Chapter XXXXI: Father and Son
Chapter Forty-One: Father and Son
When I was finished, I walked back to Piper's apartment. Something about giving the old prostate a jog makes me feel about six years younger. Why shouldn't it? When I was fifteen my prostate was the Sylvester Stallones of glands. When it came to masturbation, I had been like Billy The Kid. But time had slowed me down some and it took actual physical contact with Lacy to give my prostate a jump start. The act itself was hardly pleasurable; it was more like getting your teeth cleaned, something you just have to do, but immediately following blast off I was like a pup off his leash.
Piper let me in with his guitar in hand, and a wooden spoon in the other. He was cooking Chili on the stove and banging out some chords. We'd already seen each other when I first arrived and it was a trademark of our camaraderie to skip most formalities.
“Chow's almost ready. What's that grin for, Oggy?”
“It is a beautiful night. Special. Magical.”
“You hooked up with Lace. Nice.”
I remembered my promise. I'm not a complete ass.
“No, we just watched Sound of Music. Great movie.”
“You are saying you didn't get a taste of that honey pot?”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth? Correct. No honey pot. The chili have meat? I won't eat meat.”
“You've got lipstick on your mustache, Oggy.”
Thinking fast, I said that I'd been experimenting with rouge to give my cheeks more color in the winter. Erin's comment about me looking like a refuge still stung.
“I like to start with a light flesh foundation and then blend in some Passion highlighting. Joan Collins has some great products. I recommend her.”
Piper stirred the chili with a wooden spoon, tasted it and then added a spice.
“You are telling me that you sat over there for three hours watching The Sound Of Music, not fahking around, and talking about make up? Either you're gay or lying.”
“We talked about other things? Not just Make-up.”
“OK, Make-up and...”
He leaned toward me to allow me to finish the sentence.
“...Baseball. Did you know Lace knows a great deal about baseball. The Sox should hire her. She'd know to pull Schiraldi after getting murdered for two innings.”
“He gave up one run, Oggy. One run isn't getting murdered.”
I slapped the kitchen table as a request to speak.
“He only gave up one run because Davey Johnson blew a call and let Howard Johnson swing instead of bunting. Schiraldi should have been pulled.”
Piper tested the chili. He was the one, remember, who had dismissed the loss with the “Tough Luck” comment that I still harbored. This short volley would be one of Piper's few indulgements of my passion. He quickly changed the subject back to Lacy and her pot of honey.
“She told you not to tell me? She made you promise?”
“Not at all. I love her. I would do anything for her. She wants to go to Mexico. I'm still thinking it over.”
I explained that Lacy was really in love with me and that she needed my help in escaping a life that was suffocating her. Piper tapped on the chili pot.
“You know Lace's dad is a pilot?”
I did.
“And you want to be there for her when he isn't?”
Yes. I would be a good dad. The best.
Piper continued to stir the Chili.
“A good dad? What are you saying?”
“I'll never leave her.”
“You aren't going to Mexico tomorrow?”
Once again people were putting words in my mouth. I told him that I had to leave because I was getting sued, the Timewriaths were hounding me, Ray Knight appeared in my dreams, my Thriller record had too many skips and other obvious reasons for going to Mexico. But my commitment to Lacy should not be questioned.
“I want to bring her with me. She asked to go. She wants to raise rabbits in Mexico.”
“Oggy, you are what she hates most.”
I found that a little hard to believe. There had to be at least one thing she hated more than me.
“That's why she loves me,” I said with trademark logic.
Piper paused and looked out the small window near the front door. The chili started to boil and then burn.
“Stir that chili, that's the last homemade meal I'm gonna have in a while. You sure it doesn't have meat?”
He nibbled on his spoon and ignored me. Some people just can't pay attention to one thing at a time. Piper is a king among men, but between you and me he can be a freak. For instance, he makes these carved wooden figures. These things have no recognizable shape or function. He says he just likes to make them. They make him feel good. See what I mean?
“She loves what she hates? That would explain a lot.”
“Dude, the chili!”
Finally I stood up and took the spoon from him and started to stir it myself. Piper stood aside.
“It's fine. You know, I think we've gone full circle, Oggy. I used to admire you in Bone Harbor. Then I avoided you because you wouldn't shower and were crazy. Now I admire you again.”
“Bone Harbor? Fifth Grade? Sixth?”
“Remember the PE tests?”
