Most of the people I have met recall their childhood with landmark events. And using them as signposts they categorize the space in between those events as their stages of maturity. Some say they grew up fast, some still believe there is some growing left in them. I don’t remember my formative years through major events though, but rather my participation in others lives at various point in theirs.
When you walk out into the road facing away from my house, the house to the right, a large blue split level with a decaying asphalt driveway and a bright red door, is owned by the Albrights. Always has been, ever since they bought it in 1973. They got married at eighteen in the 1969. They have no kids and spend most of their days obsessively remodeling their house. Dale, a retired lawyer, whiles away the days in his garage skill sawing unknown projects that Diane, a real estate agent and part owner of the antique store down the road, puts forth. Then at the end of every year they hold a cocktail party and invite everyone in the neighborhood for the unveiling of their new house. No they really did unveil things… like pull a sheet off it as if it had appeared by magic. Every year all the rooms were drastically changed. I wonder how long it took them to plan and modify each of them, and how long they actually sat and enjoyed their finished product.
The house to our left was one that was in total flux however. Ever couple years some new family moved into it. The house itself though remained damn near untouched, except for the occasional upkeep. When I drove by it last time I was in town I realized it looks exactly how I always remembered it, a single story four bedroom ranch house with two big bathrooms and large backyard. When I was six, a family whose name I cannot recall moved out. The sons were much older than I was. That’s all I remember about them. The family that moved in after them were Lutheran missionaries. They had three daughters, each two years apart, the middle child was the same age as me. They would always hold secret club meetings and invite all the kids from the neighborhood. I always went because at the time it was the only game in town.
As time went by I found myself spending more and more time over there, at the request of my mother. The inside of their house had what felt like long expanses of white painted walls dotted with neatly framed family photos of various locations the family had lived in. I found these fascinating, not so much for the people in them, but everything around them. They were standing in Rome, that water was the Pacific, that person in the background could not understand a word I said because I speak English and he speaks Dutch.
The family itself was so different too. They always ate at the table and there wasn’t a television. The vast majority of my knowledge of the Christian religion comes from listening to the correct answers from their bible trivia games every Saturday and Sunday night. They always had a BBQ every two weeks and would invite members from their church over. I was always welcome as was everyone from the neighborhood.
I remember when they moved. I helped the girls pack. Laney, the oldest, had turned fourteen last month and she was starting to develop. I remember noticing this and that it was the only thing I noticed about her every time I saw her until they left. That last day I found out the youngest, Bridget, had a huge crush on me. She kissed me on the nose, her lips felt very tiny, told me this before she jumped in the car to leave. I can see how she thought it would be so dramatic, a landmark in her life, telling me and then leaving never to see me again, but to tell the truth she was quite irritating and I didn’t find her appealing at all. She gave me her new address in Guam and made me promise I would write her (yes people did things like write letters back then). I didn’t for a while and when I finally did it didn’t matter because she gave me the wrong address. It came back as return to sender… I think it was the wrong address.
The next people to move in I didn’t get to know very well. At that time my parents split up and I was carted back and forth between the two. Oh yeah, I am not an only child, I have a half brother and sister, twins from my fathers first marriage. They are about 8 years older than me and I saw them mainly on holidays. And since ever since he moved out I gradually saw my father less and less, and the twins even less frequently. I think one is a bail bondsman and the other works for the city… I can’t remember I don’t really check up on them anymore.
As far as the house to the left I think an elderly couple lived there, but the husband died or something and the lady moved back in with her daughter. All I can really recall was everyone’s reaction to it at the Albright’s yearly cocktail party. It was at that same party I felt up some girl’s boobs. I think she said she lived down on Johansson Ct., but I had never seen her before, nor have I seen her since. I will always remember how I felt her boob before I kissed her. It was only a seconds difference, but at that time everything felt it had inherent rules behind it and that was the equivalent to running over the pitchers mound instead of the first base line. I remember her heavy breathing, her nervousness. How could she have been nervous, its not like I would have rejected her boobs. Any boob grabbing at that point was alright with me. I must have been a big moment for her.
