A Walk in the Park

February 21, 2008 - 1:40am — AMP

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Terri

Federico

Kim

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Chapter 1

A Walk in the Park

What was I thinking? I should have known this would happen.

You, me and the park - what do I remember? This moment like last time - you walking your dog Rubber and me pretending he was cute and adorable when I hated that you gave him more attention and care than me or anything else at the moment - if I thought about it.

But I don't want to think about it. I just want to be here in the park walking with you and not in disappointments or resentments - and maybe even try to appreciate Rubber one half the way you do. I'm trying really - believe me. And it helps that it's a gorgeous day for walking in the park.

I guess it would help if I knew why you named him Rubber. Was it because he rubbed things? Was it because he was so bouncy as a cute little puppy? Or was there something more sordid? Understanding helps, and dogs are so often the key.

But that's it in a nutshell, that's the problem... I search for ways to understand you, while you... you just keep strolling along giving your attention and tenderness to a terrier.

I tried not to smile when you tripped over the stick you'd thrown; the stick Rubber failed to return - seems not everything rubber bounces back, huh? I tried not to smile, but that attempt failed, and you noticed. You didn't smile back, and I didn't blame you, even though I let you think I did.

I was only trying to fill that stew pot of an awkward silence when I asked you. At that point, I didn't think the answer would matter that much. I was wrong.

"Why's he Rubber?" You looked offended - as if I asked that all the time. Me filling the silence stew - you rolling your eyes. "Wha - what!" You blubbered - you salivated - like Rubber. "I don't have to answer to you - I don't have to to explain... my dog! Why do you need everything explained to you - everything analyzed! Poked! Punctured! Can't some things just be a ... mystery?!"

Like us, I thought - I almost said it aloud - like us! But I didn't - I looked down. Patches of yellow green grass. A curled browning leaf. Mystery! I know all about mystery! What I'm doing here walking with you and Rubber in the park - that's a mystery! And maybe today - tonight (we still are going out for dinner right?) - I can solve that mystery. You, me and Rubber.

Chapter 2

"Enlarge your brother with new pills today."

Like I needed another mystery. It was two days after we'd been in the park, and we'd finally managed to find a space between and within us that, if not peaceful, was quiet. No one was going to confuse us as being within the throes of the first blush of love, but we were doing okay.

Running through the apartment with a lightly held rag, I was dusting... allegedly; though, if anyone had looked closely they would have seen very little attention to where the clutch of cloth was going. Grabbing that horrible trash basket that you refuse to throw away - even though you must have outgrown the matching Red Skins pajamas your parents bought for you at 8 - no more attention is being paid while I throw out the dining room detritus from the last couple of weeks.

I don't know what made me open up the paper bag, especially as it looked empty. I only wish I hadn't. I wasn't looking for more questions, and I know the last thing you want to be asked for is answers. And yet, there it was, an empty bottle with the label: "Enlarge your brother with new pills today."

I thought you were an only child.

There's so much behind every inflection of every word we say to each other. It's got to the point where we have to dig through a thicket of words to understand how we feel - for me to even understand how I feel. I love you. I know I love you, and you know I love you, if you stop to feel the situation. But is that enough? Love is never enough. (Why did Bette Davis have to die?)

And yes, I know you hate Bette Davis, but I remember the afternoon you came and sat through a retrospective at the old Roxy Theatre, the one that they tore down last year.

And that was weird too, you're so proud of being an activist - God knows I have to listen to you night after night careening from conspiracy to conspiracy - and yet, you wouldn't come down to the protest when we were trying to save the building. You only protest 'important' issues. What's important to you.

What is important to you?

How can I have known you for this long and still have no idea? You love to discuss politics, but you don't vote. You revere your mother, but don't know how your parents met. You're a born communicator, who doesn't listen.

And I'm still here, trying to figure you out. There has to be something, Rubber loves you... and, most days, so do I. But you're so weird. And it's not always in ways I like.

Chapter 3

68 Reasons Why

Life is a litany of reasons. They don't all have to be good ones. We ground our lives on understandings we construct out of the thin air between our ears.

When Michiko told me hers, I suddenly understood so much more - about her, about life, about Rubber, about you, about myself - and finally, to my surprise, about Malcolm.

"Why did you do it, Michiko?"

I wanted to get a promotion.
I wanted to lose my inhibitions.
I thought it would make me feel healthy.
It became a habit.
I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.
I could brag to other people about my sexual experience. I wanted to feel masculine.
I wanted to satisfy a compulsion.
My regular partner is boring, so I had sex with someone else.
I wanted to even the score with a cheating partner.
I wanted to hurt an enemy.
I wanted to break up another’s relationship.
The person was mysterious.
An erotic movie had turned me on.
I wanted to get rid of a headache.
I wanted to get a favor from someone.
I wanted to lose my inhibitions.
I was tired of being a virgin.
I wanted to gain access to that person’s friend.
I wanted to get rid of aggression.
It was an initiation rite to a club or organization.
I wanted to give someone a sexually transmitted disease.
I wanted to get a job.
I was under the influence of drugs.
I wanted to hurt an enemy.
I wanted to hurt a rival’s relationship by having sex with their partner.
I got “carried away.”
I wanted to make a conquest.
I wanted to see what it would be like to have sex while stoned.
I wanted to get a raise.
I wanted to dominate the other person.
The person offered to give me drugs for doing it.
I wanted to breakup my relationship.
The person offered to give me drugs for doing it.
I wanted to increase the number of sex partners I had experienced.
Because of a bet.
I wanted to hurt and humiliate the person.
It was easier to “go all the way” than to stop.
I could brag to other people about my sexual experience.
I was seduced.
I wanted to punish myself.
I wanted to relieve ‘blue balls’.
I wanted to see if I could get the other person into bed.
I wanted to say “Thank You.”
The person had too much to drink and I was about to take advantage of them.
It was a favor to someone.
I wanted to say “I’m sorry.”
I wanted to lift my partner’s spirits.
I was mad at my partner, so I had sex with someone else.
I wanted to feel closer to God.
I wanted to relieve my menstrual cramps.
I wanted my partner to notice me.
I was afraid my partner would have an affair if I didn’t have sex with him.
I felt jealous.
I wanted to increase my emotional bond by having sex.
I wanted to become one with another person.
I wanted to communicate at a deeper level.
I wanted to get out of doing something.
I wanted to celebrate a birthday or anniversary or special occasion.
I was verbally coerced into doing it.
I was pressured into doing it.
I wanted to change the topic of conversation.
I thought it would boost my social status.
I felt guilty.
I wanted to express my love for the person.
I wanted to show my affection to the person.
It seemed like the natural next step.
I wanted to make up after a fight.