The dreaded PE tests. Of course I remembered them. Pull ups and push ups and laps around the gymnasium. They whipped us like pack animals so we might be rated against other pack animals. These took place before October 1986 and were therefore relatively pleasant memories. Baseball was the ever rising sun on the horizon at that point. Tony Perez was playing first base when Yaz was the designated hitter. Carney Lansford was the third baseman. I didn't even mind that the players union went on strike and cut the 1981 season in half. It just meant more Playoff games. Capture The Flag was my one diversion from Off The Wall games and sorting baseball cards in Kurt's attic. By fifth grade I simply did what I was told when I came to school. If they told me to do twenty jumping jacks, I did them. If I had to run in circles for ten minutes, I was off like a bunny. Just as long as I could have my recess and handful of popcorn of Fridays.
“The ones I failed because I wouldn't take a shower?”
“You passed one test.”
How Piper remembered this detail I couldn't say. He had actually kept track of all these things for a decade. God had a shorter memory.
“Which one did I pass?”
“Vision. They lined us up and you could read the lowest line. Twenty-twenty vision. Perfect, they said. I couldn't read past the third line even with my glasses.”
“That was also the day they told me I had Scoliosis of the spine and would to wear need a body brace until I was thirty-five.”
“They told everyone that.”
“So you hate me for having perfect vision?”
“I did. But by sixth grade I just admired you.”
This was hardly a priest-worthy confession, but when Piper is concerned any chink in the armor is worth mentioning.
“Then that's the difference between us. I would've hated you forever.”
“Chili's ready.”
Piper dished out some steaming mixture and placed a bread roll nearby on the table. I burned the roof of my mouth with the chili.
“This is hot enough to melt the ice caps.”
“Oggy, why didn't you shower?”
“To protect my hat,” I said pointing to the 'B' on my forehead. “ If I took a shower then someone might get my hat and wash all my memories, our memories, out. They'd be gone. I had to protect the tribe's memories. I've still got the memories of Kodiak and Clutch and BHHS hoop and Track meets with you and Darcy and Rose and that other hot chick who ran hurdles. The one who did that thing with her hair.”
“Stephanie?”
I actually knew her name but was testing Piper to see how much he had discarded from our golden age.
“Oh! What a pair of moneymakers she had. Remember?”
“The best,” he agreed. “Pure stroking magic.”
“See? I can't lose those memories. Bullwhip wouldn't like that. As long as I've got the hat then I can bargain with the Timewraiths and maybe Schiraldi will strike Knight out. I knew it as far back as sixth grade.”
“Knew what?”
“That I was the one. It was my job to protect the memories.”
“Chili's ready,” said Piper. as he used his bread roll to spoon the chili into his mouth. He'd left the meat out just for me. As we ate, Piper asked if I had told my father I was gone.
“Yeah. I called him when I first got here. That sharecropper told me to have fun. Can you believe that? Fun?”
“You had fun in Florida. I got your postcards. Surfing, eating pizza, swimming. No work, no school. Some people live their whole lives and don't have that kind of vacation.”
This was a good point, and Piper made it without the normal judgement my father might have tagged on. Yes, some people live and die without two months of pure, simple hedonism. And while it might appear to some that this vacation has yet to end for old Oggy, I would point out the hours I spent fixing my brakes, working on my bicycle, picking up aluminum from the trash cans downtown and other assorted tasks that just won't get done otherwise. I'm sure all of you sitting on your velvet thrones can file me into the “Slacker” category, but where would the world be without me?
“No one works in Florida. I had to allow myself a little fun after an era of essentialist struggle with the Red Sox. I earned the existential fun. See?”
“I'm not saying you didn't, or even had to earn it. You live your life. Did I give you shit?”
He hadn't given me shit but I was so trained to defend myself that I had shifted automatically into my, “I'm a beaten, unrecognized man. Why do you hound me?” mode.
“So now I'm a criminal on the run. I got a bad back and chronic knee pain. Fun? That doesn't sound like fun to me. Fun? My dad represents all that is Evil.”
“Your dad is a great man, Oggy.”
“A great man? My father is a monster. He has a forked tongue, you know. He sleeps hanging upside from the ceiling. How can you say he's great? He's a fahking secretary, a sharecropper, a bootblack.”
Alright, so I exaggerated a little. But how else could I make my point? Have you ever tried to criticize your parents by just telling the truth? It's impossible.
“He's a doctor of Psychology. I like him. He's funny and smart. He raised two kids alone. I couldn't raise two kids by myself. He's a hero.”
