| |
Rev-olu/ela-tion: A story
This time it really happened...
...Again.
I was floating face down (really, in a good way) in 20 feet
of crystal clear blue Hawai'i Pacific ocean that was pushing
78 degrees Fahrenheit. I could feel Dena gently holding my left
hand when suddenly our lives started again. 40 Bottle Nosed
Porpoise Dolphin passed under us and started swimming at the
same laughable pace as Dena and I.
I stopped breathing through my snorkel for, I lost track of
how long hoping that this(that) second would last forever.
It did, it does...
It was perfectly silent but for the screaming in my ears that
was the loudest most beautiful marine biology experience of
my (packed with them) life. It had only begun.
Dena let go of my hand as the two nursing infant dolphin were
being led from the tit to the surface for air completely surrounded
by the biggest and brawniest adults in the back of the pack.
They all then surfaced around the young ones. When they dove
Dena dove at a gentle and respectful distance but the two big
adults and four other, not as big (but huge of course) porpoise
came over and ensconced my friend in a gentle perfect circle
of dolphin flesh. For 10 wonderfully long seconds the dolphin
swam around her so close that she could have very easily touched
any one of them.
She didn't...
I didn't...
We all got a good long look but didn't touch.
They were all around us!
Suddenly one of the smaller ones shot up from the bottom and
took off through the air with a perfect arc just to return to
it's world with not even the slightest hint of a splash in the
blink of an eye.
I couldn't move, I didn't need to they were everywhere.
Obviously bored with monkey they slowly swam away... That was
day one.
The next day we went up Mauna-Kea to the observatory
and shot a bunch of some of my favorite
things to shoot, weird
science stuff! Between artist/photographer Harold
Rhodes (Dena's stepdad), Dena and myself we took so
many great shots that day but we just don't have the room to
show 'em all!
(... But click on those above hyperlinks to see a kind of best-of
from that photo expedition!)
Then Dena and I saw this giant Sea
Turtle on the Punalu'u Black Sands Beach the day after.
And if that wasn't enough...
... On our final day out we saw about 100 whales doing their
slow migration around the big Island that is called Hawai'i.
Included in the above spectacular Exodus was this full grown
humpback that breached 10 times in a row in less then two min.
...And the "MoonBows"! Wow, we saw two rainbows by
full moon the night we drove through Volcanos National Park,
at night! can you believe that?
... And what was the Revelation in all this?
This is how I must live. I don't mean I need to become another
superfluous white person endlessly soaking up resources and
insults in the US conquered Hawaii.
I mean that, civilization must dwell on an Island somewhere
on this mostly water planet and I'm going to discover it.
... And the revolution?
Yes, now please!
Everything we do from now on will be the bringing to fruition
of the aforementioned Revelation.
The
Broom.
I was absolutely happily hypnotized by television
when I was a kid, (OceaderMakesYourLifeEasier…), the television
and David Reynolds’ Dad. Tom “Shit, call me Tom”
Reynolds was undeniably the biggest man in the neighborhood.
My hand would always get lost when shaking his hand and it made
me feel like I was the “wet fish guy”, I’m
never the wet fish guy, I hate the wet fish guy, ug.
“Gentle Men,” ShitcallmeTom would boom, “These
are your streets, when you’re riding down your streets
spread out a bit so’s people can see ‘ya and if
some asshole in a car should come up ‘a-honk’n give
‘em one of these,” and Shitcallme would stick his
giant middle finger right in my ten year old face. We’d
all bust up laughing and he’d all ways send us away with
a parting thought like, “You men are the future, ‘n
people ‘round here gotta respect that, now shut up and
eat yer sugar! Boom, Boom, Boom he would laugh and turn away
whilst his socked feet would boom, boom, boom into another part
of his home. In late July in Austin the only time you can ride
your bike is in the late evening from 6 pm till dark around
8:30 or so. Summer in Texas is hell so what is there to be done
in the mean time between 10 am when you roll yourself out of
bed and bike time? Like most ten year old all boy brat packs
trapped in those environs in the 70’s we’d load
up on as much sugar and stupid late sixties (OneAdam12) and
flop early 70’s (RunForYourLife…) reruns, pass-out
around 1:30 in the afternoon and come-to too early for star
treck. So we would scream at each other all day long in a language
that only we understood and purposefully laugh at all the sad
scenes on T.V until at last, we could go ride our bikes on Our
streets as Men of the Future!
