Off my feet but still distant

The water started to wash away the salt from sweat and tears, along with the dust that had begun to mix with it. I breathed in deeply and did my best to release the lingering tension I felt. I told myself it was going to be okay, I’m doing the right thing. I thought about creating some excuse for us to go out to dinner tonight, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince them at the last minute. I rinsed off the soap and shampoo, imagining I could somehow leave my doubts behind circling the drain before finally falling down into the terrifying Los Angeles sewage system. I stepped out of the shower and kneaded the bathroom rug with my feet as I dried myself off with a fresh white towel. I hung the towel and walked into the bedroom. I dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and lay down on the bed. I looked up at the linen white ceiling and stared at the small bumps, ridges, and ravines that made up the texture of it. Since this house was the product of years of my mother in law’s considerations, obsessions, and moods I was certain there was a reason for this specific texture. For the most part it looked like any other ceiling, but at various family occasions during the years that Lauren’s mother, Elaine was alive, I would ask her about a particular nook or corner’s purpose or why the garden had been placed immediately upon the backdoor of the house. She would say, “Jonathan, I can’t just explain why there is a triangular corner behind the guest’s bathroom door. That decision is tied to everything else in this house. If you really are interested I can explain, but it has to do with the stairway and the particular steps I chose. I had also intended to have a fireplace, and the chimney would have needed a way to reach the roof, so it was designed to pass through that portion of the wall and lend the hallway character. I don’t like blank hallways and it seemed too much of an invasion of my privacy to put a large window at the end of the hall. You look bored! See? I told you that it was tied to everything else, and I haven’t even gotten started.” Usually around then someone would change the subject or Lauren would pull me away to help with the preparation of our meal. Despite the many holidays we shared in this home, before it was inherited and after, while Elaine was still alive but not healthy enough to live on her own and feeling like she was wasting the potential of her masterpiece, I still do not feel like I have any clear idea of why our home was made the way it was. It is a yellow-orange color, with a wavy chocolate fairytale of a roof, the floors are maple which has been well-maintained, and it has two stories. As a boy I had a fleeting interest in architecture, but remembered hardly enough to be able to identify who inspired her to make this home, or if there even was anything quite like it. It was a comfortable and Anna’s school friends loved it, calling it a gingerbread house. When guests visited they inevitably made some sort of comment, but at times their eyelids tightened and a cringe might flash momentarily betraying their judgment that the house was too playful or modern. I heard the sound of tires in the driveway and the familiar sound of Anne slamming the car door and running to our front door along the stone walkway, but then being called back to bring her violin inside too. I rubbed my eyes and stood up, just as Lauren opened the door and said, “We’re home!”
“Mommy since I played so well today can I have extra dessert? Please?”
“We will see. If you do the rest of your homework while Daddy and I make dinner, maybe you’ll have an extra scoop of ice cream.”
I walked downstairs and Anne ran to me, setting her violin case down carefully before wrapping her arms around me. “Dad! I played Adagio all of the way through. Even the hard parts!”
“Good for you. Go do your homework and we’ll talk about it at dinner,” I said.
Anne went upstairs to her room; I stood in the entryway looking at Lauren already at work in the kitchen. The kitchen had chessboard marble tiles, and very white cabinets accompanied by soft blue walls. The rapturous feeling of young love had been replaced by a calm, comfortable knowledge and trust in her, with spikes of intermittent desire. I was still in love with her, and she looked just as attractive as when we first met years ago when I was playing pool in a bar here in LA. She was wearing somewhat tight jeans that showed off her long legs and a black sweater of soft fabric of an origin unbeknownst to me. She was a tall woman with dark hair, and blue eyes that sparkled with intelligence and occasionally hurt.
She turned her head over her shoulder and said, “You going to help or stand in the hall?”
I walked over and kissed her cursorily and started to cut some vegetables for the salad. “How was your day?”
“It was good. She really is getting much better. What about yours, Jon?”
“Went for a run up at the canyon after work and then you guys came home, remember that house up there? The Spanish villa we wanted to own?”
“Of course. How could I forget, you said that if we ever lived there I would have to dress up as some sort of heroine. It’s far too big for us though, out of necessity with that kind of space we would have to have ten other kids.”
I stopped and turned to her doing my best to smile, “I was thinking about those walks we used to take up there.”
“Feeling nostalgic about me already, huh? I’m still here we can go for a walk this weekend.” She said as she walked over to me and nuzzled against my shoulder.
I didn’t reply at first and savored the slightly nutty but sweet smell of her skin. She smelled like her coconut moisturizer and the aroma that was distinctly hers. I have revisited this memory many times and I can’t wholly trust that I haven’t embellished or idealized portions of it, but truly throughout my life with Lauren I was happy with her.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
We finished preparing dinner, fusilli with meatballs and salad. I had worked as a line chef through college and she was something of a gourmet, we worked well together in the kitchen, she generally chose the menu and I helped prepare the food.