“Raised two kids?” I sputtered. “What two kids are you talking about? Did he keep some secret family over in Break Island? Listen: When my brother was sober enough to go to school he only managed to get in fights. The only reason he didn't fail out of high school was because BHHS awarded class participation points when you raised your hand to go to the bathroom. Then he joined the Army to protect our right to destroy the ozone layer by killing impoverished Arabs. What a success story. Where's his medal? Then there's me. When I wasn't hiding in the girl's locker room, I was asleep under the bleachers. I'm convinced the Red Sox can win the '86 World Series if Schiraldi would just throw a curveball in the dirt to Knight.”
I paused here to demonstrate the essential snapping of the wrist that would get the ball to break out of the strike zone, or at least out of the “0-2 RBI single” zone. The motion got a little chili on the walls, but I pushed on.
“The best job I've had was tearing covers off of paperback books because it gave me the chance to steal smut mags. I've had sex more times with a twenty-year-old fake leather couch than with an actual girl. And, to top it all off, I caused the Exxon Valdez disaster! You call that raising two kids? I'd have been better off living with wolves.”
“You're fine. He did his best.”
“His best to corrode my thinking and corrupt my morals, is what he did. He tried to force me to conform to his bootblack ethic, raise another sharecropper, bust my shine box, piss in my milk bowl. Now I'm on the run from the law and my brother is actively engaged in Genocide. Oh, yeah, my dad raised two great kids. I'd rather have Darth Vader as my father.”
“Who wouldn't? That would make you Luke Skywalker.”
Ignoring Piper's quip, I pleaded, “I lug my shine box downtown and all he does is piss on it. He breaks my shine box, Piper.”
“How's the chili?”
“Needs meat.”
Piper was not interested in discussing the Red Sox or my affair with Lacy. He asked only from a habit learned in a close knit dorm life where every one's business was dumped into the social pot and laughed at. Unlike Cristo, Piper absorbed almost none of the information I gave him. This latest with Lacy incident would probably not resurface and would never be used against me, while the time I got my scrotum caught in my zipper in fourth grade was repeated almost daily by Cristo. Because of his comparative independence Piper seemed distant to me. He wouldn't humor me with lengthy philosophic discussions, nor brag about having sex with a cheerleader in ninth grade, nor talk about his grades, nor question John McNamara's decision to leave Schiraldi in to hit. Piper liked literature, John Steinbeck in particular, and after I had dropped out of college I found myself reading East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath if only to have something to discuss with Piper on evenings such as this when he had returned from work and I was on my way to Mexico.
When I was finished, I walked back to Piper's apartment. Something about giving the old prostate a jog makes me feel about six years younger. Why shouldn't it? When I was fifteen my prostate was the Sylvester Stallones of glands. When it came to masturbation, I had been like Billy The Kid. But time had slowed me down some and it took actual physical contact with Lacy to give my prostate a jump start. The act itself was hardly pleasurable; it was more like getting your teeth cleaned, something you just have to do, but immediately following blast off I was like a pup off his leash.
Piper let me in with his guitar in hand, and a wooden spoon in the other. He was cooking Chili on the stove and banging out some chords. We'd already seen each other when I first arrived and it was a trademark of our camaraderie to skip most formalities.
“Chow's almost ready. What's that grin for, Oggy?”
“It is a beautiful night. Special. Magical.”
“You hooked up with Lace. Nice.”
I remembered my promise. I'm not a complete ass.
“No, we just watched Sound of Music. Great movie.”
“You are saying you didn't get a taste of that honey pot?”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth? Correct. No honey pot. The chili have meat? I won't eat meat.”
“You've got lipstick on your mustache, Oggy.”
Thinking fast, I said that I'd been experimenting with rouge to give my cheeks more color in the winter. Erin's comment about me looking like a refuge still stung.
“I like to start with a light flesh foundation and then blend in some Passion highlighting. Joan Collins has some great products. I recommend her.”
Piper stirred the chili with a wooden spoon, tasted it and then added a spice.
“You are telling me that you sat over there for three hours watching The Sound Of Music, not fahking around, and talking about make up? Either you're gay or lying.”
“We talked about other things? Not just Make-up.”
“OK, Make-up and...”
He leaned toward me to allow me to finish the sentence.
“...Baseball. Did you know Lace knows a great deal about baseball. The Sox should hire her. She'd know to pull Schiraldi after getting murdered for two innings.”
“He gave up one run, Oggy. One run isn't getting murdered.”
I slapped the kitchen table as a request to speak.
“He only gave up one run because Davey Johnson blew a call and let Howard Johnson swing instead of bunting. Schiraldi should have been pulled.”
Piper tested the chili. He was the one, remember, who had dismissed the loss with the “Tough Luck” comment that I still harbored. This short volley would be one of Piper's few indulgements of my passion. He quickly changed the subject back to Lacy and her pot of honey.
