And onto some information about me. I’m going Sarah, last summer, style and I’m going write one thing a day. It doesn’t have to be long or involved but it has to be consistent. Sarah did Monday - Friday (work-a-day gal, she is) and I will do something similar. Five days a week should be enough. And it will probably be M-F. However if i miss a day during the week, Saturday and Sunday will be make up days.
Table 5–I walk up with the dinner silverware.
girl: I just want to make sure it’s cool with you.
guy: yeah.
girl: I mean, because it wasn’t cool with my last boyfriend and I just need to know.
I walk away.
Table 3a–I’m bussing their appetizers. A man and a woman in their late fifties or early sixties.
man: what’s that say on your arm?
me: This [pointing to my left arm] is from Lord Jim…
man: Ahh. And the other arm?
me: That’s my mom’s name.
An hour later refilling decaf
man: What’s that say? What’s your mother’s name?
me: Glenda Grace.
man (genlty): Hmm…Did she pass away?
me: Yeah, when I was little.
woman: What a beautiful name.
I smile at them.
man: What a beautiful gesture.
I smile at them.
woman (Raising her cup of coffee): Here’s to Glenda Grace.
I smile at them, try not to cry, and walk away.
Doug Sahm was a Texas rock and roller who died in 1999 (most famous for his Sir Douglas Quintet days and their 1965 hit, She’s About a Mover). An Austin, TX legend and hero and a friend to Waldo Wilson.
Waldo Wilson is a tattooed, loudmouthed, 6′ 2″ crazy man that I worked with at the Hole in the Wall in Austin, TX. He is a pot smoking, ex-mormon, dog lover and was a friend to Doug Sahm.
Now I don’t believe in god but if I did it would look something like this:
Waldo walks into the bar on one of his off nights, drunk and noisy. We all know that his dog has just died and we are all feeling for him. He loved that dog.
He orders a beer and waits for the band to take a break and then shouts,
“Doug! Doug! You better tell god I’m coming up there and kicking his fucking ass! Doug, you tell god, ‘Waldo’s coming,’ and he better watch his ass!”
He laughs and takes a drink from his beer and looks at me and says, “I loved that goddamned dog, J.”
Yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of my mom’s death. On June 6th, 1982 my dad, after my mom told him she was leaving him and taking us (my sister and I) with her, broke into our neighbors house and stole their gun (the one that he had sold to them months earlier) and shot my mom three times in the face. He actually shot six times (all the bullets the gun would hold) but only hit her three times.
I think she lived for a few days or maybe a few weeks but June 6th is the day I choose to remember. June 6th is the day she left me. It makes me sad.
I’m going to talk about my mom for a minute.
(I was going to talk about how listening to LCD Soundsystem was like getting your asshole licked but I changed my mind. “Whew!” some of you are saying, or maybe “Damn, that sounds way more fun.” Either way, I understand.)
On May 22nd, 1982 my mom (Glenda Grace Beaman) graduated from Sacramento State University with a nursing degree. I think it was a day of freedom for her. I think she knew for a long time that she would be leaving my dad when she got that damned nursing degree.
Ok, I’m tired of talking about my mom (I didn’t get very far into it, did I?). It fucking hurts. It hurts because I don’t have more than ten memories of her. Not only was my mom robbed from me, but most of my memories of her. Half the memories I have of my mom involve her taking beatings from my dad to protect us. Sometimes it makes me angry but mostly it makes me sad.
I sometimes wonder why I’m not a sociopath. Or a rapist. Or a wife beater. It’s too bad that I don’t believe in god–I could give him the credit. How does that even work? “Hey, god, it’s cool that my mom’s dead and that my dad killed her because you made sure I didn’t turn into a sociopath.” Christians are so dumb.
I’m just lucky, I guess. We live in a universe of pitiless indifference and I seem to have dodged a few bullets.
L. was also wearing tie-dye. She is so not like me.
I think I might start telling people that my parents were killed by hippies. That being the source of my hatred of them. Maybe I was in the room when it happened and they were wearing patchouli and every time I smell patchouli now, I get flashbacks. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When I smell patchouli. That’s good.
Maybe it would have been a ritual killing. The hippies tied my parents and my sister and myself to our dining room chairs (the ones given to us by my great-grandma) and put some Grateful Dead on the turntable. The record was scratchy because hippies don’t take good care of things; look at their dogs. Jesus.
P.T.S.D. from patchouli and from the Dead. And they did a whirling dervish dance around us, the leader saying, “Man, you just don’t know about how you people are putting us down, man. Cause we’re on our trip, man, and you just keep fillin’ our lives with your death, man.” See, my mom worked for Dow Chemicals and this was some sort of retribution. “We’ll let your kids live, man, but, you know, you have to go. Poisoning the air with your oppression.”