All that mattered was that it made sense to her, really - but I made my own sense out of her list. Did Michiko know your Brother?

Michiko always talked like she knew everyone. She would curl up in her hammock, slowly swinging back and forth, moving the net with her big toe tracing the alphabet in the sand brought up to her porch from the beach. She is the only person I know who lives at the beach, and hates the sun. Typical Michiko.

We'd be inside playing Twister, or Euchre, or some other game that centered our wills towards ignoring a squall, and Michiko would be outside, drawing the alphabet in the wet sand, as she watched the lashing waves gobble up more and more of her dune. That girl was crazy.

Hated the sun, hated the sea, but give her a thunder storm, preferably with a string of lightning strikes, and she finally felt at home in her sea haven. Lightning drove her wild! Seems to me I remember one drunken night of Truth or Dare, when your ever obnoxious Brother, Dodger, said something about he and Michiko, an inner tube and a deck chair. Unfortunately, I don't completely trust my drunken misty memories – and I don't trust Dodger at all! Having said that, wasn't it his idea to get Rubber in the first place?

Brother Dodger was a weird ass guy. He probably did more acid than anyone I'd ever met before, and since, frankly, and yet somehow he always seemed to be lucid - till he lost his mind of course. I always thought it affected him more because he was so tiny. At 4 feet 11 inches tall, the acid hit him really hard.

I still don't know if his story was true - the one he'd make sure he told everyone at first meeting - but he did love to tell it. According to Dodger, he'd quite literally dodged the seminary, by pretending not to be gay, but to be slavishly into women... occasionally pretending to brandish a whip when he slurped his way through that part of the story. As I remember it, he'd twinkle as he giggled at that point, always rubbing his thumbs over the tips of his fingers as he chortled, "Apparently one is more acceptable than the other!"

Rubber showed up after the first time Dodger lost it in the loft - it wasn't the first time we'd found him up there; but that was the first time we found him nude, daubed with blue dye, and sitting in a circle of stones - whose auras he was apparently channeling; or so he said later.

I can't remember how we managed to contact his family... at that stage, I didn't think anyone knew his last name, let alone where he had strayed away from. But somehow his family arrived, slightly less than en masse, except for the massive chips they carried on each of their shoulders - a tremendously well balanced family.

You know the weird thing, they were all wearing blue too.

Chapter Four

Verde

All the craziness all the blue.

I remember back to the green time. I had the silly idea of doing a graphic novel and you helped set me up in that cabin in Yosemite. Only 7,000 dollars a week. Sigh. We were young, naive, and ridiculously ambitious. I thought I could create a new century version of Art Spiegelman's Maus - you know the mice and the holocaust. Iraqrat. It looked good on paper and while I mused a horrific tale of blood and US Nazi troops as lizards Stephan did the drawings. So much military and lizard green - dripping off the pages - the bright book cover we worked on together - the Yosemite sun. It was a delicious time. Peae. And then my creative juice ran out. After only 7 pages. You were nice about it well more than nice - heroic - visiting me in the woods with Rubber and his plastic toys. Stephan was furious. He'd worked so hard - it was a life dream for him while I was on a lark - testing my talent and squandering your uncle's pithy inheritance. We can laugh about it now - at least we have that in common! Together we look at the old drawings and wonder what if . . ?

I wouldn't be surprised if I walked into The Bourgeois Pig and saw Iraqrat on the shelves with Stephan's name all over my writing. He was a rat - dressed up like a environmental activist - changing the world he said through his pencilart. I wonder what happened to him? I wonder if he ever got the guts to come out of the closet. Brother Dodger wasn't the first crazy person we helped pick up off the floor and with Stephan no family in blue came to rescue him. That was our green time. Yosemite pretty- holding the three of us and our dreams for a blue green future.

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The future can always look good on paper, much as our relationship did. Everyone said we were perfect together, we said we were perfect together... so why weren't we, why aren't we? It looked so good on paper.

But then the paper started to curl, to crease, to tear - right about the time the juices started to run out. Couldn't write, couldn't sing, couldn't smile, couldn't taste, couldn't feel, eventually, couldn't fuck.

I know we laugh about it now, but when we do, I don't see a smile in your eyes. I see only questions. Even when we look at those old drawing of us... I see the questions. Who are those people? Where are those people? Were we ever those people?

All that time we were helping others climb out of their closets, we were merely making room for the two of us to store away our own bulging baggage. And now, looking at the questions spilling from your eye, I begin to wonder if our blue green future is only to be filled with sadness and envy.

I suppose its fertile ground.