"That's when I reach for my revolver!" There's a voice screaming in the living room. We look at each other, eyes darting furtively around the room, making sure this is real, each of us is not just hearing voices out of the ether.
"That's when I reach for my revolver! That's when I reach for my revolver!" Its getting louder now. No one moves. I look at the clock. It is 1 in the morning.
"Oyster," Georgie says. "Oyster, I think a homeless man might have just wandered into your house."
"No," I said. "No, I think that's--"
"That's when I reach for my revolver!"
"That's my dad," I say.
"Does he have a gun?" Georgie asks.
I walk into the living room and there he is, sitting on the couch looking like a stranger. My entire life he has worn a beard, big, thick and black, like primeval forests, like some kind of wizard, and now here he is sitting clean-shaven in the living room, his cheeks flushed and dark red like a tomato that's begun to shrivel, wearing headphones and screaming this phrase over and over again. "That's when I reach for my revolver!" His eyes are hazy as he takes the headphones off.
"Sorry, I'm just listening to music. On my iPod." He shouts this still, even without the headphones. He takes off his coat.
"Is that for me?"
"My iPod. Mine. That I bought with my money." He points at me, his finger quivering a little at the end. He pulls it out of his pocket and points to it and then throws it on the ground. "I love music."
I walk back into the kitchen. "He's just my dad. Not a bum. It's my dad."
"Hey everybody," he says, walking in. He doesn't look at us or anything, his eyes wandering over our heads to the window behind us, an open bottle of Jim Beam in his hand. "Did everyone have a happy birthday?" He points at Georgie, hoisting the bottle over his head. "Did you have a happy birthday?"
Georgie looks at me, opening his mouth, not sure what to say.
"What about you?" He points at one of the twins. "I don't even fucking know you, kid." He swings the bottle, spilling a line of whiskey on the floor.
"There's some food, Dad. If you want it." I point to the cupcakes and macaroons on the table.
"No," he said, touching the wall. "I'm just thirsty, just really." He opens the cabinets, starts throwing tubberware on the floor, plastic cups bouncing on the counter. He pulls out the tiniest cup he can find, a teacup barely more than an inch wide. He could hold it in the palm of his hand but he doesn't. He grips the fragile handle between his big index finger and thumb, almost daintily. He tries to pour the Jim Beam into this tiny cup but both hands are shaking and moving in different directions, like two fish in an aquarium swimming circles around each other. Some whiskey dripped in the cup but more splashes into the sink. With his back to us, he holds the cup aloft and pauses for a moment, his shoulders shaking slightly. I can see something, brown liquid, dripping from his elbow, drops dribbling onto the floor and scattering on the countertop as he begins to laugh.
"Dad," I say. "Your elbow is dripping."
His shoulders shake as he keeps laughing, whiskey scattering from his elbow. He drops the tiny teacup into the sink with a clatter but it does not break. "Oh fuck," he says, gasping for breath between laughs. "You wanted an iPod for your birthday. Happy birthday. Everyone has a happy birthday." He grabbed the bottle and stumbled back into the living room. We could hear him in there, examining the furniture and the woodwork of the house, commenting on the craftsmanship and sturdiness of the wood and beams.
"Well, uh," Georgie says. The twins pull out a phone and begin to call their mom. "I should probably get going," he says.
I walk them all to the front door. There are a row of trinkets and baubles on the bookshelves that mom had left behind. She had a love of owls, but I was never sure why, and the top of the shelf is covered in them in all different sizes and colors and materials, ceramic, wicker, plastic, blown glass, all standing like a little army, a crowd of immobile owls with a silver crucifix standing behind them all. Dad, now shirtless, grabs one from the shelf and looks it over for a second. The twins stop and watch.
"Did you have a happy birthday?" he asks the owl. He cradles it in his hand as he picks up another. "What about you? Did you have a happy birthday?" He does this with each one, picking them up, looking them over and asking them, a small collection forming in his arms. He turns around to us. "Everyone had a great birthday." He smiles. He picks each owl out again from where it lay cradled in his arms and throws them against the walls, into the bookshelf, onto the couch. "Everybody had a really great birthday. Everybody!" Some shatter, the ceramic pieces scattering over the floor. Others land with a dull sound. "Everybody," he says. When his arms are empty again, he grabs the bottle and turns back to the bookshelf. "This is a good solid bookshelf," he says and starts to climb it. The top of it wobbles dangerously, we can see the sides of it bend and sway, his feet kicking books to the floor, his hands pulling his body weight upwards. The crucifix at the top falls over.
