I am temporarily living with my parents in St. Anthony. No, not St. Anthony Falls. No, not St. Anthony Park. St. Anthony Village, a teeny tiny suburb that borders Minneapolis on the northeast side. Anyone from there says they are from Northeast Minneapolis because the skyline is in our backyard. Nobody within a 5-mile radius knows where or what the fuck it is (for point of reference, it shares an independent school district with the southern half of New Brighton, and the other half goes to Irondale). For decades, our only claims to fame were Christie Prody, who dated O.J. Simpson post-murder trial and when her cat died and the neighbors smelled something funny, they worried she had also been murdered; and my good friend and classmate since first grade, who despite being 5’8” and 160 (?), worked his ass off enough to make it to AAA baseball and had a year-long stint with the St. Paul Saints. St. Anthony, MN may have made local headlines when the city got sued for not allowing a mosque to be in a building zoned for commercial use. It made national headlines when a St. Anthony police officer killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop. The officer was acquitted. The verdict was delivered a week before our Pride event last year and that is part of why there was this PR kerfuffle with the Minneapolis Police Department and the Pride parade and it was just awful! I was selfishly grateful to have been out of town when the verdict was delivered. I was also really surprised. After that, I don’t know what the hell we tell our black children to believe in anymore. As for my hometown, it became a very polarized community with “BLACK LIVES MATTER” signs in one yard and “WE SUPPORT OUR POLICE” in a neighboring one. City insurance paid for the settlement that went to Philando’s mother. Taxpayers footed the bill for the settlement that went to his girlfriend, whose young daughter was in the back seat.
My mother wanted to move this year, I would later find out. She told Chuck during an impromptu game night -- we played Monopoly on XBOX One and she kicked all of our asses! My parents had flirted with the idea, but I never knew they had been that serious about it; at 61, I thought they would wait until official retirement.
Easter fell on April 1st. I hobknobbed at Lush with the gays for a bit and then drove to my parents’ house. My brother had to work. My grandparents were there. My mother and the three cats (Junie Pie, Bobcat, and “my’ cat, PENNY ANN, a tortoiseshell who is soooo bad but soooo good and she is my baby! -- I love the other two as well, they are very kind and docile and originally Dane’s but he gave up custody to Loretta after a year) were there.
 |
| BOB! (who is terrified of my loud noises and sudden movements), Penny Ann (the best and worst cast you will ever meet), and Junie Pie (who is as kindhearted as she is mentally challenged) |
My father was not.
“Your father went to the hospital last night,” my mother explained. He had been complaining of the flu lately. A week before, he fell asleep on the couch and I giggled and Dane called me an asshole and we all assumed he was stressed from work. He’s an independent tax strategist! The tax code was dramatically overhauled this year! This was the part of the year in which he was bombarded with questions from clients! Every year since he opened his own office, we were always used to the fact that between March 1-April 15, we would see our father very few hours during the day, and when we did, he would complain about people who would call him on April 10th delivering very complicated returns and not understanding why he couldn’t file them properly before the deadline.
My parents had been at Big Louie’s for Saturday night bingo the night before and my mom thought my father looked ill. She is also a nurse and a worrier, so she bit her tongue. He stumbled on his way to the bathroom. Justine, the gregarious bar manager, came up to my mother. “Jesus,” she said. “Mike looks like shit.” The third-party confirmation was enough for her. My father came back to the table and my mother put aside their bingo cards. “We’re going to the hospital now,” she said. He predictably protested but she drove him to the hospital and waited in the ER with him for hours.
At some point that night, a doctor decided to run an EKG, which, along with my mother’s stubborn intuition, saved his life. He had an infection in his heart valve. Two days later, a bovine transplant was performed. His heart caught up but then his body reacted very poorly to the subsequent antibiotics. He was in the hospital and a rehabilitation facility for a month and a half. In lieu of Big Louie’s bingo, he had to settle for bingo at St. Therese in New Hope, where the prizes were not vast amounts of cash but throw pillows, stuffed animals, and coin purses. He never felt younger in his life.
March 31st -- the day that my father, unbeknownst to me at the time -- had the health crisis of his life -- was the deadline in which I had to decide if I was staying in my apartment or not. I chose not to, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, Stevens Square has turned into a game of Mario Kart with all of the construction! Hand me my conspiracy theory tin foil hat, because here we go: I really do believe that, because demographically, Stevens Square has one of the lowest median incomes, neighborhood-wise, in the city, that the powers that be don’t really give a fuck about our way of life. Why would they? Stevens Square is a densely populated, tiny little grid on the map, between Loring Park and Whittier. It mainly consists of the people who were priced out of Loring Park (hi! It’s me!), immigrant families, and folks ahead of the curve who decided to invest in the neighborhood with their own condos instead of the much more expensive and gentrified Loring Park or the North Loop. Did I mention the construction??? You cannot go anywhere. The 35W-N/94-E ramp has been closed for months. The 35W-S ramp is now carpool/bus only. This week, our fucking alley had a CLOSED sign in front of it. The street behind us, which was closed to traffic but available for parking, is now closed with a gate in front of it so you can’t even park there. Our landlords have had oodles of showings and still can’t find potential renters. I think it’s because, despite the fact I will never find an apartment in this location with such an affordable price, people new to the neighborhood are understandably turned off by the fact that you need a micro machine for a vehicle and teleportation skills to successfully navigate this neighborhood right now.
