pretty crabby

Far away.

Liverpool, 1999

We're in Paul McCartney's childhood home and my mom is touching everything he must have touched, the door knobs, the banisters. When we walk up the stairs to what was once his bedroom we make sure to stand in the doorway for a long time. It is like trying to follow a ghost, the ghost of someone who is still alive. At one point I am alone in the living room, listening to the tape on tour. It is saying how RIGHT HERE was where Paul and John wrote I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and the day Paul's brother watched John walk into the house for the first time, he thought he looked pretty cool. He was just some cool kid, coming over to hang out.

Italy, June 2000

It is so dry and hot, all I smell is dead grass and it makes my skin itchy. When I breathe, hot air fills my lungs. Nothing feels refreshing or different, but I love it. I think about how I could be naked and I probably wouldn't notice. I walk as far away from the villa as I can while still in sight of it. I play Ant in Alaska over and over on my headphones. I can't stop thinking about how far away I am from him, but it doesn't seem far enough. I know I have to go home eventually.

Italy, March 2003

I am walking on an overpass between small streets filled with pottery shops and I look down and see old brick buildings and a tiny bridge all covered in moss. It is like ruins in Rome, only completely deserted and partially filled with trash. Later I show my dad and he decides we have to "GET DOWN THERE!" and finally we find a way in. A stray dog runs after us, excited for company. My dad stands on the tiny bridge which I think is about to collapse but he assures me, it's hundreds of years old! This doesn't seem like a great argument but he's so happy. I think, this is what he looked like when he was a kid.

London, October 2003

The day I go through Notting Hill and walk alone in Portebello Market is the day I am happiest. I find an Internet cafe and get a cappuchino that is bigger than my face. I sit alone at the computer and write happy messages to my parents and my friends. There is an Italian guy my age next to me, smoking hand rolled cigarettes. He takes his headphones off, taps me on the shoulder, and offers me one. I think about it for a minute before I shake my head, smiling.

Jukebox

Wake Up Little Susie is the first song I ever loved. I am six years old, riding in the back of our VW Rabbit, going to Lake Dunmore, telling my mom to turn it up. I cut all the hair off my doll, Jenny, and now she resembles a militant lesbian but I love her more for it.

When I am seven my teacher plays Here Comes The Sun every day during lunch. We sit side by side at the long orange table in our classroom, and it plays over and over. She must be repeating it on her own, she must be a George Harrison fan.

Leah and eight year old me dance in the puddles in her driveway until we are soaked and on the wet ride home my mom plays Billie Jean on the car tape deck. It's a short ride so when we get home and the song is still playing, we wait for it to end before we get out of the car.

Conclusion

I could not have loved another person more than the boy I loved when I was fourteen.

When I think about it now I realize he was the kind of person who would completely and utterly annoy me if I met him today. He was a show off, a completely obvious flirt. There was not one subtle thing about him including the Obsession cologne he apparently bathed in daily.

But I knew his walk from a hundred feet away. Once we sat in the morning group circle and threw sticks at each other for awhile. I wrote something in my diary that day about how I was in love and OBVIOUSLY he loved me back. Because he threw sticks at me.

He had the kind of fame you get in summer camp, where your popularity is not measured on your school clothes. It is measured only by the group of kids you are making laugh and how silently you can sneak out the wooden screen door in the middle of the night. Running through the dewy night time air wearing your bathing suit under your clothes, you all escape to the beach and sit in the darkness huddled close together because he said that is what you should do.

He started "going out" with my friend, Daniella. She was beautiful and sarcastic, the coolest of the girls. Because she wanted me there it would often be the three of us, together/alone. Once we ended up hiding in his cabin late at night and somehow we all got mixed up and he and I were laying side by side in the dark. My shoes fell on the floor and were lost beneath the bunks, everyone too scared of being caught to move or speak. Daniella laid silently on the bed above us with another boy, we were like a game of Yahtzee; letters scattered everywhere not making any sense. Our tan arms touched, he made a joke about laying next to a girl and "not doing anything". He was 14 years old.

A summer later he and I stood in a bathroom together in a huge house I had never been in before while he inspected his recently pierced ear in the mirror. His coolness was already starting to fade but I felt nostalgic for everything right then in that moment. I matched us up in front of my eyes, this is how we look together.

It didn't seem right. I washed my hands and left the room.

Elementary

Five: One day when I am walking to school (from our house across the street) I see a cocoon on a tree and I break the branch off. When I get to school I say I found it and Mrs. K (my teacher with the long Greek name) puts it in a glass aquarium. On the day it breaks open, she and I go outside while the other kids stay in and we let the butterfly go, standing alone in the field.