"Dad! Dad you need to come down."
He pulled himself on top and sat there, the shelf moving with his weight.
"Mr. Oster," Georgie said. "I don't think that bookshelf can support you."
"Who built this shelf?" he yelled. "Who built this fucking bookshelf? I did. There's no stronger shelf in the whole world. Its strong. These are my books." He kicked them out of their holes onto the floor, the pages fluttering. "I've read every one of these books." He lays down on top of the shelf.
"Dad, you're going to roll off that. You're going to hurt yourself."
"Why do you think they make it like this? They make so you can lay down, so you can sleep. Why do you think I built this shelf? So I had somewhere I could rest." He grabs the silver crucifix next to him, holds it over his face as though he were examining it intently, thinking it over. He lets it drop to the floor. "Strongest bookshelf in the world," he says, taking a swig from the bottle.
"Come on," I say, grabbing Georgie and the twins and pulling them towards the front door.
"Are you going to be ok?" asks Georgie.
"Probably not," I say. The twins look at me but don't say anything. Georgie opens the door and they step outside.
"Now I know why she left," I say, holding the door open, the cold air drifts into the house behind me.
Georgie claps me on the shoulder. "Happy birthday, Oyster." I close the door behind them and watch from the window as they walk away, their breath turning to silver smog in the air. At my feet is a headless ceramic owl. I turn out the lights, go to my room, and lock the door.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
“I used to help Borges cross the street when he was blind.” The old man leaned in close to me before I noticed him standing there. His glasses framed his one good guy, the other milky and blank. “Jorge Luis Borges,” his Spanish pronunciation thick with a British accent.
“The writer?”
“Yes. I helped him cross the street.” He sounded like an English colonial in WWI, dignified in the face of death and decay. “Wonderful man, really. Spoke beautifully. I never cared much for his writing though. Myself, I didn’t get it.” He frowned.
“In Argentina?” I said, looking around, trying to see if there was anyone else at this wine and cheese event that wanted to talk to me, anyone that could help me escape the clattering dentures of this English colonial. Who was this guy?
“Yes, I lived there for quite a number of years, lovely country, before I emigrated to the U.S.” He leaned in even closer. “It was for a woman,” he whispered. “You know how it is with Latin women, you simply follow the passion.” He chuckled and leaned back, repeating the phrase ‘Latin women’ to himself.
“Not really. I don’t really know how it is,” I said, shaking my head.
“Well,” he said after an awkward moment of silence. “That’s how it is, my boy. Borges, anyway, he was the head of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires, beautiful, lovely building, down the street from my flat. Every day he would try to cross this incredibly busy street, half-blind but still so proud, cars zipping by, to get to the Biblioteca. I would see him from the front windows and the dodger nearly got himself killed. So I started helping him. This, of course, was before he got his secretary who would help him, and before Perón fired him from the Biblioteca Nacional.”
“Evita?” I smiled weakly.
“Oh she was a spicy trollop,” he chuckled and nudge me with his elbow. “Her husband, of course, Juan Perón. He became president in, I believe it was 1946, yes, that seems about right. Borges's offense against Peron was little more than adding his signature to a pro-democracy petition. The poor fool. Peron dismissed Borges from the Biblioteca Nacional and ‘promoted’ him to the position of Buenos Aires poultry inspector.”
“A blind poultry inspector.” No one else was looking in my direction. I was stuck.
“Quite. Borges resigned of course. After the Revolución Libertadora, the military government overthrew Peron and reinstated Borges as head of the Biblioteca Nacional. Borges loved them, sang their praises for anyone to hear in that lovely speaking voice. He actually went so far as to call the generals ‘gentlemen.’”
The old man scoffed, his dead eye peering at the carpet.
“’Gentlemen’, as if he had never of the desaparecidos, as if he had no idea what was happening in the country, as if those motherfuckers weren’t kidnapping thousands of people in the night and kicking them out of bloody airplanes into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. It was a terrifying time. ‘Gentlemen’. Disgusting.”
The old man ate a cheese cracker. He continued with his mouth full, dentures seeming to move independently of his jaw.
