The Beginning - Innocence Found
The trouble with having a mother that's fun, is that sometimes she can embarrass you by being too fun. 18 years ago, at my ripe young age of 12. She's great enough to drive us to a pool hall in the city. It seems that all I ever remember is the snow...it was always cold. Cushion and Cue - mom decides to stand on a pool table and yell out "party at my house" I can't tell you what it feels like to watch your mother stand on a table and announce to the world that she was going to invite a bunch of strangers into her home full of children. Sure, you can imagine most kids going, "heck yes, you're mom's so cool." yeah, parties aren't that cool when you're mother's a pill popping junkie trying to stay young and "hip" . So it seemed every other weekend we had a house full of strangers from a dive for a pool hall ransacking our house for whatever they could see fit to find. It was a joke. Standing there waiting to use your own room because people wanted their privacy while fucking on the red satin sheets that danced about your waterbed for their happy pleasure they weren't likely to remember the next day. All the while leaving you with a mess of ejaculation to clean up, like some silent slave left to serve the belligerently inconsiderate bastards with no sober mind to call home.
Yeah, I can't tell you what that was like. Smiling at your friends, embarrassed by the fact that your mother was flirting with some guy 20 years her youth getting drunk with kids even younger. You want pills, you want booze, you want smokes...yeah, she was good for that. You want a mother that tells you you're not supposed to lose your virginity to the closest loser willing to pop a cock for a drunk night...yeah she wasn't that kind. She was the party mom, the mom everyone loved but left for their real mothers at home who actually gave a shit their kids were alive and well.
And where might my father have been in the mix of all this? Working his ass off out of town for the money to provide my mother with whatever lifestyle she saw fit to disease herself with. My father, the great, grand wonderful man he was...couldn't compete. Hands down my mother won attention for her clumsy ways. He would try as much as he could, to provide consistency and love and support...you could say he was the PERFECT father...only...he had the constant task of cleaning up after a women who constantly destroyed everything and everyone around her, all the while manipulating others to feel sorry for her. And boy was she damned good at it. The party mom, the fun mom, the drugged up drunk manic depressive bi-polar compulsive lying mom who couldn't see she destroyed everything she touched. Couldn't see nor ever admit to it. So my father had a love for a women who could care less what she did to anyone. She was above it all and below it all. And I could never understand how he could love this women. But he sat silent, holding her hand, her head and her heart...trying his best to keep her from killing us all.
It wasn't until what was to follow that I ever saw a life better than this.
So there we were, one evening at the place my mother loved to exploit her idiocy as a parent. Billiards. I could care less to know how to play, I just knew I liked to stand there and watch people's faces. The players that knew what to do, how to stroke the stick like some lover and tap, slam or gently caress each move to slide the balls into the pockets cradled like some love affair of a game. Money down, money up. Hustlers, smoke and a love affair for the table. I couldn't get enough of the influence.
Staring at the door for new faces, constant faces, the players of this game. I couldn't tell you how many I saw. How much interest in each face, wondering about lives, who they were. Nor could I tell you how I felt the first time I saw "HIM" The first moment of complete innocence. I wish I could articulate it as some poet making love to words, because in that first moment...I had found a moment so pure...in the midst of this chaos and sin, this moment so pure that I found myself frozen. Frozen in this place, all that surrounded me going on...all the chaos...completely frozen. I can't tell you what it was. No, I can't tell you what that moment held when the whole place when blank, dead silence in my head except for the face of the first pure feeling I had ever had in my life. Pure. I can't recall it's innocence, except to tell you I wanted to smack myself. Wake up, WAKE UP!!! The scene rushes back in and he's gone like a ghost that haunts. So there I stood, feeling half way insane. Did he even exist, where was he. I couldn't see him. I made up excuses to walk around, grabbed a friend and walked to the games. Played a game of foosball, looking, glancing, pretending not to be in search of something. But I couldn't shake it.
I was drawn to his face more than ever..and a week went by..a week that I asked myself again and again if I had felt what I felt, experiencing the a glimpse of a future to come and go. What did the universe do? Was this moment supposed to have happened? Driving myself crazy, and for the first time in my life I had found an excuse to drag my compulsively irresponsible mother back to this place where children shouldn't be. Dragging her back there. I wanted to see him. His face. Just to watch him. I just wanted to watch. Could he even have been real. It was odd that I should be so excited to go, and perhaps had my mother been a better person she would have noticed my desire to be there. But she hadn't.
