The Meaning of IV

No, IV does not represent the 4^th cantos of my poem, nor the 4^th chapter of my manifesto.  Neither does IV represent the century of Constantine.  It is why I am home today from work, why I sit around uselessly in this quiet, empty house.  Intestinal Virus.  My stomach rumbles and gurgles like the errant plumbing of section IV housing.  I am an upended decanter of ditch water.  Fever and dehydration created the perfect conditions, a lapse of mental discipline, a crack in a years-forged wall of self deception, so I remembered.

I left by way of the back door.  I couldn’t bear the thought of staying in that house a moment longer.  It harbored all the years of my confinement, all of my fears and hate in the shadow of a cruel father and wraith mother.  Why must I become them?  Why shrink in cold, airless rooms?  Maybe I couldn’t believe in myself, couldn’t trust that I could make it on my own, but there wasn’t much else to choose from.  “What the hell, why not?” A rally cry for freedom as good as any other.

I drifted down The Great River road to Beale Street and Bourbon.  I slept in unlocked cars, ate what food was left unguarded, wrote in a notepad while I smoked along the levee.  I drew out a picture of my father, crinkled Kodak paper with spores of mold, but there it was again; his flashing smile coming out of the dark, his white teeth approaching like a line of ghosts.  It made me warm, happy, proud, protected.  What of this father in the picture, who was not my father in the confines of the house, who was not the man he projected for the lens, but who ran deeper than the polluted waters held back by this levee?  Perhaps Bukowski could help reconcile me with my forebear, my template, my mould, the piss pot emptied and waiting to be filled.

Were they really that bad?  They left me with board games but nobody to play with; Sorry and Life and Surgery.  I dressed in costumes of their old 70’s clothes, wide ties and polyester purple trousers and wigs and white boat shoes. 

I had left with a regrettable lack of drama.  No fury towards dad, no accusations or commiseration for Mom.  I patted the dog on the head and began walking.  As I accumulated miles at my back, I began to believe in myself, in an utter lack of infirmity, an immunity to cold and virus, flu and bugs that get lodged beneath the finger nails.  Antibodies.  Parasites.  Latent.  Blooming.

IV represents my fallibility.  IV represents the number of years I’ve been gone.  IV is the number of miles left in a nearly complete circuitous route back home.

Conversations with a Dead Dad

photo by ARTeTǝTЯA ( Too much busy elsewhere :( ).

Forget about it, Son. Forget about work and all the meetings there. Forget about the re-orgs and what your employees think of you. Forget about the newspaper this morning, and headlines of earthquakes and tsunamis, of political lambasting and financial collapse. Come on over, come here to me. We’ll rest up a bit. Breathe deep, calm yourself. Look at how the sun melts the snow. It almost smells like Spring, doesn’t it? Your favorite season, I remember. It’s not here yet, though. There will be plenty of winter nights to light a fire. You remember how I always put on too many logs, and your mom would complain how hot it was? Nothing is more nostalgic for you than the smell of wood smoke. But those days weren’t without their stress either. Even hearing my voice again makes you nervous. It’s ironic that I should be the one to comfort you now, when back then I was anything but. Even now, when you hear that voice filling you with self doubt, it’s my voice. When you think your ideas are stupid, it’s me that shoots them down even before you utter them. But forget about that now, son. Forget about the jolt of fear when your school bus would drop you off and you would see my car in the driveway, home early from work. Forget about the sound of my raised voice calling out for you when I found something you broke. Forget about my temper. Come on over, come here to me now. Breathe deep. Calm yourself. See the sun. Hear the wind in the trees. Smell Spring just around the corner.

Giving Dad a Shave

photo by cristal78023.

William was sitting on his mother’s lap, leaning back into the crook of her shoulder while the family watched television, only his father wasn’t looking at the screen. He was scowling at William. “Boy, you’re eleven now. You shouldn’t still be sitting in your Momma’s lap.”

“Leave the boy alone,” she said. “You’re still my baby, aren’t you?” she teased, hugging him close, but William started to squirm away as he watched his father. He had always been intimidated by the cigar smoking, gruff man, but now he studied him closer. He felt that inevitable tug as a boy starts to cross the threshold of boy to man, the trepidation of leaving the protective wing of his mom, and yet drawn to those masculine instincts just starting to form. He noted the way his father chewed on the cigar at the corner of his mouth, the casual tilt of the whiskey glass in his hand. That night he heard his mother and father arguing in their room. William tucked his head under the pillow, buried himself beneath the sheets and tried to become invisible.

Each night his father came home from work, his mother needed to give William a push to go hug him. His whiskers scratched the boy’s cheek. When he slipped off his shoes, his black stocking feet stank. William had the job of putting his shoes in the closet, and hanging his father’s hat on a peg. He ran his fingers over the felt brim, smoothed the brown feather tucked into the sweat stained band.

He turned twelve that summer, the last summer vacation before he would have to start working, and he spent his days secretly trailing after his father from twenty yards back, to and from the plant, in the evenings when he’d stumble out of the bars, on the weekends when he would run his errands. He adopted the way his father would lean against a wall or a tree with one leg cross over the other and propped on a toe. He carried change in his pockets and jingled the coins when he’d walk down the sidewalk. He learned to spit into the sand without getting any on his chin. He substituted a toothpick for the cigar and sucked on it all day, shifting it from one side to the other using only his mouth.

Now when his dad came home from work, there were no more hugs, but his dad grinned proudly, ruffled the boy’s hair, slapped him on the shoulder and told him to go get him a glass of whiskey, “two fingers high, no ice. And no sipping,” he chided, shaking a finger at his son. When the boy returned with the glass, he said, “Okay, you can have a little sip,” as though relenting, but William hadn’t asked. He took a small taste anyway, just enough to wet his lips. It burned.

That weekend, he tailed his father as he went on another of his errands, this time to the barber shop for a cut and shave. William’s mom still cut his hair, but something about the barber shop drew him. He had only been there once a few years ago, but remembered the checkered tile floor, the smell of pipes and cigars, and a baseball game playing on the radio. His dad never wanted him to come along, for some reason, so he followed him in secret and waited from behind a tree across the street. After twenty minutes, his dad came out with a clean shave, trimmed hair, and his arm slung around the barber’s sister. They disappeared up the stairs leading to a small apartment above the shop. The blinds dropped shut. Half an hour later, his father came slinking out of the building and around the coiled barber pole and swaggered toward home.

Back at the dinner table, he watched this man accept food from his mom without a hint of guilt or regret, watched him tell her the pork was overcooked and the peas too cold. The next time he announced that he was going for a cut and a shave, William followed. Once again, his father came out of the shop with the barber’s sister and disappeared upstairs to the apartment. William balled up all of the fury a boy of twelve can muster, ran into the barber shop, grabbed the straight razor off the sink, and stomped up the stairs with a man’s bearing instead of a boy’s. He slashed his father forty times and left the barber’s sister untouched but soaked in the blood of his father. “That’s for momma. It’s you that was never good enough.” He dropped the razor, walked out of the apartment, and disappeared into the streets.