Six: My teacher is my mom's good friend, Carol. For the first few weeks of school I can't stop calling her by her first name. Then when she comes over sometimes to have a beer with my mom on her porch, I get stuck again and keep calling her "Mrs. Madden".

Seven: Mrs. Collins is my teacher. We have two praying mantises in class and one day when we come in there is only one. She reads us James and the Giant Peach every day after lunch. We lie in a big mass on the floor, we're not afraid if our arms and legs touch. There is the sound of Velcro being ripped apart, over and over again.

Eight: We move to a new city, a new state, in the middle of fourth grade. I can't see the board, I can't see the teacher, so I squint until my head hurts and pretend it is just a new nervous tick I have. This obviously wins me a lot of friends. Some boy makes fun of me for licking my lips at lunch (where I sit alone). I resolve to never do that again. I have to get glasses, and my dad picks them out. A bright fuscia pair just for me.

Nine: Jeannette is my best friend until the night I have a sleepover with her and two other girls and she convinces them all to hate me and they lock me out of my bedroom. I start wearing makeup every day and my babysitter gives me all her old nailpolish and I paint every finger and toe a different color. Her boyfriend has a dog and they take me out with them to drive around in his fancy car. I decide the dog is mine, and whisper that in his ear, our secret. For my birthday they call me outside and give me a Cabbage Patch Kid. They both know this is a huge thing to do, but they act cool. As cool as teenagers need to act around a 9 year old who thinks they hung the moon.

Ten: We move again and I change schools and have a man for a teacher. My friends and I decide to be in the talent show and sing Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles. Jennifer writes the words out for us and we all practice singing along to it every day behind the school. One morning we are waiting to go inside when a rock flies out and hits Jennifer in the head. I look over and see blood and then teachers surrounding her. We have to drop out of the talent show, but I still know every word to that song, I can see her round handwriting in my head.

Eleven: We move back to Vermont and I hate my school. I start staying home when my mom leaves for work until one day no one can find me and they call the police. That night when I am back home, I sit in the bathtub and my mom and I talk. I don't pay close attention to what she says but I watch the water going over my feet, and I know I am just where I need to be.

"But once I really listened the noise just fell away..."

The other day, it happened again.

It happens fairly often and I should be used to it. Somehow we get to the point in the conversation when I am talking about my family, or my dad and his "partner" and someone will look at me, slightly confused, and say "your dad is gay?"  The next question is always a little more complicated.

"How did that happen?" Like he was sent to the moon and never came back. Or "how long has he been gay?" To which I want to say, 'well, you need to ask HIM that.' But I always try to take a deep breath and act calm and helpful, because I know they aren't trying to be rude, they are curious, and they just don't really GET IT so suddenly it is my job to be the teacher.

Everyone thinks that is the reason, it MUST BE THE REASON, that my parents aren't together today.  I suppose I could just smile and say "of course that is the reason!" Wouldn't it be great if everything was that easy, clearcut, black and white. Husband turns out to be gay, the end! But to me, and to them, I think it is much more complicated than that.

I know my dad loved my mom just the same that she loved him. They were 18 when they met and they got married when they were 21 and that was what you did then. Of course, there were other factors and I often think if I could go back in time, I would want to go back there to see them, to see what they were like. But I know (because they tell me) they were in love. Obviously.

After they did split up, when I was three, for reasons more complicated then I am going into here they always tried to put me first. They spent holidays together and did things together just because of me. They kept loving each other, even through the times when they probably didn't like each other very much.

So, yes, my dad is gay. For specifics about when he discovered that or how that was you need to speak to him. I can only say what has happened to me. When I was eight years old my dad sat me on a park bench and I will always remember that day. Even if now I don't remember the words he said to me, I know what he meant. How I always knew that I mattered, that my mom mattered, that together they put me here.

Everything I know about being brave and being honest comes from my parents. They are the two strongest, most sensitive people that I know. I am here because of them, to suggest that I am here because of something strange or dark... I  feel sorry for the people who can only think that way. It must be nice to see the world in a certain perfect organized way, where everyone is one way or another, where people never change.

That is not the world I live in. I live someplace where the babies come first, where feelings and respect actually matter. Where when you loved someone once, you always love them. Even when you have moments where you can't believe you ever felt like that, you remember. You honor your past. Somehow, someway.

More than that, I have no explanation, no reason, no cure. I can't explain how these things happened.

I can't explain love.