Rotting in the Amber
Jul. 5th, 2007 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thehefnerConsider this a rough first draft.
It's long, but there's some very interesting stuff in here.
She was even more apprehensive about going than I, as she hadn't stepped foot inside this house since they divorced back in 1990. No, that's not true. She was inside a year or so later, when Dad went hobbled downstairs for a nightcap and slipped. He smashed into the marble, the black-red blood pooling under his unconscious face and seeping into the crevices.
I called up Mom, who in turn called up an ambulance. By the time she was on her way, he was already awake. I found him sitting silently on the bottom step, his hands cupped, staring blankly down into the pool. She showed up and, against his dazed and drunken protests, forced him to go to the hospital. As they were getting him ready, I sat in the kitchen and prayed. We were never a religious family, and hell, I think even then I knew it looked worse than it was, so why be such a damn drama queen now? But when you're eight years old, and there's that much blood...
My first thought was to pour out his 1.75 liter bottle of Seagrams gin right down the drain. Fuck that; to smash it on the kitchen tile. But I didn't want him angry at me, or to make a mess for either of us to clean up. And besides, what'd be the point? He's just buy more.
So instead I prayed. "Please God," I said, "Please don't let my dad die."
Later at Sibley Hospital, where I was born and my father would spend some of the last weeks of his life, Mom finally put her foot down. "John's going to live with me from now on." Any other time, Dad would have been all fire and brimstone, fighting and threatening all the way. He didn't contest it at all. Mom told me and, understanding completely, I just nodded. She said I could visit him to say goodbye before we left to my new home.
I found him in the ER, his stitched face covered in crusted blood and bruises, and he gave me a dazed but knowing little smile.
He said, "I'm not going to die, John."
Sorry to tangent there. My point was that Mom hadn't been in this house for a long time, and was not relishing the prospect of her return. I warned her to watch out for the front steps, which had been falling apart for years. "God, they are," she said, with some surprise. "He was always so proud of these steps."
It's strange to think that, over the years, I'd been coming and going from that house with such little care or thought, so that I never noticed things like how overgrown the azaleas were. Nor the untamed Virginia Creeper, spreading through the remains of his garden and up the telephone pole like...
... well, like a cancer, really.
Thanks to Nita hiring maids (during the week when it seemed like Dad might have been able to return home), the house looked in better shape than it had in years. The blood and spaghetti sauce stains in the kitchen were scoured, for one thing, and the house no longer smelled of rotting. But it was still muggy from the complete lack of ventilation, just as Dad liked it, and Mom's nose (which hadn't gotten dulled to the everyday odors of the house) immediately caught the "dying old person" stench. Kinda like my grandmother's smell, only with more of a "rotting flesh" touch, as opposed to her "adult diapers" fragrace, also known as "eau de barn."
We started going through all the things we wanted to keep--the grandfather clock, my hand-carved baby rocking chair, the Rembrandt prints, his grandmother's china and other heirlooms--and I could see that Mom was getting more and more unsettled, although she wasn't yet able to place just why.
Going into the living room, I was hit with a sudden burst of rebel inspiration, and leapt onto the couch. Mom instantly understood and started laughing while I did my best Teri Garr in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN impression, "Roll, roll, roll on ze couch!"
She said, "Put your feet up on the couch! Put your feet on the couch!" which I did, shifting from Teri Garr into Dave Chappelle as Rick James on Charlie Murphy's expensive sofa, kicking and rubbing my soles against the material.
For all my life, and all her marriage, we were never allowed on that couch. Dad forbade it, except during Christmas and Thanksgiving, or what company came over (and even then, not often). The same goes for the dining room, which you had to walk through if you wanted to get into the kitchen. We walked through that room every day, but I never recall eating a single meal there in all my years. The table and chairs sat there, untouched, my whole life. Displayed like a doll house.
As such, we usually ate all meals in the tiny kitchen. Well, not Edd, Mom's child from a previous marriage. Dad made him eat in the basement.
That is, until Mom gave birth to me. See, Dad never forgave Mom for breaking her promise not to have any children, and he swore to hate her forever once she refused to get the abortion. Disgusted at the sight of her, he in turn refused to let her back into his bed. Mom, Edd, and little baby John all had to sleep in Edd's room for the next few months. She had to buy her own groceries, and if they even touched his, which he had bought with his own money, there'd be hell to pay.
