Want Me To Give You Something To Cry About?

The Long Walk

I was playing in the hot summer yard and heard the familiar arguing, yelling, and thuds coming from inside that always tightened my guts.

This fight seemed louder than usual.

My mom came out the trailer door with my toddler sister and strapped her into the stroller that was parked in the yard.

Come on, we’re going.

Where?

For a walk.

This was before my step dad let my mom get a job and he had the keys to our only car.

We started walking down our gravel road. Quickly. We had never done this before. It was hot and I wondered where we were going and how long it would take.

Was he drunk?

No.

Then why did we leave?

He was dry-drunk.

What’s that?

Sometimes alcoholics can be just as crazy as when they’re drunk, but they’re not.

Now I can recognize that he was binging on rage as a substitute for alcohol.

I enjoyed the walk. I threw rocks and sticks into the woods as we walked down the road. We went up and down hills, past the creek where I caught frogs, and eventually past my farthest wanderings.

After an a hot, dusty hour, we took a break on the steps of a country church, shaded with fruit trees.

Then my step dad’s car whizzed by. I saw no slamming on brakes with a cloud of gravel road dust, he just kept going. He must not have seen us. I couldn’t believe our luck.

We walked for hours. We stopped at a garage sale where we had a drink of water. Past a lake dotted with small fishing boats.

Finally, we stopped at the clubhouse of a golf course. I drank so much water. It was air conditioned in there and the bar tender gave me quarters for pinball.

My mom used their phone to call her brother, whose house I now understood we were walking towards. He came and got us.

Later that night my mom called my step dad. Mr. Hyde had turned back into Dr. Jekyll and as simple as that, it was safe for us to go home.

Tired and dusty, I walked back into the house. Nothing was said or acknowledged about what happened. The hour glass for the next rage explosion was turned upside down and reset.

It was very confusing and perfectly common.

Well Let’s Just Hope This Doesn’t Happen Again

I went to the window to see who’s headlights were pulling into the driveway.

Through the parted curtains, I watched my mom help my step dad from car and through the yard towards the house. He was drunk.

I sprang into action, scanning the house for anything that might piss him off. I desperately wanted this monster to go to sleep and deflate.

When he walked in the door, I was in the middle of picking up my sister’s toys on the living room floor, which were in the path to his bedroom.

Not old enough to understand, she protested.

Leave my stuff alone!!

Shhh, I’m just trying to make room for dad…

Noo!

What’s going on in there!?

Fuck.

In this state, all of his movements and sounds were a hammer. Yelling, throwing, stomping, grabbing, and knocking things over.

What are you doing to my daughter?!

Nothing, I was just trying to clean up for you.

What are you doing to my daughter?!

Our babysitter, his mother, was efficiently getting on her coat.

Well, I better get home.

Desperate, I whispered to her to please not go. Pretending to not hear, she put on her hat and gloves, and slipped past the brewing tornado, out the door.

What are you doing to my daughter?!

When sober, I’d get some kind of mind-fuck lecture about how it was my fault her stuff was out or that they were actually my toys.

When drunk, there was only one channel. Rage. His rage, staring right at me. As I braced for another rage explosion, the memory of all the past rages primed my nervous system and I started to re-experience them before this one even happened.

Anything I do in this moment gets the same response. Escalation.

I could: Apologize, claim innocence, admit guilt, stay silent, cry, get out of the way, make noise, be happy, look irritated, hesitate, mispronounce a word, argue back, move the object that’s in his way, try to find the object he insists I’ve hidden… They all make his face a burning stove and ratchet my face another inch closer to it.

What are you doing to my daughter?!

---

This kind of event is mostly what I remember of his drinking, the years when he was trying to get sober.

He’d make pledges of benevolence and sobriety. But over the next weeks or months he’d progress from kindness and laughing, to growing irritable, and eventually getting drunk some weekend, coming home, and terrorizing us.

Sometimes my mom would get a call warning her that he’d been out drinking.

Come on, get in the car. He’s been drinking.

How I felt hearing this is how I imagine school kids in the 50s felt during nuclear bomb drills.

Anxiety bubbling, I’d get on my shoes and coat, grab a toy or a sketchbook, and scurry to the car.

My heart would pound as we backed out of the driveway, wondering what would happen if he pulled in at that moment. I’d watch every passing set of headlights wondering if they were his and if he could recognize ours.

