Tales from the Ghetto: Primordial Soup

content warnings:  child sex abuse mention tho i don’t go into any detail at all, child neglect and abuse, poverty, violence.

In this big post I tried to say everything I can remember about all the places I’d lived as a child, and as many places as that was, there may be some pretty big gaps.  Life isn’t a story with a three act structure and a cool hook.  Though one can tease it into something resembling that, I’m just trying to get it all out, bit by bit, before the dust of time blows over it all.  Before I start to forget who and where I am – to the extent that I am anything, which is an occasional issue for me.

In that post I said I would expand on those entries individually.  Better nate than lever.  I approach the task…

In the beginning, I was born into a housing project in suburban California.  My father reenlisted in the army and hauled us between another few states, but we came back to land in the same shitty spot, and all my earliest memories were there.  I didn’t know it was a project until recently, having a conversation with my dad.

My dad recently told me for the first time that when I was a toddler, my sister had shut me into a footlocker and was being secretive about where I was.  He said I could have suffocated, might have been an early hint of her antisocial personality disorder.  That might be a dramatic take on it, and I do not remember the incident at all.

Seemed like any of dozens of places I’ve lived.  Beige carpet, cottage cheese texture walls, popcorn ceiling.  The closer we got to the nineties the more every interior light fixture became titty domes, but back then in the middle o’ Cali, they were frosted glass squares with an organic bulge in the middle.  The open sides collected more flies than titty lights.

I don’t remember the layout very well, but maybe the dining room faced an interior courtyard to the east, the bedroom I shared with my brother faced west and was south of the entrance.  I feel like it was the ground floor and while there were two story buildings in the complex, this wasn’t one of them.  The dining room and kitchen would have shared a cheap linoleum floor with optional cigarette burns and cracks.  I don’t recall ever seeing a cockroach, but it may have been the feebleness of crawling out of infancy hobbling my senses – I cannot imagine such a place not having roaches.

The euphemism for kids doing weird sexual crap is “playing doctor” and some amount of that happened there.  The nature of it, in combination with later information, suggests to me that my older sister may have been sexually abused at an extremely young age, and it gave her ideas.  We weren’t even in school yet when that happened, at least I wasn’t.  It might have been in preschool for her.  My dad is a piece of shit scumbag, but not that flavor.

I remember my dad singing a drinking song when we were there.  Only one part of it.  “Beer, beer, beer, said the sergeant, merry men are we;  For there’s none so fair that they can compare with the airborne infantry.”  There were artifacts of his time in the army – duffel bags, fatigues.  I might have seen him in uniform once.  He wasn’t fat yet, but he seemed like a giant, like king kong compared to me.  I never did get as manly-looking as him, which I can be thankful for as I’m more transfeminine now*.  Dude looks like Herman Munster with big gorilla hands.  Jack Torrance hairline to match his creepy demeanor.

There’s a photograph of me from that time.  I’m wearing a magenta coat and turning around in my seat, looking down.  Maybe there was a bird on the ground.  Behind me, at an outdoor restaurant table under an umbrella, my dad was drinking a bottle of michelob while four or five empties sat on the table in front of him.  Think he had a suitably 70s-80s moustache.  Dook dook, little boozehound.  Sweet dreams.

I remember I had a little green ensemble with Richard Simmons length shorts and matching t-shirt, with blue and white stripes down the side.  I liked the material, a kind of fake velvety stuff but not shiny.  There’s another picture of me with my adult teeth starting to come in, the overbite fully developed.  It propped my mouth open and I looked pretty damn dorky until I learned more self-awareness around ten and forced my lips shut until they stuck like that.  In that picture I was smiling but had extreme eyebags.  Maybe it was taken on the day I learned about daylight savings time and was certain it was a bad joke.

As I mentioned in the other post, the project was next to some golden fields of wheat, or some other crop.  I saw a tumbleweed in the parking lot once; I saw lightning strike in a field in broad daylight.  I learned what hail is.