“By this time the poor bastard was completely blind, could not see a single thing. Politically as well, so I suppose. So he hired that secretary to shepherd him around like some dog, some seeing eye dog. I saw them from my front window for years. Later, at the age of 86, as he was dying, Borges married that poor girl.”
My friend Mindy, who had invited me to the event in the first place, was looking in my direction. I made a motion to her and turned to the old man, “It was nice meeting you, I should probably—”
“He was a lovely speaker though,” he continued, completely ignoring me, tongue scouring his mouth for any remaining cracker crumbs. “Just extraordinary. You could almost forgive him his politics when you felt his words raise the goosepimples down your arms.”
“This has been nice,” I said and started to inch away, slowly.
“Of course he lectured in Spanish but personally he spoke English, whenever I would help him cross the street, he knew I was English so he spoke it to me, and he always spoke with an Irish accent.”
I was still only a few inches away, I tried to wave Mindy over. Maybe she could save me.
“An Argentine with an Irish accent, just beautiful. But his writing? I never much cared for it myself. Didn’t get it.”
“The writer?”
“Yes. I helped him cross the street.” He sounded like an English colonial in WWI, dignified in the face of death and decay. “Wonderful man, really. Spoke beautifully. I never cared much for his writing though. Myself, I didn’t get it.” He frowned.
“In Argentina?” I said, looking around, trying to see if there was anyone else at this wine and cheese event that wanted to talk to me, anyone that could help me escape the clattering dentures of this English colonial. Who was this guy?
“Yes, I lived there for quite a number of years, lovely country, before I emigrated to the U.S.” He leaned in even closer. “It was for a woman,” he whispered. “You know how it is with Latin women, you simply follow the passion.” He chuckled and leaned back, repeating the phrase ‘Latin women’ to himself.
“Not really. I don’t really know how it is,” I said, shaking my head.
“Well,” he said after an awkward moment of silence. “That’s how it is, my boy. Borges, anyway, he was the head of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires, beautiful, lovely building, down the street from my flat. Every day he would try to cross this incredibly busy street, half-blind but still so proud, cars zipping by, to get to the Biblioteca. I would see him from the front windows and the dodger nearly got himself killed. So I started helping him. This, of course, was before he got his secretary who would help him, and before Perón fired him from the Biblioteca Nacional.”
“Evita?” I smiled weakly.
“Oh she was a spicy trollop,” he chuckled and nudge me with his elbow. “Her husband, of course, Juan Perón. He became president in, I believe it was 1946, yes, that seems about right. Borges's offense against Peron was little more than adding his signature to a pro-democracy petition. The poor fool. Peron dismissed Borges from the Biblioteca Nacional and ‘promoted’ him to the position of Buenos Aires poultry inspector.”
“A blind poultry inspector.” No one else was looking in my direction. I was stuck.
“Quite. Borges resigned of course. After the Revolución Libertadora, the military government overthrew Peron and reinstated Borges as head of the Biblioteca Nacional. Borges loved them, sang their praises for anyone to hear in that lovely speaking voice. He actually went so far as to call the generals ‘gentlemen.’”
The old man scoffed, his dead eye peering at the carpet.
“’Gentlemen’, as if he had never of the desaparecidos, as if he had no idea what was happening in the country, as if those motherfuckers weren’t kidnapping thousands of people in the night and kicking them out of bloody airplanes into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. It was a terrifying time. ‘Gentlemen’. Disgusting.”
The old man ate a cheese cracker. He continued with his mouth full, dentures seeming to move independently of his jaw.
“By this time the poor bastard was completely blind, could not see a single thing. Politically as well, so I suppose. So he hired that secretary to shepherd him around like some dog, some seeing eye dog. I saw them from my front window for years. Later, at the age of 86, as he was dying, Borges married that poor girl.”
My friend Mindy, who had invited me to the event in the first place, was looking in my direction. I made a motion to her and turned to the old man, “It was nice meeting you, I should probably—”
“He was a lovely speaker though,” he continued, completely ignoring me, tongue scouring his mouth for any remaining cracker crumbs. “Just extraordinary. You could almost forgive him his politics when you felt his words raise the goosepimples down your arms.”
“This has been nice,” I said and started to inch away, slowly.
“Of course he lectured in Spanish but personally he spoke English, whenever I would help him cross the street, he knew I was English so he spoke it to me, and he always spoke with an Irish accent.”
I was still only a few inches away, I tried to wave Mindy over. Maybe she could save me.
