And Mice of Men

I've been keeping a secret.  Twice everyday I've been rushing home before my wife can find out what I've been up to.  It's killing me.  First off, my back may not be able to take it anymore, and secondly, there's the concern of the spread of disease.  But it ended today, the secret that is.  And for the fifth time the peanut butter was licked clean.

It all started on Monday.  I was up late, caught between Facebook and focusing, when a little mouse ran out from underneath our pantry and over my shoe.  I was a little disappointed in how I reacted.  I leapt.  I screeched.  The mouse scurried away to his foul little reprieve near our food supply.

Knowing that Sarah would rather not know there's a rodent in our house, I put forth my clandestine plan to get rid of it. It would be pretty run of the mill.  I'd move the refrigerator out of its nook, set a trap and sneak the fridge back without anyone ever knowing of the invader and its quick death. 

It didn't work like this.  The next morning I checked the trap and the mouse had eaten all the peanut butter without tripping the trap.  I set it again and went off to work.  I came back for lunch and, much to Paco's consternation, went about grunting the stainless steel appliance across the kitchen floor.  Again, the mouse ate the bait, but heaven could wait.  He was still alive and I could hear him squeaking from underneath the pantry. He was taunting me. 

So I expanded my efforts.  I kept the fridge moved out, set the trap, and put up a camera as well.  I wanted to see how this mouse was getting away with this.  And then in moving the trap to get a better camera angle, the damn thing snapped shut on me.

Having the kitchen pulled apart and a camera in the middle of the room is the kind of thing I didn't want Sarah walking in on.  So before getting the boys from daycare, I'd swing by the house, take down the camera, move the fridge and, of course, re-bait and reset the trap.  I wasn't only not killing the mouse.  I was feeding it.  This happened all week: killing my lunch hour setting up video equipment and preparing traps, and wasting valuable resources racing around the city living my secret life. 

Finally, on Friday everything started to unravel.  And then ravel, before unraveling again.  I was back from my hurried lunch when Sarah called.  The pain in her molar meant she was going to visit the dentist at three, therefore leave work early.  Well I became obsessed with timing.  If she were to be done with her appointment at four, which seemed likely, then she'd get home and walk in on what looked like a dark obsession for animal snuff films.  Worse, I'd have to spend all weekend dismantling and cleaning cupboards. 

My boss is very cool, and probably wouldn't mind if I left early to clean up the scene, but we were working on a deadline and I really needed to show I wasn't really all that distracted by a mouse.  But then he chimes in about how mad his wife got when she discovered mice, and we get into this confirmation of how once your castle is breached you can never live it down.  Your manhood is tested by a mouse, and the life you're providing comes into question.  And there begs the question, "how dirty are you?"  Am I all the people I've ever made fun of?  Am I the redneck with the dirty kids--oh crap, are my kids going to be the ones at school who purportedly give off namesake germs? 

After this conversation I'm cranking to get things done and I'm really getting nervous about being discovered, and then Sarah calls again.  She's at the dentist office and she's gotta get a root canal.  I'm ashamed at how happy I was.  She was going to be distracted long enough for me to get home and keep my manhood intact.  I even got cocky.  Instead of first going home and straightening out the kitchen, I went and got the boys. 

Quin, Otto and I were at the last major light to our house when Sarah called again.  The dentist wasn't able to do the procedure so she was on her way home.  I turned onto our street and our car was heading at our truck.  She was equidistant to the house.  I sped up and got into the garage, but it was useless.  To hide all my gear I would have to ditch the kids in the car, ostensibly leaving irritated children for the woman who had Novocaine mouth from a painful dental ordeal. 

I gave it up.  I was done moving the fridge.  I was done moving the reading lights out of the kids' rooms for extra camera lighting. I needed to share my defeat with someone--strip away the macho sheath and get some comfort through our shared experience.  Which now appears will come through cleaning the kitchen.  

