A beach window with a Christmas sign, the sort that I like, old fashioned and rich. Thanksgiving over--it is Christmas now. My relatives left after the sun went down last night to stand in line at Target which opened at six. They were going to save big. I scoffed.
They came home with everything they wanted--Blu-Rays, X-boxes, and. . . . By eight o'clock they had hooked up the 55" HD television. They got it for $300. I'm not kidding at all when I say I was flabbergasted.
There is a thriftiness in life of which I am unaware. Everyone lives well. They have cars and clothes and games and food. O.K. I have gained about twenty pounds eating their food. It is full of calories--gravy, sugar in the corn, mashed potatoes, lots of bacon and sugar buns. . . . Nobody goes hungry.
The house was full for dinner. My cousins loved reminding my mother that she was "the last one left." She is, they meant, the last of her generation in the family. It is the sort of mean things that hillbillies say without thinking, I guess, but I could see the sharp pain in my mother's eye. There were cousins and second cousins and girlfriends and babies and missing cousins and second cousins who are missing or not wanted. I drank two bottles of champagne, beers, and plenty of whiskey. I was anesthetizing myself, I reckon. It wasn't misery, exactly, but something else. It is not that I don't like these people, for I do rightly enough. I am simply not used to so many things, so much "America." There is endless nonsensical chatter and the blaring of commercial t.v., radio shows, and barking dogs. It is simply part of the woof and the weave of their lives. For me it is something else.
People went and came with their boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives and babies, sitting and chatting, catching up, commenting on how big the children have gotten and how so-and-so plays volleyball and is hoping to get scholarships. . yada, yada, yada.
None of them ever finish school.
But where I used to feel. . . how do I say it delicately. . . something. . . I feel . . . something else, now.
I am in a strange land believing I was never meant for this life, life on this planet, any life at all.
I went upstairs to get my dopp kit, and came back down through the living room with the big t.v. on my way to the bathroom. Player's good drug ears heard the rattle of pills in their bottles as I walked.
"What's in there?" he wondered out loud, but it was no wondering at all. He loves to call me out, to defame me, in front of the crowd.
"Oh, you know, the usual old man stuff." What he heard was a handful of Xanax someone had given me to get me through the blackest of nights.
There are plenty of black nights, but never enough solutions.
I try to write now, but everyone is up. They come into the room and talk. The t.v. comes to life. People rehash and opine on others. Everyone has the answer to something. If only they could run things, we'd all be better off.
Children. They are endlessly enamored of them. There can never be enough pregnancies for them. legitimate, illegitimate, it doesn't matter. As long as there is the endless stream of reproductive miracles to replace those who are passing. Shit and death are everywhere.
I am a mess. I had to get away from home to realize how much so. I am tired of it, tired of it all. My mother wonders what I am doing. She means at the computer I assume, but even if she doesn't know it, she means so much more.
We must decide if we are going home or staying one more night. I don't care one way or another. I've never felt so much this way, whichever way it is. The world used to be so much for me. It gave me everything and made me gold. I'm a billion year old carbon.
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