“An Argentine with an Irish accent, just beautiful. But his writing? I never much cared for it myself. Didn’t get it.”
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Oral History of Impractical Devices, 2
Read part 1
The boy was weird, that's all there was to it. Don't get me wrong, you know, I had a fondness for him, we were flesh and blood and all that. But there was something always off about him. Didn't seem to like his brothers much.
Q. And you didn’t attend the science fair during his fifth grade. Is that correct?
No, I didn't go to the science fair that time — wish I had now. I heard it was quite the spectacle, been telling people the story ever since. We had to live by candle for days afterwards. He was pretty upset, I guess, but I would have gone no questions asked if it was a soccer or baseball game, anything like his brothers. But he never played sports or games with the rest of ‘em.
Q. What did he spend most of his time on?
Once he could read he mostly did that. I don't know where he got all the books from. Either his mother was buying them for him secretly or he was stealing ‘em from the library. Even before that, the kid was a destructive force in my house, you know?
Maybe ‘destructive’ is wrong. I’m trying to be even-handed here, don’t want to come off like some bitter old man in your interview. But he would take things apart — the phone, our old hi-fi, one time the whole goddamn TV. Soon as we turned our backs, something that used to work was suddenly in pieces across the living room. And no, he could never put ‘em back together again. Not the way they had been. After he'd finally rebuilt the TV, the colors were all psychedelic and blurred, the thing only picked up stations from Mexico. His mother was worried. Thought he would electrocute himself one day. Meanwhile, I come home from work and can’t watch anything on the tube except telenovellas. He'd use the parts on something else sometimes. Robots.
Q. What do you mean when you say robots?
Not real robots, they never worked — this was still before the kid could even read. He'd take apart his brother's Gameboy. A few days later we’d see pieces of it taped to a cardboard box filled with circuit boards and wires glued to everything, with a — what do you call, a Lite-Brite? — one of those on top as the head, bulbs all arranged to look like a face. He got savvier. Started putting tape-recorders inside, so it would seem like the thing was talking. But they never did anything and there'd be the missing belt from my old turntable, strapped right to the front.
No wonder he didn't have a lot to do with other kids.
Walter Andrews
The boy was weird, that's all there was to it. Don't get me wrong, you know, I had a fondness for him, we were flesh and blood and all that. But there was something always off about him. Didn't seem to like his brothers much.
Q. And you didn’t attend the science fair during his fifth grade. Is that correct?
No, I didn't go to the science fair that time — wish I had now. I heard it was quite the spectacle, been telling people the story ever since. We had to live by candle for days afterwards. He was pretty upset, I guess, but I would have gone no questions asked if it was a soccer or baseball game, anything like his brothers. But he never played sports or games with the rest of ‘em.
Q. What did he spend most of his time on?
Once he could read he mostly did that. I don't know where he got all the books from. Either his mother was buying them for him secretly or he was stealing ‘em from the library. Even before that, the kid was a destructive force in my house, you know?
Maybe ‘destructive’ is wrong. I’m trying to be even-handed here, don’t want to come off like some bitter old man in your interview. But he would take things apart — the phone, our old hi-fi, one time the whole goddamn TV. Soon as we turned our backs, something that used to work was suddenly in pieces across the living room. And no, he could never put ‘em back together again. Not the way they had been. After he'd finally rebuilt the TV, the colors were all psychedelic and blurred, the thing only picked up stations from Mexico. His mother was worried. Thought he would electrocute himself one day. Meanwhile, I come home from work and can’t watch anything on the tube except telenovellas. He'd use the parts on something else sometimes. Robots.
Q. What do you mean when you say robots?
Not real robots, they never worked — this was still before the kid could even read. He'd take apart his brother's Gameboy. A few days later we’d see pieces of it taped to a cardboard box filled with circuit boards and wires glued to everything, with a — what do you call, a Lite-Brite? — one of those on top as the head, bulbs all arranged to look like a face. He got savvier. Started putting tape-recorders inside, so it would seem like the thing was talking. But they never did anything and there'd be the missing belt from my old turntable, strapped right to the front.