I loved it once we got to which ever family or friend’s we were hiding out at. It was a bubble of happiness, where I imagined my life without him. Things felt new. Sometimes we’d get pizza, watch movies on fancy cable TV, and I might get to sleep on a couch or a water bed.

I liked it when we stayed with my biological father’s sister. I felt so loved by her and I loved playing with my cousins.

On one visit she said to me:

I sure hope you don’t become an alcoholic some day.

Me too.

Then I looked down at the can of soda in my hand, suddenly aware of how I had been coveting it and savoring each sip over the past 15 minutes.

Fuck. Fuuuck.

Coincidentally, my biological dad, whom I barely knew, was visiting from out of state. The next morning, as we were headed out the door to go back to the aftermath, he said:

Well, let’s just hope this doesn’t happen again.

At the time, his sentiment felt empty because the optimism seemed naive and simplistic. Silly.

Now, his sentiment feels empty because in a few days he was going back to sunny California to smoke pot and fuck girls and not have to think about this. And because what was needed was action, not hope.

Hope without action can go fuck itself.

I was fifteen and I had the seminal teenager Saturday night planned.

The oldest of my group of friends just got his license and we were driving to a dance club in the big city, an hour away. A few girls from school were also piling in the car and their friends from the big city were meeting us there.

Dancing in front of girls was the most terrifying thing I could imagine. But the possibility of meeting and, if there’s a God in Heaven, making out with girls, gave me heroic courage.

I was still drying off from the shower when my friend stopped at my house to pick me up. So when the phone rang, he answered it.

Hello?

Dude, where are you guys? Get here already.

We’re leaving in a minute.

Okay well hurry. One of the girls’ boyfriend said he’d buy for us but he’s leaving for work soon.

No way!!

I could hear the excitement coming through the phone and see it on my friend’s face.

At that age, we could just start to glimpse the adults we were to transform into. A version of ourselves, with great powers and abilities. Fully fledged, independent people, with agency in our lives.

People who could go wherever they wanted, any time they wanted. Who had money. Who could buy extra fries. Who had a car to drive around with friends. Who had sex. Who know what to say.

After a long childhood of feeling powerless, the excitement of this transition made us crazy and wild, like cooped up puppies finally released into the yard.

For my friends, adding alcohol was rocket fuel for this epic night.

But I only felt neutral about it.

The summer I was eleven, I was bailing hay with a crew of high school kids for the neighbor farmer. This was a rite of passage where I’m from. I drove the tractor while the older kids picked up the bails in the field and tossed them up on the wagon to be neatly stacked.

They treated me like one of them. Or at least, like their mascot, which was plenty good enough for me. I was so hungry for any attention that I ate it up.

Secret from the farmer, they passed around a flask. One of them offered it to me.

I was terrified of alcohol. It turned my step dad into a volcano and I was haunted by the fear of one day turning into an alcoholic too.

I’d never been presented with the opportunity to actually drink. Seeing it in person, was like seeing down a long corridor, the glow of Hell.

Though repulsed, I was also afraid of offending the offerer and losing this fragile feeling of belonging.

I froze.

He pulled back his offer and took another swig.

What, don’t drink?

I don’t know if he intentionally gave me an easy out, but at that moment I saw a method I could use to avoid my greatest fear.

I just wouldn’t drink. Ever.

I was so adept at living with depravity, I knew I could maintain this pledge.

And I did. But that meant enduring things like my friend’s beer pit stop. While the boyfriend went out for the beer, we roamed his college apartment parking lot on our skateboards laughing at nothing and everything the way fifteen year old friends can.

Then the girlfriend stormed up to me.

You better call your mom. She’s been calling all our parents, telling them about the club and the beer.

My mom was only moderately intuitive at sniffing out teenager schemes. How did she know?

Hello?

Mom?

Where are you?

At a friend’s, in town.

You better get home right now.

Why?

Just get home.

But I don’t drink, why do I have to come home?

Just get home!

The ride home was quiet. Everyone looked nervous as they rehearsed their defenses and considered their punishments.

But not me.

Normally, while my friends were having a blast in a plane of unrelatable, uninhibited, drunkenness, I was off entertaining myself wondering what I was missing out on.

So, I was scrunched in the back, smiling, thinking how my discipline, for once, was paying off.

When I walked in, the answering machine has been moved to the kitchen table, like a court exhibit.

My step dad hit play, crossed his arms, and watched me.

The answering machine had somehow started recording when my friend picked up the phone while I was in the shower and it recorded his entire club and beer conversation.