“Anne, come down and set the table for dinner. Before it gets cold!” I called from downstairs.
She rushed downstairs and began to set the table, I was told that she was still young enough to look forward to eating with us, but I also liked to think that it was a product of the functional family we had created. I sat at the head of the table, with Lauren to my right and Anne to the left. We passed the bread and salad around the table, asking politely for butter or dressing, and enjoyed a peaceful meal. I imagined what this scene would look like without me here. Would they sit alone together at the table, or would I be stealing even this simple ritual from them as well? Picturing the world without me in it was very difficult to do. Some nights I wasn’t home in time for dinner, work ran late, or I had some event to attend that I spared my family from, so I’m sure Anne and Lauren had a routine for when I was gone, I just had no way of knowing it what it was. Plus, that was different from dining alone together indefinitely. I sat and made routine conversation about Anne’s day in school, her violin lesson, Lauren’s day at work teaching, and my run.
At the mention of running Anne chimed in, “Daddy, you aren’t too tired to take Marlowe on a walk are you? I’ll even come with you too.” Marlowe was our golden Labrador that I had bought Anne two years ago for her birthday. He was energetic and as he had gotten older better behaved. I had replaced several pairs of shoes of Lauren’s in an attempt to conceal his puppy mischief since she wasn’t much for dogs, but I had failed to find a suitable replacement for the last pair and had had to confess. She wasn’t vain or terribly attached to shoes, but she didn’t like being inconvenienced and I had bought the dog without consulting her—so accordingly I did most of the dog-walking, but after she grew used to the idea I began catching her playing with him and quickly stopping when she noticed I was watching. So in the beginning, Anne and I did most of the walking, and I think this was time that she enjoyed spending with me. Dogs are an excellent way of being alone with someone without feeling alone. Instead of reminiscing about my family I should have been paying attention to them and carefully remembering that last dinner, but instead I went off deep in thoughts of what could have been, and what was, precious days that had been spent in familial bliss, and felt pride in my success doing what my family never could do; being a family. They deserved a fate better than being my accomplishment.
Lauren and I cleared the table, saving what was leftover for next day’s lunches. Anne helped by loading some of the dishes into the dishwasher and getting Marlowe excited.
“Daddy! Marlowe is ready to walk, let’s go.”
“Annie, we don’t run things on Marlowe’s schedule. If you do that you’ll have an impossible to handle dog, remember?”
“Daddy let’s just go walk and not talk about schedules, they’re borrring.”
I grabbed the leash from on top of the refrigerator and put it on the already jumping Marlowe. Anne started for the door, and we began our walk down the street on that hot autumn evening. Our particular stretch of Highland Ave. isn’t as busy as the rest of the street, but it isn’t an ideal dog-walking street, after a block or so, not that this unplanned city really has many blocks, the street merges with La Brea, a much busier, wider street populated by stores, gas-stations, and food chains that are uninviting and seem unlikely to attract any buyers, the quality of the neighborhood sharply drops off further down La Brea, so Anne and I took a left and walked down a quieter side street.
Marlowe could probably walk the route himself by memory. I handed Anne the leash and watched to make sure she wasn’t pulled around by our dog. She had dark shoulder length hair like her mother, that would likely be chopped off soon as she started to rebel against us. Despite my certainty that I was her father, she looked like a younger version of Lauren, with large green eyes that could focus for impossibly long or frustratingly short periods of time depending on Anne’s moods. She was wearing a summer dress, pink with flower imprints, and quite small black shoes. As was our habit we didn’t speak much during the walk, just enjoyed each other’s company and watched Marlowe strain against the leash for one last whiff of whatever imperceptible scent had caught his attention.
I didn’t have anything I could say. As a child my father burdened me with his confessions and that was the last thing I would do to my daughter. She had a mischievous side but was still completely innocent, her jokes were non sequiturs or predictable punch-line jokes she had heard, she could be stubborn but I saw no sign in her of my selfishness, or tendency to lie. Of course until that next morning, she really had no reason to be anything but our perfect little daughter, and here I was, quietly walking her dog with her before hurting her in a way it would take her years to even understand. These unseen wounds would linger on within her, unnoticed, or aggravated, like an undetected cancer which she would someday have to acknowledge or be destroyed by, that was the gift I was giving her. I hoped that I would be able somehow to write her after I left, and to explain things when they became clear to me. I wanted to spare her the confusion and hurt that may be inevitable parts of becoming a grown-up, but even as I reached out to touch her soft, relaxed hand and hold it, I knew there was nothing I could do to shelter her from the reality outside of our gingerbread home, that would be further encroaching upon her life as she grew older, inevitably suffering a thousand minor disappointments and heartbreaks, all without me to comfort her.
“Dad… Thanks for taking me and Marlowe on a walk.” She smiled eagerly at me, already trying to cheer me up without acknowledging that I was somewhere far away.
“Thank you for coming.” I squeezed her small hand that I was still grasping.
“Why can’t you see stars here? When we were at Joshua Tree we could see way more stars. I miss them.”
“The city lights are too bright, so we can’t see all of the way to the stars.”
“Can we go back sometime?”

