Land Where My Fathers Died

I am not patriotic. I don't believe in patriotism. There are very few things to which I pledge blind allegiance. Some of those things are represented by actual living people, some of them are represented by special books, some are even represented by a vague floating notion that nudges me ever so gently toward Grace. But none of them are represented by flags.

And yet, on a day like today, on in fact *this* day, it's all I can do to keep myself from jumping down and kissing the ground and belting out "God Bless America" (and brother I can hit the roof).

A beautiful Southern California day, with all the things I love deep inside my warm embrace, catching the wave that takes us to shore and deposits us comfortably on the cliff at sunset with the wind caressing our wet hair. A hazy back-of-the-El-Camino hug.

And I think of my father, on beach somewhere in the Pacific, beaten down and battle weary and half-exhausted with Malaria, wiping things off his helmet that wouldn't be permitted in an open casket. I think of him choosing (at an age when I was choosing between Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper) to try to stay alive, maybe without even knowing why. Maybe just discovering then and there that he was, in fact, a fighter. Realizing this, of course, only after he had knocked that other motherfucker to the ground.

And then I think: Ok, yes. Yes. There will always be fighting and dying. There will be always be those who protect and those who are protected.

There will always be Fathers and Sons.

Is there a problem?

I have participated in what you could generously call "fistfights" on two occasions in my life. The first time I was riding my bike home from 4th grade with a friend when a bully out of central casting (I think his name was Kim, like a girl, which is probably why he was a bully, like the Johnny Cash song) growled some kind of bully growl (the details escape me) and I stepped in to object. The Boy Named Kim responded to my chivalry by tossing my bike into the middle of the street, and in an unprecedented burst of bravery I punched him, aiming I'm sure for his big fat face but instead landing a glancing blow on his...shoulder.  Yeah, his shoulder. He paused briefly, and then socked me square in the mouth. My braces cut my bottom lip wide open, creating a geyser of blood that quickly ran down my jaw and stained my Star Wars shirt, the sight of which seemed to freak Kim out (he didn't mean to kill me, after all) and sent him running back home. I retrieved my bike, wiped my mouth on Han Solo's face, and claimed victory.

The second, more recent brawl took place over two decades ago in Mrs. Miller's 7th grade reading class, when my friend Gregory Corso pushed me because I accidentally stepped on his black karate-shoe-clad feet with my clunky Reebok high-tops. I reflexively punched him in the nose and knocked him back into the pencil sharpener, giving him both a bloody nose and a nasty bump on the back of his head. I received Saturday School and a huge heaping of guilt in return, and vowed never to use those lethal weapons called fists again.

And yet for some reason I've come dangerously close to fisticuffs on two separate occasions in the last week, and I can't quite figure out why. I'm a grumpy, quick-tempered, moody fuck to be sure, but my volatility traditionally manifests itself through sarcastic quips, obscene rants, self-loathing and screaming tantrums, not physical violence. But something inside me is hankering for a fight, it seems, and I'm going to have to show some uncharacteristically strong self-control if I want to keep from knocking a bitch out, or more likely getting my own punk-ass knocked out, or stabbed or hauled to jail or whatever the hell would happen if I actually gave in to my impulses. Which I won't, I'm pretty sure, so don't worry or call me or recommend yoga or anything. That would just piss me off more, anyway,  thereby quickening my descent into barbarism. And you don't want that kind of blood on your hands.

The first near-fight was last Thursday on the trolley, of all places. I don't take the trolley, normally, so I don't know what line to catch from the train station to my office, and the only reason I wasn't walking the fairly short 10 minute walk to my office is a recent flare-up of what I have google-diagnosed as metatarsalgia, a fairly common runner's injury that is in effect a bruising of the ball of the foot and middle toes that comes from overuse or ill-fitting shoes. (I don't run unless someone is chasing me, but I do go for a rigorous walk most days at lunch). So I wanted to take the trolley, but I either got on the wrong one or missed my stop and somehow ended up at the trolley transfer station, which is twice as far as the train station from my office, in the other direction.

I was about to take my earbuds out and investigate the situation when a trolley-worker (porter? conductor? troll?) burst into the car (empty except for me) and loudly, rudely, informed me that the train was out of service and I needed to exit immediately. I got up and tried to leave but...let's just say that I tend to, as the Robert Downey Jr. character in "Tropic Thunder" put it, "go full retard" (no offense intended) in certain stressful situations. My brain just shuts down and my motor skills (admittedly limited to begin with) completely abandon me. And I just could not figure out how the fuck to open the godamn trolley door, no matter how long I stared at it. So, in desperation, I called out to to the trolley-worker seeking assistance. He was displeased, to say the least. Dude was clearly having a bad morning, and he yelled back something like "push the fucking button!!" The only button I saw was a big red one above the door, so I pushed it. It was the wrong button, turns out, as the attending alarm made clear, and this is where it starts to get interesting.