You want to explain this?

It seemed self evident, and more importantly, not to do with me. So I didn’t know what he wanted me to say.

Well, were going to go this club and they got someone to buy beer for them.

What do you mean “them”?

My mom was aware I didn’t drink, and I thought my step dad was as well.

It was for them. I don’t drink.

Don’t give me that bullshit.

I was immediately furious.

After rehab you always said it was up to me to break the cycle of dysfunction. And that’s what did, I chose not to drink and I never have.

How can anyone be around beer and not drink?

I don’t drink!!

Don’t raise your voice to me, boy.

I did exactly what you told me to and I’m getting in trouble for it anyway.

Even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. If you were caught in a car with other minors who were drinking you’d be in just as much trouble as them. In fact I called the police and reported your friend’s car being full of minors with alcohol.

Why would you call the police!

You need to learn. And I’m going to make sure you do. You’re grounded for two weeks.

For what!!??  WHAT DID I DO!

You got no right to be angry. Make it a month.

I felt a wave of heat rise up my spine and engulf my skull, consumed from the inside out by all the years of suppressed anger packed in my guts.

I ran into my room, slammed my door, and found myself ripping clothes from my closet, snapping and bending hangars, with clumps of clothes landing all over my bed and floor.

My step dad yells through the door.

You want some more boy?! Keep it up. I’ll ground you the rest of the school year.

I need to scream, but the only place I could scream it was deep into my soul. Where I did. I buried and packed where it would sit for decades — atoms aching to be split.

On the surface I was angry at not being believed and being punished for what I hadn’t done.

But there a special kind of soul breaking anger that came from being told that my feelings were wrong.

As a child, my internal emotional reality was not a safe place to be. To protect myself, I learned to transform my wrong feelings into:

• Ghosts that would pass right through me.
• A sacred vow to be a different than him, to hate him, and never forget the things he did to me.
• Manic optimism that felt like running on top of a frozen lake before the cracking ice gave in.

As for my would-be drinking friends from the foiled adventure, the worst punishment received was grounded for three days.

Later that week my step dad called me back into the kitchen, crossed his arms, and made this declaration.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I have done my best to raise you right but after your actions last weekend and your volatile response to being held responsible for them, I see I’ve done all I can do. You are totally out of control. And so, I am turning all control of you over to your mother.

My feelings passed through me like a ghost.

When I entered junior high, my grades plummeted.

I couldn’t understand why because I gotten decent grades in elementary.

What I couldn’t grasp was that in elementary, the teachers were like arm-floaties in the pool. They reminded us to turn in assignments and gave class time if we didn’t finish.

In junior high, they just dropped us in the deep end of the pool, expecting us to be responsible for ourselves. No reminders to turn in homework, just quiet depletion of my grade average for my missed assignments.

My first progress report made a thud on the kitchen table and my step dad exploded.

Boy! Get in here!

Yes dad?

You want to tell me what your grades are?

Wha… I don’t know.

You’re failing half your classes. Now tell me why you thought it’d be okay to fail your classes?

I don’t think it is.

You don’t think. That’s your problem.

I didn’t know I was failing.

That’s no excuse. Your teacher doesn’t give you grade updates?

I don’t think so.

She does or she doesn’t. Now which is it?

I guess she does.

You guess. You’ve got a real piss poor attitude, don’t you? Don’t you?!

Yes.

What?!

Yes!

Over the next few weeks I tried to do better, but I couldn’t seem to improve.

As afraid as I was of my step dad screaming at me again, I was equally paralyzed and unequipped to turn my grades around.

When I ran into roadblocks in school work, I felt overwhelmed. The teacher would ask for a homework assignment and I would suddenly realize I hadn’t done it. I forgot. Again! Or I wouldn’t understand the assignment, and I assumed that, like my step dad, the teacher will yell at me because the assignment is perfectly clear and I’m being stupid and difficult and wasting their time,

Learning is a skill. And mine was not developed.

I was asked if I had homework but no one worked with on how to manage and do homework.

• How to overview my tasks and break things into doable steps so I didn’t feel overwhelmed.
• How to prioritize so I don’t panic when I’ve run out of time for important things.
• How to find answers or even feel safe to ask questions so I didn’t feel frustrated and hopeless.

Apathy came as a result of this muddy pit. It was not the root cause of it.

Reading, in particular, was hard for me. I consume the world visually and reading has always felt like labor and I’ve always been slow.

