Chapter 4

            “I could use a foot rub!”

            She barked this request almost every night, but why did she need a foot rub? She sat on her butt and watched the idiot-box all day. Did she need a rest from resting? At least she wasn’t some lazy nigger, right?

            I ignored her, as usual.

            “Gizmo (our cat) licks my feet every single night. When’s the last time you gave me a foot massage? You must not love your mother!”

            She was right. I didn’t love her. Amanda Goldstein deserved a foot massage just by virtue of her hotness. What about Alisa…? Hmm… Alisa and her (presumably) Dorito-smellin’ feet.

            Fart… Mother lifted a varicose-laden leg and let rip. She farted a lot and took pride in it.

            “Gizmo doesn’t mind my farts.”

            Round-faced bitch. My dad, in times of peace, called her “round-face” or “round-faced Polack” or “Round-faced Polish warlord.” Mother was neither ugly nor attractive. She looked like a hybrid of Renee Zellweger and a blonde version of Flo from the Progressive insurance commercials: 

            Fart… Amanda’s farts smelled like coconuts, just as Alisa’s smelled like decaying legumes. Or so I presumed. Mother’s farts just smelled like sound.

            I hated mother’s grossness. What kind of girl would want to date a guy with a hyperflatulent mother?

The bitch’s bedroom expanded out to a sliding glass door (fully alarmed in case of cat burglars) and a second-story back deck. In the summer, she pulled the screen over the opening. The balmy air wafted through her bedroom, dissipating the smell of her gas.

            The sound of crickets. Sexual frustration. All of membranous nature breathing and I didn’t have anyone to love or fuck. Some other kid my age was probably out on a mushroom trip, a satyr (who didn’t even know what a satyr was) running through the woods with some pretty girl turned nymph; someone less deserving, less hippyish-intellectual than me connecting to other people and the world while I sat home alone and watched “What About Bob?” for the zillionth time. This undeserving ignoramus (who had probably never read a single book on mysticism or mythology) enjoyed the boon of becoming “one with everything.” Even as I sat isolated from oneness despite my superior qualities and my willingness to go full-Dionysus. Psychedelic sex! The decadent-conformist (who was lucky enough to be exposed to certain drugs at such an early age) found himself in the arms of the White Goddess. Just as “ravers” even in hick states like Indiana fucked hot girls at some “rave” (and what the hell was a “rave” or a “raver” other than some decadent-conformist postmodern phenomenon, but one that bestowed Joseph Campbellian “boons” on its attendees?) Those hick “ravers” in Indiana were less innocent than a slick Jersey boy like me. So much for Tri-State Joe Pesci and goumba leather jackets! A decadent-conformist hick from Indiana or South Carolina knew more about trance music and decadent yet ego-dissolving sex than I did. But the White Goddess would find me. Someday. I knew she would. All I asked for was what the young Nietzsche wanted in “The Birth of Tragedy”: to get out of my head, lose my individuality, wallow in the mud, and revel with others in the frenzy of Pan and Bacchus. Nietzsche never figured out how to get to that place either. No wonder he died of insanity.

            In contrast to the front of our house, the back deck was as ill-maintained as Alisa’s West Belmar bungalow. The perch decayed through lack of use and would have imposed itself as the one and only architectonic manifestation of our gothic family life. But mother had robbed even the back deck of its right to self-assertion; its quest for justice through self-uglification (I’ve tried to find justice through degradation and it never works out that well.) Our veranda (more Anglo-Saxon auburn than the pastel balconies of Old San Juan) didn’t cut off its own nose to spite its face (as I often did) but accumulated layers of fungus as an “F You” to my cunt mother. Our few neighbors were too far away to notice the up-close deterioration of a once-proud roost. Like Kafka’s “Hunger Artist” (and like me) our deck raged and suffered in vain.

Joyful people love second-story decks. Especially in the spring and summer. What better place to sip a cup of Joe and think about life? Up. High. Closer to the heavens and God. A panoramic view of the woods and the few neighboring houses, glimpses of white siding or the corner pocket of a sturdy roof; the other dwellings in our orbit as distant as the Kuiper Belt.

            But the distance was not enough for my mother.

            “I feel too exposed out there! I don’t want damn neighbors looking at me! I like my privacy! I don’t want the Fossinellis looking at me. But they better not let that damn dog on our property anymore. That damn dog of there’s shittin’ over here! Shittin’ on our grass! It’s upsetting Greta and the cats!”

A wall divided mother’s room and pocketed off a small sink and vanity area. Above the sink, a mirror. Behind the “man in the mirror” was a mirror closet. The vanity mirror and the closet mirrors created a funhouse effect – the back of one’ head went on forever and ever in dimension after dimension!