New start

Every evening I take a run after work. We live nearby the Hollywood hills and like many people in Hollywood I often run up and down Runyon Canyon. As I ran up Fuller my calves started to burn a bit, the incline is steep and the concrete is uneven. Usually I’m sweating a bit before I even enter the park, but it was hot today so I felt droplets of sweat begin to bead on my temples and by the time I reached the small gate into the park by an unsupervised table filled with granola bars and bananas I was really sweating. It was getting darker earlier, so it was nearing dusk as I started up the canyon, trying to not breathe in too deeply the smog, or occasional smell of dog shit. I took the left path which is initially steeper, but would help ensure that I would reach the top before it was completely dark. I felt the pleasant sensation of my shoes sliding along the dusty dirt and rock path and began to forget about why it was important that I take this run.
The trails were not empty but much less full than on a Sunday morning, when a mish-mash of aspiring, would-be, and successful actors who looked like they could have successful fitness model careers took shirtless runs up and down the trails, accompanied by actresses, producers, and people hoping to sight celebrities, oh and not to forget the dogs. This small idyllic, in comparison to the swath of unplanned city, patch of nature was home to more than fifty dogs on weekends who for a brief hour or two had their chances to feel like unfettered animals. When my wife and I were younger, we would go dog watching on the weekends. Sundays we would wake up lazily, make love, and after a quick breakfast we would walk up this dusty, relatively natural canyon and look at all of the different dogs and their owners. At the time we wanted a dog and we would have little arguments over which dog we saw would have been perfect for us. I was partial to Australian Shepherds at the time; she wanted something small, a Pomeranian.
Fortunately, the hill is steep and there are pebbles and rocks scattered in some areas, so I still have to pay attention to my footing, otherwise after having been up and down this path over a hundred times I would simply be on autopilot and not enjoy this brief respite from everyday life. My calves had stopped hurting and I was keeping good time as I rounded one of the bends that overlooks the ravine below. The path is very wide and I can pass the people walking their dogs easily. There are two obvious draws to the Canyon, its own benefits, the dull green foliage that leads me to feel I’m not in the middle of a sprawling city, the views from the summit, the multiple paths and ridges to explore, and the convenient as well as interesting location of it, and then the people it attracts.
Of course amongst the crowds drawn to this collection of hills that overlooks some of the richest and nicest homes in Hollywood are families, dog walkers, the aforementioned aspiring actors, agents talking deals, and tourists, but what has been fascinating to me is almost everyone is beautiful. I haven’t reached some sort of blissful runner’s high that has deluded me into thinking this; that usually happens on the way down. Some of the most attractive men and women in Hollywood can be found putting themselves on display every weekend here, while tourists gaze upon their wet finely honed bodies and think to themselves “Ah, that’s what a Californian looks like,” these statuesque bodies that are the product of countless hours of dedication and strange California dieting techniques. I had always wanted to take a series of photographs of this attractive milieu, but I never will. I am not a photographer, and I have a busy life here.
As I get closer to the top I start to slow down a bit, I don’t want to come to a complete stop suddenly when I take my last look at this city that has been my home for the last twelve years. At the top of this popular path is a bench that overlooks Hollywood, and on a particularly clear day past Santa Monica to the Pacific Ocean. Those sorts of days only come right after there is rain which clears the air of the haze, the lingering, unvanquished remains of smog. Countless couples sit on this bench and find where they live, or shop while quietly admiring the vast expanse of single to two story buildings that make up the majority of Los Angeles. To the left of that bench there are multimillion dollar homes with bright blue, well-lit swimming pools and winding roads that connect steep driveways to the rest of what we accept as civilization. I stared down at those massive opulent homes and looked at the house Lauren and I had finally agreed on years ago, during those naïve, heady puppy shopping days, as being our dream house. It was far too large for our needs, a three story Spanish inspired home that my minimal architectural vocabulary cannot do justice to. It was the sort of home you imagined Zorro would retire to, not that either I or my wife were particularly Zorro-like, but it was regal, gorgeous, and a dream home that we reached compromise on. I struggled to fight back tears. This was another dream of ours that would never come to fruition. It wasn’t the money, I suppose over time I could someday afford that house, but it was my failure as a husband, a secret failure that would only become clear to her tomorrow.
I loved Lauren, her bright blue eyes, long legs, her knack for a bon mot, and her way of saying goodbye that was a breathless sigh. She was the mother to our nine year old daughter, and tirelessly dedicated to our family. I felt sick to my stomach and pushed these thoughts of her out of my head. I squinted and tried to see the ocean, glanced at the lonely skyscrapers and began my descent. At first the path is too steep and the dirt slips out easily from my feet so I walked carefully down to the massive slabs of stone that make up a small staircase. After I walked down those steps I began to run again until I reached my car, for a couple minutes I think of nothing and feel like a running boy. I reach my car and drive home, crying in the driveway before showering for Anne and Lauren’s return from Anne’s violin lesson.