Years earlier, my step dad noticed I didn’t read on my own.

Sit down, I want to talk to you. You see how I’m always reading?

Yeah.

You should be doing the same thing. And since you have not taken it upon yourself to do so, I’m going to make sure you do.

He puts a paperback novel on the table. It was Tarzan. A several hundred page paperback book written for adults.

I’m giving you two weeks to this read this. And you had better get it done because I’m going to quiz you.

For me, reading wasn’t stepping in to a fantastical, magical world like I hear other people say it was for them, especially as kids. For me it was a place of stress, inadequacy, and shame.

I would read a couple of pages, and realize I didn’t grasp what was happening. I felt like my step dad was watching over my shoulder with his face slowly turning red. I’d go back to re-read and a couple paragraphs later I realize my mind had been elsewhere as my eyes moved over the words. I’d re-read them and the same thing would happen. My mind was trying to climb up a slippery snow bank. I felt exhausted and lethargic. And the clock was ticking.

This pattern was still in place with my junior high homework. And when my report card came, and nothing had improved, my step dad implemented a new rule.

Since you are unable to police your self, you are forcing me to do it for you.

I am putting you on academic probation. You will come directly home from school every day. You will not see friends, you will not go to cub scouts, you will not do anything.

When you get home, you will do your homework before you watch TV or anything else.

If you do not have homework, you will read out of encyclopedias for one hour.

What I needed was help. This was punishment for not knowing how to do what I didn’t know how to do, by the person responsible for teaching it.

It was one of the bright ideas he picked up in rehab, from another asshole.

I thought rehab meant everything would be better from now on. But he was worse after rehab. Instead being high and oblivious, with the occasional weekend of rage and throwing things, he now had focused attention on what the rest of us were doing wrong. He implemented a long list of these extreme and suffocating rules.

I got my grades up to barely passing.

But by then, like my allowance and all his other promises, his attention drifted away and he left me to my mediocre grades in peace.

One day I nailed a rusty basketball hoop to a tree and was taking shots with my half empty basketball when my step dad came home from work.

“Hey dad, wanna play basketball with me?”

“Maybe later”

Which, I knew, meant no.

If an interest of mine didn’t coincide with his, he had no time for it.

So I was excited when I was old enough for Little League because my step dad loved baseball.  He played in high school and on his work’s softball league. TV baseball games were the soundtrack of summer in our house.

And he did take an interest.

He got me a glove and instructed me how to oil it.

Instructions from him came in a formal, proper, staccato tone –  I guess to show how simple and clear the task was, in order to contrast with how stupid I was.

“I’m providing you with this glove and I expect you to properly maintain it. Care for it, and it, will care for you.”

The one other adult I remember playing catch with was my grandpa. Every throw from him felt like him saying: You are worth my time. And each catch by me felt like a soul affirming: ‘atta boy.

Playing catch with my step dad was a series of stressful, high stakes, drills that felt as though they exposed the narrow limits of what I could do physically and the shallowness of my courage.

Every throw from him was a grenade.

When I caught it he said nothing.

“You don’t pet a dog on the head for being a good dog.”

…he once explained to me.

The catches that hurt my hand, felt like punches from him.

When I dropped it he yelled.

I had trouble with ground balls. After a couple unexpected bounces met with my shins, I became afraid of the ball. I resorting to jumping out of the ground ball’s path and he yelled at me.

“If you don’t stop moving I’m going to nail your feet to the ground!”

I was not old enough, and he was not kind enough, for me to understand his hyperbole. My imagination vividly described me what those sharp nails would felt like splitting their way between the bones, tendons, and muscles in my feet. I believed he would do it.

I stood in place as the ground ball came to me. And it worked. I caught them. What a confusing message for an eight year old: success through threat of bodily harm.

After one of my games, we went right from the car into the yard.

“Get over here. I want to show you something. When you’re out in the field you’re flat footed.”

“What’s that?”

His voice rises.

“It means you’re standing out there with your feet flat on the ground, not ready for the ball. You should be on the balls of your feet.”

I have no idea what he means. Aren’t feet naturally flat? There are balls in my feet? I know asking will get me yelled at, so I take my best guess and widen my stance.

“Boy, what did I just tell you? Get up off you heels. Like this.”

I lift my heels, but not knowing the purpose, I stand straight up like I’m looking over a fence.

“Now squat down like you’re getting ready for the ball.”

I bend forward keeping my eyes available like a bow from Japan.

“No, God damn it. Crouch down like this.”

