J. Beaman - The Magazine

When I was fourteen years old my grandparents took my sister and I to Yerington, Nevada for a Beaman family reunion. I had plenty of family in the town where I grew up but not many Beamans. I have written here before about my Uncle Lee. Here’s an excerpt:

“My Uncle was my hero, an outlaw biker, tattoos old Harley Davidson motorc ycles, and a profound love that he shared vigorously of rock and roll. Throw in that he had a gorgeous wife that was sweet, charming, smart and had tattoos on her tits. So I was fourteen and the man walked on water.”

After a long hot day of barbeque and my grandparents gambling we settled down into the greasy, classically small town Nevada hotel room. It was about nine at night and with me in bed with my grandpa and my sister in bed with my grandma my uncle knocked on the door and asked if my sister and I could hang out in my uncle and aunts room for the night. We didn’t get to see them much and it was a real treat to hang out without my grandparents hanging around.

My grandma said no. She was expectedly curt and sour. After my uncle left, defeated, I whispered to my grandpa, “Come on, gramps. We never get to hang out with them.” My grandpa told me I could go.

As I was putting on my pants, my grandma went fucking crazy. I stormed off in a fourteen year old, punk rock huff with my walkman and a copy of Nevermind the Bullocks and my grandma drove away in a drunken rage.

She didn’t come back. We were 150 miles from home and my grandma just left us. I continually threatened to walk home. “I could make it. It’d be cool. Punk rock. I just need batteries for my walkman and fuck her.” My uncle still makes fun of me for that.

When we finally got home (crammed for hours in my aunts 72 camaro) I refused to eat any food that my grandma would prepare. I was working at a cafe/ice cream parlor and thought I needed no one.

One afternoon my grandpa and I got in a fight about it. He was drunk and I was stoned and both of us were crying and I shouted at him, “Why don’t you just divorce the bitch.”

“Because I love her, son, and I’m just too goddamn old.”

When I was fourteen years old, visiting my aunt and uncle at our cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, my uncle Lee came flying through the front door, into the kitchen, his fist tight up against his chest, clutching the countertop, groaning, “Oh fuck, Jesus, where are the Tums?” I thought he was having a goddamn heart attack. He was old after all, older that I thought I would ever be. My Uncle was my hero, an outlaw biker, tattoos old Harley Davidson motorcycles, and a profound love that he shared vigorously of rock and roll. Throw in that he had a gorgeous wife that was sweet, charming, smart and had tattoos on her tits. So I was fourteen and the man walked on water.

A few hours later I was sitting on the stump behind the outhouse smoking one of my first cigarettes, reveling in my new found adulthood however it wasn’t long before my world-wise uncle caught on.

“You been smokin’?”

“Yeah.”

“You don?t have to hide that shit from us. I won’t tell your grandpa.”

Like I said, my uncle was fucking cool. A few days later, frying up some fish we had caught earlier that day, Lee let me in on some of the events that led up to his kicking the habit a few years earlier. It was the typical shit you hear from many ex-smokers; spend a weekend partying, spent most of Sunday night hacking with difficulty breathing and he just thought to himself, “Man, I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

“Yeah, that sucks.” I was fourteen.

But what kept running through my mind was, “But dude…you’re old.”

My uncle was thirty the year he quit smoking.

I turned twenty-nine this year. I tried to quit smoking this week. Failed. I found myself driving 70mph to HEB to get some Tums because it felt like someone was ass-raping my chest.

I love my Uncle Lee and I’m glad that I seem to be turning into him.