I planned on moving, and, like I had done twice in my twenties, using my tax rebate as a security deposit for my next apartment. My father does my taxes. He was out of commission. I tried TurboTax and found out how much I would get, but they needed my AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) as reported last year. My father had that info. He was rarely lucid and also didn’t have access to his files. “Just ask him,” my exasperated mother said one day (after my selfish ass called her frantic, because my father being hospitalized was one thing, but my not getting my tax rebate by May was A. VERY. SERIOUS. CRISIS.). As if my father, from his hospital bed, would remember the exact numeral he had reported for his adult son a year prior. I even tried the IRS website, but they couldn’t find any proof of my existence with the variable information I had. Again, my father = tax professional, me = immature ingrate who expects that magical jackpot every year with minimal effort.
I am also tap-dancing around the fact that, while I kind of said this in our last entry (months ago!), I was in a relationship that wasn’t. I could write so many cryptic things, but that would not be fair to him -- or you, who have read of all my triumphs and tribulations from the beginning.
So I can offer you this, only speaking of my own faults:
-I never spoke up for myself. My Sliding Doors moments consist of him blatantly lying to my face -- with good intentions, sure -- and myself just nodding and looking out the car window, or retreating elsewhere. BUT THEN WHAT IF INSTEAD:
“I appreciate you wanting to spare my feelings,” I say in the movie in my mind when he says his favorite lie as casually as one comments on the weather, as we are on our way to a party in the suburbs. “But I know that isn’t true. If you would like to have an honest conversation about this, we can have it.” And we have that conversation, as awkward as it is, and then everything is okay. And no one is hurt and everything is out in the open. There is no suspicion, there is no paranoia, there is no resentment, there is no lack of trust and miscommunication ever again.
I don't say that in reality. We go to the party. We will go to many parties. And all of my anger and trust issues fester to the point that every single night we go out, I become a boiling pot of rage. All of that not speaking up for myself? Those feelings and the pain from them are there, only now everything is coming out at 100 words a minute at 3:30 A.M. in high decibels. Somehow everything is his fault. All of my pain, all of my insecurity, all of my self-loathing, is solely because of him. That is not true. That is not fair.
And I become increasingly vituperative. He becomes increasingly assertive in deflecting my verbal abuse. I follow suit. All of this is exacerbated by Adderall and tequila, a combination that sounds as reasonable as "Roseanne and Twitter" and "16-year-olds and a road trip".
-I was so in love with him. He loved me a lot. We did not feel this way at the same time. I was a wallflower when he was a player. He was a wallflower when I was a party animal trying to prove something. Maybe that is a guy thing or a gay thing. Maybe it is just the narrative of my life. I fall head over heels and tell myself I've moved on right before they realize it. (See also: Kevin. See also: Paul Ryan. Kinda sorta with Broski, but that whole thing was fucked up from the get-go.)
And I stopped writing.
I stopped caring.
To let go of my anger was to let go of the power I had in being correct. I was not willing or maybe even able to do that.
My new therapist is named Bobby.
***
In so many ways, my life began in 2012. Previously, I was a 3-time college dropout. A wannabe comedian. A wannabe actor. A wannabe writer.
After three years (!) of living with my parents, then with a group of straight dudes, and then with my recently divorced and relocated uncle, I finally moved to “the big city” (read: 10 minutes from where my parents lived). I had previously done stand-up here and there. I failed to sell a memoir. I worked on a play for months before the whole thing got canceled - but that’s where i met Joey and that’s when I started writing again. I did it the same way I had done in high school and college with LiveJournal, using code names for my plethora of crushes and acquaintances.
And people just found it. New to Twitter, I recognized blogger Dennis Jansen at LUSH and was brave enough to introduce myself; he became my staunchest supporter, mentioning me twice on his website and keeping in touch and encouraging my writing even after leaving Minneapolis for Dallas and Washington. Izak Pratt, whom I had a Twitter crush on forever, gave me words of encouragement after my first major blog. A striking woman named Dani approached me at the 19 one day. “You were my routine,” she said. “I would start my morning tea and while I drank it, I would see if you had a new post. I loved reading what you had to say”. James Henry would give me advice about boys, especially in “Season One”. I was the outsider who found his way into the world of the Minneapolis nightclub scene, perhaps in its final, pre-Grindr dying breaths. People read of my friendships, my adventures in show business and stand-up, the disappointment in that industry, the disappointment with my real job, my new apartments, my flirting with crushes, my absolute heartbreaks, et cetera. The messier my adult life got, the more cryptic and infrequent my writing was, and for that I will always feel guilty and inadequate. I had let everyone in when life was great; why could I not do the same when life was not? I have only deleted one episode. I kiss a boy in it who is very gorgeous but I didn’t know he was closeted when I wrote it. Oh, and I ended up in the psych ward at the end AND THEN I PRETENDED THAT EVERYTHING IS NORMAL!!!!!!
I wrote a play instead. It’s in the Fringe Festival. Go see it.
And thanks for reading.
I found my Kelly Clarkson Breakaway CD yesterday. I was obsessed with it in high school. Even my yearbook says BREAKING AWAY. I thought I was gonna move to Florida and I ended up in Wisconsin for two years, lived the dream in New York but screwed that up, felt hopeless but then somehow became somebody ...
...And now I'm back here again. Ten years later.
As my hokey senior yearbook says, it's not good-bye, it's see you later.
One kid wrote in every person's yearbook, "No one's a virgin, life screws us all". He became a widowed father by 28. Maybe he knew.
So let me be a hokey yearbook and tell you to have a good summer.
And let me also say thank you for following me during all of these years, especially to those of you who Tweeted me who came up to me at a bar, probably feeling so awkward and saying, "Hey, this is weird, but I read your blog?"
It meant so much more to me than you'll ever know.
xoxo
Gossip Girl
Your writing is great, Jakey.
ReplyDelete