He tries to adjust me. I don’t know what he’s doing so I can’t help, I just try to be as pliable as possible so he won’t think I’m resisting. But it comes across as apathy.

“Cooperate, God damn it!”

I feel like a mannequin. He pushes my back downward, widens my stance, and taps the back of my knee.

“And bend your knees.”

I bend them like I’m about to sit in a chair,

“No, not like that, like you’re ready for the ball.”

I bend further l like I’m about to sit on the ground.

“No! …”

I arbitrarily adjust into one stance after another, each one not what he’s looking for. I’m in a loop, like a metal duck at the fair getting hit with the BB gun sending it back and forth.

He just keeps yelling, saying the same thing.

I’m standing in my yard, in my uniform, and face red from crying, wishing he hadn’t taken an interest.

I have a recurring nightmare that I’ve killed someone.

I’ll describe it in a minute, but first, here is where it came from.

Throughout my childhood, the abuse came without warning.

It felt like a cinder block hung ten feet above my head at all times. What made my step dad happy the day before, would cause the cinder block to crash down onto my skull today. It was inconsistent, unpredictable, and illogical.

For example:

In trying to elicit praise, I said, in my most chipper voice:

“Hey dad, today I learned how to do cursive in school, look!”

I write my name in cursive.

In trying to show my love and elicit his in return, I write his last name as mine.

“Wrong. That’s called writing.”

My heart drops and I’m confused.

“Yeah, I wrote my name in cursive.”

“No, that’s writing.”

“What?”

“What did I just say?! Listen up, boy.”

Now I feel like I’m walking a tightrope ten stories in the air because I have no idea how angry he’s about to get. He might just be gruff or he might spiral into a rage where he yells, grabs me by the arm, makes up insane homework assignment to make me believe his point of view, grounds me for a month… Who fucking knows?

“But this is what they said in school…”

“Are you talking back to me?”

“No.”

“Look, this is writing” (he jerks my pencil out of my hand, writes in cursive and then in printing) “…and this is printing.”

I am so fucking confused.

I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, but I knew I was simply trying to share with him an accomplishment. Something anybody else in the world would return with affirmation. But he returned it with aggression and accusations as if I were trying to get away with something.

“But in school they said that is cursive.”

“What did I just get done telling you, boy?!”

Even when I give the credentials of learning it in school, from an actual teacher, a grown adult who has a degree specializing in this very thing, it makes no difference.

Even at that age I could guess that that was the terminology when he was in school, and it had simply evolved now that I’m in school.

But he wouldn’t even acknowledge that. He insisted that his were the only terms in existence.

On its own, I imagine this event not sounding significant. But it was not on its own. It was one of several painful interactions that day. One of many that week. One of several hundred that year.

It hits the same tender wound that has never had a second to heal. And it’s roots under the surface are tangled with all the very significant, terrifying events.

The small event sends a wave through the entire root system — the entire emotional ecosystem, stirring the pain from the big events.

He was and adult and my father figure, so it never occurred to me that the problem was with him.

Without this as a possible explanation, the only answer that made sense was that there was something horribly wrong with me, that I couldn’t see.

As a result, since I was a kid, I’ve been followed by a vague feeling of persistent guilt of some horrible crime, resulting in this recurring nightmare.

I’ve killed someone.

I don’t remember actually having done it, but I had. And I’ve hidden the body poorly.

Sometimes I broke through the basement concrete and buried the body. Or I buried it in the backyard, but not very deep, and close to my home.

I imagine the friends and family of the murdered start wondering where they are. They call the police. They put up posters and form search parties. Inevitably, someone will come forward, having seen me with the victim. The police question me. I lie and feel ashamed and dishonest. They sense my lying and they start looking around my yard and find the body. It will be so easy for them to discover I’m the murderer.

I plead with myself: “Why did I do it?”and “I had such a nice life and now I’m fucked.”

I keep thinking in disbelief about what I had done, shocked that I was actually capable of killing someone.

I see the inconsolably crying and grief of the victim’s family and I know I caused it.

It makes me feel vulnerable, sad, sick, afraid, and ashamed. All of the good feelings I’ll have for the rest of my life will be pulled into the black hole I’m feeling in my soul.

My life is over and now my choices are:

• Go through the rest of my life with the shame and guilt of knowing I’ve killed someone.
• Every day wonder if the police will knock on my door.
• Turn myself in and spend the rest of my life in prison.