“OceadarMakesYourLifeEasier, Oceadar makes your life,
doo-doo-doo” all six of us were singing as we took our
road up the Choquette hill from the dusty trails in the Aroyoseca.
“…makes your life, doo-doo-doo!”
Yo-Yo we got motors a-stern, we gots to moses or Nova with the
back 60’s s’gonna run us flat. So we parted our
red sea of bikes (all six of us had red bikes) and the red-neck
in the red 1971 Chevy Nova with the tires that measured 60 centimeters
wide on the back with twin 78.9mm front rubber drove through
our fearless pack as we sang “OceadarMakesYourLife, doo-doo-doo…”
“Stupid fuck’n assholes!” Said redneck said.
“Yo-Yo, looks like dudes gotta have, …one of these!”
And six little middle fingers shot up as the Red Nova screeched
to a dead silent stop.
“BMX Grenade, explode!” My friend Albert yelled
and we all shot off in six different directions as the Novas
tires squealed in smoke and reverse.
I took off through the back ally of the Church of Christ at
the base of Choquette street and headed South, South, West up
Roth avenue, cut du-south up the hill through the Presbyterian
Church parking lot, shot across Grover through the Baptist Churchs’
foyer’, through the playground behind the Catholic Chapel
and finally jumped the fence with my bike to the “Holy
Faith Revisited” Methodist churchs’ back lot. The
whole way I could hear the screaming of the Nova’s tires
as it roared though our streets in hot pursuit of… Me!
Why me? Out of the six of us why does he have to chose me. I’m
not the slowest, everybody knows Danny’s the slowest.
Wait a second, I’ve seen that car in the garage of the
guy that lives next door to Albert Allen. Alberts ‘ol
man’s a cop so of course the dudes not going to fuck with
him. My poor ass family lives four doors up and across the same
street so I’m the only other kid he knows, he’s
coming after me!
As that very thought process dawned some where deep inside my
scull I was lifted by the hair up and over the privacy fence
I was trying to silently hide behind. Staring into the shit
brown eyes of an incredibly strong, Texas bred, lightly educated
adult male completely covered in a hot summer days worth of
engine grease I was truly scared shitless.
“You cayn’t out run my car you little dumb fuck!”
He/It/(fuck that hurts) said to me as he held me just off the
ground by the hair with my back to the splintered, cedar fence.
“Yer coming with me”. He said and completely punched
my lights out with his free hand.
I awoke too soon with a scream and as much fight as I could
muster being dragged to the red Nova. He tossed me rag-doll
style into the front seat of the Nova into the arms of another
man whose size and body odor was truly astonishing. The second
man grabbed me and held my face firm against his fat greasy
blue jean covered thigh until I passed out again.
“Ow, that little shit kicked me in the nose!” the
fat man said as the three of us sped through the neighborhood
in a sooped-up ’71 Nova. “Where are we taking him
anyway?”
“I’m taking him home to his mama and I’m gonna
tell the bitch she better start raising her kids right or we’ll
do it for her.”
“Yeah!”
“Fuck you, you big dumb red-ne…” And the fat
mans fist busted my lip wide open with a squirt all over his
big ‘ol disgusting Wranglers.
Presently the Nova slides to a halt in front of my Moms house
and both men struggle to get in a few good punches before they
drag me out of the car, roll me into my front yard and boot-party
my already limp body right there on the lawn.
“Now, let’s see what yer mama has to say about you.”
The smaller of my two Texas torturers says as they both haul
me to my feet and drag me towards my family’s shining,
infamous front door. The fat man punches me in the face two
more times with his free hand before we reach the door and then
all hell in the heavenly form of my mother broke lose.