After that summer I remember everything changed. I was a sophomore, sixteen, and a complete horn dog. There was never a second I didn’t think of fucking, and there wasn’t a female I didn’t imagine naked on my bed ready to go. Of course my grades suffered. And to make things worse I made couple of friends who smoked pot after (and sometimes during) school and whenever I felt lonely I would go sit on a couch and watch horrible stoner comedies with them, even if I had seen them 20 times. But I wasn’t close with them, they just filled a need. After senior year I remember thinking I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire. Dramatic I know, but using extreme, if not banal, metaphors like that to describe my feelings was always pleasing and edgy enough that I felt they got my point across at the time.
The house to the left remained empty for a couple of years until spring came and the Ames moved in, who came all the way from France to our neighborhood. The Father worked as moderator for some shipping company based out of La Havre. I remember seeing Juliette walking home everyday from the bus. The stop was three blocks away and I had a car. But I thought I would look creepy if I offered her a ride home from the stop like I was expecting some action, rather than hoping for some. Instead I stopped taking my car to school and rode the bus, telling my mother I wanted to save money on gas, hoping I could talk to her. But she sat with some girls on the bus back and forth and there were a bunch of people at the stop. Combined I would come to find that all of them made it hard for me to get her alone. It was the last stretches to each other’s houses that all my waiting paid off, not that I did anything about it. It wouldn’t be until three months of bus rides that I managed more than a smile or nod. And as soon as I said hello she asked about my friend Louis.
Great she wants to fuck my friend I thought. I told her I hung out at his house on occasion. But it was when she asked if I score some grass for her I knew I was back in the game. I remember the day I brought it over, it was a Thursday and my mother was out getting her hair done and from there going to a business party that her then boyfriend Larry was attending. I walked the heaping bag of grass over (Louis severely hooked me up, in retrospect not a bad guy) and knocked on her back door. We smoked out on her back porch, her expertly rolling a huge joint. We went inside and she took off her shirt and said she wanted me to fuck her. This was probably the most direct statement I had ever heard in my life.
Throughout that year we continued this routine. I would score some green, her parents would go out for the night, we would get stoned and fuck. We weren’t a couple, we never talked at school. This bothered me at first, but in the end I was getting laid and that more than could be said for my peers.
I remember how weird it was to walk over there, everything was so different. When I was last in this house I was no taller than the doorknob and now I could reach up and slap the ceiling fan. The interior was much like it used to be, white walls, big rooms with big windows that looked into a expansive backyard, which had a big tomato patch in it. I see her mother in it from time to time, with fresh makeup and neat gardening gloves pruning the bushes. I have always wondered how she was remained so pale after spending so much time in the sun; it was like nothing could touch her.
The interior was much the same but the décor was something else completely. Instead of those family photos mildly covering the walls, the house was full of plant life. Orchids, fichus, cactuses, lilies… the whole house I was full of living things. I remember the upkeep of these houseplants was one of Juliette’s main chores, along with other tasks scrawled in French on a pad of paper stuck on the fridge. I also remember Juliettes bubbly handwritten check marks on each of the completed tasks. They had a big smelly cat named Toulouse, who moped around all day reporting every so often that his water dish was empty. There was a perpetually half empty bottle of wine, corked on the table, ash trays and a fan next to every window in each room. There were hanging baskets of fresh fruits hanging in the kitchen, Juliette’s mother grew them in the garden but Juliette always complained the soil was for shit around here and she had to go to the market to get anything good.
I remember spending vast amounts of time in her bedroom, the door closed and locked, lying on her bed smoking either a joint or a fresh rolled cigarette that she stole from her father and her stark naked on her dresser sipping juice from those tiny glasses. I was very inquisitive about the French lifestyle, but she wasn’t so inquisitive about America. Any time she opened her mouth about something it was to bitch about it. There was always some kind of injustice, mistake, or horrible person in charge. I didn’t complain, why would I when I had a pair C-cups staring right back at me. I just let her indulge herself, she would expect no less.
