the grill and later roast marshmallows. Afterwards we'd play volleyball and take a last afternoon dip in the lake before heading home with the sun was sinking in west.

The Human Sickle

Sunday afternoons while addled and hung-over from Saturday night's excesses we played pick up games of full contact football without any protective gear. This was when I was in my mid-teens and had earned the nickname "The Clothes Line" for my sweeping sickle of a forearm aimed at my opponent's throat. I took down ball runners left and right.

I was not the only one with a nickname on those Vince Lombardi gone to seed days. There was also "Mushly" a diminutive player who was often given the ball to run with because he was squirmy and cartoon logic had us convinced that due to his size he could slip right through an opponent's legs. Also on the playing field were two brothers who were known as "Horse Man" and "Pony Boy." The latter had the build of a Budweiser Clydesdale and when he ran it was easy to see him as galloping. The former was far more gentle and had all the cute makings of a little girl's desire for her very own pony.

We played without cheer-leaders or audiences and usually downed hair of the dog libations while attending to our grid iron duties. It was not unusual for someone to call time out to refresh himself with another beer. We had after all our priorities.

Our playing field was in a neighborhood park and the end zones of it were marked by articles of clothing, for instance someone's balled up shirt. Side lines were where we left our six-packs of beer. There were also no goal posts or after touchdown kicks for extra points. Our games were strictly touchdown affairs. The only kicking involved was when we punted for kickoffs and also on fourth downs when a team failed to move the ball an estimated ten yards in the span of three plays. No matter what the reason for a punt however it engendered in both teams rebel yells and hearty tackles of the poor slob running with the ball.

In our subsequent huddles we'd occasionally smoke a joint, swig down some beer, and declare all out mayhem on a player we'd momentarily come to despise. The huddles following one of my particularly vicious clothes lines usually rallied the opposing team into a vehement unit who'd issue an all out call for blood. There was a price to pay for being the human sickle.

Lacking whistles and flags and impartial judgment we self officiated with the loudest yelling team most often winning the argument on how to call a questionable play. More often than not hotly contested calls led to ever more vicious tackles in subsequent plays.

There was also no official time for how long a game lasted. Usually we'd call it quits when the beer ran out. By then most of us would be sporting fresh lumps, cuts, and bruises. We'd limp off the field and go our separate ways all the while nursing thoughts of the havoc and revenge we would reap in the game on the following Sunday.

My sister at sunset

The mind has its phantom thoughts that are renegades from logic. They are vaporous and disappear as quickly as they arrive. Twice since my sister killed herself a month ago I have been visited by two such thoughts, both of them questioning with a unified voice, "I wonder if Karen will call me tonight?" And poof. Each of the two vanished with an attending slap; "Oh yeah, she is dead."

I haven't been able to get a hold of the fact of her demise, in part I believe, because there was through cremation no stilled body to gaze upon at her wake. Instead at a cushioned spot for kneeling there was, at eye level, a photo of her and an ornate urn. Ashes to ashes and all of that. I gazed upon those tokens of her life and death and felt the dullest pangs of loss. It just didn't seem real that my dear sister was gone for ever and ever, amen.

Her graveside service too with its priest and Catholic invocation of Jesus and the eternal hereafter provided no closure for me. The words of the priest read from a book did not sooth or console. The man did not know my sister, nor did she think herself a Catholic. She'd left that religion years ago. The service however was not for me and as I stood there at my sister's grave site I had only one hope and that was that the priest's words eased my father's suffering from the loss of his daughter, the woman who would always remain his little girl.

There is this grainy 8mm-like film loop that runs in my mind each time my unbidden thoughts turn to my sister. In the loop she is falling. Exactly where she is is murky. I can not place the location. She is falling is all I know. Whether she was pushed or slipped is a mystery. For she is always in mid fall in a space that seems to have no top or bottom. I see her falling through the air without aid of a parachute.

Besides such cinematic thoughts are those born of regrets: Could I have in someway said magic words to my sister, words that had the power to rescind her fatal and final decision? Was there another way things might have been? Could I have in my last phone call to her found the right words to fill her once again with hope of better days to come? But all my questions are for naught. They've not an inkling of power to undo all that's transpired. And to think them I've come to see is a kind of betrayal to all my fond memories of my sister when she was radiantly alive and in remission from that horrible disease of depression.

In time I trust I will adjust to her passing and the film loop of her falling will fade away and be replaced by the images of a fond memory of my sister and I: In that memory the two of us are on the beach at sunset with her beloved dog, Stella. The sun is brilliant in smeared oranges, yellows, and golds and Stella is digging up crabs and barking at porpoises. A slight breeze is blowing and I am feeling content, serene, and in awe of the magnificence before me. The moment is one of utter perfection and Karen turns and looks at me and says, "God. Isn't this great." If ever I had an obligation to her it is to remember her in that light.