I learned what sickness is.  One morning I projectile vomited my breakfast cereal, forming a lifetime memory.  It was in that place I contracted the chicken pox, with feverish delirium, itching, the usual – leaving silvery white scars on my body.  I don’t remember any cool fever dreams, unfortunately, only the itching, and being too exhausted to move.  Sleeping propped up so I could breathe, losing track of day and night.

I must have learned to read and write during that time, but I could not read cursive writing yet.  I remember drawing a bunch of loops on paper to emulate how my mother wrote.  I have been told it was my sister who taught me to read, and that tracks – my parents were neglectful.

With any sort of fault, it’s different from person to person.  Some neglectful parents starve their children to death, some just turn a blind eye to mental illness and serious issues while being seemingly supportive in other ways.  My mom managed to not kill us, to generally nourish us, but we were getting skin conditions and bad hygiene habits that would haunt us for a long time.  My dad was putting the whole job of parenting on her, while he was having alcohol and drug issues.  So even with antisocial personality disorder developing, my sister must’ve felt like teaching me was a fun thing to do with her time, made her feel big, and therefore I’m literate.

We had a TV back then and the only thing I can really remember watching at home is Dukes of Hazzard in its initial run.  I probably watched Sesame Street and cartoons, but I don’t remember doing that at home.  Happened somewhere else, maybe grandparents’ house.  I know that’s where I saw Flash Gordon, Kung Fu, and Man from Atlantis.  Saw some westerns I can’t remember, some football games.  I don’t remember any specific books from that time.  I do remember the radio was that barfy saccharine late 70s early 80s guff.  Sing it with a perm and rhinestones on your evening gown or lapels.

A grandmother made us quilts with our names and dates of birth on them.  Mine was chiefly yellow with lavender embroidery for the name, black squares with a citrus fruit motif.  It got pretty beat up and some purple bubble gum permanently adhered before it was retired.  I feel like my brother had a light blue “security blanket,” like Linus in Peanuts, but this could be mistaking comics for real life.

I didn’t think about being a middle child much, as a thing, but I did identify with those sardonic characters, the exasperated calm at the center of the wacky circumstance, like Charlie Brown and Kermit the Frog.  I was reading the Sunday comics, tho I didn’t understand a lot of what they were talking about.  I liked the art style on Tank McNamara, but had no effin idea what the sportball jokes were about.

I remember my brother sleeping in a crib and some kinda fuss about when he stopped.  I remember not thinking anything much of the fact my sister was from a different father and was biracial.  Maybe kids are less prejudiced without bad influences, maybe it’s because she was one year older and therefore The Boss, or maybe it’s because she unmistakably did look like us – just with brown eyes, coffee-colored skin, and loose brown curls.

One time when we were outdoors at night, I was playing with a toy gun and tried to throw it to my brother, and it hit her close to the eye, cut her skin.  The parents insisted I apologize and I distinctly remember feeling it made no sense to do so when no ill intent was involved.  They did not successfully explain to me that recklessness is as much something to apologize for as maliciousness, just made me feel like I had to eat shit for no reason.  Is there no communication in this household?  Thereafter toy guns were not allowed.

I’m gonna do a separate post for the grandparents’ house, I think.  And another for excursions, another for school.  Got a few more things to say here and it’s already run long.

I remember my dad combing my hair after a bath and asking which side I wanted it parted on.  I didn’t know what that meant and said both?  He said ok haha and ran the comb over my head on both sides, one after the other.  With his big-ass gorilla hands, that caused me pain.  I was genuinely mad, which I’m sure amused him more.  The things we remember the best in life are humiliations and pain, generally.

