Tempest / Tossed Salad

With a touch of the blues.

MAMA?

When I was two, I was living with my grandparents. At that point, my mother was hospitalized after she tried to kill herself and I hadn’t seen her since I was nine months old. One time my grandparents took me to New York City to visit my great aunt Lucy and her daughter Kathy. We went to a playground and Kathy once told me I’d walk up to mothers watching their children playing, stare at them with a quizzical and searching expression, and say, “mama?”

FIRST LOVE

When I was little, sometimes I’d stay over at the neighbor’s house and one of the older girls would look after me. I don’t remember her name, only how it felt being close to her. We’d stay up late and watch horror movies sitting on the couch with all her siblings. While giant ants rampaged or mummies took revenge, she would wrap me up in her arms like a rag-doll and I would feel her skin on my skin. It felt so safe and erotic, even though I was only five. I would walk up the hill every chance I’d get to see her. That summer, when I was visiting my grandparents, I fell in love. This girl wore her hair in pigtails and wore cut-off jeans and tank-tops. She was more aloof than my previous infatuation and I followed her around like a puppy dog. One day, I went over to her house and knocked on the door. No answer. The door was open so I went in. I looked around the first floor and couldn’t find her. I walked up the stairs, opened the door to her bedroom and there she was, naked, writhing on top of a young man. They both looked at me and started laughing. I ran all the way back to my grandparents house intoxicated with my first injection of shame.

THE EARACHE

South Philadelphia in the 1970’s wasn’t exactly the safest place for a little kid to roam the streets alone. I’d usually wander down to the Delaware River and sometimes wade in among the garbage and debris. One evening, around dinner time, I was walking around the neighborhood looking for something to do and my ear started hurting. I thought I’d see if my Aunt Beth and Uncle Ed were home. I walked east on South Street, towards salvation maybe. When I knocked, Beth opened the door. I asked her if I could come in and she told me they were having a dinner party. I said I was hungry but they were having chili and it was too spicy for me. I said okay and since it was getting dark, I headed home. On the way, my ear was on fire. I turned down an alley and found a spigot. I ran cold water from the spigot into my ear to soothe the pain. The next day my mom took me to the doctor and they gave me antibiotics to clear up the infection. I was six years old.

ABANDONMENT ISSUES

A little boy, only seven, barefoot and wet from the rain, stands outside looking in the kitchen window. Inside his mother is smoking a cigarette, agitated, serving dinner to the boy’s younger brother and sister at the kitchen table. She doesn’t notice him there in the dark, his heart beating fast, tears streaming down his face. He looks down at his muddy feet and then turns to leave. Five minutes earlier she told him to “get the fuck out and never come back”. He made his way down to the beach, strewn with driftwood, where he liked to play. One time he found a beached whale. Another time a dead seal. He walked and walked in the dark, feeling the sand on his feet, the sound of the Pacific Ocean almost deafening. He felt like the young girl in his new favorite book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, alone and uncertain. The rugged Oregon coast and the moon held him until, exhausted and without any idea of where he would land, he returned to the house two hours later, dirty and drenched, stoic. He went to bed that night with a fresh coat of anger on the canvass of his already compromised life.

4 AM

listening to the rain, hasn’t rained here for several days, yet plants are still growing, deciding to flower, I’m deciding whether or not to pull the tomato plants later today when the rain stops, woken by a dream, don’t remember many details, my daughter teaching herself French, my son with his mom and another man, lately I’ve been watching old tapes, interviews from 1996, friends and family, my 29 year old self asking questions about how they perceive him, a lot of answers, mostly about how he treated them, I lie in bed with an unsettled feeling in my stomach, familiar grief and some jealousy, comparing myself to a man in a dream, thinking there’s no going back only learning from the past and pushing ahead into possibility where I will forgive myself and make better choices as I continue to grow while at the same time accepting my own death and building a muscle, what someone in the tapes called ego consciousness, but maybe simply confidence and trust that I’m okay and already know how to love, capable of intimacy

SETTING OFF

The worst thing about being told by a loved one they don’t feel comfortable or safe sharing themselves with me because they’ll “set me off” is how that sentiment alone sets me off.

First, it rankles me and then I am incited to examine why. So, here goes.

Full disclosure, I’ve been investigating this dynamic for thirty years and my core sense of self hasn’t shifted much regardless of the endless searching, even in the most cherished relationships where I feel unconditional love.

However, when confronted, it always feels like an indictment and, in turn, I always feel an intense responsibility around fixing it.

Am I so internally and externally volatile that just the mere tone of my voice elicits this response? Is there an invisible beast inside me that roars at the slightest provocation?

Do I just accept it as part of who I am and move on? Shake hands with the shadow part?

From what I can understand, it can be a roadblock to achieving intimacy.

Perhaps it’s like a one-way mirror. Picture a man alone, standing on a soap-box, shouting into the void in a doorless windowless enclosure witnessed by people he loves but cannot see in the adjacent room.

Or perhaps I’m the one looking through the glass darkly and cannot contain what needs to emerge.

Next time we arrive at this crossroads, you tell me.

I promise you this, if you tell me you cannot reveal how you feel because it might set me off, I’ll likely be set off one way or another and we may miss an opportunity to connect.

After all, I’m not one to hold anything back and maybe, if you take a moment to reflect, your discomfort might be what we both need.

At this point in my life, at the risk of sounding like an asshole, I’m no longer interested in apologizing for who I am.

There comes a time when acceptance takes form. Like the painter, William Turner, I’d prefer to be tied to a mast in a storm and feel it all rather than cross the street to avoid uncertainty.

Perhaps I am finally arriving, uninhibited, uncensored, unpredictable and free, integrating all the wild and stormy parts of my nature that used to unconsciously cause harm.

How about this; next time I’m set off, I’ll accept your fear but won’t take it on and you can choose whether or not to stand and face the storm. I guarantee it’s not personal and it may just be the uncertainty that attracted us to each other in the first place.

In the end I may wonder who’s actually getting set off in this scenario.