The mirrored closet stored my dad’s dusty old clothes; 80s-era Adidas warm-up outfits; a Sly Stallone type suit:

            And even his Big Johnson shirts, which I loved (especially since my last name is Johnson):

           

            Wall Stadium (our local auto racing track) and Daytona Speedway tee-shirts hung from wire hangers like saggy bellies.

            Mind you, I am describing the state of his unused closet as it appeared in the mid to late 1990s. The tiny (by the standards of our other closets) tomb already served as a time capsule; a memorial; a requiem for a more innocent time; a romantic time: the 1980s. Our family of four driving down to Daytona (and Orlando) with Uncle Tommy. Uncle Tommy pushing the van up to 90 and tailgating a tractor trailer; blowing Marlboro smoke out the window because he was too hooked to wait to the next rest stop for a puff (I guess mother was still young and laid-back enough to  tolerate his incessant lighting up); buying fireworks (completely illegal in overregulated New Jersey) at South of the Border on the South Carolina border, the first stop to have palm trees – we were almost there! That cup of O.J. at the Florida Welcome Center on the Florida-Georgia line. Dad and Uncle Tommy dropped us off in Orlando (to connect with my then-snowbird grandparents at Disney World) and then headed East to the Hellraiser Heaven of Daytona Beach (where rednecks spread-eagled themselves on the hoods of cars and drag-raced down the streets.)

            Romance. I needed a girl to take that same trip with me. In what seemed like a distant future. The 2000s. Would we then see flying cars with Confederate flag decals?

            Romance.

            The 90s, in comparison, were a Will Toward (sorry to be all Nietzschean again) a Paradoxical Grunginess/Sterility. Women had already started to demand more than the state of their own inherent superiority (the best women, of course, are both muses and superior to the men they inspire.) The genesis/kernel/origin of SJW culture first flickered in the early to mid-90s. A yuppie time minus the grandiose neon. The understated 90s. I hate understated.

The woman of the 80s was Kelly Preston in “Space Camp”:

            Beautiful. Inspiring. Superior. Loving. Her character in the film was a supergenius Valley Girl. She tooled with quadratic equations almost as much as she toyed with her hair and make-up. She almost looks sort of Puerto Ricanish in this photo (though the Reagan 80s were still lily-white compared to later decades.)

            Hmm… What formed in me as I watched these films?

The woman of the nihilistic 90s was Michelle Forbes from the now “vintage 90s” film “Kalifornia” – a shrill, strident, shrewish, feminist asshole. Her character was a mere harbinger of the dreary cultural terrors to come:

 

            Please note the contrast. Michelle Forbes (the archetypal woman of the 90s) looks like the alien on the cover of Whitley Strieber’s “Communion”! Unlike 80s Kelly Preston, she would not stroke my hair and say “It’s okay, baby… It’s okay…”

I smelled dad’s dusty clothes and inhabited the Differance (yes, I used Derrida’s “differance”) between then and then. The Differance was between 1980s South of the Border (when tourists stopped there) and the late 90s (when they didn’t.) Some of the humorless liberal Yankee tourists had even taken to complaining about the politically-incorrect signs along I-95:

 

The liberals (like the Michelle Forbes character above) had already started to ruin the fun (and they were just getting started!) It was only 1997, but Van Halen’s mournful refrain already played in my head: “Where have all the good times gone?”

            Shit! Fuck that! The good times are just beginning! Just beginning. I am becoming more and more popular every single day. Soon I might even get laid for the first time. Should I try to fuck Alisa Alvarez? Hell no! Why would I think of her? She seems cool though. Except for giving me an attitude about borrowing that pencil She wouldn’t be offended by a sign that stereotyped Mexicans. Only pussy-ass white yuppies are bothered by shit like that.

            I closed dad’s closet, another recess against the wilderness outside; like a lone house in the North Carolina woods; not a cabin, but a small ranch; in the wild, but not too wild; central heating instead of a pot-bellied stove; somehow even cozier for its lack of oak-fueled heat; the wood paneling of a construction site trailer (the best kind); more like a country lawyer’s office than a home (if not for the antlers on the wall.) Let’s go into Sloterdijk here and call it one of the best bubbles – if not the best bubble – against the cold, uncaring, near-Lovecraftian macrocosm.