Otto the Elephant

Picture Translation, Episode 1: A Day Downtown

So you say you want to go outside and play?  If there's anyone I know who can match a kid's determination to do something ridiculous, it is me.  We'd talked about riding the train downtown and enjoying some time on the 16th Street Mall.  We were going to leave at 10am, which would have been perfect, but a little snafu with me watering trees and getting the boys wet with the hose meant we had to chase little, naked people around the house.  After finally getting everybody together again it was 11.  By the time we got downtown, it was colder and windier and we were hungry.  But we have a rule in our house: no one goes anywhere until we're all starving and crazy.  Sarah suggested we make a quick U-turn, but once I'm set on something I'll drag my grandmother through the brush to get it done.  Think Harrison Ford in Mosquito Coast.  So we ate, and while at the restaurant Quin hit his already tender nose (daycare injury) and warranted batshit craziness ensued.  The service was awful (wtf?  Cheesecake Factory?  desperate.) and everybody's tolerance wafted away in the fall breeze.  We ended up missing two trains and once we got one had to get off and wait for another.  We then ended the day by pushing our hollowed progenal husks home in the stroller. 

Here's the picture.

 Here's the picture translated:

a little different than those Grape Nuts commercials

Yesterday, a new business contact asked me, "When you wake up, what's the first thing you want to do?"

Of course you don't want to scare people with too many details. But what the hell, if you're going to do something you might as well do it all out.

What's the first thing I want to do in the morning? To be honest, I want to go back to sleep. I used to make a move on my wife, but now we're both too tired.  And the three year old in the bed makes it kind of weird.

So, what is the first thing I do?

I roll uphill.

It's what I have to do to motivate myself past the doubt and doldrums, the warm bed pulling me back in. So I move and I keep moving, because if I stop, I'm toast.

The motion begins with trying to get out of the house as quietly as possible. I take Paco to the park at 630, and if the boys hear me they'll want to go. That means that either Sarah, who just wants to lie there for a few more minutes, gets stuck with angry children, or I take a kid or two who want to bail on the cold as soon as we get there.

I walk around the park, sometimes jogging, sometimes groaning out some pushups. I keep to myself, with about 45 percent of me wanting to talk to the other guy who's there.  Otherwise it's Paco and me. Paco running ahead and then turning around to see what I'm doing. It's must be disappointing for a dog, or for any species.  Mostly I'm trying to enjoy the moment, but screwing up the leisure by thinking of all the stuff I need to do. And the stuff mounts. Everything I see is inspiration for another story. There's something about my mom I need to write. My dad; I need to get a eulogy done before he dies. Eulogies are always too late.

And I think of a comedy line that would be a great part of a sitcom I'll never get to. For a moment I think that if I just started writing it it would be done by now. And so would that book. I'm going to finish my Masters...comes a late-breaking distraction.

"Jesus, Jared" I say aloud. I cringe, wondering if there's anyone around. I make point to remind myself to stop scolding myself so loudly in public.

I get back to the house and I keep it positive. The kids help with that. When they wake up they're so cute and unaffected by all the bitterness in the world. The last thing I want to do is push them over the cliff before their time.

I make some breakfast. I turn on PBS Kids. We eat strawberries and miniature powdered donuts while we watch The Cat in the Hat or Curious George. Their jet engines are just warming up.

And then it spins into the final ten minutes of chaos. We're about to go but Quin announces he wants to take something to school that he shouldn't.  He's also hungry.  I say something about the breakfast he should have eaten.  Dumb.  Otto smells. We've got to change him. He doesn't want changed and writhes around on the changing table. Exorcism.

We get in the car and off to school.  I drop them off in their respective classrooms.  They take to it well but I'm sad we have to do this.  I have a brief Che Guevara moment in the hall.

Ten minutes later I'm in traffic, listening to NPR and drinking whole milk out of a sippie cup. It's good.  I've rolled to the top and now the day can begin.

I don't have anything purple, but i have this.

I picked at the grass like if I tortured it enough it might give me an answer. I picked at it hoping and waiting for an earthquake or massive sinkhole to swallow me up. It was only a matter of moments before I'd cave and tell a handsome, middle-aged couple that their son was gay.