There we were, and the night dragged on. No sign of him, discourage in my heart as I sank down and finally gave up the search. I had noticed a kid from previous times there, started talking to him and his friends. A few jokes passed back and forth, and then suddenly my heart dropped into my stomach...there "HE" was again. I went silent. No one cared, no one noticed. The same frozen moment watching him walk through the door, down the side of the tables. Seeing him sit. I wanted to be sure. Was he real? Was I really there? Did I really feel this? The place faded to a slow motion movie set...time almost stopped and I could feel my body moving. "what? what are you doing?" I kept asking myself over and over "stop! what are you doing?" My conscious self trying to convey some sense of reason to what gravity and the universe had compelled the spirit in me to do. Completely frozen in my head, and my body on it's own, walking toward this pure thing, this sense, this being..the pure aura...and in one moment it all comes rushing back, *SMACK* Oh my god, what had i done?
I should have smacked myself, not him. HIM. The first introduction - here hand, meet his face! Oh god, I turned so quickly the other way i could NOT believe what had just happened. WHY did I do that???? Embarrassed, scared, confused.almost wanting to cry and in a way I was....as I walked back to my friends and they were laughing. Still laughing with the other kids that had been there than night. I get there and turn around to see him walk over and start talking to one of the guys we were talking to. He was FRIENDS with Adam??? Oh how embarrassed and confused. And the only thing I could muster up is a joke about how his name was like a girls....and five minutes later how he laughed like a girl. I can't tell you how internally red from embarrassment I had felt. The purest moment in my life ended with a smack across HIS face. And as embarrassed as I was, I sat there as if calm, collected as if I (for some reason) planned to do it. Laughing at him, making fun of him. But the deepest part of me knew I would NEVER forget him. This was the first moment of love, the purest moment of my life. He had my heart in a way that no other would EVER know to have it. He had my complete spirit. I vowed that day, if he were to allow me in his life, I would spend the rest of it asking the universe to bless him with all he ever wanted in life. And each day after, every moment....every second with him...was like the first..the purest of want, the deepest of loves, the original innocence.
Until I had to let go. I would do anything he had asked. And he asked me to forgive him for what he was about to say. I listened, I loved him, I let him go. But never, did I forget. I couldn't forget him. So I tucked him away like some distant dream. And I kept my heart silent, in reverence asking the universe to watch over him as he took his own path. In silence crying over a loss I knew I had to bare. He was the only certain thing I had ever felt in my life...the only thing absolutely pure about me....it was he. And year after year, the more distant his path, the deeper I tucked it away...never forgetting to ask the universe to watch him, to keep him safe. And all harm that would defeat him, I would beg of the universe to give to me. Because that was my burden of trade. My burden I asked of the universe because I loved him in a way that is only describable in one word: Birth.
The trouble with having a mother that's fun, is that sometimes she can embarrass you by being too fun. 18 years ago, at my ripe young age of 12. She's great enough to drive us to a pool hall in the city. It seems that all I ever remember is the snow...it was always cold. Cushion and Cue - mom decides to stand on a pool table and yell out "party at my house" I can't tell you what it feels like to watch your mother stand on a table and announce to the world that she was going to invite a bunch of strangers into her home full of children. Sure, you can imagine most kids going, "heck yes, you're mom's so cool." yeah, parties aren't that cool when you're mother's a pill popping junkie trying to stay young and "hip" . So it seemed every other weekend we had a house full of strangers from a dive for a pool hall ransacking our house for whatever they could see fit to find. It was a joke. Standing there waiting to use your own room because people wanted their privacy while fucking on the red satin sheets that danced about your waterbed for their happy pleasure they weren't likely to remember the next day. All the while leaving you with a mess of ejaculation to clean up, like some silent slave left to serve the belligerently inconsiderate bastards with no sober mind to call home.
Yeah, I can't tell you what that was like. Smiling at your friends, embarrassed by the fact that your mother was flirting with some guy 20 years her youth getting drunk with kids even younger. You want pills, you want booze, you want smokes...yeah, she was good for that. You want a mother that tells you you're not supposed to lose your virginity to the closest loser willing to pop a cock for a drunk night...yeah she wasn't that kind. She was the party mom, the mom everyone loved but left for their real mothers at home who actually gave a shit their kids were alive and well.
And where might my father have been in the mix of all this? Working his ass off out of town for the money to provide my mother with whatever lifestyle she saw fit to disease herself with. My father, the great, grand wonderful man he was...couldn't compete. Hands down my mother won attention for her clumsy ways. He would try as much as he could, to provide consistency and love and support...you could say he was the PERFECT father...only...he had the constant task of cleaning up after a women who constantly destroyed everything and everyone around her, all the while manipulating others to feel sorry for her. And boy was she damned good at it. The party mom, the fun mom, the drugged up drunk manic depressive bi-polar compulsive lying mom who couldn't see she destroyed everything she touched. Couldn't see nor ever admit to it. So my father had a love for a women who could care less what she did to anyone. She was above it all and below it all. And I could never understand how he could love this women. But he sat silent, holding her hand, her head and her heart...trying his best to keep her from killing us all.