The front door on our house at 1407 Choquette, Street in Austin
Texas was a formidable site indeed. Made in the late fifty’s
by the homes original “Nuke-Paranoid “ owners it
was a solid piece of Texas White Oak completely covered in a
giant, seamless reflective Tin coating that would surly repel
any “Red Army Rain of Terror”. That door used get
so hot in the summertime that you couldn’t even touch
the thing, it was also slightly too big for it’s frame
and opened out with a loud metallic tarring sound when it was
heated up and fully expanded in high summer.
My mother kicked the front door of her home opened with loud
tin screech and the seamless corner of the massive door caught
the fat man square in the middle of the forehead knocking him
out behind the door dropping him with a sick splat.
“Get your hands off my son you big bully!” My Mother
said behind gritted teeth and from inside the foyer closet she
donned her terrible weapon. A small powder blue asymmetrically
cut Oceadar brand house broom with the plastic “DustGard,
for your protection!” at the base where the bristles meet
the handle. She held her weapon firm “baseball bat”
style, choked up on her end to just miss her torso with her
first swing.
“Now hold on a second lady, this little shit was in the
middle of the street and he flipped me off.”
Whack! My mothers perfectly placed first blow shattered the
pretty little blue plastic
“DustGard, for your protection!” all over the right
side of the rednecks face taking a chunk out of his right ear
lobe. He lets go of me to put up his right arm for defense but
mom had already switched hands for the left shot, upper-cut.
With a loud, Whack to the other side of his head the redneck
hit the grass with a flop and gush of red drool right next to
my shocked and lifeless form.
“I don’t care what he did,” Whack! “He’s
just a little boy!” Whack, whack.
“Ow!”
“You don’t hit a little boy!” Whack.
“You don’t beat up a little boy” Whack, whack.
“Ow, you bitch stop hitting me!”
“And you don’t cus in front of a little boy!”
with those last words my five foot, two inch mother unloaded
on him. She hit him until all the bristles broke off of the
broom then beat him with the broom stick until it broke in half
but continued to whale on him with a broken broomstick in each
hand until he finally stumbled back to his car and sped away.
He stopped two houses down the road to pick up his fat ass buddy
running down the street holding his head with one hand and his
dirty pants up with the other.
Boom, Boom, Boom. “He did what!?” ShitCallMe said
grabbing the keys to his 1940 Ford coup saying “I’ll
show that little bastard what he gets when he beats up on children
in our neighborhood, Ok, everybody in the car and keep your
filthy feet off my seats!”
The 351 Cleveland explodes to life and the 8 track of Linard
Skinard’s greatest hits blares a southern nasal hymn as
we tare off down the road in search of cold vengeance on a hot
summers night.
“Well you best go get him or I’ll have to kick his
ass by swinging you around in circles by yer big toe, Now Go!”
“Yes’ser!” The fat man with the huge “goon-noggin”
on his forehead says as he shuffles off to find his wounded
cohort.
“Yeah what do you want Mr…” The redneck mumbles
as he comes to the front door of his darkened little house.
“Shit,call me Tom!” the large man says and grabs
the redneck by the throat with his massive right hand and drags
him out of the house and into the light of the front porch.
“ ‘et me go” the redneck manages to wheeze
while falling to his knees in front of the giant Tom Reynolds
who holds a death grip on the mans neck.
“Well, did yo…” Tom is stopped short of his
question when he gets a good look at the rednecks puffy, beaten
and bruised face in the dim porch light then asks,
“ What the hell happened to you boy?”
“That kids crazy mother beat me up with a broom!”
The redneck said pointing my way and you could’ve heard
a pin drop in the three full seconds of silence that followed
before Tom Reynolds exploded with a cacoughany of laughter and
saliva all over the rednecks’ swollen face. The six of
us had to help ShitCallMeTom back to his car because he was
literally laughing too hard to walk. I think I remember David
Reynolds telling me later that he got to drive his fathers beautiful
car for the first time that night because his Dad just couldn’t
manage.
I can still remember the wet smell of freshly cut grass intermingled
with the crusty dried blood in my sinuses as I walked home that
night. I can also remember feeling mad and embarrassed at my
mother for making Mr. Reynolds and all my friends laugh at me
when all I could feel was pain all over my battered little body.