            It was like Dad was dead, but he wasn’t. He slept downstairs in the fourth bedroom. He hated sleeping with my mother:

            “How the hell can I sleep next to you? You snore like a drunken sailor! I can’t sleep! I can’t sleep! If I do fall asleep, you wake me up with your snoring or your farting! That’s all you do is wake me up! And then I have to toss and turn all night. Worrying. Thinking about problems. Stressing out about the dealership. I’ll just sleep in the fourth bedroom. That way you can be happy and I can be happy.”

            My parents somnambulated through their relationship, a marriage of convenience. They should have divorced by the mid-90s. Amanda’s parents were divorced and remarried. Did Alisa’s parents live together? Did they like each other? Were they too poor to divorce? Who cared, right? I suddenly did. And out of nowhere. Why?

            Dad liked giving impromptu tongue-in-cheek speeches in the manner and in the bellicose voice of a fire and brimstone preacher. His cheeks flushed livid, his lip quivered, he pounded tables and shouted, “I am a decent Christian man!” (Even though he was an agnostic on some days and an atheist on most.) He looked like Billy Crystal and Gary Shandling (though he was not Jewish.) Perhaps, at his most edgy, he resembled a balding and pot-bellied Scarface. Of WASP stock (though he grew up poor, “with the niggers,” as he was fond of saying), he looked dark, perhaps Mediterranean. “I am one of God’s chosen people! I need my sleep in the morning so that I may serve Him! And your mother keeps snoring all night!”

            My dad was very funny, funnier than most dads, probably funnier than Mr. Alvarez (Mr. Alvarez likely had a corny older-Latino sense of humor; like he would throw a bowling ball into an unoccupied lane or something.)

            Dad never frequented the home bar outside of his “fourth” bedroom. The one non-illuminated by the unplugged neon clock.

            Mom and dad stored alcohol there. I say “stored” rather than “kept” because the liquids existed – but did not live – under the bar. Bottled alcohol’s sole purpose for being is eventual consumption. But my parents did not like to drink (certainly not to excess) and we never entertained. Aunt and uncle never came over for a glass or a dram. Dad had friends, work friends, people he goofed around with all day as he oversaw the operations of his dealership, but none of them ever stopped by for a visit.

            Home bars should be like bar bars. Bonhomie! Friends and loved ones tipping the bottle to and fro, talking about times past and memories yet to come; deep, racial stuff; songs of the fatherland or motherland (wherever the homeland was or is.) Hugging. Even fighting. Brawling. Yes, even brawling is relation. Physical contact. A dance. A mutual struggle. A resolution of grievances among people who know each other too well to not fight. Obverse affection (the most authentic affection?) Even a bloody nose is better than nothing.

The drunk guests of our bar were made-up entities who had emerged from a perfect vacuum; nature in our house did not abhor nothing from nothing! Who said black holes are glamorous, unless it is the black hole of a black woman? (And horny black women did not live in our house.) Mundane specters require a past, a story, the shedding of an emotional imprint on an environment. But how could ghosts replay temporal loops in our “home,” a house built in 1987 and seldom visited since? A ghost house devoid of spirits. The central air-conditioning blew cat hair tumbleweeds along the high plains of our shampooed carpet (but Doc Holliday never sauntered through the burglar-alarmed double doors of our sawdust saloon.)

The fourth bedroom, as a guest room, was even more spare than the rest of the house. A dresser, a closet, and a nightstand with a Gideon Bible in the drawer, a gift of scripture for the non-existent guests at the Hotel Harrow.

And that was it. No television or reading lamp to soothe dad’s late-night nerves. The sacrament of Xanax – and it was a sacrament for those of us who had to live with my mother – calmed my perpetually stressed father (even though he liked stress.)

 He woke up around 8am every morning, gritted his teeth, and hyperventilated; a jagged, jittery, unsteady, back and forth of the breath from the back of his belly and his upper chest: Huh…. Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh…

And then he chewed more gum and sighed out a quivering, unsteady exhalation.

The morning coffee percolated as he shaved and showered in the downstairs bathroom.

Mother pounded on the door if he showered for more than ten minutes:

“Water ain’t free, ya’ know!”

“It’s my damn house,” he shouted. “I’ll take a damn shower as long as I want!”

Like me, dad lined his closet with unstylish clothes. Hawaiian shirts. Loud Kmart button-downs; esoteric geometry sprawled from starch collar to rolled cuff like the unearthly language of an alien computer program.

Alien languages! I wanted to go to Disneyworld’s Tomorrowland with Amanda and Alisa. The three of us could attend a Disney-sponsored exolinguistics (the study of alien languages) conference and then fuck all night in the hotel room. Wow! Bringing both of them to Disneyworld? Oh, this aside is what I am: innocent and horny. Always innocent. Never a decadent-conformist “raver,” but an innocent who only wants to study and fuck with beautiful women! Like 1980s Kelly Preston.