Not that he'd ever hit us. He never had to.
Then, of course, I became the light of his life. Bonnie Prince Johnny, he called me. I could do no wrong. He refused to discipline me, letting me be a natural, untamed two-year-old brat. Even though he never said it out loud, it was clear to everyone that Edd was absolutely neither wanted nor welcome. Of course, what happened when Mom tried to save Edd by sending him to live with his Austin-Powers-at-the-World-Bank father and totally bugfuck insane stepmother, well, that's a whole other story.
I knew about some of that, but not all. Not until just an hour ago. She hadn't even remembered it until yesterday. All of a sudden, finally jumping up and down on that couch, spreading my toxic oils and skin flakes over the precious material, seems like something of a hollow victory.
"What the HELL was I thinking?" Mom laments today. "Why did I put up with all that bullshit just to please him? What PLANET was I on, to let him treat me this way?!"
We went into the kitchen, whereupon Mom remarked, "Aww, so he finally did replace those kitchen chairs."
Aw geez, I thought, I didn't need to hear this again...
"Those were the chairs you were conceived in!"
Aaaaaand there we go, yes, thank you, Mother, I'd finally just repressed that one.
We went through the cabinets, looking for things like my old Beatrix Potter baby dishes and cups, when Mom's eyes went to something blue and plastic on the top shelf. "Is that you old baby bottle?" she asked, and then said, "I'm too short. Can you get that?"
I grabbed the strange, horn-like apparatus attached to the plastic baby bottle, with a rubber bulp at the end. A lightbulb went off and Mom said, "Hey, that's my old breast pump!"
"GAHHH!" I screamed, dropping it. Mom instantly went into hysterical cackles as I frantically washed my hand, yelling, "The stink's never gonna come clean! Get me a fucking brillo pad!"
We proceeded down to the basement, the air thick with mold, and dug out his framed, autographed photos of Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, with both of whom my father had performed.
Dad could have been one of the greatest oboists in the world, had he really wanted to. He started learning late (age 14), and was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music, one of the leading conservatories in the world. He studied under--and became one of the most favored students of--the legendary and (in)famous Marcel Tabuteau.
Tangent: Tabuteau's top student, and my father's best friend and idol, was a fellow oboist named John de Lancie. Of course, geek that I am, that name was always familiar, but it wasn't until I clicked on that very wikipedia entry that I discovered that he actually is the father of the actor John de Lancie! Q himself!!!
I never met John de Lancie senior, although I had the chance when he invited us to his 80th birthday party. To think, I could have met Q! Well, not just him, but his father, my father's hero... and my namesake. I'm named after John, you see (and my middle name is Curtis). But we never went. Dad claimed to not want to bother going through all the trouble, but Mom thinks it's because he didn't want these people, Dad's few remaining old friends and colleagues whom he hadn't seen in years and years, to see the state to which he'd degraded. John died a couple of months later.
Looking at the autographed portrait of him, the glass frame speckled with mold, I could see the resemblance to his son. I wish I had met him. I wish more people could tell me about Dad's life and music. I wish I could have seen them play together, even if no one really appreciate what they were doing. No one but each other.
I don't know what to do with Dad's old oboes, reeds, or his extensive oboe repair kit. Part of me feels like I have to hold on to such an integral part of the man, if only for the sheer curiosity of the objects. They're very much the sort of bizarre cool crap you'd find at an antique shop or yard sale, something you might buy not even knowing what the hell it does or did, just because it looks interesting and cool.
I wish there was someplace we could donate them, but like I said, he never aspired to be as good as he could have been. His name isn't listed alongside John de Lancie's in Tabeteau's wikipedia page. He's not like my grandfather, who has his own room named after him in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (or would have, had he not been so humble as to refuse the offer).
Dad never wanted fame. He just wanted music, women, and booze. That's all that mattered to him, when you came right down to it.
Well... not all, exactly. Not after we later on discovered what was really so unsettling to Mom.
Going upstairs and into his bedroom, we found tons of his old photos and documents, including and old man rant to financial guru Ric Edelman, and several lovely letters from Hugh's mother, our Aunt Grace. It was Grace who persuaded Hef to finally meet us and give us a tour of the mansion back when I was seven, all of which you'd know if you'd read or seen THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES (and if not, shape up!). And then, I found this card:
Which inside read:
That's from about 1990. We might have one other Christmas card hiding someplace, but we haven't gotten one for sixteen years.