Who's Robert?

Her eyes watered as she thought about what was lost forever. She pushed her hair out of her face and resolved to never think again about what had changed. This was her new life sans Robert. She would not think twice about how it was her fault or how she had lied. She made her decision and unlike so many others would not allow herself to feel a pang of regret.

She sobbed into her pillowcase and pushed thoughts of sharing a home and dog with him out of her mind. She thought maybe now he could do something with his life instead of just wasting it on me. He has so much potential. She thought about him and how she had always felt like charity around him. He could be stubborn and standoffish but he was the most dedicated lover she had ever had. No one had made her feel quite like he did but for some untold reason she betrayed him. The sex had died off, and she felt dull next to him. Never feeling like she was the beautiful one in the relationship had its consequences. He had large lips, a dimpled chin, and guarded eyes. So much of her day to day life was spent in pursuit of beauty. Her life and hope was sacrificed to the fickle god of appearances. Hours spent in front of the mirror complaining about her nose or stomach were forever lost.

She couldn't quite put her finger on it but there was something about this man that was different. He accepted so much of her and would give anything he could, yet she felt uneasy about him. She didn't want to be made into anything or pushed into growing into a person someone else saw within her. Drinking and comedy was enough. She would tell herself how ugly she was, but this was likely an accumulation of guilt. Never feeling right about herself had taken its toll. Relationships overlapped easily and names were mixed-up. Running is a full-time job but her life had been a series of trials that had her well-prepared.

Alcohol was her ace in the hole. If new shoes, new men, and new TV shows couldn't drown out her pain she turned to margaritas, cranberry vodkas, and Irish whiskey. She would wake up in the morning with missed calls and a snoring half-naked stranger next to her. Quickly she would take aspirin and then wrap herself longingly in her newest detour. Its hard to say whether she ever was capable of loving someone else. Beneath whatever infatuation grew there was always a lingering suspicion of other people and their intentions. She would think how it would be impossible for someone like him to love her.

Life went on as it always did. There was an emptiness in the space around her but nothing oppressive. It was more of a fog than a wall, and given the right combination of male attention and alcohol she could wade through this troublesome condensation without paying it any heed. It came in fits, some mornings she wondered what her life would have been like with the other man but most days there was no time to think. Waking up late and hungover she would jump into the shower, criticize her body and admire her breasts, and get dressed as gorgeous as she possibly could. Day after day was a ritual of body worship without much attention paid to actually maintaining health or spirit. If her butt sagged a bit she would do squats for a couple days, and if her stomach seemed larger she skipped food and only drank.

