February 22, 2006
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Fucking Loyalty
When my cell phone rang at work at 3:30 this afternoon and the caller ID said “DAD,” I knew someone had died: my dad and I speak twice annually on a good year. I was right. My great-grandpa died last night. The night I had my first migraine in months. The night I wrote about the girl—the one this great-grandpa had touched—in an exercise we did in our writing class about the themes that motivate us in our lives. Listening to my dad’s voice filtering through the phone, my mind was an emptied wastebasket, ready to be filled with new trash. And filled it was.
Daughter Truly: Oh dad, I am so sorry to hear about your grandpa. I love you.
Confused Truly: Why am I shivering? I can’t stop shivering.
Honest Truly: So, I hear that the child-molesting fuck faced ass hole croaked. Are you going to the funeral?
Secret Truly: Phew—this gets me out of a few unsavory projects at work: bereavement leave to the rescue.
Sympathetic Truly: Grandma, I am so, so, sorry to hear about the loss of you’re dad. You know he was important to all of us.
Pissed Off Truly: Fuck this noise. I’m not changing my plans for this.
Other Daughter Truly: Mom—I know you are in class tonight, but I wanted to let you know that great grandpa finally kicked it. So I’ll be in town tomorrow at one.
I know, my reactions are hideous.
But this loyalty, this fucking loyalty, it really has a way of noshing on the very core of you. My great grandpa prayed to God and went to church and slept in a separate bed room than his wife, desperately trying to conceal the fact that, on at least one occasion, his fingers crept uncleanly over the plump and innocent body of a little girl, and one who has earned my allegiance in earnest. This girl and I are like the sun, the great eye of god, peering relentlessly through his facade. And we see the slimy, lip licking contents of his insides, we smell the brine and the must. And now he is dead. And still we are the only ones who believe what is true. What is not a lie. What has been packaged, sterilized, used to exploit, used to manipulate: the girl and I were a guitar string that was accustomed to playing beautiful music but was tightened, tightened, tightened until it snapped, splitting us in two. No matter how much we try to mend the damage, it will always be there—the horrid results of our manipulation—hovering at the edges of our words, darting between the laughter, seeking endlessly to reconnect in hugs, encouraging words, and funny valentines. We learned exploitation and shame when most kids are learning multiplication tables and typing. And we still don’t fully understand it.
I mentioned that I did a writing exercise about theme in class yesterday. Like in this blog entry, I wrote about Loyalty. This is what I wrote:
A tent that fits over the twin mattress. It is pink, purple, polka-dotted. Lets set it up, shall we? Slipping the bendable poles through nylon sheets, the dome is erected: let the camping begin. We don’t have any marshmallows—no food at all really—so lets eat this bottle of vitamins instead. We suck ice chips and style each other’s hair using roach clips. I’m almost forced to sleep on the floor, with the mouse pellets, with the water bugs, with the creepy crawly thick things that scuttle underfoot like walking mustaches. But I cry. My mouth hinged open, my eyes clamped shut. “Fine,” you sigh and I crawl up in the tent with you, promising not to pee the bed in the night. My footie pajamas are thick, but not thick enough to save us from the hot spring of urine that I inevitably leek late into the night. The piss puddle is cold by the time we wake. You roll onto it sleepily. We both knew this would happen. But we did it anyway.
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Please, no condolences. It will only irritate me.
What is a theme that motivates you?
Comments (2)
Truly, your writing never fails to make me want to read more. I sincerely hope you are published and accessible someday. Yours is a novel I would probably keep on the shelf instead of donating to the library.
A theme that motivates me is parents who don’t parent. They create these human beings and then are content to shove them off to a broken system and call it good enough.
faith has always been a theme that motivates me [i know, that is antiquated and irrelevant these days, maybe even backwards and foolish, it's just not trendy anymore to be religious ;p]
but through everything i’ve gone through, it’s always been my faith that kept me going. through all the people i’ve lost and being attacked and getting hiv and losing my hands, in the end the one thing that made me keep living [not just keep being alive, but actualy, actively, living] was the fact that i was living for Christ.