Next to dad’s shirts were a few pairs of neat, clean, black or blue “dungarees” (unless he had a meeting or special event that day, in which case he wore an expensive silk suit and a watercolor tie.)

Dad never ate a weekday breakfast at home. Ever. He poured two cups of coffee, a quarter of half & half, and three packets of granulated poison (Sweet N’ Low) into his plastic thermos, rushed out the trip-wired door, and sped off in his ‘97 ‘Vette (as a Chevy dealer, he drove only the latest models.)

After a general perusal of his dealership from service to sales, he drove “into town,” usually accompanied by an associate: a lawyer, loyal customer, local VIP, prominent holder of a much-cherished business account, or some other guy’s guy (by his standards.)

Dad and his associate(s) cussed, complained, and gossiped over a hearty diner breakfast and then went their separate ways. He mostly schmoozed with people he genuinely liked and enjoyed, but he drummed into our heads that he kissed the red asses of Satan and all his demonic legions so that we could have all the “things” he never had. If we dared to question his Jehovian Word (which we learned, quickly, was not a good idea) he would reply with the following, a speech as set and routine as the Miranda Rights business card carried by a forgetful cop:

 “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, boy?” The first line rolled forward like the smooth rumble of thunder from the unknown behind an inky-black stormfront. “You think I’m some punk-ass like you? You think I’m some nigger on the street? I kissed some fucker’s ass all day today so you could have all the things I never had and that’s how you talk to me?”

If I did not reply, he would go on a long speech about how he grew up with nothing. His parents were poor. He couldn’t afford shoes. Teachers called him white trash. Other kids made fun of him for being poor. He spent his summers working while the rich kids went to the beach every day.

If I did reply (which only happened a few times), he would scream in a deep yet hoarse voice:

“I kissed some fucker’s ass for you!”

Father worked hard and no one can take that from him. Except for a villainous ass-kiss or two, he loved his daily routine, the reassuring comfort of a microcosm in an infinite universe (he hated to think of time or the vastness of space.) He didn’t have the leisure to think of astronomy or death if there was another deal to close. Like Donald Trump (though he despised Donald Trump for being a member of the “lucky sperm club”) he lived for the deal (even as he pretended to hate his life/work/business.)

He hated Donald Trump and the rich kids who might have excluded him from a beach club, yet he thought his money – and his money alone - would make me Donald Trump or a rich kid who might have excluded him from a beach club. He thought money would transform me into something he hated. He wanted me to be someone he hated because he loved me and the people he hated, after all, had it so much better than he did. Or so he thought/assumed/imagined. My dad, like most fathers, wanted his children to have it better than he did – even if it turned us into objects of his delusional, unwarranted, and solipsistic envy.

He didn’t understand that it takes more than money to raise a Brad, Chad, or Lucky Blaine. It also takes the instillation of self-confidence (and you can’t learn how to talk to chicks out in the country unless they are fowl.)

We weren’t a part of a cabana beach or some country club scene! We did not know one member of any country club anywhere! Imagine my wigger dad dressed up like a Scotsman and teeing off on the green! We weren’t caddyshackers! We just had a nice house with a pool in the backyard. That was it! But I still had to hold my head down in shame. Shame! For how much better I had it! For all that he had given me that he never had – like my own unique, individualized neuroses!

At least Brads, Chads, Lucky Blaines, and Donald Trumps had the courage to talk to girls! At least some (or maybe most) of them had friends or got laid at a reasonable age. Dad lacked self-confidence because he grew up poor. I lacked self-confidence because I grew up “rich” (by his standards.) My parents’ self-isolation also isolated me. From the beach and almost everything else. From the universe that breathed outside my window every night. From the crickets who, unlike me, were fucking.

Why was a boy as handsome as me suffering like one of Maya Angelou’s (and she sucks, by the way) caged birds? Look how handsome I was and I suffered so:

After one of dad’s Horatio Alger monologues or worse (sometimes a beating), I tiptoed up to room, hid under my blankets, wept to myself, and took myself (us writers are the best at maladaptive daydreaming) to a different world, a compassionate world full of one or many beautiful girls. They would unconditionally love and nurture me. And I would love and protect them in turn. They would love me. My Kelly Preston from “Space Camp” goddess would love me.

Chills. Shivers. Before Alisa I spent most of my time under the covers with the imaginary version of Amanda Goldstein. She would love me in that much better world.

As an imaginary beautiful woman held me, I prayed to hate my father as much as I hated my mother.

But I didn’t hate him.

I loved the asshole.