And names?  When I was a child I remembered names very well.  On some occasion I was left to play at the apartment of a boy named Dennis Kessler.  Only name I remember between then and elementary school tho.  He was blond (I was too at that time) and not too rude.  He had a lot of toy cars, which I was impressed by.  He had a toy truck where you could stick cars in the back of it, and that was fun.  Toy cars were more likely to be metal at that time, tho some were plastic as well.  I feel like this was a situation where I was being stashed so my mom could fuck off and do something bad, but who knows?

Last thing of note here was my very earliest memory – getting punched in the nose when arguing over a swing.  I would have been three or four, the boy much bigger.  First of many bloody noses in youth, tho the only one I can recall being directly caused by violence.  I have a deviated septum, which could well be from that incident.  I had a dim recollection there were adults in the background who did not care.  Recently my father told me they were Hell’s Angels.  If your beak is gonna be fucked up for life, might as well be from a Hell’s Angel baby.

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* this feels unfair to trans gals with very masculine faces.  not sure the best way to express this without triggering someone’s gender dysphoria, but i wanted to express where i am on that, for myself.  to most i’m sure i also look frankensteiny, and in alternate world where i’m not with my husband, i would totally get with another frankenstein girl.  but few of us would want to be her.  i just recognize tha struggle?

Sexy Anonymous

I once had a weird relationship with the alternative weekly magazines in Seattle.  I read them front to back every week, including the advertisements and personal ads at the end.  It’s a compulsion and a procrastination thing; better that than doing my school work.  Because of this habit, I’d sometimes show up in the letters sections, embarrassing myself.  I got to know the personalities of the writers.  I spent more time in the shared world they created than they did.  The Alt Weekly Cinematic Universe, before those were a thing.

So.  I was feelin lonesome and adventurous one time and submitted a kinky personal ad.  They give you a number where you can check messages for responses to it, and I promptly lost the number and forgot about it for weeks.  A few years later, I randomly met an old friend on Broadway and she said she recognized my personal ad from the way I wrote it.

Now is it possible I’m such an eccentric writer that I could be clocked and remembered in this way, or did I actually share with her the fantasy I was describing, back when we were hanging out, singing along to Pepper in her jalopy, or watching horrible hentai on VHS, or seeing the news reveal of the Heaven’s Gate Cult in the wee hours of the morning, thinking of the same nike slogan everybody else thought of simultaneously?  Just do it?  I must have told her about the fantasy.  Shame I lost track of the ad and missed my chance to live it.  I’m sure that the very specific person I described was out there for me somewhere, and ready to rock.

My last girlfriend ever was hot to trot.  Different lady, different topic, but adjacent.  We had killer foreplay, tho I flamed out when it was time to bone down.  Reasons.  The important thing here is the foreplay.  I did something to her kinda random and specific that she liked a lot.  There was a section in one of those alt weeklies where people sent anonymous requests for sex advice, and I recognized myself in this.  She, or somebody with the same experience, wrote a letter asking “how do I get the nerve to ask new partners for this specific kind of foreplay?”

Was it her?  I don’t know.  But since I graduated from art school, I have not returned to this habit.  The reading, not the foreplay.  Well, that specific thing surely would not work on my husband, so not that either.

Those papers got cheaper and worse, with more ads and less content as the years wore on.  I don’t even know what they’re like now.  At least one of them still exists, but what does it even have to offer anymore?  That world is behind me now, ink stained pulp sheets drifting through wind-swept gutters.

Have I mentioned these things before?  At some point you will have read the entire contents of my brain.  The repetition will set in, and then it’s over for me.

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Under a Catholic Spell

Shortly after we moved into our condo, my husband found a little plastic figurine of St. Joseph buried in our backyard, and thought little of it.  I thought it was fun for personal reasons, and was partly responsible for making it a piece in the “altar” of our household.  However, quite recently, my man randomly discovered that planting Joes is a known thing – among catholics who are trying to sell houses.  We were muffuckin’ bewitched!

So the question is this: who was the superstitious catholic?  Previous owner was a military dude cohabiting with a lady that did not share his surname, and they had a realtor.  One of these three, at least, was addicted to cathohol and wanted to sell a place fast – compelled by these pressures to inter a Giuseppe.  Perhaps we should pity them.