It is said that no man is ever the same again after being tortured
by another man. When a man looks into the eyes of another man
that is beating him he can never again trust or truly feel in
control of his own world. Unless of course that man gets to
watch his torturers get their asses kicked by his own mother
sporting a powder blue asymmetrically cut house broom with a
“DustGard, for your protection!” at the base where
the bristles meet the handle. That’s different, that,
(…makes your life easier.)
I_Broken
I’ve broken my back four times, well, four
times in five different places.
(That soaks in quick and useually has the "quizical dog"
effect of turning the head slightly to the right and down a
bit.)
The first of these accidents and I do mean accidents was the
most dramatic by far I broke my neck diving off of a fifteen
foot cliff into twelve inches of water.
(Oh, the wince…)
After I made the dive I had to pull my head out of the mud which
incidentally I genuinly do not remember doing but it was obvious
that that is indeed what I had to do being as though my middle
of the back length hair was for the next few days of my now
very uncomfortable life coated in the thick slime from the base
of the “Libby Cliff” at Paleface State Park 30 miles
out side of Austin Texas. Oh yeah I also got to climb back up
that aformentioned incline.
Bleeding from the mouth, (I bit into both of my cheeks upon
impact),
It’s ok I’ll teach you now please help me into the
car, I can’t seem to feel my legs.
“Oh my god! I can’t learn to drive a standard with
you bleeding out of your mouth! You can’t do this to me!
I can’t do this! Said my now very ex-girlfriend Lisa as
she drug my almost lifeless body to the passenger side of my
1977 Chevy Camarro Rally Sport with a Holly four on the floor
speed shift and my Blouponght Stereo blaring John Cougar Melloncamps
“Jack and Diane”.
The engine explodes to life.
“What now, Oh my god! You are not doing this to me!”
Lisa screams above John.
Please turn the radio down I can’t move my arm either,
wow my head really hurts.
“What now, what now, what now, what fucking now?!”
Let off the gas, please.
“Ok, Aaaaaaa, stop bleeding?”
Ok I’ll try (slowly swallow) but for now you have to push
the clutch in very slowly and pull the gearshift towards you
and then push it away from you into first gear (swallowing again).
“Wow, that was easy, I think I can do this, now let it
out right?”
Slowly, please.
“Ok hear goes.”
Slo…
At that moment I heard inside my head, above the roaring din
of a revved up 350 in first gear, the loudest poping sound I’d
ever heard coming from the center of my forehead.
I heard myself say, Slower please.
She drove me the 35 miles to Breckenridge hospital in the heart
of Austin, Texas parked the car with a screeching halt in the
middle of the ambulance lane and ran away, I never saw her again.
Over the following year I learned to walk, gained and lost over
100 pounds and became the world champion in Attari's "Yarr's
Revenge" with a score of 66,235,466.
That was 1981 and the bones that I actually broke were in my
neck here,
(pointing to my now bare neck with two fingers)
at C- 2 & 3.
Two years later I was skating down some dream asphalt in North
Austin on Tallow Field. It was all so new out there in 83 that’s
just where we went if we wanted any real speed without having
to dodge too many cars.
Just at the very bottom of hill there was a long slow banking
curve so accumulating speed at the top of the drop was important
for control in the turn. Focus, the “Horse Stance”
you are at the center.
The woman in the car parked at the curb had been just sitting
there for about three minutes before ultimately deciding to
check her oil before starting the car. She (lets call her Doris,
I don’t know for sure simply because I never actually
met her) Doris opened her door to the screeching song of polyurethane
on fresh blacktop.
I lept straight up slightly too late so both of my sneekered
feet caught the tip of the bracket on Doris’s half-opened
window to her 1979 Mercury Zepher. With a perfect one and a
half “S-curve” flip landing on my backwards out
stretched arms I heard that familiar “Pop” once
again, T-5 this time. Doris pulls out with that 6 banger Zepher
tearing up those 78’s all over my fresh road. I never
even went to the hospital, cuz I was afraid I’d lose my
Piano Moving Job. I didn’t even find out about that one
being broken until I broke the next one.