I would bring the pot, we would smoke, screw, and then she would sit me on her pillow top double bed and trapse around the room stark naked monologue-ing, playing music, sipping juice, never settling in one spot too long.
Looking back now that wasn’t such a bad time. All I did was smoke pot, get laid, and listen to strange new music. It always seemed to be someone from the seventies that she found on vinyl, if it wasn’t on vinyl it was “merde”. I had never seen or heard a record before. I just remember that no matter how quick or funky the music was, it always felt sort of mellow when it came off a record. She moved to upstate New York at the tail end of senior year. I remember she made me a mix reel before she left, she said she believed CD’s were shit. It is the only reel I own; permanently affixed to the player I dug out of the attic.
Juliette’s reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsB_CasDuaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRfdlcQ_MZw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJiC6cA3dUA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfVejpYc8Zc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmZ03Q7AoaU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY77zDzNmYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43uSMJntgw
I suppose it was better than a kiss on the nose. She also gave me her email address, as the information superhighway was just starting to kick off. We sort of chatted online, half heartedly nothing serious. She had a boyfriend who was five years older and lived in the city. I of course was single and overweight. Besides I wasn’t a major thing in her life, I was just the weed guy, I thought. I moved out in autumn to go to college. I had shaped up towards the end of the year and raised my GPA earning a Bright Futures scholarship. Once out of the house and on my own I preceded to fail all my classes and lose my scholarship. Instead I got a full time job and found a place just outside campus.
I am currently 25 and I haven’t been home in 4 years. I don’t speak to my father, and for the past several years my mother sends me pictures of the various remodeling projects she has started up. Probably influenced by a certain couple we lived next to. I remember returning home for Christmas when I was twenty to find that the spare rooms held all the furniture we had put in storage. I had removed all of my belongings when I moved into my place, so she had to fill the void somehow. But it felt perverted to sit in a fancy dining room setting that used to be the place that housed a mountain of laundry and a porn library in the cooling vent. I can’t remember if I removed those before I last left. What a discovery that must have been for her.
She eventually sold the house and moved into a smaller place with her long time boyfriend. I unfortunately couldn’t find the time to get off of work to help them and say goodbye to the place that saw me thru some rather awkward and horrible times. Yes some horrible things happened in my life, all of which have shaped me into the slightly reserved and distant man I am today, but some very wonderful things happened there too. Those are the things I prefer to remember.
Anyway she stopped sending pictures of her redecorating when she finally settled into her new place. I am sure I will find out what her new place looks like when I visit this Christmas.
As for Juliette, she sent me an email the other week talking about how much she missed a guy like me, someone who just listened. I guess I am not the weed guy after all.
I am much older now, and I don’t really think much has changed about me. Everyone always says they were a different person then, I think that is merde. Everyone of those fucks that say that obviously didn’t have a lick of insight into themselves and were so vain to believe all it took was a little passage of time and suddenly there this great big adult with a wealth of life experience. I am twenty five and I miss the way the carpet smelled in my room. The way floors creaked when you walked into the kitchen. The inherent drama everything took on when I was a teenager. Well actually I don’t miss that at all, but even in retrospect the bad things don’t seem that bad.
I wonder if the Albrights still hold those parties, if there is some young man growing up in the same room that housed a half-used bunk bed and then several years later a cabinet containing fine china. I wonder how he will judge his upbringing when he looks back. Will he see his life in a series of landmarks, or will he see the landmarks of others.
When you walk out into the road facing away from my house, the house to the right, a large blue split level with a decaying asphalt driveway and a bright red door, is owned by the Albrights. Always has been, ever since they bought it in 1973. They got married at eighteen in the 1969. They have no kids and spend most of their days obsessively remodeling their house. Dale, a retired lawyer, whiles away the days in his garage skill sawing unknown projects that Diane, a real estate agent and part owner of the antique store down the road, puts forth. Then at the end of every year they hold a cocktail party and invite everyone in the neighborhood for the unveiling of their new house. No they really did unveil things… like pull a sheet off it as if it had appeared by magic. Every year all the rooms were drastically changed. I wonder how long it took them to plan and modify each of them, and how long they actually sat and enjoyed their finished product.