On the other hand, it worked, so cathoholicism must be the way.  I shall convert presently.  Gimme that bloody drank.

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Eccentricities

I can talk a little shit about people in my life on here because they all have reasons for not reading any of it.  Reasons are reasons and I take no offense, plus the freedom to talk that shit has some use.

There’s a cognitive feat that even many single celled organisms are capable of: responding to a sensory stimulus in a binary way.  See light, move towards.  See dark, move away.  I live with a full-fledged human being that utterly fails at a task this simple, probably by making it more complicated?  I don’t understand how.

In her case, it’s backing up a car.  With a backup camera.  That camera affords her the possibility of forgetting everything she ever learned about driving, about left and right, and simply moving the wheel in the direction that makes the car go in the desired direction.  It’s comparable to a video game less sophisticated than Pong.

There are two circumstances that occasionally come up in our lives which require backing up, and she avoids them at all costs.  One is going to the dump to get rid of garbage in excess of what the man will pick up from our curbside.

She was so bothered by this, I offered an alternative.  You can illegally dump this garbage, say, in a dumpster behind a random business, but I am not going to ride shotgun if you do so.  My husband said, hey, you can do that at your sister’s condos.  Unlike ours, they have shared dumpsters.  I mentioned there was a slight possibility she could get busted for it.

She instantly hatched a zany scheme to make it look like our excess trash actually was her sister’s, thereby dodging that unlikely ticket.  This only emphasized the eccentricity for me:

She crafted a macchiavellian plot to avoid culpability for a very minor crime she was very unlikely to catch punishment for, all to avoid a cognitive task that could literally be performed by a protozoan.

That’s a lil funny.

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Gaslight Ghetto

I’ve had the strange experience a few times in recent years of mentioning my childhood poverty to another person and their response making me feel gaslit, like what am I remembering wrong?  For example, mentioning I have lived in a few housing projects and homeless shelters, and them asking which ones, and then…  I don’t remember the names, barely remember the locations.  I wasn’t living in them for long enough to identify with them, to see that as my “hood,” get to know the other kids there.  We’d be kicked out or otherwise shuffled along to our next flophouse before that could happen.  My father helped me fill in a few of these details, but he didn’t remember all of it either.

So to gird myself for this situation in the future, I’m trying to remember everything about my childhood that wouldn’t be too creepy to tell.  Maybe some of those things too, with appropriate content warnings?  Here we go…

Content Warnings:  Violence Against Animals, Animal Death, Description of Poverty, Mention of Parasites and Pests, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child Injury, Children in the Context of Sexual Things (but no CSA mentioned in this one), Racial Tension, Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Marital Infidelity, Teen Pregnancy, Vomiting, Terminal Illness, A Man Dying Young, Mental Illness, Generational Abuse.

This will take more than one post and include details that don’t have to do with the poverty itself, just me trying to remember what I can before it slips any further into the void.  For this post, I’ll lay out what I can recall of the chain of places I’ve lived. [Read more…]

Where I Be

This is a picture of a corner of my living room.

The sun is shining.  Being in the southern half of the sky, it’s not as hot as it could be.

I took the day off sick because of course I did.  I’m considering what sort of things I can do for the good people of the world who need stuff to put in their heads.  Might prepare some content for the queue if I can.  Much love, y’all.

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Climb Every Mountain

Had a lil honeymoonesque thing recently, went to a rental cabin in Port Angeles and drove to some sights in the area over a few days.  First day we went to a little waterfall which was pretty cool, tho the nearest terlet was on some Silent Hill shit.  The second waterfall was an unexpectedly long hike, which wore us out something fierce, but it was cool to be in the middle of some natural nature.