Counseling dad, age 5

As a young boy when things wouldn’t go my way I would threaten suicide. “Fine! I’ll just kill myself.”
This seemed to be effective in infuriating my mother, which is strange since I was five years old. We were in the kitchen in the upstairs duplex we rented on Tinker Bell St. I was upset because we had gone shopping for piñata party favors and was jealous of the prospective winners. There was a king Arthur book that I wanted, but I think at the time I had my eye on one of those neon-colored Koosh rubber balls with strings flying out at every possible angle.
“Don’t say that! That’s terrible. Why would you say that? It’s just a toy, stop being so ridiculous.” What confuses me is why she would even bother getting angry. I would just laugh at my kid if he threatened suicide. This of course is a judgment call based on age and I wouldn’t recommend it as a blanket strategy.
“No one cares! I’ll just kill myself.” Oh the ennui of a five year old, but how did I know about suicide? That was a lesson from my sterling example of a father. Dad alternated between a thin veneer of happy go lucky attitude and the pits of despair.
Generally a phrase such as “the pits of despair” is hyperbole, here it is not. David was capable of curling up into a ball and asking existential questions to anyone who would listen. The apartment was a one bedroom since mom was the only one who worked. My younger sister and I shared the bedroom, and my parents used half of the living-room as their bedroom, with a futon on the floor in the corner nearby the television and bookshelf. On hard days Dad would lie on the futon in the fetal position and ask me why life was worth living. This was a frequent enough occurrence that it didn’t trouble me to answer these questions thoughtfully and also that I was comfortable pretending that I would kill myself over a rubber toy. “Why should I even go on buddy?”
“Because things change. Tomorrow is going to be different.”
“Nothing changes for the better. Things just get worse.”
“You had one kid before and now you have two. That’s a good change.” Reminding him of his responsibilities was a misguided attempt in inciting some sort of lingering maturity but most likely reminded him of his feelings of hopelessness.
“You ever just want to curl up into a ball and die?”
“No. I don’t think about that. Sometimes I get really tired of waiting for a friend who is late.”
“But what if you knew that friend was never coming and that you were going to wait there forever?”
“I’m gonna go to school dad. Feel better.”
“You should stay home, we can play Rad Racer.”
“Thanks but I can’t miss more school.”

Teepee continued

I am not sure whether I will be able to fully describe the overwhelming fear I experienced. From all that I can recall these are two of the most terrifying moments I've been through in my entire life. Neither one is particularly eventful but during both the sensation of fear was palpable. The first is simple but the combination of a climactic moment in a book and the dark teepee came together to scare me out of my five year old mind, and the second was my father yet again including me in something I wouldn't want to be involved in even today.

As I mentioned in the first part of the teepee adventures for my fifth birthday I was given a boxed edition of The Lord of the Rings books by Tolkien. I was reading those and Jack London on my own a year later but in the teepee when we sat around the fire my mom would read Tolkien to me. I am sure this treatment would intensify the experience of any book but at times in my young mind I was half-ready for Urakai and Balrogs to run out of the woods into our camp. To be clear, I knew the difference between fantasy and reality but could find myself becoming very immersed in the story.

The movies do an adequate job of capturing the scene that overwhelmed me, after fighting the creature that guards the entrance to Moria and after opening the door, Gandalf and the party make camp inside the long abandoned dwarven cavern. I forget which Hobbit drops pebbles into the well, maybe Merry or Pippen, but after dropping several stones into the dry well he awakens the orcs that live below. After they camp and discover the fate of the dwarves that had been sent there, they hear drum being played and are attacked.

I distinctly remember sitting by the fire as my mom read this scene to me. As a young boy Gandalf was my favorite character and this scene is expertly written by Tolkien, who can often drag on into his mythology without any apparent purpose, he manages to build the tension gradually and incredibly. Before ever heading to Moria the Fellowship is warned not to use that passage and that it is not safe. After fighting the Watcher in the Water there is a feeling of relaxation as the party escapes into Moria. Then there is the dropping of stones, and later they read the diary of Balin, the dwarf who was sent into Moria in an attempt to reclaim it from the orcs and Balrog. Just as Gandalf reads the final entry, where it is clear Balin died in a terrible fight and drums are mentioned, the party hears the first dim sound of a drum. From then Tolkien builds the tension to a frenzy before the orcs attack, but he manages to maintain the tension even after - as the party tries to escape and Gandalf seemingly sacrifices himself to the Balrog so that Frodo may survive. Like I said, I can remember this stuff!

