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| Me, Robusto, and "Dangerous" (a.k.a. Mad Dawg Dave), wandering around Cambridge in the early evening, lost and high and young and having fun. |
Back in college, I didn't openly speak about being Native American, because it wasn't something I was accustomed to talking about. Like our old Dutch and British Colonial roots, we had assimilated a long time ago, or so we thought. Being Métis often cropped up at the oddest times, and the most inconvenient ones, too, like partying with the boys back in college. New York State has some very large, powerful, and highly public native societies, a lot of which center on being a mad, bloodthirsty Mohegan, which are not my roots. Most Americans get their ideas about "Indians" based on bad Kevin Costner movies about beautiful hippy chicks with feathered white-girl hairdos, who just happen to live like the natives do in their peacefully quaint pot-smoking tents, where free-love and lots of nudity reigns. Nothing could be further than that about the fucking Indians I know. Promiscuous and alcoholic, yes. Nice? No. Not particularly.
It should be noted at this point in the piece that you really have to judge each tribe individually, and every individual separately, which really sucks if you are manic-depressive and learning-impaired, like my retarded friend Dave was, and still is to this day. He was also very drunk and extremely handsome back when I first met him, which didn't help him out at all as a retarded Indian. He's one of them Half-Breeds where the Euro and the Native just don't quite fucking mix right, especially if that Euro part is part Polish. Some days that fucking kid doesn't know whether his jacket is on frontwards or back, or if he's got armholes in them or not. He's that fucked up. It's actually really funny to watch, if you've managed to skip the ten-day drunk he's on.
Oh, he can plateau for years on dry land, but then he crashes and burns for years, too; trapped in a wetland he can't get out of by himself, without someone else to pull him out of the dirty bog waters he happens to be stuck in at the time. You know? He's got a really small territory, one plain boring chunk of suburban upstate New York that he can handle...and that's barely manageable on some moonlit nights as well. It's like he was made badly out of several types of clay with different firing times that just don't meld well together, and on really bad days, he splits apart at the seams. If you've ever met a New World American with mixed parentage who's really fucked up, then that's it, with some extreme Indian shit added for extra fireworks. He's a wild drunk, but he's also funny and charming at times, too. It's changeable, based solely on his unique blend of chemistry, same as his sister.
Some days she's this gorgeous Native American Cindy Crawford who's also a gourmet chef, and then at other times, she's that desperate middle-aged chick trying to act young, making out with a teenage guy in the back of the bar to prove her worth, still. They're heart-breakingly superficial, and it's a truly weird mixture, man. Just when you think they're soulful, they puke on your shoes. Just when they even out their looks, they go meth-addict skinny on you, smoking and drinking and drugging for days and days on end. Something inside of them never gelled right, and too much time with them can drive the wrong "whitey" mad. It didn't work with me, but then my genetics formed a healthy, stable branch of Indo-European the first time out, creating a strong generation of Métis that thrive in both Old and New World soil.
Genetics are great if you think about it, but if you half-ass it, you get them: my part Mohegan, Cayuga, Irish, Italian, German, Polish friends who never set into a clearly focused picture, just blurry fleeting images of your fun night out, when you may or may not have made out with one of them. I'm proud that I chose a native blend my first time out, but like the new wave term "starter" suggests, I'm glad I half-assed that first fake marriage so that I could get it annulled, because there's no way a boy like my old friend Dave could ever fully bear the weight of Holy Roman Catholic vows, made in a sanctity that will always escape him. He tries, you know? He tries. And that's about it. He's a half-boy, half-man, wild child of the night, as depressively manic as he can be, and he's not the one for me. Hang in there if you're still seeking your moon-mate. He or she is out there. You just have to look harder...
For you, Fiona
