For the Love of Christ

Living in this big house, alone since Tom died, has its advantages and drawbacks. This is the first time in my life that I have had to take care of gas, electricity, and water bills, and it’s lonely out here on the Island. Raymond and Denise will not come to visit, though Denise calls occasionally. She says Ray maintains a grudge. Thinks I benefited unduly from Tom’s death. He seems to forget he was the one who pushed me into accepting the invitation to move in here giving the two of them more space in the city. I haven’t made any friends yet, but I do go to the 7-Eleven more than I need to in hopes of finding the clerk Raquel on duty, and I shoot the breeze with her if there are no other customers.
Yesterday, answering the doorbell, I found a Jehovah’s Witness on the doorstep. When I noticed he was practically tractless, I invited him in, convinced that I would not be converted, but that I’d have another voice to listen to for half an hour.
The young, blond-haired man, still a boy actually, made a lot of good points, but had not quite won me over, when he was suddenly beset by a bout of hay fever or some other allergy. I thought it strange that he had a handkerchief, a black handkerchief peeping out of his pocket, but never pulled it out to sneeze into. Instead, he kept extracting tissues from one of those little plastic packets one can pick-up at the 7-Eleven, not officially Kleenex brand, but universally referred to as such.
Oddly, when he discovered he had used the last tissue, he told me he had better be off. There were still many people to visit. “But you will think of checking out the Witnesses, won’t you,” he asked.
I assured him I would without the slightest intention of doing so.
He was not driving, but walking rather from house to house, and I thought he was a long way from the Watchtower in Brooklyn where he said he lived. I wondered about the significance of the black hanky in his pocket, but concluded it was one of the last of the personal possessions he had kept on entering the Service, perhaps a gift from a loved one he had lost, and it served merely as decoration with no utilitarian purpose.
Far from cheering me out of loneliness, the young man left me feeling sad for the rest of the afternoon.

Troubled Water

I turned thirteen that summer. Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married and my mother, enraptured, watched the proceedings on television. I wasn’t really that interested in a Royal Wedding, but I sat with her because my dad had been gone all day. As the broadcast continued, I found the glamorous Diana to be poised and regal, and thought she was the kind of woman I wanted to marry. Even though I had experienced stirrings, at that point in my life, it never crossed my mind that married people might have a sex life. Years later, I did marry a woman named Diana, but it turned out she was far from being the Lady with a capital L that she fancied herself, but I digress. Much later that night, my dad came home ossified and found the two of us watching an I Love Lucy rerun. He shook my hand, slipping me a couple of quarters in the process, and asked my mom, “What’s that shit on the tube?” before falling asleep on the couch. He snored so loudly that we lost interest in Lucy’s antics and gave up and went to bed in our rooms at the other end of the apartment. Mom said, “At least I know he got home safely. I worry when he’s out with his friends from the factory.”
A couple of days later, one of my friends, whose father didn’t drink because he had a good job in a bank, invited a bunch of us over to his house to watch music videos on cable television. There was a new channel that was showing them all day long and we watched our favorite groups rocking away as if we were almost there at one of their concerts. Ramon’s parents were going out for dinner, and when Mrs. Martinez waltzed past us I inhaled her scent. She was a dark Puerto Rican beauty with long hair swept up into what was called a French knot, and she smelled like roses. As she stopped to check her hair in the hall mirror, I watched her patting it into place, and thought that was my new ideal, really the kind of woman I would like to marry, and for very different features than I had seen in Lady Di. This woman was sensuous and earthy. Too bad, I was reminded that she was my friend’s mother when she turned at the door, and said, “You boys be good now.” For a while, when I was thirty-five and divorced, I did date a hispanic woman who eventually quit me after telling me one night that I was a Loser with a capital L. Such is my luck in fulfilling boyhood dreams, but again, I digress.
When that summer ended and we had returned to school, one Saturday several of us took the subway into Manhattan to attend a concert that Simon and Garfunkel gave for free in Central Park. A couple of my older friends were interested in “hooking up with chicks,” as they called it, and we younger boys were advised to keep their younger sisters entertained. I sat next to a girl named Debbie through the whole concert, and to this day I cannot listen to Simon and Garfunkel songs without being reminded of Debbie’s chattering. We never saw each other again, but I still recall the sound of her voice. It makes me think of charcoal and ashes.
Near the end of September, Ramon announced that his father was taking him down to Philadelphia for a day to see the Rolling Stones in concert, but he must have felt guilty that so many of us wouldn’t be able to afford an outing like that and promised that we could all come to his place to watch MTV the next weekend, all day long if we wanted. I think a few of the other guys took him up on it, but I didn’t. I stopped hanging around with those guys so regularly after that, and as time went on I saw them less and less. I was not planning to attend the same high school many of them were in, and I knew I would have to concentrate on my studies and get better grades if I wanted to make something of myself. I saw the chasm between Mr. Martinez and my dad as a widening gap, and some days I almost gave up hope of ever bridging it.

Do I Have Something Caught on My Teeth?

Judging by your reaction, honesty is not always the best policy. When I admitted my faults to you, you said I creeped you out, while the guy walking behind you gave me the eye of scorn saying, “Hey, what are you doing, man, giving it all away?” without saying anything, and when he passed to where you could see him, you said you thought he was cute, to my face. I didn’t benefit one iota from that exchange, so in my very next statement, I lied to you, or tried to, but you saw right through me. I think you see right through me on most days, as if I weren’t there at all. I still have a few aces up my sleeve—the one on which I wear my heart—sincerity, candor, frankness, but I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think any of them are working anymore. Is it me or a nagging memory that bothers you?