T-7, the bane of my hyperactive biological barometer! I broke
that one at the corner of Penn and Meridian in North Oklahoma
City in the Summer of 1988 on my GPZ 750 when I hit a 1977 black
and brown Buick Regal with a 17 year old girl at the wheel on
the way to her Junior Prom. She (I'll call her Kathy Regal,
I never saw her again either) was already late so in a bit of
a hurry when she tore out of the McDonalds parking lot in front
of a dumbass on a motorcycle with no helmet on his soft little
monkey head (that would be me). I left a perfect cartoon-esk
body splat mark in the side of Ms. Regal's gargantuen vehicle.
My GPZ was now firmly wedged under the front end and my legs
were packed in tight under her drive shaft. Kathy then opened
the massive door and stepped directly on to my chest. I wanted
to let her know that she was crushing my sternum with her fluffy
pink pump but the freshly bitten hole through my tongue would
only allow a squirting monosyllabic grunt that left a streak
of blood from the hem of her dress to the pink patent leather
belt at her waist.
Kathy's scream compressed my skull directly back to the road
with a low thunk. My now ex-wife drove on the sidewalk for two
miles to get to the scene of the accident just in time for the
ambulance to take me away. That was my first year of grad school
and my professors let me finish my classes from home in my bed.
They gave me oral test by phone, can you believe that shit!
Finally (I hope) In 1990 I was abruptly turned into the highest
paid Pizza Hut employee of all time when on my first delivery,
of my first hour, of my first night at work as a (freshly over-educated)
pizza delivery boy I was struck by a drunk driver from behind
in Bellingham, Wa. I was in my 1988 Suzuki Samurai, the very
car I bought from the money I got from my stupid motorcycle
wreck.
Any guesses why today I ride a human powerd bike.
The
Oligarchist
He conquers the world The
Oligarchist gets girl with the twins on
the whorl wearing diamonds and pearls.
He makes lots of cash with boys in the banks and the ones with
the tanks.
Wipe your chin, wipe your chin.
Out of the trees (monkey)
Out of them trees (monkey)
Breed (monkey)
Breed (monkey)
BReed (monkey)
BREED!
Bright pig trash (monkey) white trash hash with a slight sugar
crash (monkey) eat monkey eat!
(Ha!!!)
He Sticks the syringe in the ass of Oklahoma when
it comes up dry another country gets
to die.
He'll take lots of boys turn they're backs into cash for the
boys in the banks are the ones with
the tanks.
Out of the trees scratch your big fat head monkey
die, oh why does monkey have to die!?
(Get to!!!)
Out of the Trees
Monkey
Breed!
Into the streets
Monkey
Eat!
Under the ground
Monkey
Die...
Lying/Storytelling
When I was 11, I moved to Edwards ARF in the Mojave Desert.
I hated it. Dry, bland, too many people. No forest, pond, pony,
Labrador, long acrage, barn loft, or blessed alone-ness. Too
many people, and all of them military families.
I was 11, and most of my classmates were 12. I always kinda
liked that - made my sucesses seem bigger somehow. My new school
wasn't small - it was a combined Jr/Sr High School.
I was 11, and my hormonal depression and bitchiness were just
starting to war with my natural ebbullence and curiosity. Through
a series of unfortunate changes, pissiness won.
I was 11, and I showed up for my first day of school. There
were no "life-long friendships" barring my chances
of making friends. Thirty percent of my classmates had also
moved there that summer, and seventy percent hadn't been there
more than two years.
I was 11, and a tomboy. Somehow, during that strange summer,
I had changed. My body looked more girlish, even in my t-shirts.
I grew six inches. My eyes went bad and my parents bought me
the cheapest glasses on the discontinued rack. I got the first
sinus infection of my life, and it wouldn't leave. I was awkward
and ugly, and I sniffed and snuffed and blew my nose all the
time.