I remember being so afraid for these imaginary characters and completely enthralled but also simultaneously hoping that somehow I could stop listening to the story. I don't remember if I could fall asleep that night but I was mesmerized by that moment of the book for a very long time.

Later that summer my father started to work at a store several miles away. He would walk or hitch-hike his way down the mountain in order to get to work. At night he would come back with food for dinner and a proud smile. During some of the time in the teepee my dad was the happiest I ever saw him. He was always more at home in nature than the rest of the world, even behind his drum set. Those idyllic moments didn't last long. On his walks he took to exploring the woods and streets around us. One evening he came back with pans but they weren't new. This raised some predictable questions that he gracefully avoided answering, but a couple of days later he asked me to come with him on a walk. That wasn't anything out of the ordinary, aside from reading, running through the woods with a stick, and watching my sister try to crawl there wasn't much to do in the teepee other than walk around the forest.

"I want to show you something buddy," he said and we crossed the stream. Then we walked up the hill to the main road and walked along the shoulder for a mile or so. The road itself was fairly quiet with a house alongside it every couple hundred yards. Eventually he stopped and walked up toward a dilapidated, run-down, white two-story house. We walked up the driveway and he said to be quiet. There wasn't any car in the driveway and it didn't look like anyone had lived there in awhile at least from the outside. Even at my age I could tell my Dad had been there before. He was comfortable and opened the side door that opened into the kitchen. I have no idea what he was thinking bringing me there. Maybe he was lonely, maybe it scared him too, but regardless he brought me into an abandoned house. It wasn't the sort of abandoned house that pervades television, with junkies passed out everywhere and graffiti on the walls, although that would have been terrifying in its own right. Instead it was a fully furnished, mildew smelling, abandoned house with no signs of the occupants having any idea that they would be leaving.

I am not a superstitious person so do not misinterpret this as being a ghost story. All of the belongings to the family, or couple, or person that lived there still remained. I don't put a lot of value into material possessions, but with someone's entire belongings left behind I couldn't help but wonder why no one knew or claimed anything, or took care of the house. My father looked into the refrigerator and some of the drawers to the side of it, everywhere he looked there were clear orange prescription bottles. Whoever had lived there had been very sick or very old. I don't remember if he grabbed anything, I would imagine he had looted what he wanted before bringing me but maybe he was hoping he had missed some painkillers. Toward the front of the house was the living room which was dusty and dark because the blinds were drawn. For whatever reason David wasn't interested in the living room, but we walked through it to the stairs. Upstairs was darker because we were in a windowless hallway, but we went into the master bedroom. It had a four post wooden frame and a queen size bed made with a floral comforter, in front of it was a medium sized television and I remember standing as close to the door as I could while he went through the television cabinet and later went into the master bathroom to look around. I knew we weren't supposed to be there and I knew that places like this weren't really supposed to exist. Families were supposed to take care of things like this after someone died, or moved, or went to the hospital, but here no one did anything. The power was shut-off so this had to have happened awhile ago, and yet no one had been into the house except for my dad and I. I had all of these questions, why wasn't anyone there? Why didn't anyone care? Didn't someone want this house or these things? What had happened here? Why were we here? Could we leave? But I didn't ask anything. I implicitly understood that what we were doing was wrong and that it was best not to mention anything about it. When I stood there at the threshold to someone's abandoned bedroom, where they may have died but had surely once lived, I wanted more than anything to get out of that house. The terrible unfinished reality of it was suffocating. I didn't say anything, I wasn't very good at standing up for myself then. I stood quietly, trying to look brave and waited for my dad to find whatever it was he was looking for. Thankfully he either found what he had wanted or realized how terrified I was and we left. We walked back to the teepee and I pretended we had gone on a normal walk, I didn't mention what had happened to anyone for years. I had no idea about his drug-use then and even through all of the grotesque scenes that he put me through, this one was the most lasting and shocking to me. I think of it differently than when he overdosed, or was drunk and angry, under those influences I could make excuses for him - but on his own to bring me somewhere like that without any consideration for me was a huge mistake. I honestly don't believe my father was being neglectful or careless.. unfortunately, I think this was a misguided attempt at showing me something exciting. His notion that I was special and therefore didn't need the coddling protection afforded to normal children allowed him to thoughtlessly hurt me without any malicious intentions. This one simple misunderstanding of me led to painful, strange drug-fueled discussions of fate, love, and saving the world.