“She told you not to tell me? She made you promise?”
“Not at all. I love her. I would do anything for her. She wants to go to Mexico. I'm still thinking it over.”
I explained that Lacy was really in love with me and that she needed my help in escaping a life that was suffocating her. Piper tapped on the chili pot.
“You know Lace's dad is a pilot?”
I did.
“And you want to be there for her when he isn't?”
Yes. I would be a good dad. The best.
Piper continued to stir the Chili.
“A good dad? What are you saying?”
“I'll never leave her.”
“You aren't going to Mexico tomorrow?”
Once again people were putting words in my mouth. I told him that I had to leave because I was getting sued, the Timewriaths were hounding me, Ray Knight appeared in my dreams, my Thriller record had too many skips and other obvious reasons for going to Mexico. But my commitment to Lacy should not be questioned.
“I want to bring her with me. She asked to go. She wants to raise rabbits in Mexico.”
“Oggy, you are what she hates most.”
I found that a little hard to believe. There had to be at least one thing she hated more than me.
“That's why she loves me,” I said with trademark logic.
Piper paused and looked out the small window near the front door. The chili started to boil and then burn.
“Stir that chili, that's the last homemade meal I'm gonna have in a while. You sure it doesn't have meat?”
He nibbled on his spoon and ignored me. Some people just can't pay attention to one thing at a time. Piper is a king among men, but between you and me he can be a freak. For instance, he makes these carved wooden figures. These things have no recognizable shape or function. He says he just likes to make them. They make him feel good. See what I mean?
“She loves what she hates? That would explain a lot.”
“Dude, the chili!”
Finally I stood up and took the spoon from him and started to stir it myself. Piper stood aside.
“It's fine. You know, I think we've gone full circle, Oggy. I used to admire you in Bone Harbor. Then I avoided you because you wouldn't shower and were crazy. Now I admire you again.”
“Bone Harbor? Fifth Grade? Sixth?”
“Remember the PE tests?”
The dreaded PE tests. Of course I remembered them. Pull ups and push ups and laps around the gymnasium. They whipped us like pack animals so we might be rated against other pack animals. These took place before October 1986 and were therefore relatively pleasant memories. Baseball was the ever rising sun on the horizon at that point. Tony Perez was playing first base when Yaz was the designated hitter. Carney Lansford was the third baseman. I didn't even mind that the players union went on strike and cut the 1981 season in half. It just meant more Playoff games. Capture The Flag was my one diversion from Off The Wall games and sorting baseball cards in Kurt's attic. By fifth grade I simply did what I was told when I came to school. If they told me to do twenty jumping jacks, I did them. If I had to run in circles for ten minutes, I was off like a bunny. Just as long as I could have my recess and handful of popcorn of Fridays.
“The ones I failed because I wouldn't take a shower?”
“You passed one test.”
How Piper remembered this detail I couldn't say. He had actually kept track of all these things for a decade. God had a shorter memory.
“Which one did I pass?”
“Vision. They lined us up and you could read the lowest line. Twenty-twenty vision. Perfect, they said. I couldn't read past the third line even with my glasses.”
“That was also the day they told me I had Scoliosis of the spine and would to wear need a body brace until I was thirty-five.”
“They told everyone that.”
“So you hate me for having perfect vision?”
“I did. But by sixth grade I just admired you.”
This was hardly a priest-worthy confession, but when Piper is concerned any chink in the armor is worth mentioning.
“Then that's the difference between us. I would've hated you forever.”
“Chili's ready.”
Piper dished out some steaming mixture and placed a bread roll nearby on the table. I burned the roof of my mouth with the chili.
“This is hot enough to melt the ice caps.”
“Oggy, why didn't you shower?”
“To protect my hat,” I said pointing to the 'B' on my forehead. “ If I took a shower then someone might get my hat and wash all my memories, our memories, out. They'd be gone. I had to protect the tribe's memories. I've still got the memories of Kodiak and Clutch and BHHS hoop and Track meets with you and Darcy and Rose and that other hot chick who ran hurdles. The one who did that thing with her hair.”
“Stephanie?”
I actually knew her name but was testing Piper to see how much he had discarded from our golden age.
“Oh! What a pair of moneymakers she had. Remember?”
“The best,” he agreed. “Pure stroking magic.”
“See? I can't lose those memories. Bullwhip wouldn't like that. As long as I've got the hat then I can bargain with the Timewraiths and maybe Schiraldi will strike Knight out. I knew it as far back as sixth grade.”
“Knew what?”