And I read. I read everything I could get my hands on. My dad
gave me books from his sci-fi collection at what he considered
to be the correct rate for my development. Heinlein's early
stuff (not the later, sexier books), Andre Norton with her buried
references to intimacy (other than the mental/magical, that
was safe).
I read romance books. I'd found one a year earlier when my
grandma had visited. It was quite an eye opener. Until then,
I had thought sex was dispassionate, that it felt good in that
scratched itch kind of way. I also thought sex was always between
a man and a woman, and that a penis went into a vagina and sperm
came out and swam up into the uterus. No actions, no actors.
Romance books taught me about in and out, and about the connection
between love and sex. I didn't believe it all, but the descriptions
of the sex itself sounded much better than the ones in my books
about "my body" from childhood.
I read other things too. Kid books: the Babysitter's Club,
Nancy Drew, other girl books. I had long since turned the entire
Laura Ingalls Wilder set into tissue by reading them so often.
I knew so many stories, and they were all true. The characters
were all real people and their lives went beyond the beginnings
and endings of the books they lived in. I knew perfectly well
that they didn't exist outside the books, but that didn't seem
to make them any less real.
I was 11 and the oldest person at my school was 19. I was more
excited than scared. I'd always done well in school. my love
for our home in Arkansas didn't obsure the fact that I hadn't
learned much in my three years in school there. I was excited
to be challenged, to learn and perform well. I was scared of
the older kids, but I was excited to start over, make friends,
do well.
I exchanged glances with kids in my classrooms. I was confused
by their signals. Where were the boys and girls who would respond
to the challenge in my eyes? Who would I playfight with? I was
also looking for a girl to be my new best friend (duh!) but
most of the girls I thought looked interesting didn't look back.
Between classes, in the quad (which really was an awkwardly
shaped rhombus), I finally made eye contact with some interesting
girls. Satisfied with that progress, I finished my first day
of school, baffled but okay.
During my second day, I struck up a conversation with a girl
named Betty Jo. It sounded southern and made me homesick. She
asked me about Arkansas, and I froze. If it was going to be
hard to make friends here, I was going to need to tell her something
not-boring.
I told her a story. It was a good story, and in the telling,
it became as true as anything in an Encyclopedia Brown book.
I was fascinating.
I told so many true stories that were invented that my world
was a wondrous place. All my new friends liked my stories. Sometimes,
they wanted me to repeat them, but I couldn't always remember
the details. I learned to really experience the stories as I
told them because that made them even more real, and I remembered
even more details that way.
My stories were beautiful, exciting, heroic, or sad. I became
so touched while telling them that my eyes would fill with tears.
My friends cried, laughed, gasped, and loved it all. I was telling
them the shape of the world.
At home, I hid. I hated my parents. They moved me to this horrible
allergenic place and I hated them. They didn't know the person
I had become through my stories. They didn't treat me like I
had convinced my world to treat me. My dad caught me reading
romance books and grounded me from reading for a week. I started
to sneak around. I snuck books into my room and secreted them
everywhere. I read contraband at every opportunity.
I was 12, and my present life was painful, boring, and sad
in comparison to the glories of my story-life. I fell into depression
with each recurring sinus infection. I was too smart - or timid,
or lazy - to lie about the present, and I lost ground with my
friends. I still lead the group, but I wasn't as magical as
I had been. I withdrew.
By the time I was 13 and we moved, I had come to realize that
my stories were true - they were true and good and necessary.
And they were myths. I wanted to say important things that would
be tools for looking at the world, and I succeeded.
No one caught me. No teacher, parent, friend, or counselor
said to me, "That's a wonderful story. Why don't you write
it down and change all the names? I'd love to read it - fiction
is a wonderful thing."
I have learned to love the truth of fiction. There's a line
where story passes fact and reaches truth, and sometimes it's
better to tell the truth than the fact. I read with tears and
laughter and love the true stories of the real people in the
fictional books by wonderful storytellers. I have made peace
with my truths and my facts and my stories.
I was 13, and I introduced myself to my new neighbor in Moses
Lake, Washington, a girl one year younger than me. "Hi!
I just moved here from California, but California was boring.
Where are you from?" |