The house to our left was one that was in total flux however. Ever couple years some new family moved into it. The house itself though remained damn near untouched, except for the occasional upkeep. When I drove by it last time I was in town I realized it looks exactly how I always remembered it, a single story four bedroom ranch house with two big bathrooms and large backyard. When I was six, a family whose name I cannot recall moved out. The sons were much older than I was. That’s all I remember about them. The family that moved in after them were Lutheran missionaries. They had three daughters, each two years apart, the middle child was the same age as me. They would always hold secret club meetings and invite all the kids from the neighborhood. I always went because at the time it was the only game in town.
As time went by I found myself spending more and more time over there, at the request of my mother. The inside of their house had what felt like long expanses of white painted walls dotted with neatly framed family photos of various locations the family had lived in. I found these fascinating, not so much for the people in them, but everything around them. They were standing in Rome, that water was the Pacific, that person in the background could not understand a word I said because I speak English and he speaks Dutch.
The family itself was so different too. They always ate at the table and there wasn’t a television. The vast majority of my knowledge of the Christian religion comes from listening to the correct answers from their bible trivia games every Saturday and Sunday night. They always had a BBQ every two weeks and would invite members from their church over. I was always welcome as was everyone from the neighborhood.
I remember when they moved. I helped the girls pack. Laney, the oldest, had turned fourteen last month and she was starting to develop. I remember noticing this and that it was the only thing I noticed about her every time I saw her until they left. That last day I found out the youngest, Bridget, had a huge crush on me. She kissed me on the nose, her lips felt very tiny, told me this before she jumped in the car to leave. I can see how she thought it would be so dramatic, a landmark in her life, telling me and then leaving never to see me again, but to tell the truth she was quite irritating and I didn’t find her appealing at all. She gave me her new address in Guam and made me promise I would write her (yes people did things like write letters back then). I didn’t for a while and when I finally did it didn’t matter because she gave me the wrong address. It came back as return to sender… I think it was the wrong address.
The next people to move in I didn’t get to know very well. At that time my parents split up and I was carted back and forth between the two. Oh yeah, I am not an only child, I have a half brother and sister, twins from my fathers first marriage. They are about 8 years older than me and I saw them mainly on holidays. And since ever since he moved out I gradually saw my father less and less, and the twins even less frequently. I think one is a bail bondsman and the other works for the city… I can’t remember I don’t really check up on them anymore.
As far as the house to the left I think an elderly couple lived there, but the husband died or something and the lady moved back in with her daughter. All I can really recall was everyone’s reaction to it at the Albright’s yearly cocktail party. It was at that same party I felt up some girl’s boobs. I think she said she lived down on Johansson Ct., but I had never seen her before, nor have I seen her since. I will always remember how I felt her boob before I kissed her. It was only a seconds difference, but at that time everything felt it had inherent rules behind it and that was the equivalent to running over the pitchers mound instead of the first base line. I remember her heavy breathing, her nervousness. How could she have been nervous, its not like I would have rejected her boobs. Any boob grabbing at that point was alright with me. I must have been a big moment for her.
After that summer I remember everything changed. I was a sophomore, sixteen, and a complete horn dog. There was never a second I didn’t think of fucking, and there wasn’t a female I didn’t imagine naked on my bed ready to go. Of course my grades suffered. And to make things worse I made couple of friends who smoked pot after (and sometimes during) school and whenever I felt lonely I would go sit on a couch and watch horrible stoner comedies with them, even if I had seen them 20 times. But I wasn’t close with them, they just filled a need. After senior year I remember thinking I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire. Dramatic I know, but using extreme, if not banal, metaphors like that to describe my feelings was always pleasing and edgy enough that I felt they got my point across at the time.