“That I was the one. It was my job to protect the memories.”
“Chili's ready,” said Piper. as he used his bread roll to spoon the chili into his mouth. He'd left the meat out just for me. As we ate, Piper asked if I had told my father I was gone.
“Yeah. I called him when I first got here. That sharecropper told me to have fun. Can you believe that? Fun?”
“You had fun in Florida. I got your postcards. Surfing, eating pizza, swimming. No work, no school. Some people live their whole lives and don't have that kind of vacation.”
This was a good point, and Piper made it without the normal judgement my father might have tagged on. Yes, some people live and die without two months of pure, simple hedonism. And while it might appear to some that this vacation has yet to end for old Oggy, I would point out the hours I spent fixing my brakes, working on my bicycle, picking up aluminum from the trash cans downtown and other assorted tasks that just won't get done otherwise. I'm sure all of you sitting on your velvet thrones can file me into the “Slacker” category, but where would the world be without me?
“No one works in Florida. I had to allow myself a little fun after an era of essentialist struggle with the Red Sox. I earned the existential fun. See?”
“I'm not saying you didn't, or even had to earn it. You live your life. Did I give you shit?”
He hadn't given me shit but I was so trained to defend myself that I had shifted automatically into my, “I'm a beaten, unrecognized man. Why do you hound me?” mode.
“So now I'm a criminal on the run. I got a bad back and chronic knee pain. Fun? That doesn't sound like fun to me. Fun? My dad represents all that is Evil.”
“Your dad is a great man, Oggy.”
“A great man? My father is a monster. He has a forked tongue, you know. He sleeps hanging upside from the ceiling. How can you say he's great? He's a fahking secretary, a sharecropper, a bootblack.”
Alright, so I exaggerated a little. But how else could I make my point? Have you ever tried to criticize your parents by just telling the truth? It's impossible.
“He's a doctor of Psychology. I like him. He's funny and smart. He raised two kids alone. I couldn't raise two kids by myself. He's a hero.”
“Raised two kids?” I sputtered. “What two kids are you talking about? Did he keep some secret family over in Break Island? Listen: When my brother was sober enough to go to school he only managed to get in fights. The only reason he didn't fail out of high school was because BHHS awarded class participation points when you raised your hand to go to the bathroom. Then he joined the Army to protect our right to destroy the ozone layer by killing impoverished Arabs. What a success story. Where's his medal? Then there's me. When I wasn't hiding in the girl's locker room, I was asleep under the bleachers. I'm convinced the Red Sox can win the '86 World Series if Schiraldi would just throw a curveball in the dirt to Knight.”
I paused here to demonstrate the essential snapping of the wrist that would get the ball to break out of the strike zone, or at least out of the “0-2 RBI single” zone. The motion got a little chili on the walls, but I pushed on.
“The best job I've had was tearing covers off of paperback books because it gave me the chance to steal smut mags. I've had sex more times with a twenty-year-old fake leather couch than with an actual girl. And, to top it all off, I caused the Exxon Valdez disaster! You call that raising two kids? I'd have been better off living with wolves.”
“You're fine. He did his best.”
“His best to corrode my thinking and corrupt my morals, is what he did. He tried to force me to conform to his bootblack ethic, raise another sharecropper, bust my shine box, piss in my milk bowl. Now I'm on the run from the law and my brother is actively engaged in Genocide. Oh, yeah, my dad raised two great kids. I'd rather have Darth Vader as my father.”
“Who wouldn't? That would make you Luke Skywalker.”
Ignoring Piper's quip, I pleaded, “I lug my shine box downtown and all he does is piss on it. He breaks my shine box, Piper.”
“How's the chili?”
“Needs meat.”
Piper was not interested in discussing the Red Sox or my affair with Lacy. He asked only from a habit learned in a close knit dorm life where every one's business was dumped into the social pot and laughed at. Unlike Cristo, Piper absorbed almost none of the information I gave him. This latest with Lacy incident would probably not resurface and would never be used against me, while the time I got my scrotum caught in my zipper in fourth grade was repeated almost daily by Cristo. Because of his comparative independence Piper seemed distant to me. He wouldn't humor me with lengthy philosophic discussions, nor brag about having sex with a cheerleader in ninth grade, nor talk about his grades, nor question John McNamara's decision to leave Schiraldi in to hit. Piper liked literature, John Steinbeck in particular, and after I had dropped out of college I found myself reading East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath if only to have something to discuss with Piper on evenings such as this when he had returned from work and I was on my way to Mexico.
posted by Oggy Bleacher | 8:24 PM
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