heard the people who live on the ceiling scream and fight most scarily;
hearing that noise was my first ever feeling that’s how it’s been all around me...
the Clash
...had a friend named Michael when I was seven or eight...first kid I ever met whose parents were divorced....he told me, I remember, one time when we were playing up in the treehouse my dad built in the woods behind our house....didn’t know many kids who talked about serious stuff like he did, either...
....at some point, heard my mom telling somebody, another adult, something his mom told her...about how she’d had to quit her job to look after the kids because the sitter’d been doing something sitters aren’t supposed to...which I didn’t think too much about at the time...
...another time I slept over a couple nights...don’t think I’d ever been in house like that...really bare and run down...toys lying around, mostly broken...holes in the walls his mom plastered over herself...said some bachelors lived there before, and apparently punched the holes with their fists....he lived there with his mom and two little brothers, and this guy who was living with his mom...dark beard, ponytail, tattoos, kind of quiet, soft-spoken when he spoke at all...had a workshop in the basement and an ashtray shaped like a hand with a middle finger sticking up at the back....nowadays, I’d call him a biker, though I don’t remember if he actually had a motorcycle....Michael and one of his brothers, a year or so younger, looked a lot alike...skinny white kids with long stringy hair down to their shoulders...first boys I ever knew with long hair...but his other brother, who was maybe three or four, had dark skin and an afro....Michael said he just came out that way....the first night I had dinner with them, that brother spilled some milk, and their mom turned red, stuck a big fist in front of his little eyes, said see this? this is gonna go right in your face...
...late that night, hearing footsteps in the dark hallway, she shrieked, high pitched and threatening, through the door...then opened it, said oh, it’s you in a voice turned gentle and soft, and pointed me toward the bathroom...
hearing that noise was my first ever feeling that’s how it’s been all around me...
the Clash
...had a friend named Michael when I was seven or eight...first kid I ever met whose parents were divorced....he told me, I remember, one time when we were playing up in the treehouse my dad built in the woods behind our house....didn’t know many kids who talked about serious stuff like he did, either...
....at some point, heard my mom telling somebody, another adult, something his mom told her...about how she’d had to quit her job to look after the kids because the sitter’d been doing something sitters aren’t supposed to...which I didn’t think too much about at the time...
...another time I slept over a couple nights...don’t think I’d ever been in house like that...really bare and run down...toys lying around, mostly broken...holes in the walls his mom plastered over herself...said some bachelors lived there before, and apparently punched the holes with their fists....he lived there with his mom and two little brothers, and this guy who was living with his mom...dark beard, ponytail, tattoos, kind of quiet, soft-spoken when he spoke at all...had a workshop in the basement and an ashtray shaped like a hand with a middle finger sticking up at the back....nowadays, I’d call him a biker, though I don’t remember if he actually had a motorcycle....Michael and one of his brothers, a year or so younger, looked a lot alike...skinny white kids with long stringy hair down to their shoulders...first boys I ever knew with long hair...but his other brother, who was maybe three or four, had dark skin and an afro....Michael said he just came out that way....the first night I had dinner with them, that brother spilled some milk, and their mom turned red, stuck a big fist in front of his little eyes, said see this? this is gonna go right in your face...
...late that night, hearing footsteps in the dark hallway, she shrieked, high pitched and threatening, through the door...then opened it, said oh, it’s you in a voice turned gentle and soft, and pointed me toward the bathroom...
....the next day, Michael and I jumped up and down in a pile of leaves his brother’d raked up, scattering them all over the yard...his mom yelled at both of us, said we’d better get up every last leaf...so we started raking....then, after a while, eager to get back to playing, I said I doubt she really meant ‘every last leaf’...with a nonchalance that grew naturally in my world...but he kept working...he was in his world, and he knew it...
...just happened to remember this story, recently....sorry if it's a bit dark...