No wonder he didn't have a lot to do with other kids.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sometimes it seems like such a strange, hard road. Figuring yourself out, figuring the world out, how you fit into it all, where you come from and where you’re going. Learning who your parents are as real people, who they were before they knew you, deciding if they’re good or bad, if you’re going to be good or bad, and how much you want to be like them. Forming your opinions about things and trying to connect with other human beings, to form and maintain friendships against the alienation and loneliness hiding in every corner, behind every door, under every bed, to find lovers whose bodies feel like the barest breath against your startled cheek. Everything so uncertain, every step so halting. It seems like such a long journey, pushing your way up in the dark through soil to the surface to gasp for air, and then you realize there are hundreds, thousands, billions of others walking that same road at the same time, discovering the same things, making the same decisions or even different better ones, and the road was flattened by millions of feet before yours and will be trod upon by trillions following in your wake, discovering life along the paths you have made and your eyes flutter and you suddenly realize: You were never alone at all and you never will be again.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Oral History of Impractical Devices, 1
Read part 2
It was the fifth grade science fair where I first met Percy Andrews. The auditorium was just stuffed full of this machine, I wasn’t even sure how they got it in the door, there was hardly any room for the rest of the presentations. It just sat there, hulking, and seemed to shiver with rage that anything else was even included.
Q. And what exactly was it? What did it do?
It was a, uh, perpetual energy machine if I remember right. The idea—well, Percy’s idea—was that this machine would generate more energy than it would consume, that the results would increase exponentially. A little bit of electricity was needed to get the thing moving but after that, it fed, or was supposed to, off the power it generated itself, forever.
It wound up blowing a hole in the power grid instead. The whole town was blacked out for nearly two days while they tried to fix the damage. One of the gears blew off and almost decapitated a teacher. You should have seen her face; she wasn’t even mad or scared, just kind of confused and awestruck.
Q. So who wound up winning that science fair, in the end?
Oh, I won. My hydroponic tomatoes won the science fair. My mom was quite pleased but Percy had already left, his parents weren’t even there I guess, and he just fled the embarrassment of failing. There was a canal behind the school with a small bridge over it, behind the transformers and past the hedges and the fence, entirely hidden but only a few feet from the school grounds—it was a place where kids used to fight or kiss after class without worrying about getting in trouble. I found Percy sitting there in the darkness of the blackout, his body small and trembling like some kind of baby animal. His legs hung over the railing of the bridge. I couldn’t tell if he was weeping or not, it was too dark—but I still remember watching him and thinking about his tears, how they might be falling into the canal and mixing with the water. How I could grow tomatoes from them, he was so beautiful.
It was the last thing he ever built. Until recently.
Samantha Waters
The machine took up half the room, and seemed to throb with energy—a whirl of motion and sound held together by wires, gears, shivering tubes, and pistons. The sound of it was unreal, like an automobile factory inside a submarine, but still I could just barely hear its creator shouting over the din: “This machine will end world suffering.” He was 10 years old.It was the fifth grade science fair where I first met Percy Andrews. The auditorium was just stuffed full of this machine, I wasn’t even sure how they got it in the door, there was hardly any room for the rest of the presentations. It just sat there, hulking, and seemed to shiver with rage that anything else was even included.
Q. And what exactly was it? What did it do?
It was a, uh, perpetual energy machine if I remember right. The idea—well, Percy’s idea—was that this machine would generate more energy than it would consume, that the results would increase exponentially. A little bit of electricity was needed to get the thing moving but after that, it fed, or was supposed to, off the power it generated itself, forever.
It wound up blowing a hole in the power grid instead. The whole town was blacked out for nearly two days while they tried to fix the damage. One of the gears blew off and almost decapitated a teacher. You should have seen her face; she wasn’t even mad or scared, just kind of confused and awestruck.
Q. So who wound up winning that science fair, in the end?
Oh, I won. My hydroponic tomatoes won the science fair. My mom was quite pleased but Percy had already left, his parents weren’t even there I guess, and he just fled the embarrassment of failing. There was a canal behind the school with a small bridge over it, behind the transformers and past the hedges and the fence, entirely hidden but only a few feet from the school grounds—it was a place where kids used to fight or kiss after class without worrying about getting in trouble. I found Percy sitting there in the darkness of the blackout, his body small and trembling like some kind of baby animal. His legs hung over the railing of the bridge. I couldn’t tell if he was weeping or not, it was too dark—but I still remember watching him and thinking about his tears, how they might be falling into the canal and mixing with the water. How I could grow tomatoes from them, he was so beautiful.
It was the last thing he ever built. Until recently.
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