The phone rings and I hear your voice. Yeah I know you. I’m even like you, I’m told. My mother says this from time to time, usually in like a negative or tired or sadly ironic kind of way. God, she’ll say, you can be just like Joe Sweeney. Which I always think is weird, on account of the obvious, don’t you? So the bad shit’s written on the DNA.
“Hey there,” you say when I answer the phone.
“Hi,” I say.
I knew the call was coming, had been expecting it, and as soon as the phone rang I knew, crashed out on the living room floor, still stuffed with OG, gazing at the ceiling with a feeling of pleasant dislocation, I knew.
Let me tell you how I feel when I hear your voice. And this is going way back to a time before I knew how I felt about any of this. If I even know now.
I feel dread. I feel confusion. I feel guilt. I feel sadness. I feel the systems begin to churn and move forward at high speeds beyond my control, as if my stomach were a compass in a room with a giant magnet, as if . . .
“How you doing?” you say.
“Happy Birthday!” you say.
“Thank you,” I say.
“This is the big one. This is a milestone. This is, so what, now I guess you can buy dirty magazines and go fight in wars. Oh and vote! Don’t forget that one. I mean come on, let’s, we gotta prioritize here. Lucky for you there’s an election coming up.”
“Yeah,” I say, forcing a little laugh, “what luck.”
“Forget dirty magazines. Bill Clinton or George Bush? There’s the real fun.”
And now it’s your turn to laugh, a low dry chuckle.
“Yeah. I mean wow. Think of everything I have to look forward to.”
“Better start reading up now so you can make an informed choice,” you say. And you laugh again and I laugh again and when the laughter fades you say, “No but seriously, Vim. How are you? How have you been?”
But seriously, folks... what’s up with airplane food?
“I’ve been good. Things have been, you know, pretty much the same. I went up north for a while, visited my uncle, came back. Now I’m just uh.”
“How’s your uncle doing?”
“Oh. He’s . . .”
We talk for a minute or two about my uncle and his crazy ways and the few things you remember from your time in the family, how the first time you met my uncle and his brother you thought, I mean these guys were gone, Vim, they looked like they were about to pass out at the table. I’d tried pot just a time or two but nothing like what these guys or kids, I should say, I guess really they were just kids at the time and . . .
I’m nodding, smiling, thinking of the spaghetti. My mom walks into the kitchen and as she passes she looks and whispers: “Joe Sweeney?” Then she’s at the sink, rinsing her coffee cup and couldn’t care less. She’s already been through it. I’m on my own.
You are my family. Your name is in mine. Your blood is in mine. The telephone turns into a hammer. “What’d you do today,” you say, “anything special?”
“Special?” I say. “Yeah you know, did you go out to eat or anything or . . .”
“We went out.”
“Oh yeah? Where’d you go?”
“The Olive Garden.”
And this for some reason makes you laugh. You laugh. Maybe I can’t read the laugh. Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe you’re laughing because it’s all we know how to do. But the laugh cuts me deep, my thoughts jumble and swarm, the kitchen reels.
“Pretty fancy,” you say, still amused.
“Fancy?” I look around the room. Nothing in here makes sense anymore. The phone isn’t a hammer, it’s a giant sucking heart.
“All-you-can-eat breadsticks,” you say. “Can’t beat that.”
I think of my mom. I think of Ed Hoekstra. I think of a time not so long ago, early last fall. I was on the back porch and Ed came home from some golf thing. He can’t golf. I’m a hacker, he likes to say, but I drink beer pretty good. And he was drunk then so we shot the shit for a while and his eyes were swimmy and happy before they changed and he looked over at me and said in a low voice You know it Vim, you know it, don’t you?
I didn’t speak. I waited for him to finish. But he did not finish. During the pause my mind rolled back in fast-breaking waves the way it’s doing right now and Ed wiped his face where a tear had fallen. I felt very small, like I didn’t know shit, and I waited.
You know I love you just like... like you were my own son.
So now a huge hole opens and the truth flies up from my throat and bangs against the back of my teeth and all the rage and denial. Sometimes I think there’s no place for truth in the world, no place for love. But I want you to know me finally in a way you never have, because some wounds don’t heal and some dreams won’t die and I want you to know me. I want you to understand or try to as much as you can so we can go on reflecting one another but in different places, a different geography separated forever by unbridgeable distances so I say to you now, “Yeah, no, you sure can’t. But tell me, how would you like all you can eat of my dick?”
And the next thing is I’m shaking in some other room and my mother comes over and then she has her arms around me.