My father's dad was absent most of his childhood, using his job as a shield from his wife's ongoing descent into dementia. I do not think David had any idea what it meant to care for and protect another person, because of this I learned quite early how to protect myself as well as how to care for those who couldn't care for themselves. What is interesting to me about these two different stories is that even then the world of books offered something that was sorely lacking in my minimal experience of the world: clarity and resolution. I never learned why we went to that house. I guess he was looking for more drugs, but really past that I have no idea what happened there or why nothing was fixed. Life is messy like that.

I personally don't have a deep love for neat parenthetical clean books but I loved the safety and logic behind novels. I wasn't versed in literary criticism but I intuitively knew that every word was chosen, every scene crafted with a purpose in mind. This vision and direction was deeply reassuring. In the midst of a chaotic, careless world people were creating beautiful, captivating people, places, and stories that had a reason for everything.

Teepees and house pets

My sixth birthday I celebrated in a tent during a rain storm in Phoenicia, a small town near Woodstock in Upstate New York. My parents gave me a cupcake with candles in it to blow out,a boxed set of The Lord of the Rings, and a small ornate jeweled dragonfly statuette. I am not sure what happened to the dragonfly or even why I had wanted it or if I had a desire for it in the first place. I honestly cannot give an accurate accounting of how long we spent living in the teepee but it was to my knowledge almost a complete summer.

Ostensibly we lived in the teepee to experience nature and test ourselves. I think that the true motive for our living situation experiment was to see if such a drastic change could help my dad clean up his act. When I was very young, four or so, we lived in a house near the Highschool I would later attend. The family that owned the home had split it into a duplex and rented to us. I remember watching Thundercats and some of the Disney channel there, and making a snow triceratops in the winter with my dad. The house itself was an older home with tall ceilings. It could easily have been two stories but instead had lofts at the ends of a large living room with vaulted ceilings. This was before my sister was born so it was just my parents, our cats, and I. I don't think we had kitty boy yet, my first cat, but we had Muskrat who was a pretty terrible cat at times. I remember he didn't like me and would intentionally use my bed as a litterbox.

In that home I have some of my earliest memories of my parents fighting. The kitchen was immediately to the right as you entered the home, to the left was the living room and dining area, above the kitchen was the loft my parents slept in, across from that on the far end of the living room was another loft that my mom used as a studio, and below that off to the side was my bedroom. I am sure the house is smaller than I remember it being.

At the time I didn't piece everything together, but this particular night was so confusing and troublesome that it has stuck with me my entire life. I think it was a night in the late summer when my mom didn't come home. David, my dad, asked me to come up to the loft with him and keep him company. He was an expert at asking me questions that children should not be asked. As a baby I had answered some of them remarkably well which I think gave him reason to continue this habit throughout my entire life. An anecdote about my precociousness as a toddler (?) was that once I came to him and asked what was at the end of the universe.

"I don't know, bud, what do you think?"

After a short pause, "The past."

Who knows if this is true. I also had a very convincing story that I told them about my other family. I invented a black family that I lived with in San Francisco. I said that my father was a poor trumpet player who drank all of the time and that my mom had to work so she could feed me and my 5 brothers and sisters. This was not so different from my future.

On that strange night my dad asked, "Do you know where your mom is? She's with another man tonight. Do you know how that makes me feel?"

I am not sure I would have an adequate response to this even today 22 years later. I didn't know then nor did I know for years but apparently my parents had agreed that when they got married if they felt like they had met someone who they had a special connection with they could pursue that without betraying their marriage. This experiment was a huge failure.

"I don't know dad, maybe she'll come back. I know mom loves you. Its going to be okay."