The house to the left remained empty for a couple of years until spring came and the Ames moved in, who came all the way from France to our neighborhood. The Father worked as moderator for some shipping company based out of La Havre. I remember seeing Juliette walking home everyday from the bus. The stop was three blocks away and I had a car. But I thought I would look creepy if I offered her a ride home from the stop like I was expecting some action, rather than hoping for some. Instead I stopped taking my car to school and rode the bus, telling my mother I wanted to save money on gas, hoping I could talk to her. But she sat with some girls on the bus back and forth and there were a bunch of people at the stop. Combined I would come to find that all of them made it hard for me to get her alone. It was the last stretches to each other’s houses that all my waiting paid off, not that I did anything about it. It wouldn’t be until three months of bus rides that I managed more than a smile or nod. And as soon as I said hello she asked about my friend Louis.
Great she wants to fuck my friend I thought. I told her I hung out at his house on occasion. But it was when she asked if I score some grass for her I knew I was back in the game. I remember the day I brought it over, it was a Thursday and my mother was out getting her hair done and from there going to a business party that her then boyfriend Larry was attending. I walked the heaping bag of grass over (Louis severely hooked me up, in retrospect not a bad guy) and knocked on her back door. We smoked out on her back porch, her expertly rolling a huge joint. We went inside and she took off her shirt and said she wanted me to fuck her. This was probably the most direct statement I had ever heard in my life.
Throughout that year we continued this routine. I would score some green, her parents would go out for the night, we would get stoned and fuck. We weren’t a couple, we never talked at school. This bothered me at first, but in the end I was getting laid and that more than could be said for my peers.
I remember how weird it was to walk over there, everything was so different. When I was last in this house I was no taller than the doorknob and now I could reach up and slap the ceiling fan. The interior was much like it used to be, white walls, big rooms with big windows that looked into a expansive backyard, which had a big tomato patch in it. I see her mother in it from time to time, with fresh makeup and neat gardening gloves pruning the bushes. I have always wondered how she was remained so pale after spending so much time in the sun; it was like nothing could touch her.
The interior was much the same but the décor was something else completely. Instead of those family photos mildly covering the walls, the house was full of plant life. Orchids, fichus, cactuses, lilies… the whole house I was full of living things. I remember the upkeep of these houseplants was one of Juliette’s main chores, along with other tasks scrawled in French on a pad of paper stuck on the fridge. I also remember Juliettes bubbly handwritten check marks on each of the completed tasks. They had a big smelly cat named Toulouse, who moped around all day reporting every so often that his water dish was empty. There was a perpetually half empty bottle of wine, corked on the table, ash trays and a fan next to every window in each room. There were hanging baskets of fresh fruits hanging in the kitchen, Juliette’s mother grew them in the garden but Juliette always complained the soil was for shit around here and she had to go to the market to get anything good.
I remember spending vast amounts of time in her bedroom, the door closed and locked, lying on her bed smoking either a joint or a fresh rolled cigarette that she stole from her father and her stark naked on her dresser sipping juice from those tiny glasses. I was very inquisitive about the French lifestyle, but she wasn’t so inquisitive about America. Any time she opened her mouth about something it was to bitch about it. There was always some kind of injustice, mistake, or horrible person in charge. I didn’t complain, why would I when I had a pair C-cups staring right back at me. I just let her indulge herself, she would expect no less.
I would bring the pot, we would smoke, screw, and then she would sit me on her pillow top double bed and trapse around the room stark naked monologue-ing, playing music, sipping juice, never settling in one spot too long.
Looking back now that wasn’t such a bad time. All I did was smoke pot, get laid, and listen to strange new music. It always seemed to be someone from the seventies that she found on vinyl, if it wasn’t on vinyl it was “merde”. I had never seen or heard a record before. I just remember that no matter how quick or funky the music was, it always felt sort of mellow when it came off a record. She moved to upstate New York at the tail end of senior year. I remember she made me a mix reel before she left, she said she believed CD’s were shit. It is the only reel I own; permanently affixed to the player I dug out of the attic.