The guy came barreling out of whatever little trolley closet he was working in and loudly said "Not that fucking button!!" before shutting off the alarm and hitting the proper button, the one just to the left of the door. "How did you get on in the first place?," he said, and that's when, for some reason, I finally lost it. Lost it, completely. "I walked through an opening fucking door, that's how I got on, you fucking asshole!!!", or words to that effect. He told me to "pull the fucking headphones out of my ears and pay attention" and I got right up in his face and yelled, creatively, "FUCK YOU! You're an asshole!!!" I was ready to punch the dude, I swear to God, I was gone, and looking back I think his response is the only thing that stopped me. "So are you!!!" So are you. He didn't deny he was an asshole, he didn't question my parentage or threaten me, he just told me I was an asshole too. And he was right. And the door opened and I walked off the trolley, just in time to see three transit cops drinking coffee and eyeballing me suspiciously. And I just hobbled off on my fucked-up foot, stewing in anger, shame and aggression all the (needlessly long) way to work.

And then on Saturday, at a pool with my kids, I noticed a group of teenage boys, the kind of whitebread, date-rapey, football team, privileged fucking shitheads that nearly ruined my own high school years, chilling out in a private cabana paid for by one of their plastic cougar moms. On our way out of the pool, my two young sons and wife right me, I was carrying a load of wet towels, my whale-like flesh unmercifully exposed far more than usual, and I turned and saw one of the kids look at me, then say something to his friend, who then looked at me, and then they both burst into laughter. I've been a fat kid my whole life, and I damn well fucking know when people are laughing at me, and that was this, for sure. And I stopped, and fixed my gaze at shithead #1, and when his eye caught mine again I held the gaze and said, loudly: "Is there a problem?" And, like the little bitch he was, he said "no" and looked down quickly. And then and only then did I keep walking. I would have jumped into that cabana like the fucking Hulk, I swear to god, and pretty quickly gotten my ass kicked by the La Costa Canyon varsity offensive line no doubt, if I hadn't gotten the response I wanted.

So the question remains: what the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know, exactly, but I have a few ideas. The reason I was on the train on Thursday to begin with, the reason I didn't drive to work like usual, is because it was the second anniversary of my father's death, and my wife and mother and kids were picking me up later in the day to visit my father's grave site. So yeah, that might have something to do with my pent up rage, I suppose. Or maybe, as my wife suggested, on some level I'm too comfortable and feel the need to shake things up. Or maybe I'm just turning into a fucking idiot as I get older. I don't know. But I do know this--if you see me coming your way anytime soon, it's probably best not to piss me off. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Righteous/Melancholy

May 11--

"She says the joke is on me, I say the joke is on her.
I said: Well, I have no opinion about that.
We'll just have to wait and confer."
--Paul Simon

When I was seventeen (it was a very good year), I fashioned myself a bit of a crack investigative reporter, a four-time San Diego County High School Journalism Write-off Champion, Runner-up, or Award Recipient, depending on the category. I took that responsibility seriously, unlike pretty much every other responsibility I rubbed up against at that age, and I embraced it. Through my leadership capacity on the school paper, I volunteered  to write a "candidate round-up" article about the upcoming school board election. I arranged phone interviews with all the candidates, among them a kind of proto-Sarah-Palin Fundamentalist Christian Soccer Mom who had made "family values" a cornerstone of her campaign. I prepared a list of tough but fair questions and sprung them upon her one day from the journalism room phone. Somehow, I believe at her prompting, the discussion of abortion came up. I told her my opinion, she told me hers,we finished the interview. A few days later I received a letter from the candidate, addressed to me C/O the school paper, thanking me for being a student journalist who cared about the future of my school and then reminding me that murder was a sin in the Eyes of God, and that Abortion Was Murder, and just in case I didn't fully understand that she had included a series of photos of dead fetuses to illustrate to me the consequences of LEGAL MURDER. 

That was over twenty years ago, and it still freaks me out. Soon enough I got the fuck out of Vista, and then over time Came the Fuck Back, and now I am who I am, a guy with a family and a life who has chosen to live here, to raise my family in the place I was raised. And last last night, for the first time since I was an intrepid high school Woodward and/or Bernstein looking for The Story, I found myself deep in the thick of local educational politics. And it was UGLY. 


May 16

I wrote that five days ago. I nodded off before I could finish it, then never came back to it. So it exists now as a record of my general disposition the night after the school board voted to cut all arts funding to my son's performing arts school. There was going to be more, it was going to be epic, with lots of comparisons to Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin and what have you, but I fell asleep. And my blood still boils about it but it is not what I am thinking about tonight.

Tonight I am thinking about another night, exactly two years ago, when I stood a lonely vigil on the wall. And then the night finally surrendered and soonafter so did my father, and then everything changed. If you're looking for the "Before" chronicles, you're in the wrong spot. Click the fuck back in my "Older Posts" section. Because you're smack dab in the The After Diaries.

Tonight i feel mournful. I feel old. I feel sore. I feel blessed and battered. I feel loved. I feel tired.

I feel sad.