Their son wasn't there. He had hung himself from my bunk bed. But three days before, he was alive and cracking jokes. He was funny, he was smart and he was carrying a burden so heavy it would eventually suffocate him.

Michael was everything a parent would want. He was a great student, he was outgoing and he was handsome.  He had a brilliant mind for math and was a business major. In a world that's far, far away from ours, being a homosexual would not be a disclaimer to that list.

It was 1993 and gay was everywhere. But I'd just moved from my little hometown where no one was gay--where no one was gay in the same way Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says no one in Iran is gay. There was denial, but perhaps like someone who doesn't want to come out of the closet in a conservative Muslim country, small town America doesn't exactly roll out the purple welcome mat. But I shouldn't blame small towns or even my town. In 1993 gay was everywhere because of big city politics.

It's ironic.  Gay was everywhere not because homosexuals wanted it to be, but because a group of self-declared non-gay folks in Colorado Springs forced it there.  They put an amendment on the fall '92 ballot that was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court as infringing on the rights of gays and lesbians.

For me this was all new.  I was so clueless that the first woman I ever hit on at college was the president of the Gay and Lesbian Bisexual and Transgendered Alliance. She would say "no", and I reeled from the rejection until she presented to the class her role with the GLBTA.

So I wasn't at all presuming anything when I walked into my dorm room, and sitting on a well-made bed with matching pinstripe comforter, sheets and pillows was my new roommate.  He'd organized his desk.  It was simple and clean with a designer lamp, calculator and notepad.  He hopped up, and in a button-up shirt and tie introduced himself.  He also apologized for moving to my desk all the dirty clothes and empty beverage containers I'd left on his. 

It was going to be a tough adjustment for me, because prior to school I'd had my own room for the three weeks of football camp. I'd gotten accustomed to my mess.

Michael and I were the prototypical freshman dorm dwellers. We started out as friends and ended with a bitter falling out. There was something about his stereo. It was broken and he blamed me. I was mad about him borrowing my car. He became messier than I was. I was loud when I was drunk. Those fumes add up and in a space the size of a handicapped bathroom stall.  I can’t remember what sparked it, but I left a week before school ended. I'd found an apartment and was in the process of moving when I got the call.

A friend of Michael's walked into his room and found him. She was not supposed to go into his room that morning. He'd called the night before and asked that I pick him up so he could take me out for breakfast and we could fix our problems. I was on my way to my car when I noticed the apartment complex payphone ringing. For the heck of it I picked it up. It was a mutual friend desperately trying to find me.

Someone had seen Michael the night before. She said he seemed very comfortable. He was stoned, maybe tripping on acid, she thought. He commented on the stars and how pretty they were. She was out walking her dog and was taken by how calm he was, in bare feet, standing on the lawn outside the dorms. It seemed he had made up his mind, written his letters and made peace with his decision. He was going to die.

Under the same stars where we all live. On this same bit of dust floating through the universe. It's seems that we are insignificant, but in this small space, we are not.  We are the meat between the morning and the night. We are the lovers past dusk and the comfort before dawn. We are the scaffold on which we all try to climb and the helping hand that can help us get there. We are all we've got. For a moment, imagine a world without heaven or hell. Without Harry Potter or magic or a fifth dimension of gentle, glowing ease. We can only be certain of what we can do for each other.

You can add a god if you want. But time still passes. And on a day in late April of 1993, I walked across campus in a daze. Kids were looking at me, talking. I was the roommate of the kid who had killed himself. Some of the less tactful asked if it were true that I got an automatic 4.0. I didn't.

In the distance there was a tree on a hill. It stood still as college kids walked past it. They would keep on walking, through school, internships, their trip to Europe and into their adult lives. The tree would loom in the background--perspective for perpetual motion. I got a chill knowing that I would one day leave campus and move onto other things, but Michael would not.

