I am at my parent's house typing. I haven't spent the night here in years and for the first time I felt old, an adult, disconnected from my memories of childhood and the images that shaped me. I took melatonin to sleep because I thought sleeping in this old room might make me feel weird, make me think of things, remind me of the various times I came to visit my aunt who lived in this room, we'd drink Budweiser talk about love interests and I would just watch her in both fear and awe because I never witnessed a person like her with that magnitude of nothingness and full fledged ego, just wanting 5 dollars for a six pack or a ride to her ex-husbands little trailer. I would just watch her, maybe I learned something, maybe I did not.
Contrary to what I anticipated I actually had the best nights sleep I've had in weeks. The bed was comfortable, the room neat, the sheets fresh.
The previous night I felt fidgety, at odds with myself, worried. I tried to read a book I purchased written by an old Russian Absurdist and it made me feel dissposessed. This world is not absurd, it is real and anyone who has feelings knows this. It is absurd to think otherwise. It is absurd to take this all in and take it lightly. The book was called "Today I Wrote Nothing" even as I held the paperback in my hand and read the title to myself it felt like nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. Making real my own thoughts about writing, my recent resignation, the dismal way I tell people I do not want to pressure myself anymore so from now on plan only to read, not to write. Because I don't want to let anyone down. But when ones' sole communication is writing, what happens when it stops? What gets communicated are only tangible ideas, my favorite fruit, my dislike for African-American comedies, my love of summer dresses and wheat beers. What comes out are simple tactical creations. You know me because you have read my reviews on Yelp and have seen me come home from work and talk about nothing else and then get on the computer to compulsively check email, but I only became those things when I stopped writing in my heart.
Sounds basic, like a movie or book, maybe John Cusack or Beth Lisick but it is basically my entire existence.
I flipped through the San Jose Mercury News, my parents house is good for three things: the daily paper, a good hot breakfast and an hours worth of venting. When my car turns down their court I never fail to be reminded of my youth the life I left behind to be less ordinary. As always, I read each obituary, because you really never know. I glanced at a name of a particular obit and saw the birth year was mine, 1981. I remembered the name well, from the 5th grade, Mr. Davis' class, remembered the way Mr. Davis would bring his guitar to class and sing Puff the Magic Dragon and how when he gave my best friend the set of Chronicles of Narnia books I was secretly jealous because I knew she didn't love those books like I did. Didn't believe in the wardrobe. This boy, now a deceased 28 year old man was probably the most memorable person, besides my childhood sidekick, in all of my elementary school existence.
He, like my part Salvadorean cousin Ruben, was covered in freckles, had a shock of red hair and by the typical understandings of childhood interactions, probably had a crush on me because he made fun of me constantly and was relentless in his attacks. Nigger, wetback, ugly, you name it, that was me in this boys' words. So you can understand my surprise when I saw his face and name in the obituaries. Instantly I was transported back.
Laying at the pool at the Venetian in Las Vegas I am a world away from that girl. The dark one, the quiet one, the blackest Mexican girl. I'm 27 I want an even tan now, I want to be as tan as possible because it looks good against the orange and bright blue and I feel beautiful when I take time to see myself. I will even pay a girl to spray tan me if I have to just for that perfectly bronze-brown.
I stared at that newspaper and tried to remember a story something I could recall about my brief interactions with this kid who I called a jerk, asshole and idiot. Then I remembered being in the woods on a great day as field trips always were. We were at Big Basin, it wasn't a field trip, it was a three day camping trip and for many of the downtown kids a first time being away from parents for days on end and the first time away from the TV and Sega Genesis while immersed in a world of nature.
We are on the day-long hike, the one the cool teenage camp counselors had mentally prepared us for, we have our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, our institution provided juices boxes, we are wearing our good walking shoes. This day is great. As always, the boy and I exchange insults, basic ones like dummy, fart-smeller and turd and it goes on and on but I am used to this I am quick, always ready when it comes to words but no matter what it seems the boys always win because when it comes down to it, there is no lower low than being an ugly little girl in a 9 year old's mind. We approach one of the highlights of the hike, besides the banana slug and possible Mountain Lion droppings. We are at the base of an enormous giant Sequoia, a marvel of nature the trees can grow up to 300 feet sometimes with a diameter over 20. We are 25 city kids standing at the base of a giant toppled redwood tree that has been hollowed out, allowing for a space to walk through. The camp leaders prepare us, get us excited about the greatness we are about to experience, the sheer vastness, but we are just kids and we just think its cool we can stand almost the whole way up inside of a tree-trunk and we can be as loud and boisterous as we want.
The camp counselors tell us to each make a wish as we walk through the cavern that is this hollow tree, we walk through and the sun's light travels through the bark in places brightening the darkness in spots. I think of no wish I think only of a comeback to tell this boy when he makes fun of me again. I do not wish him to get a bad case of poison oak, nor do I wish for a shopping spree at Macy's so that I can be the cutest most stylish girl in class. I use this moment to think of a retort to this boys constant harassment.
As I enter the light walking out from within the tree I tell a few kids I bet he wished for a freckle remover, they laugh and instantly the fight is on. We are the rest of the kids' entertainment, a 5th graders train-wreck they can't help but watch. Other than that I don't remember exact words or phrases, in a way I was kind of proud of my smart remark, I thought it was very funny and so did the other kids. The boy, of course, did not. He pushes me I push him back the cabin leader grabs me and tells me if I do one more thing I will be sent home early. I stay quiet and I am sad, I never get in trouble. I am simply defending myself with simple words.
I see that the boy who died suddenly at 28 who was my 9 year-old bane of existence was no longer living in San Jose and didn't go to high school in the south bay, but rather moved to the east bay where I assume he probably never thought about the freckle story or the joking that all along I felt somehow shaped me. Maybe he did have a crush on me, who knows.
I watch the Michael Jackson memorial from start to finish, have read every article deemed worthy by music critics and have listened to every track from the Jackson 5 catalog from front to back in the week or so since Micheal's departure, even delved in the 80's where I always saw Jackson as too otherworldly to be a real musician. I like small things, little obscure 3 piece bands, I've always liked to hate things people admired, rub my hand into splinters to learn on my own by buying a shit CD with my last 20 dollars so while growing up MJ was always too much for me but as an adult and lover of music I've searched for every speck of information since the announcement on June 25th. I've scoured the good and bad, the Time magazines the People's the dozens of trustworthy music blogs. In the big-print places I have read the journalists hung-up on allegations and though we live in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty, I do not blame them for trying to get to an answer in an analytical way even if it may make the articles very predictable. They are just doing their job, writing the words for us to ingest. I watch Michael on YouTube singing The Love You Save and I Wanna Be Where You Are because I love those songs and I see his brown face, his birth nose, smiling eyes and neon disco get-up and in a whirlwind combined with all the articles I have stored in my mind about his white kids, his surgeries, the Vitiligo I feel a deep unsad sadness a popular aloneness an over-the-top fashionable tackyness solitary in a crowd of similarity. In essence, I feel a conflict as deep as the first day of summer is long and I understand.
Race and color, if you ask anyone who's experienced the lasting sting of comments of constant ridicule, they'll tell you that it is very personal and at times, very difficult to put into words.
