10,035. RUDIMENTS, pt. 97

RUDIMENTS, pt. 97

Making Cars

I've often walked about thinking

that if I'd only had a better working

relationship with my father, things

could have been different. Wayward

son, indeed. I'm no better now, in my

own dealings. And I've made mention

here how I truly think it's a class thing.

Not to cast blame, or try to wiggle out,

but just using my own personal experience,

I've always seen how 'better' people

seem to have the tighter family units.

That's all  -  it's not much of an observation,

but it sure seems true. We never even had

a joke between us. Some guys joke with

their fathers all the time. It's a failing. I

noticed it  -  stiff decorum is a waste of

time. No matter, because I've learned for

sure that I've got no answers, and most all

my once-friends, and contemporaries,

have by now, as well, buried their own

parents along the way, jokes or not.

All my own father ever did, really, was

pound into my head the idea that I had

to work hard, stay at it, get a good job, be
the best, work like a dog, be subservient,

follow orders, go along, and all that.

Whatever was any of that supposed to

be? I never knew. The cool guys I met,

those 'other' classes, they were all the

smooth, smiling guys, never a problem

or a complication  -  money, habit, position.

It was all there for them, and when they

got along they already knew how much

was to be coming their way, family fortune,

trust fund outlays, and the rest. Doctors,

Attorneys. Financial Advisors. No sweat

and no worries. I was a dog, and I soon

realized it. If I, at any one time, had more

than twenty dollars on me, it didn't feel right.

I'd be sitting around somewhere, with some

monied New York type, Studio School guy

or whatever, and the subject would turn

(not with me, so much as while they'd be

talking with others) to who it was they invested

with, T. Rowe Price, or Edwards Investments,

or whatever. I felt like Elmer Fudd.

-

Maybe all that is nothing, but it rubbed a sort

of salt into a sort of raw wound. Maybe I

should have just quit, or drowned myself.

I'd be out at the piers, along the Hudson

Waterfront  -  all these hundreds of weird

gay dudes trying to pick each other up. Those

piers back then were a gay Eden; there'd be

every sort of tight-crotch flamer trying to

throw off some steam, walking around,

loitering, cruising, figuring for a pick-up

at least. (Do I want to add 'fingering?')...

There were those dead-empty lots, for sex;

and trucks, open-ended box containers, male

and female sexual activity everywhere. It

was crazy, the craziest thing I'd ever seen.

It kept just getting worse, and then AIDS

hit, much later and it all blew up in everyone's

faces. But by then it was too late  -  the lines

had been drawn each person had their side.

Those who knew what they were doing, did

it. The rest just died or got caught in a really

shitty vice that kept clamping tighter. I guess

the word 'vice' here too has two meanings.

-

No matter  -  try explaining something like

that anyway to dear old Dad, whose sight

horizon ended at like the corner of his lawn,

where the watering hose ran out. My point

is, somehow I'd gotten distant and lost as

my own horizons expanded way past those

I'd been led to. It's extremely difficult and,

as Thomas Wolfe put it in his phrasing,

'you can't go home again.' My rope was

cut, and my anchor long gone. The only

ballast I had to throw over was the huge

weight of all my bad ideas and learning

and knowledge from years past  -  schoolyard

crap and classroom learning. All of which,

incredibly, my father still respected as

meaningful, and felt meant things. There

was no explaining any of that. My mother,

same thing, but another story too  -  lady

things and mother things that I never even

went near. I never had a relationship there.

-

I never tried at all to replace those lost 

people with others. I decided it was best 

to just stay alone. Dog-like, again, I 

wandered, and  -  to my surprise  -  that 

became good for me, acceptable, and 

welcomed. I was at home in the world 

though not of it. Perfect. A true, no-baggage 

transit point, all mine. My no-limits life 

was on its way to wreckage, but I was, 

for a while, a booster for wreckage. Do

you know, or can you remember, being 

young, when weird types would actually 

come by you (I can remember this vividly) 

trying to sell 'boosters' for a few dollars in 

the back of some crummy program booklet or

guide of whatever sort, for their organization. 

At first all that really perplexed me. Booster? 

What's that? Then I'd see the ballet program 

from a sister's dancing-school class recital,  

or the local Little League Dinner booklet, 

and understand what a booster was  - a tiny 

little back-of-the-book ad where you could 

pretty much write whatever you wanted,

mysterious or not, and they'd print it. 'I 

like Janie,' or 'Johnny's the one!', or most

anything. I ended up thinking that was

pretty cool  -  never did any, but liked the

idea. It was like a real-life graffiti that no

one would ever bother, at least for the two

that the program books was around before 

hitting the trash can.

-

So that was all it for me  -  it was all a

question of definitions. The defining of

what it was you wanted or were after. 

Sounds easy, but it never was, and to 

this day I'm still on the same, endless

quest  -  pretty much as ever : finding the

streets that still have cobblestones, as

it were. Staying afar from the nearing

dangers of whatever crud they call this

'civilization' now. I like to locate the lost

and the wasted, and make it, or them, mine.

Perhaps that's the dead, dumb heritage of 

whatever greater, cosmic 'self-heritage' I've 

been given. Parentless, now, a long time,

and adrift in a world I probably never 

even see, saw, or wanted to. How the
hell did I end up being everyone's
Dad? Sometimes that's exactly
what I ask myself.