This reminded me that I still needed to let Hef know of his cousin's death. I managed to dig out the Mansion address, and will tomorrow send two letters, one to the Mansion and another "care of" PLAYBOY magazine, in the hopes at least one of his secretaries will pass it along to him. Assuming they don't have my name on the "to be shredded" blacklist or something. Mom suggested I include an offer to send Hugh photocopies of his mother's letters, to see what he'd make of that. Who knows if I'll even get a response, but I can't help but wonder.
If he does, though, I can't begin to imagine what that'd do to THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES. In a very real sense, I now kinda hope he continues to ignore me!
But we'll cross that bridge when... if... we ever come to it. I'm not holding my breath, not after this long.
That's when Mom realized what'd been bothering her. It sunk in when she opened the closet to find the folded towels. Folded because she was the one who had folded them over twenty years ago.
So many things, from the pillows she made for him... to the clothes in his closet... to the dishes in his cupboard... to all her tools in the basement (still hung exactly where she left them)... to the sheepskin condoms in his closet... to, yes, even the breast pump... all untouched and unchanged over twenty years. We discovered a wicker picnic basket Mom had made for him. Inside were dishes, utensils, and a withered grape vine that held a dozen or so raisins.
Can you imagine walking into a perfectly preserved period of your life, and a painful one at that, twenty years after the fact? Except preserved isn't exactly right. The condoms were, of course, dried up, and anything that could decay and fade, did. No matter how covered up it was.
That was the pattern we saw, more and more. Was Dad just lazy? Did he want to still be surrounded by that period in his life so he could wallow and stew about the woman who betrayed him by creating the single greatest joy of his life?
I already mentioned the expensive piano that remained constantly covered by a faded yellow sheet, the Rolls Royce Silver Dawn that went increasingly-undriven in his garage, and me sitting upstairs doing nothing for hours on end. All examples of how use meant far less to him than mere possession. The fact that he owned it was enough. That he owned it and was protecting it.
But now we discovered that it went further than that. He actually bought a new fireplace some time ago, but never took the sticker off. Plastic is still on the windows. So many more examples of a man who wanted everything in his life to be exactly as it was when he first got it, even if that meant he could never make use of those objects.
He had them, and even if they would naturally corrode and rot even inside their packaging, he still had them. That's all that mattered.
We raided the liquor cabinet before leaving. Now even though he was an alcoholic, Dad's habits were restricted to a case of Miller Lite a day, and then gin and tonics in his last fifteen years. Somewhere along the way he must have experimented with others, as evidenced by the mostly-finished bottles of Drambuie and Crown Royal.
We did find a half-drunk bottle of Jameson Whiskey, closed with a cork. I've always wanted a bottle of Jameson, but could never afford it. Will it still be good after twenty-plus years? I surely hope so. Whiskey doesn't go bad, right?
Now, the real prize was the unopened bottle of Martell VSOP cognac, which was aged 10-12 years back when Dad bought it about twenty years ago. I'm saving that one for a special occasion.
But we also found one more thing in the liquor cabinet. His last bottle of Seagram's gin, 1.75 liters bottle, only a couple shots-worth missing. That's as far as he'd gotten into the last bottle of the case, and he probably would have had another case or two delivered soon thereafter. So I have it in my own liquor cabinet, on the top shelf. I'm not going to drink it, don't worry (Seagrams is shit), nor am I going to smash it or pour it down the sink.
I'm not certain what I'm going to do with it exactly, but I have an idea. We'll just wait and see. I've been good at that lately.
On our way back home, the van crammed full of paintings, rugs, papers, tools, etc., Mom brought up a frequent theme in our family. Namely, our fear of becoming our parents. After all, she's terrified of becoming my grandmother, and I've spent my whole life swearing that I'd never become my father, that I'd never treat my loved ones the way he treated me. But then, I also swore I'd never drink. So there we go.
Over the past month, Mom had been shuddering with horror at how Dad had become his mother, who had tormented him with a long, slow death, hatefully manipulating and guilt-tripping him all the way. But yesterday in the car, she realized that he never did quite get that bad. He wasn't exactly Mr. Positive; no, need I remind everyone of "Like Hell"? Still, he was better than her, and Mom was impressed by that.