Every day of my adult life, when I interact with other people, or imagine interacting with them, there is at least one moment where I have to deal with this feeling. That there’s something intrinsically criminal about me to other people that I am unaware of.

I get better at managing it every year, and the dreams stopped once I connected it to my step dad… Unless I talk about it, then I usually have the dream that night.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know what happened.

My step dad was giddy because his good friend was back in town visiting from out of state. I loved seeing him happy because he would be neutral to me or sometimes even fun. I’d find myself letting my guard relax and I always held out hope his good mood would stay, and he’d change for good.

My sister and I were in the back seat on the drive to see his friend.

We stopped at a winery. I was fascinated that the employees behind the counter let customers taste samples.

“Want to taste some sparking grape juice?”

“Me?”

I look at my step dad to see if this is okay. He looks back at me neutrally but still I pause to gauge whether I think he’ll make me pay later for an undeserved treat.

I take a sip and it’s yummy!

We leave with a box of bottles of wine.

My step dad and his friend had the same first name and they played a game where they jockeyed as to who got the title Jeff #1 or Jeff #2.

I had witnessed just one side of this game, overhearing their long distance phone calls. But now it was being played in person, propelling my dad’s good mood.

My sister and I occupied ourselves while the adults visited and left in the evening.

We got home and I came inside. While looking in the fridge of a snack, I heard my mom yelling outside.

Oh shit.

After a bright sunny, good mood day, without warning, the storm is here.

I don’t remember my step dad’s heavy drinking years. My memories start at this time, in the years when he was trying to stay sober.

Sober weeks and months would go by, then something, anything, would set him off and he’d come home drunk and out of his mind. Like the Hulk. Like a tornado. His normal distorted thinking and behavior now empowered by a 500 mile per hour wind.

This was the shoe that was always waiting to drop during the good times. Always in the back of my mind.

I  watched over the back of the couch, out the window. I saw my mom on the porch pulling bottle after bottle of wine out of the case, throwing each into the yard to break.

“Well you better get un-drunk real quick!”

Fuck. He’s drunk. I hadn’t realized it. How could I have missed it? I thought the wine was just for his friend. I didn’t realized he was drinking, too. I didn’t realize he was drunk-driving with me and my little sister in the car.

My step dad mutters a reply and walks back to his car. My mom is following, screaming at him.

“Oh no you don’t. Get back here! You’re drunk! You’re drunk! Do not get in that car!”

But of course he does. He starts the car and backs out of the driveway.

I could see that my mom was yelling after him because could crash the car from being drunk. I don’t know why, but my 11 year old mind took it a step further and concluded that he was going to intentionally crash his car. Drive right into a tree and kill himself.

Even though I was terrorized by this man, he wore the shoes of the father in my life since I was a baby and, as a child is wired to do, I loved him.

The thought fear of him killing himself took over my body. To my child mind the thought felt as real as if it were actually happening in front of me. I started screaming and crying and jumping up and down.

His car zoomed off and my mom walked up the porch steps and opened our trailer door.

I suddenly felt embarrassed that I was so hysterical. I think because part of me realized my fantasy was not realistic and because I was terrified of showing that much of an emotional need to my mom. And I suppose, afraid I wouldn’t get what I needed in response.

I had trained myself to never need anything from anyone, and the thought of appearing vulnerable felt humiliating and disgusting and weak.

So as soon as she stepped through the the door, I instantly turned off my crying and screaming and sat calm and still on the couch.

Even then, it was alarming to me to see the way I just turned my emotions off like a faucet. “This can’t be normal” I thought.

“He was driving around drunk with you two in the car?”

I wonder if I’m in trouble.

“Yeah. But I didn’t know he was drunk until we got home and you were fighting.”

“Didn’t you see that he bought wine and was drinking it?”

I don’t know why she’s asking this. Now I believe I’ve done something wrong and I should have been able to stop him.

“I thought he just bought it for the other Jeff. Like a present.”

Along with my tightly stuffed hysterical feelings, I now add to my list of guilt and responsibility that I have to make sure this tornado warning doesn’t drink.

What my childhood bicycle meant to me was perfectly described by what my friend’s 10 year old daughter said to her beloved bike: “You made me free.”

On my bike, I could be away from my home, the least safe place in my life. I could be myself and have a say in what was happening to me.

The sensation of moving was so pleasurable. To pedal fast, coast, feel the summer air run through my hair and flap my tshirt like a super hero cape felt like flying.