Screwed down to a microscopic focus so tight you've cracked the lens, there I was on the back lawn of a stranger's home. A friend of the family offered their Durango house for an informal celebration of life. Everyone was inside hugging and sharing the pleasant smiles and laughter that perforate the darkness of death. Michael's parents arrived from Colorado Springs and requested I join them in private. They wanted to know why.

They sat together. They were imposing and beautiful in the sun by the aspen trees. Middle aged but well kept, he had a full head of dignified silver, and she was gray, but put together like a Lego person. Sharp angles and sleek.

"Yes. Why?" she repeated. "We want to know anything you know about what Michael was thinking."

She looked at me, piercing. He joined her. They looked like they were posing for a political piece.

"We don't have our son, Jared," he filled. "All we have left are questions."

I looked down between my Indian-style lap and picked at the grass some more. I couldn't dig fast enough.

I like to be quick with answers but this was, apparently, an answer in lieu of their living son. I thought about the truth, or at least what I knew of it. I figured they should know it.

When "homosexual" rolled out of my mouth it didn't feel like a word. It felt like a sea cucumber or mound of mud. I didn't know if I'd said it correctly. I repeated it louder and simpler: "He was gay."

I paused. His parents squinted like my vertical hold had gone.

I just kept going. I couldn't stop myself.

"I think he died because he was gay. He was gay and had no idea how to explain it to you or the world."

I could have set myself on fire and his parents would not have budged. They were paralyzed.

I went on to tell them about how I believed he'd come out, and then regretted it. Every few days we'd get a call from the GLBTA. A familiar female voice would ask for Michael and ask how he was doing. Often he’d be in the room but would refuse to get on the phone. One day, when he was gone, a professor called and asked for Michael. I knew the professor so asked if I could help. He'd been crying.

He told me that he'd just read Michael's paper. He said it was the most moving student piece he'd ever read. It was a story about the struggle of an oppressed woman.

Michael's parents cried. I cried. I don't remember much after that. The day smeared into a Monet of self doubt. I don't know how long I sat out there, but I fielded questions about a dead man's sexuality until my face was hot with sun burn. It was a small sacrifice compared to the shattered existence of a mother and father.

A few weeks later they would send me a letter. It said nothing of Michael's sexuality. Just that they missed him and they chose to remember him as they knew him. I guess that said a lot.

Not too long after that I ran into one of Michael's friends at a party. She said she could never forgive him for killing himself. I wasn't sure what to think. He's dead. All the kids he knew are going to grow up chase after their dreams. Michael won't get to do that. And I wondered if it was him who needed the forgiving, or a world that made him think he had no reason to live.

Mourning the loss of another sensible, financially sound lifestyle.

We have several friends who are about to have their first kid. I wanted to make a list of things they should do before it's out of its convenient carrying case.