I said, "Maybe we can't hope to avoid becoming our parents. We've seen too many examples of people doing just that, no matter how they fought it. It's too deeply ingrained. It's what we know. I mean, heck, if we didn't have those flaws, we'd just have some whole other set of flaws. Better to have the flaws you know. The flaws you understand."
I added, "To that end, maybe the best we can hope for... is to be at least better than they were. For humanity to improve just a little bit with each lifetime, learning from the mistakes of the past while making all new ones for themselves."
"It's evolution," she said.
"Exactly."
"I like that. All we can hope for is to be better than our parents were."
I smiled, not sure how ironic we were being or not.
"In either case," I said, "At least we're working on it."
It's long, but there's some very interesting stuff in here.
She was even more apprehensive about going than I, as she hadn't stepped foot inside this house since they divorced back in 1990. No, that's not true. She was inside a year or so later, when Dad went hobbled downstairs for a nightcap and slipped. He smashed into the marble, the black-red blood pooling under his unconscious face and seeping into the crevices.
I called up Mom, who in turn called up an ambulance. By the time she was on her way, he was already awake. I found him sitting silently on the bottom step, his hands cupped, staring blankly down into the pool. She showed up and, against his dazed and drunken protests, forced him to go to the hospital. As they were getting him ready, I sat in the kitchen and prayed. We were never a religious family, and hell, I think even then I knew it looked worse than it was, so why be such a damn drama queen now? But when you're eight years old, and there's that much blood...
My first thought was to pour out his 1.75 liter bottle of Seagrams gin right down the drain. Fuck that; to smash it on the kitchen tile. But I didn't want him angry at me, or to make a mess for either of us to clean up. And besides, what'd be the point? He's just buy more.
So instead I prayed. "Please God," I said, "Please don't let my dad die."
Later at Sibley Hospital, where I was born and my father would spend some of the last weeks of his life, Mom finally put her foot down. "John's going to live with me from now on." Any other time, Dad would have been all fire and brimstone, fighting and threatening all the way. He didn't contest it at all. Mom told me and, understanding completely, I just nodded. She said I could visit him to say goodbye before we left to my new home.
I found him in the ER, his stitched face covered in crusted blood and bruises, and he gave me a dazed but knowing little smile.
He said, "I'm not going to die, John."
Sorry to tangent there. My point was that Mom hadn't been in this house for a long time, and was not relishing the prospect of her return. I warned her to watch out for the front steps, which had been falling apart for years. "God, they are," she said, with some surprise. "He was always so proud of these steps."
It's strange to think that, over the years, I'd been coming and going from that house with such little care or thought, so that I never noticed things like how overgrown the azaleas were. Nor the untamed Virginia Creeper, spreading through the remains of his garden and up the telephone pole like...
... well, like a cancer, really.
Thanks to Nita hiring maids (during the week when it seemed like Dad might have been able to return home), the house looked in better shape than it had in years. The blood and spaghetti sauce stains in the kitchen were scoured, for one thing, and the house no longer smelled of rotting. But it was still muggy from the complete lack of ventilation, just as Dad liked it, and Mom's nose (which hadn't gotten dulled to the everyday odors of the house) immediately caught the "dying old person" stench. Kinda like my grandmother's smell, only with more of a "rotting flesh" touch, as opposed to her "adult diapers" fragrace, also known as "eau de barn."
We started going through all the things we wanted to keep--the grandfather clock, my hand-carved baby rocking chair, the Rembrandt prints, his grandmother's china and other heirlooms--and I could see that Mom was getting more and more unsettled, although she wasn't yet able to place just why.
Going into the living room, I was hit with a sudden burst of rebel inspiration, and leapt onto the couch. Mom instantly understood and started laughing while I did my best Teri Garr in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN impression, "Roll, roll, roll on ze couch!"
She said, "Put your feet up on the couch! Put your feet on the couch!" which I did, shifting from Teri Garr into Dave Chappelle as Rick James on Charlie Murphy's expensive sofa, kicking and rubbing my soles against the material.
For all my life, and all her marriage, we were never allowed on that couch. Dad forbade it, except during Christmas and Thanksgiving, or what company came over (and even then, not often). The same goes for the dining room, which you had to walk through if you wanted to get into the kitchen. We walked through that room every day, but I never recall eating a single meal there in all my years. The table and chairs sat there, untouched, my whole life. Displayed like a doll house.