It wasn't until what was to follow that I ever saw a life better than this.
So there we were, one evening at the place my mother loved to exploit her idiocy as a parent. Billiards. I could care less to know how to play, I just knew I liked to stand there and watch people's faces. The players that knew what to do, how to stroke the stick like some lover and tap, slam or gently caress each move to slide the balls into the pockets cradled like some love affair of a game. Money down, money up. Hustlers, smoke and a love affair for the table. I couldn't get enough of the influence.
Staring at the door for new faces, constant faces, the players of this game. I couldn't tell you how many I saw. How much interest in each face, wondering about lives, who they were. Nor could I tell you how I felt the first time I saw "HIM" The first moment of complete innocence. I wish I could articulate it as some poet making love to words, because in that first moment...I had found a moment so pure...in the midst of this chaos and sin, this moment so pure that I found myself frozen. Frozen in this place, all that surrounded me going on...all the chaos...completely frozen. I can't tell you what it was. No, I can't tell you what that moment held when the whole place when blank, dead silence in my head except for the face of the first pure feeling I had ever had in my life. Pure. I can't recall it's innocence, except to tell you I wanted to smack myself. Wake up, WAKE UP!!! The scene rushes back in and he's gone like a ghost that haunts. So there I stood, feeling half way insane. Did he even exist, where was he. I couldn't see him. I made up excuses to walk around, grabbed a friend and walked to the games. Played a game of foosball, looking, glancing, pretending not to be in search of something. But I couldn't shake it.
I was drawn to his face more than ever..and a week went by..a week that I asked myself again and again if I had felt what I felt, experiencing the a glimpse of a future to come and go. What did the universe do? Was this moment supposed to have happened? Driving myself crazy, and for the first time in my life I had found an excuse to drag my compulsively irresponsible mother back to this place where children shouldn't be. Dragging her back there. I wanted to see him. His face. Just to watch him. I just wanted to watch. Could he even have been real. It was odd that I should be so excited to go, and perhaps had my mother been a better person she would have noticed my desire to be there. But she hadn't.
There we were, and the night dragged on. No sign of him, discourage in my heart as I sank down and finally gave up the search. I had noticed a kid from previous times there, started talking to him and his friends. A few jokes passed back and forth, and then suddenly my heart dropped into my stomach...there "HE" was again. I went silent. No one cared, no one noticed. The same frozen moment watching him walk through the door, down the side of the tables. Seeing him sit. I wanted to be sure. Was he real? Was I really there? Did I really feel this? The place faded to a slow motion movie set...time almost stopped and I could feel my body moving. "what? what are you doing?" I kept asking myself over and over "stop! what are you doing?" My conscious self trying to convey some sense of reason to what gravity and the universe had compelled the spirit in me to do. Completely frozen in my head, and my body on it's own, walking toward this pure thing, this sense, this being..the pure aura...and in one moment it all comes rushing back, *SMACK* Oh my god, what had i done?
I should have smacked myself, not him. HIM. The first introduction - here hand, meet his face! Oh god, I turned so quickly the other way i could NOT believe what had just happened. WHY did I do that???? Embarrassed, scared, confused.almost wanting to cry and in a way I was....as I walked back to my friends and they were laughing. Still laughing with the other kids that had been there than night. I get there and turn around to see him walk over and start talking to one of the guys we were talking to. He was FRIENDS with Adam??? Oh how embarrassed and confused. And the only thing I could muster up is a joke about how his name was like a girls....and five minutes later how he laughed like a girl. I can't tell you how internally red from embarrassment I had felt. The purest moment in my life ended with a smack across HIS face. And as embarrassed as I was, I sat there as if calm, collected as if I (for some reason) planned to do it. Laughing at him, making fun of him. But the deepest part of me knew I would NEVER forget him. This was the first moment of love, the purest moment of my life. He had my heart in a way that no other would EVER know to have it. He had my complete spirit. I vowed that day, if he were to allow me in his life, I would spend the rest of it asking the universe to bless him with all he ever wanted in life. And each day after, every moment....every second with him...was like the first..the purest of want, the deepest of loves, the original innocence.
Until I had to let go. I would do anything he had asked. And he asked me to forgive him for what he was about to say. I listened, I loved him, I let him go. But never, did I forget. I couldn't forget him. So I tucked him away like some distant dream. And I kept my heart silent, in reverence asking the universe to watch over him as he took his own path. In silence crying over a loss I knew I had to bare. He was the only certain thing I had ever felt in my life...the only thing absolutely pure about me....it was he. And year after year, the more distant his path, the deeper I tucked it away...never forgetting to ask the universe to watch him, to keep him safe. And all harm that would defeat him, I would beg of the universe to give to me. Because that was my burden of trade. My burden I asked of the universe because I loved him in a way that is only describable in one word: Birth.