Juliette’s reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsB_CasDuaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRfdlcQ_MZw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJiC6cA3dUA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfVejpYc8Zc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmZ03Q7AoaU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY77zDzNmYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43uSMJntgw
I suppose it was better than a kiss on the nose. She also gave me her email address, as the information superhighway was just starting to kick off. We sort of chatted online, half heartedly nothing serious. She had a boyfriend who was five years older and lived in the city. I of course was single and overweight. Besides I wasn’t a major thing in her life, I was just the weed guy, I thought. I moved out in autumn to go to college. I had shaped up towards the end of the year and raised my GPA earning a Bright Futures scholarship. Once out of the house and on my own I preceded to fail all my classes and lose my scholarship. Instead I got a full time job and found a place just outside campus.
I am currently 25 and I haven’t been home in 4 years. I don’t speak to my father, and for the past several years my mother sends me pictures of the various remodeling projects she has started up. Probably influenced by a certain couple we lived next to. I remember returning home for Christmas when I was twenty to find that the spare rooms held all the furniture we had put in storage. I had removed all of my belongings when I moved into my place, so she had to fill the void somehow. But it felt perverted to sit in a fancy dining room setting that used to be the place that housed a mountain of laundry and a porn library in the cooling vent. I can’t remember if I removed those before I last left. What a discovery that must have been for her.
She eventually sold the house and moved into a smaller place with her long time boyfriend. I unfortunately couldn’t find the time to get off of work to help them and say goodbye to the place that saw me thru some rather awkward and horrible times. Yes some horrible things happened in my life, all of which have shaped me into the slightly reserved and distant man I am today, but some very wonderful things happened there too. Those are the things I prefer to remember.
Anyway she stopped sending pictures of her redecorating when she finally settled into her new place. I am sure I will find out what her new place looks like when I visit this Christmas.
As for Juliette, she sent me an email the other week talking about how much she missed a guy like me, someone who just listened. I guess I am not the weed guy after all.
I am much older now, and I don’t really think much has changed about me. Everyone always says they were a different person then, I think that is merde. Everyone of those fucks that say that obviously didn’t have a lick of insight into themselves and were so vain to believe all it took was a little passage of time and suddenly there this great big adult with a wealth of life experience. I am twenty five and I miss the way the carpet smelled in my room. The way floors creaked when you walked into the kitchen. The inherent drama everything took on when I was a teenager. Well actually I don’t miss that at all, but even in retrospect the bad things don’t seem that bad.
I wonder if the Albrights still hold those parties, if there is some young man growing up in the same room that housed a half-used bunk bed and then several years later a cabinet containing fine china. I wonder how he will judge his upbringing when he looks back. Will he see his life in a series of landmarks, or will he see the landmarks of others.
2 comments:
Great first paragraph! Not so much the rest. Overall-- too long-winded and uninteresting. Part of the problem, i suppose, is that I don't know what angle you're going for... just a strict auto-biographical account or an actual coming-of-age story? If the latter then I suggest you add a conflict of some sort.
Either way, your characterization needs a little help. Unless, of course, you intended for the narrator to come off as a self-contradicting, arrogant prick. I mean, he pretty much gives the finger to the American Dream when he writes, "Everyone of those fucks that say [they were a different person [in their past]] [don't] have a lick of insight into themselves."
This guy pretty much had his life handed to him. He didn't struggle with any "landmark events." Didn't overcome any obstacles. Didn't learn from any mistakes. Instead, he rants about frivolous occurances throughout his life, and attempts to pass them off as a potential guiding philosophy-- "Listen kids. Don't do shit with your life and you'll end up with tits and toke. Wait! There's more! NO parents!!!"
Was that the message you were trying to give? Were you even trying to give a message? Cause for a story dubbed "growing up," this guy needs to do more than just get older.
It's obvious that you find wonder and happiness in the subtle and quaint things in life. I'm much the same way. Life is life, and it's not always great, it's not always showy and spectacular. It's true.
But, to that end, this rambles a bit and, like Ryan said, could use a little conflict. It's like music, in a sense: for me, there has to be something to bring me back to it, whether that be a good bridge or certain harmonies or a great hook, even if the song is inherently shit. It's the same here - if you're going to make a narrative out of the mundane, then you have to make it bite, and be altogether memorable.
Vonnegut did that all the time, and that's what makes him one of my favorite writers... the boring can be surreal, joyous, frightening - only if you work to make it so.
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