As such, we usually ate all meals in the tiny kitchen. Well, not Edd, Mom's child from a previous marriage. Dad made him eat in the basement.
That is, until Mom gave birth to me. See, Dad never forgave Mom for breaking her promise not to have any children, and he swore to hate her forever once she refused to get the abortion. Disgusted at the sight of her, he in turn refused to let her back into his bed. Mom, Edd, and little baby John all had to sleep in Edd's room for the next few months. She had to buy her own groceries, and if they even touched his, which he had bought with his own money, there'd be hell to pay.
Not that he'd ever hit us. He never had to.
Then, of course, I became the light of his life. Bonnie Prince Johnny, he called me. I could do no wrong. He refused to discipline me, letting me be a natural, untamed two-year-old brat. Even though he never said it out loud, it was clear to everyone that Edd was absolutely neither wanted nor welcome. Of course, what happened when Mom tried to save Edd by sending him to live with his Austin-Powers-at-the-World-Bank father and totally bugfuck insane stepmother, well, that's a whole other story.
I knew about some of that, but not all. Not until just an hour ago. She hadn't even remembered it until yesterday. All of a sudden, finally jumping up and down on that couch, spreading my toxic oils and skin flakes over the precious material, seems like something of a hollow victory.
"What the HELL was I thinking?" Mom laments today. "Why did I put up with all that bullshit just to please him? What PLANET was I on, to let him treat me this way?!"
We went into the kitchen, whereupon Mom remarked, "Aww, so he finally did replace those kitchen chairs."
Aw geez, I thought, I didn't need to hear this again...
"Those were the chairs you were conceived in!"
Aaaaaand there we go, yes, thank you, Mother, I'd finally just repressed that one.
We went through the cabinets, looking for things like my old Beatrix Potter baby dishes and cups, when Mom's eyes went to something blue and plastic on the top shelf. "Is that you old baby bottle?" she asked, and then said, "I'm too short. Can you get that?"
I grabbed the strange, horn-like apparatus attached to the plastic baby bottle, with a rubber bulp at the end. A lightbulb went off and Mom said, "Hey, that's my old breast pump!"
"GAHHH!" I screamed, dropping it. Mom instantly went into hysterical cackles as I frantically washed my hand, yelling, "The stink's never gonna come clean! Get me a fucking brillo pad!"
We proceeded down to the basement, the air thick with mold, and dug out his framed, autographed photos of Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, with both of whom my father had performed.
Dad could have been one of the greatest oboists in the world, had he really wanted to. He started learning late (age 14), and was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music, one of the leading conservatories in the world. He studied under--and became one of the most favored students of--the legendary and (in)famous Marcel Tabuteau.
Tangent: Tabuteau's top student, and my father's best friend and idol, was a fellow oboist named John de Lancie. Of course, geek that I am, that name was always familiar, but it wasn't until I clicked on that very wikipedia entry that I discovered that he actually is the father of the actor John de Lancie! Q himself!!!
I never met John de Lancie senior, although I had the chance when he invited us to his 80th birthday party. To think, I could have met Q! Well, not just him, but his father, my father's hero... and my namesake. I'm named after John, you see (and my middle name is Curtis). But we never went. Dad claimed to not want to bother going through all the trouble, but Mom thinks it's because he didn't want these people, Dad's few remaining old friends and colleagues whom he hadn't seen in years and years, to see the state to which he'd degraded. John died a couple of months later.
Looking at the autographed portrait of him, the glass frame speckled with mold, I could see the resemblance to his son. I wish I had met him. I wish more people could tell me about Dad's life and music. I wish I could have seen them play together, even if no one really appreciate what they were doing. No one but each other.
I don't know what to do with Dad's old oboes, reeds, or his extensive oboe repair kit. Part of me feels like I have to hold on to such an integral part of the man, if only for the sheer curiosity of the objects. They're very much the sort of bizarre cool crap you'd find at an antique shop or yard sale, something you might buy not even knowing what the hell it does or did, just because it looks interesting and cool.
I wish there was someplace we could donate them, but like I said, he never aspired to be as good as he could have been. His name isn't listed alongside John de Lancie's in Tabeteau's wikipedia page. He's not like my grandfather, who has his own room named after him in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (or would have, had he not been so humble as to refuse the offer).