I spent the night upstairs with him and mom didn't come home. We talked and he showed me the book he cherished, it was some sort of ancient Rosicrucian book, small leather-bound and gold leafed. After he died that was one of my two requests that I receive from his possessions but it was no where to be found. The other is a piece of the Golden Gate Bridge that sits on my dresser as I write this. What I've learned is that this isn't a true piece of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was used as a promotional material for a book by the same name by Alistair Maclean. The novel is a conspiracy thriller about the President being kidnapped in plain-sight as his motorcade crosses the Golden Gate. I'm sure my dad knew what it really was but he let me go on thinking that it was a real piece of the bridge for most of my life. It is fitting that the one thing I wanted from my dad was something used by a writer. I stayed up very late with him and did my best to comfort him.

The next day my mom came back and immediately they were screaming at each other. My recollection is hazy but I remember David putting a hole in the wall with the shillelagh, how is that for Irish by the way? A shillelagh is a club used to cudgel people and wild dogs. For most of my life at home we had it in place of an American baseball bat, you hear a loud noise you grab the shillelagh. I think ours was made from blackthorn sapling. Its bark was pitch-black and the wood beneath it was a deep red. It felt deadly and looked intimidating despite its relatively small size. It was probably no longer than two and a half feet. As a terribly small and innocent child I stood in the middle of their screams trying to calm them down. I remember being shocked at how angry and careless they could be while I hoped with all of my heart that something I was saying would make them stop fighting. Nothing ever did. The fight would escalate until my mom would become afraid for her safety, then she would take me and leave. I believe the subject of this fight wasn't only her sleeping with this other man (who knows what really happened) but also that my mom was threatening that we would leave.

"I'm going to take him back to my mom and start a new life. This is wrong. David, you aren't listening, David I can't take this.. Look what we're doing to him. David calm down."

In all likelihood he was drunk by now, and my father was a particularly malicious venom-tongued drunk. At some point during her attempt at communicating David grabbed the shillelagh and smashed it through the wall. "You're going to take my son from me? Therese you weren't even here last night. Where were you? Who's going to watch him when you're off doing whatever that was?"

My mom grabbed me and left. We flew across the country to Los Angeles and her mother took us in. David soon followed. He tracked us down and somehow convinced mom to take him back. Shortly after my sister Emma was born. Later that year we moved back to New York and started this whole teepee business.

Rita and Chris were a lesbian couple that were family friends. Chris had a stable with an Appaloosa and was more handy than I will ever be. She had lived in a teepee for a couple months and loaned us hers to use. She helped us set it up but we didn't do a very good job of things. The top of a teepee is supposed to be very tight, in order to allow smoke to leave but not much rain to enter, our opening was about four or five times the size it should have been. The property where we made our semi-permanent camp was owned by an older couple that were friends of friends. I would lurk around outside their house, well as much as a five year old can lurk, until the woman would give me shortbread cookies. Because of our lacking teepee skills when it rained the water would put out whatever fire we had burning and collect inside the teepee, quickly turning the earth into mud. For this reason we kept our three person tent set up in case of rain.

That summer there were record rains. We spent entire days inside that tent. At the beginning of the summer we brought a small zoo along with us. I brought my turtle, Five Dollar Bill (his cost), my hamster (which ate all of its young and would readily attack even me), and a cat. Unlike the humans of our family, including my less than one year old sister who was learning to crawl on the forest floor, the animal family members quickly realized that there was no benefit to living with a family outdoors.

As unlikely as it seems, Five Dollar Bill was the first to escape. Our campsite was half a mile from a healthy river and the noise of rushing water could be heard during the night. On a night early in June, Five Dollar Bill slowly and purposefully walked out on me, right into that river.

The cat occasionally still came for food but had become even more aloof until one day it altogether stopped showing up. Most likely it replaced us with another family, a family with a house.

On warm, dry nights we slept in the teepee and took full advantage of the extra space. We kept some of our belongings in the tent, mostly books and things that had to stay dry. Among those things was the hamster's cage and in it the hamster. So on this night my sister and I were already asleep when my parents heard something rattling the cage. I must stress that this hamster was a terrible creature. Even at an age where I loved all living things and refused to eat meat, I knew this animal would never love me. It stood on its hind legs and hissed at me, barring its petite fangs whenever I tried to feed it.

So upon hearing this rattling, my mom says "Gee, it really sounds like something is trying to get into the hamster's cage.. Don't you hear it honey?"

"I don't think I hear anything."

"Are you sure? I sure wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

And as my parents feigned concern my last pet, although it was a poor terrible creature, was eaten alive by a raccoon.