Second day we went to see a mountain view, where all you had to do is pull over, get out, and look.  Simple enough.  But then we were like, since we’re on this road, maybe let’s go all the way, and ended up a mile above sea level, walking up another steep path with need of frequent breaks.

I guess the environment would still be considered subalpine because trees could grow, though they were weirdly-shaped in order to survive. Lot of short branches. The grasses and shrubs were weirder too. My home boy who had come along to do the driving noticed strawberry plants and lupines that were not the sort of thing we expected. Saw some canada jays which wikipedia suggests would be the “obscurus” subspecies, vamping for treats but receiving none. We’d left the trail mix in the car.

The trail had no handrails, and a few feet and a slip could easily lead to death.  The area is renowned for unpredictable weather and high winds, but wasn’t too bad.  I mean, I’m here, so I must not have been blown off a mountaintop.  Surprised my husband was willing to climb that high, given that he has a low key fear of heights that can even hit him looking at google satellite view.

Point is, it was very beautiful.  I’d post photos but it’s slightly less easy than posting words, and they don’t do the thing justice anyway.  They’re so flattening.  When you’re up there and you can see how far down it all is, when fast-moving clouds are sliding along the mountainside below you, random shafts of sun hitting snow-flocked jagged peaks, and those beautiful golden shrubs and grasses, the long feathery moss on the trees, I dunno.

I’m not in favor of mountain climbing generally.  That’s what got Julian Sands.  But if you can drive most of the way and then just hike up a few hundred feet of steep path, well, go ahead.  Less than an hour later, we went from having random snow sprayed in our face to having warm sun, down at a little park on the shore.  Good times.
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Dreamposting – Gun Culture

Had a dream that I was a security guard again.  Some kind of mayhem had transpired in Seattle in the night, wherein a gun had been discharged in public.  We were all under suspicion, but one specific guy had done it, and copped to it before we got into real trouble.  Even so, there was so much going on that I wasn’t aware of his confession until it had already transpired, and was running around trying to sort out defense evidence along with my home boy Clark.  Some seagulls had been killed, and during the course of events I found their bodies floating in water, gelatinized and translucent…

[Read more…]

Here Also Be Dragons

St. George can fuck right off.  St. Patrick with him.  In this house we dig the subjects of herpetology, reptile and amphibian.  Sadly, in their season we can barely hear the frogs from our cul-de-sac, most of the time my boyfriend can’t hear them above his tinnitus.  Also, though I know garter snakes are common in the area, I haven’t seen any since we moved in a year ago.  Certainly, I never expected to see a lizard.  I haven’t seen one since I was last in Kansas, half a continent away.

Now, like Charly on the other side of the planet, I’ve seen a drab brown lizard in my yard.  People further south could surely not give a shit.  Even in this state, east of the mountains in the plains, they would not be impressed.  Floridians whose houses are low key infested with invasive wall-crawlers would tell me to take my happiness to hell.  But no, this is cool and special.

There is an invasive creeping wood sorrel of the purple-leaved variety growing from a crack in the sidewalk between ours and our neighbors’ doors, which are right next to each other.  My boyfriend was stepping out to check on the sunflowers he’s growing, when he noticed a movement in the sorrel.  As the surprised beasty moved, his mind ran through possible identities – slug? snake? – before realizing it was a lizard.  He called me outside in time to see it, though if I’d gone for a camera, I would have missed it.

We did not have an amazingly good look at it, but enough to be confident it was a brown lizard about seven inches in length (18 cm) with no obvious markings. Based on the area where we saw it, range maps, comparisons of different boring brown lizards, we are moderately sure it’s a northern alligator lizard, northwestern subspecies.  I don’t know shit about lizards and presumed, wrongly, that I’d never see one on this side of the state, at least not here in the very developed suburbs.

It eats crickets, and I’ve noticed the crickets are less noisy this year.  Lizard population increasing?  Or did I just see lizard on the move because insect decline got them being more bold in searching for prey?  They also eat slugs, and I hope they do.

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