Dad never wanted fame. He just wanted music, women, and booze. That's all that mattered to him, when you came right down to it.
Well... not all, exactly. Not after we later on discovered what was really so unsettling to Mom.
Going upstairs and into his bedroom, we found tons of his old photos and documents, including and old man rant to financial guru Ric Edelman, and several lovely letters from Hugh's mother, our Aunt Grace. It was Grace who persuaded Hef to finally meet us and give us a tour of the mansion back when I was seven, all of which you'd know if you'd read or seen THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES (and if not, shape up!). And then, I found this card:
Which inside read:
That's from about 1990. We might have one other Christmas card hiding someplace, but we haven't gotten one for sixteen years.
This reminded me that I still needed to let Hef know of his cousin's death. I managed to dig out the Mansion address, and will tomorrow send two letters, one to the Mansion and another "care of" PLAYBOY magazine, in the hopes at least one of his secretaries will pass it along to him. Assuming they don't have my name on the "to be shredded" blacklist or something. Mom suggested I include an offer to send Hugh photocopies of his mother's letters, to see what he'd make of that. Who knows if I'll even get a response, but I can't help but wonder.
If he does, though, I can't begin to imagine what that'd do to THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES. In a very real sense, I now kinda hope he continues to ignore me!
But we'll cross that bridge when... if... we ever come to it. I'm not holding my breath, not after this long.
That's when Mom realized what'd been bothering her. It sunk in when she opened the closet to find the folded towels. Folded because she was the one who had folded them over twenty years ago.
So many things, from the pillows she made for him... to the clothes in his closet... to the dishes in his cupboard... to all her tools in the basement (still hung exactly where she left them)... to the sheepskin condoms in his closet... to, yes, even the breast pump... all untouched and unchanged over twenty years. We discovered a wicker picnic basket Mom had made for him. Inside were dishes, utensils, and a withered grape vine that held a dozen or so raisins.
Can you imagine walking into a perfectly preserved period of your life, and a painful one at that, twenty years after the fact? Except preserved isn't exactly right. The condoms were, of course, dried up, and anything that could decay and fade, did. No matter how covered up it was.
That was the pattern we saw, more and more. Was Dad just lazy? Did he want to still be surrounded by that period in his life so he could wallow and stew about the woman who betrayed him by creating the single greatest joy of his life?
I already mentioned the expensive piano that remained constantly covered by a faded yellow sheet, the Rolls Royce Silver Dawn that went increasingly-undriven in his garage, and me sitting upstairs doing nothing for hours on end. All examples of how use meant far less to him than mere possession. The fact that he owned it was enough. That he owned it and was protecting it.
But now we discovered that it went further than that. He actually bought a new fireplace some time ago, but never took the sticker off. Plastic is still on the windows. So many more examples of a man who wanted everything in his life to be exactly as it was when he first got it, even if that meant he could never make use of those objects.
He had them, and even if they would naturally corrode and rot even inside their packaging, he still had them. That's all that mattered.
We raided the liquor cabinet before leaving. Now even though he was an alcoholic, Dad's habits were restricted to a case of Miller Lite a day, and then gin and tonics in his last fifteen years. Somewhere along the way he must have experimented with others, as evidenced by the mostly-finished bottles of Drambuie and Crown Royal.
We did find a half-drunk bottle of Jameson Whiskey, closed with a cork. I've always wanted a bottle of Jameson, but could never afford it. Will it still be good after twenty-plus years? I surely hope so. Whiskey doesn't go bad, right?
Now, the real prize was the unopened bottle of Martell VSOP cognac, which was aged 10-12 years back when Dad bought it about twenty years ago. I'm saving that one for a special occasion.
But we also found one more thing in the liquor cabinet. His last bottle of Seagram's gin, 1.75 liters bottle, only a couple shots-worth missing. That's as far as he'd gotten into the last bottle of the case, and he probably would have had another case or two delivered soon thereafter. So I have it in my own liquor cabinet, on the top shelf. I'm not going to drink it, don't worry (Seagrams is shit), nor am I going to smash it or pour it down the sink.
I'm not certain what I'm going to do with it exactly, but I have an idea. We'll just wait and see. I've been good at that lately.