Even coming to stops felt magnificent. I’d hit my back brake, leaving a calligraphic skid mark in the dirt and a billow of dust rising in its wake.

I rode my bike everywhere I could: down to the creek to catch frogs, to my friend’s house, or no where in particular.

One day I caught glimpse of parachuters magically descending out of the sky towards the training school a few miles away.

I took off in my bike on a mission to watch them land. I got a half mile down the gravel road, when a dog came charging at me to protect the boundaries of its farm.

I froze in fear. I stopped, held still, and let the dog sniff me, exactly as instructed by cartoon Wonder Woman in a PSA. But instead of sensing my benevolence, it sensed my fear, which must smell like guilt because it bit my leg.

It only scratched the surface of my skin but the incident really shook me. I was only nine. A nine year old who had good intentions but was bit anyway. It felt exactly like the trauma at home of being chronically and unpredictably intimidated and bullied by my step dad. To this day, the bark of an angry dog feels like a jolt of electricity direct to my heart and I’m instantly angry. It’s a PTSD trigger.

My next incident with a dog was when I was twelve.

I had started riding my bike to school. In trying different routes, I rode past a pig farm with a very large, aggressive dog charging at me who had no intention of giving me an judicious sniff.

I pedaled as fast as I could and barely made it past the farm, shins in tact but deeply shaken.
In yet another futile attempt to get support or maybe just connect with my step dad, I told him about it.

“Hey dad, I just rode my bike past the pig farm and their huge dog came after me and I barely made it past him!”

“Yeah?”

He seems to not like my comment so I don’t know what to say next.

“Yeah. Well I guess I shouldn’t ride past there anymore.”

“Why?”

What does he mean “why”? I just told him.

“Because their dog almost bit me!”

“You shouldn’t be afraid of a dog. Just bring a stick with you and beat it back if it comes near you.”

I feel like I’m in trouble. That there is something wrong with me because I’m scared of a huge aggressive dog, that triggers the PTSD I got from the very person who is criticizing me.

Now I see that this, again, reinforced my understanding of the world that there is no support and guidance available to me.

“But how can I ride a bike and carry a stick?”

He’s getting irritated.

“Just lay it across your handlebars!”

“How will I work the brakes?”

“Boy, don’t be difficult. Go find a stick.”

“That’s okay, I’ll just go down a different street.”

“Don’t back talk me! Get a stick and get on your bike. I’m going to show you how it’s done.”

I’m surprised because I thought he was going to get on his bike and ride next to me, and protect me. The way, I suppose, kids feel towards nurturing parents.

But no. He got his baseball bat from behind the front door, and got into his car.

“Get going. I’m going to follow you to make sure you do it.”

“But it’s going to bite me!”

“God damn it! Quit pussy footing around. You’re going to get over this. Now get going!”

I awkwardly saddled my bike with a stick across my handlebars and turned onto our gravel road. My step dad followed a car length behind me.

No matter what weapon I was armed with against my step dad (logic, obedience, crying, pleading, hiding, standing my ground) nothing prevented him from attacking me. That was my training in how life worked so having a stick across my handlebars put me no closer to knowing how the hell this was going to work against an angry dog.

A mile and turn down the next road later, the smell of manure arrived before the sight of the farm did.

As soon as I entered the border of the yard, the dog came running and growling to intercept it.

“Hit him” My step dad yelled from his car.

But panic took control of me and all I could do was pedal faster. The dog nearly caught me when my step dad swerved at the dog, almost hitting it. He stopped, stepped out, with one foot on the ground, one still in the car, and his baseball bat ready. The dog ran back to its house.

Now what? I supposed he’d pull next to me and lecture me about not doing as I’m told, or on around the block

My step dad got back into his car, turned around and drove back home.

There was no way I was riding back past the house by myself, so I had to go all the way around my mile-square block to get back home.

I was confused why he didn’t follow me the rest of the way to make sure I stood up to other possible dogs. But I guess he thought his job was done and he taught me how to handle an angry dog and face my fears.

All I learned was: keep my fucking mouth shut.

I got into breakdancing when I was twelve. It was exhilarating. It was so new. The music was new, the clothes styles, and the way people moved… the dancers were like magicians. It was part of a culture change. And I was doing it!

No one else in my grade was doing it. In fact, most were high schoolers… the coolest of the high schoolers.

They met before school in the gym. The floor was shiny and smooth. It was quiet and dark but for the auxiliary lights which made it feel even more like a secret.