Take a nap. Go out to eat and then see a movie. Nap during the movie. Then go back out for a late meal. Wake up and have a three and a half hour breakfast where the only person you're worried about running off is you after your second pot of bottomless coffee. Break something glass and leave it on the floor, and then stay up all night playing Nintendo. Cuss. Cuss like a fucking shit-faced cockwad sailor with a penchant for pussy, tits and ass. Cuss until you can't stand yourself.  Cunt.  Wear formal attire just for the hell of it. If you're the father, drink. This is your moment to relish one of the little known highlights of a pregnancy; a designated driver with big boobs. Mom, you need to be sober for many reasons, but being lucid is so important to savor every moment of every peaceful meal, every sip of something without floaties, every solo trip to the bathroom, and every conversation with an adult. Nothing will ever be yours again, and in about a year you'll hear yourself talk and wonder when the hell you became that annoying parent you swear you'd never be. Don't go to McDonalds. Don't do it. You'll get plenty. Go to a real restaurant and order your food cooked slow. Get several appetizers, several desserts and extra steak knives just to carelessly place around the table. Read. Read with porn playing loudly in the background. Listen to gangster rap and the Dropkick Murphys. Impulsively go to a concert you don't even care about.  Call your friend with kids and ask if they want to go. Challenge yourself to see how last minute you can do things. As you leave the house breathe deep the air of spontaneity, maybe leave the porn playing.  Appreciate logic.  Watch sports, or whatever your favorite show is. First, switch to PBS to make sure cartoons are on, then flip away to your favorite show. Do this over and over while loudly wishing horrible, violent things on Elmo, Bob the Builder and that shit Caillou. Cuss while having sex. Make some noise you've never made before. Do an animal impersonation. Break the bed. Book a trip on a plane to wherever. Pack a bunch of liquids and knives so the delays in security are all your own. Relish controlling your own chaos. Board the craft and be sure to be indignant about the crying kids. It is a shame that some people should be so thoughtless. Get a convertible coupe rental car with barely enough room for yourselves. Go to a body of water and be careless about the shoreline.  Go to Vegas and get a hooker.  Pay her by the hour to discuss what her parents did wrong.  Vocalize criticism of your spouse.  Verbalize all the negative things about the people you know.   Go.  Go now and be free with your dark, inner, nonparental beast.  Love the animals in your house.  Talk to the plants.  Go to all the parties you can and be the life by saying you'll never take your kids for fast food and you'll never sit them in front of the TV and you'll never buy them those stupid light-up shoes.  Go mofos!  It's time to spread your wings and fart like a drunk trucker.  Get over yourself and laugh at burps and take notes on all the stupid shit you do all day just so you'll remember what you did with your time.  Get on with it!  Get to the beach, start a bar fight in Mexico, cook something that's not shaped like a zoo animal!  Smell broccoli like it's a rare flower, put saffron and thyme and basil in things.  Eat a pan of brownies, chug a wine cooler, smoke something and don't give a damn who sees you do it.  Celebrate the shit out of your birthday and buy absolutely nothing for no one for Christmas.  The clock is ticking. The person you know as you is about to die, so live it up. Fill that bucket list up with debauchery and opulence and vast swaths of sloth without once somebody rubbing a booger on you.  Or wipe a boog on yourself while shouting something morbid about the tooth fairy. 

Go.  Godspeed.  Explore what's beyond that childproof gate.  And whatever you do, tell us about it.  You are our Magellan and we are starved for your spicy adventures.

The Morning Timeline

7:43 -- I make the announcement, "Load up all buttercups!"  Quin repeats it.  We're on our way.

7:43 -- No Otto.  Hear grunting sound from kitchen.

7:44 -- Quin wants to see what's repulsing me.  While rolling up the toxic diaper I explain that you can see as good with your imagination as with your eyes. 

7:46 -- Washing hands.  Otto plants himself in front of refrigerator and his demanding a 'nana', something that after much anger and confusion we found is a pickle.  We're out 'nanas'.  I get him string cheese. 

7:46 -- Quin wants string cheese, too.

7:47 -- Quin doesn't want half of Otto's string cheese so takes both. 

7:47 -- I scold Quin.  He shoves entire string (which is really more like a dowel) of cheese into his mouth.

7:48 -- I stand there trying to think of something to say.

7:50 -- I get Otto his own string of cheese.  He takes a bite and gives the rest to Paco.

7:52 -- Otto successfully loaded in the car, I go to buckle Quin.

7:52 -- Quin opens his mouth and ejects now ball of cheese into my hand.

7:52 -- Paco gets more cheese.

7:54 -- Backing out of driveway Quin demands milk.

7:54 -- My explanation that there's a lot of milk in cheese hits some resistance.

7:54 -- I tell Quin to have some of Otto's milk.

7:54 -- Quin launches into an angry chant: "I want MY sippy cup!" 

7:57 -- "I WANT MY SIPPY CUP! I WANT MY SIPPY CUP!  I WANT MY SIPPY CUP!"

7:58 -- I announce the passing of a cement mixer truck.  Quin bites. 

7:58 -- Peace is restored. 

8:02 -- Arrive at school. 

8:03 -- Give the boys a big, huge hug.

8:03 -- Otto blasts a pound of snot onto me.