On our way back home, the van crammed full of paintings, rugs, papers, tools, etc., Mom brought up a frequent theme in our family. Namely, our fear of becoming our parents. After all, she's terrified of becoming my grandmother, and I've spent my whole life swearing that I'd never become my father, that I'd never treat my loved ones the way he treated me. But then, I also swore I'd never drink. So there we go.
Over the past month, Mom had been shuddering with horror at how Dad had become his mother, who had tormented him with a long, slow death, hatefully manipulating and guilt-tripping him all the way. But yesterday in the car, she realized that he never did quite get that bad. He wasn't exactly Mr. Positive; no, need I remind everyone of "Like Hell"? Still, he was better than her, and Mom was impressed by that.
I said, "Maybe we can't hope to avoid becoming our parents. We've seen too many examples of people doing just that, no matter how they fought it. It's too deeply ingrained. It's what we know. I mean, heck, if we didn't have those flaws, we'd just have some whole other set of flaws. Better to have the flaws you know. The flaws you understand."
I added, "To that end, maybe the best we can hope for... is to be at least better than they were. For humanity to improve just a little bit with each lifetime, learning from the mistakes of the past while making all new ones for themselves."
"It's evolution," she said.
"Exactly."
"I like that. All we can hope for is to be better than our parents were."
I smiled, not sure how ironic we were being or not.
"In either case," I said, "At least we're working on it."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Nice.
Date: 2007-07-05 10:47 am (UTC)And save the Martell for opening night of the MONOLOGUES tour, or for reading your first reviews.
AND whiskey, particularly that brand, NEVER goes bad. I was in an Irish band; you learn this stuff.
Re: Nice.
Date: 2007-07-05 02:07 pm (UTC)And that's not a bad idea.
Mmm, my father's twenty-year-old whiskey...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 10:50 am (UTC)just want to tell you that I look forward to your writing. It's a beautiful way to heal.
Wow...
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Date: 2007-07-05 02:09 pm (UTC)And thank you. I wouldn't write these if I didn't hope there, y'know, were actually good.
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Date: 2007-07-05 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-07-05 02:12 pm (UTC)Now I'm reminded of the SOUTH PARK episode that was an entire parody of GREAT EXPECTATIONS (narrated by Malcolm McDowell as "A British Guy.") In it, Miss Havesham explains why she has her daughter Estella break hearts. Miss Havesham will use the tears from the men with broken hearts to power her Genesis Device, allowing the old woman to become young again and put herself in Estella's body, and then she will continue breaking men's hearts for another generation. She then uses her robot monkeys to attack Pip.
It's one of my favorite episodes, and most SOUTH PARK fans utterly hate it, which is why they've only aired it once.
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Date: 2007-07-05 02:39 pm (UTC)And, you know, excellently written entry. I was almost disappointed when it was over.
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Date: 2007-07-05 05:54 pm (UTC)And thank you. Don't worry, there'll be a whole expanded book with more (crazier) stories than these.
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Date: 2007-07-05 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-07-05 03:58 pm (UTC)My only comment--and remember, free advice is worth exactly as much as it costs to give--is that you might think about dropping the extended digressions (paragraphs 2-7, and then 18 & 19). Although your brother Edd's life under your dad and your dad's fall when you were eight would make outstanding monologues in and of themselves.
Good work.
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Date: 2007-07-05 05:46 pm (UTC)I will very much keep that in mind, but bear in mind, this is all going to be expanded in the context of a book, where I'll go into detail about Edd, my grandparents, Gordon, etc.
The very last story is about the time when I performed "My Grandfather's Last Words" for Dad, and his reaction. I cannot think of a more fitting ending.
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Date: 2007-07-06 01:11 am (UTC)Unrelated: Have you ever seen "In the Mood for Love" and "2046" (which is the sequel)? They're sort of about memories and stories. I think they might be kinda your thing. Beautiful, beautiful movies.
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Date: 2007-07-06 02:06 am (UTC)And no, I have not. But it sounds like I clearly should.
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Date: 2007-07-06 04:24 am (UTC)(And that should be great whiskey. Jameson's is where I became a certified whiskey taster. Good times!)
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Date: 2007-07-07 02:57 pm (UTC)still, i'm glad i got to hear you tell it to me first. in person was a wonderful way to experience it from you, even if the subject matter is painful.
as for becoming our parents.. you thankfully have so much of your mother's best qualities in you. and even beyond that or your father's influence, you have more and more and more become your own person, unique and individual of either of your parents.