These high schoolers were legendary to me. I would never have dared annex their presence except that my best friend brought me into the fold. He was the one teaching how to do it.

I had no idea how he knew about these meetings, or even how to break dance.  He was just good at things.

One night after school, practicing in his bedroom he said:

“Hey, there are tryouts for a breakdancing team. We should do it.”

“Really? Me too?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I’m not good like you are.”

“What do you have to lose? It’s worth trying. They travel all over competing and performing. And if they’re good enough, they go to New York for a week to perform.”

The next week his mom drove us to the next town over. The audition was in a basement with a wide open linoleum floor. This was great riches compared to our flattened cardboard boxes.

One of the other auditioners did things I had never seen.  I felt intimidated.  Once my focus returned from being dazzled by his perfect blond spiked hair, I heard his mother’s extensive boast about him which ended with:

“…it’s just what he loves to do.”

He just sat in his chair watching the next auditioner get ready, barely noticing the complement hang on him like a needy girlfriend.

Her comment made me sick. To be spoken of so smotheringly by his mother in public. I pictured him wearing a diaper soaked sticky with maple syrup.

Now I can recognize my jealously. More specifically, my learned-survival response to the chronic criticism and absence of affirmation I received.  I had come to associate wanting affirmation with weakness and a feeling of disgust.

I just stuffed that feeling down with all the others and renewed my oath to never need anything from anyone.

So I mustered a dose of my self-made courage and did my audition. It was descent and I was hopeful.

On the ride home I started to picture the possibility of making the team. I’d be dancing all the time, learning from the instructor and other kids. Maybe I could actually get good at something that would set me apart and (I assumed) fill the void in my self esteem.

My friend’s mom dropped me off at home.

“Where were you?”

“I was with Clayton.”

Many times I watched this friend make conversation with my step dad about cars, fishing, guns. I never knew how he knew these things but my step dad liked him and he seemed to be satisfied with my answer. That was a good sign towards me getting permission to join.

“Guess what dad, we went to an audition. You know the breakdancing we’ve been doing?”

“No.”

“Oh, well Clayton’s been teaching me this new kind of dancing. Hardly anybody knows how to do it. But we do and there’s a team that’s forming and we tried out for it! That’s where we just were and I think we did pretty good. And if we make the team we get to travel around to competitions and do shows and if we make the finals we get could maybe win prize money and a trip for the big competition in New York!”

As I talked, I started to feel proud of myself. I had done something worthy. I showed initiative, applied myself to something, and took a risk. 

In my mind I saw myself in the competitions, with a serious look of concentration from executing something complex that I worked really hard on. I saw strength and satisfaction. I saw myself riding in the back of cars riding back from competitions, laughing with everyone on my team, and passing back bags of McDonalds. 

I imagined all these things I could do with my body, like unlocked super hero abilities and the inner glow that would radiate from me. I saw the hotel in New York the night before the competition with my mom who came with me and just maybe even my step dad, as this made him see me in a new light. 

I saw happiness. 

But as my eyes focused back to reality I saw the look of discontent on his face as if I had just grown a dress out of my skin.

“You’re not going to New York.”

I stuffed the feeling down with all the others and reveled in my fortune that I didn’t need anything from anyone.

 

 

 

 

On one warm, sunny, summer morning, when I was seven, my stay dad, in a screaming rage, was dragging me through the living room, towards the front door in order to show me something outside — to point out and illustrate some crime I had committed.

Maybe I left the hose running, or missed a bunch of weeds in the rows of corn, or hadn’t closed the shed door. 

When one of our dogs or cats would soil our carpet, he’d grab them by the back of the neck, head pointed directly at their violation, drag them towards, then rub their nose in their puddle of piss or pile of shit. If their feet helped them along was of no matter to him.

This is how he was dragging me.

I don’t remember if he was dragging me by my arm, or shirt, or what, but what I do remember was my belt loop getting caught on a piece of furniture next to the door.

It stopped abruptly our momentum and jerked his arm back.

He though I was defying him by grabbing something to prevent him from carrying out his punishment.

He went supernova. 

He yanked again, then again, then again.

“GOD DAMN IT!”

I tried to corral my crying into an explanation, to say it’s not me! It’s my belt loop! Look I’m completely willing to submit to my punishment!

But he didn’t see it. He was in a complete blind rage. He was a wild animal. It was fucking terrifying. It was one of the most helpless feelings I’ve ever had.

I felt like such an object.