Just like the same news hype that returns every year, so, too, does the change of seasons pose serious intellectual problems for psychologically-impaired people. Every year, my mom and her wacky sisters get vicarious thrills from the earth's rotation around the sun that causes dry conditions out west and big rainstorms in the east, in the exact same way that a UFO fan gets off on strange ideas about alien abductions and well-wished-for anal probes. <Gasp!> Did you see the news today?!
First, it was really hot outside (TOO WARM!) and now it's freezing cold (TOO COLD!), because the "in-between" seasons like spring and fall often have weather patterns like that, which isn't fun unless you pretend you're watching a really scary movie with them, and they don't like horror movies. Uh, okay...sure. Let's go with that. Or, alternately, you could just look out the window, or feel the windowpane to gauge the temperature, or (and this is even weirder) you could actually go outside. Tons of options here.
WHAT?!! GO OUTSIDE?!! "What are you, nuts? I have severe hay-fever allergies! Do you want me to die?!" Or, they never had allergies to begin with and you're a bad person for making that up. Besides, why would you remember something so odd like that anyway? "So strange to me..." Unlike, say, paranoid schizophrenia, I actually enjoy each season for what it offers us. It's necessary to all life on this planet, and it's also a welcome change. Humans like adaptation and growth. "BOO!" Hobbits don't. So, like most of my life, my immediate family briefly passes by me while I live the best life ever, pretending that my challenges are the same "up-and-downs" as their manic-depression. It isn't, but they don't have anything else to compare it to, do they?
Just like their "parties" are some of the most dreadful affairs on G-d's green earth, so, too, did they easily confuse anti-social lurking in corners at large family reunions with "fun", the way alcoholism is nothing like having a great time at a kick-ass party. Drinking = instant asshole. Right? Of course, they know better, but my family likes to pretend that it doesn't hurt as much if they keep a vigilant boot on the heel of my good time. It's a lie, but they've already downgraded their sins against me to a cutesy widdle "white lie" (like the kind that naughty children do), while I sin real bad!
It was the same deliberate untruths they told each other about my body, my sexuality, my fertility, my health, my looks, my partying; anything that could be put down in the "Clan of the Cave Troll" to control the reversal of their intentionally misspoken words that would delay the inevitable good fortune that is my destiny. "Get your shots in while you can", my dad used to say, "because you won't be able to beat her forever." It was as tacit a reason to abuse me as they abused everyone and everything around them in their delusional sickness. How to hurt and get my help at the same time?
Like a crook who wastes $2,000 worth of time planning a $23 rip-off from a $43 bar tab, the pettiness of it was astounding in its depths, like the hapless Moriarty plays to a Sherlock Holmes, without the homosexuality and opium addiction. I don't have those facets. But, you do. I get it. And so, much like anything else that was epic in my life, my family couldn't participate. They could watch from a dark corner of the room, but they couldn't "boogie down" like me and my crew. I told them about our 70s parties with as much detail as they would let me, but when they finally opened the door to one of Bobby's rockin' shindigs, it was "Animal House: The Real" for a group of people who needed a much safer distance from the action.
They looked so uncomfortable. Bobby was swinging in a big Afro wig from a light fixture that gave way inch-by-inch as it was slowly pulled from the ceiling in a dramatic CRASH! to the floor. Just like the movies! Everyone was dancing in 70s-era costumes to "Play That Funky Music", and from the dropped jaws of my brother, his girlfriend (now wife), and his best friend, I could tell they were in shock that such things actually existed out in the world. They stood frozen in the foyer before the huge living room to the big old house we all rent(ed), with intact period details at a fraction of their costs, making the best party they ever attended into a spectator sport. I felt bad for them as I took their coats and got them beers. It'll be okay! I laughed to help them relax a little bit more.
Just like the weather that so frightened them into complacency, I also took my ability to have a good time in stride, too. I knew I was having the best time ever and so did my friends, but to actually see the astonishment on their faces brought it back home for me. Oh. You don't do that. I do. Like every good parent, I wanted them to join in the fun, even if it was just a little while before their drinking habits became alcoholism, and their study sessions with Vivarin became serious prescription pill-popping addictions. My life pulled me away from them, and I could see it on their faces that they knew it, too. We might never meet at this point again.
Eventually, my family stopped asking me if they could come by, by inviting themselves into my life to see if it was real. It was, and it still is. No tricks up my sleeves. Therefore, it seemed fitting to me that one of the last Oneonta parties I went to was held in the great outdoors, in the autumn season of September, still warm in the day and freezing at night, in classic upstate New York style. We raised our now-iconic plastic red cups to a seasonal storm named after a woman by male newscasters, in a cruel joke about our supposed tempermental moods brought on by our hormone-ravaged bodies. We toasted every fierce gust of wind that shook treetops so large, we made them more famous by putting them up in New York City as our Christmas trees.
Big fat raindrops started to fall on us at the same time the wooden makeshift stage Rock Ptarmigan played on started giving way, as all of their friends danced and sang with them onstage. Tony laughed as it tilted first towards the left where they gathered around the empty mic, then slowly gave way as he lightly hopped off the stage before the final lurch that saw it fall completely to the ground. We laughed, too. Show's over! We gave one last cheer to the heavens before the skies opened up, to pour down the rain that we knew would come but cheered for anyway, safely nestled as we were in our loving little city of the hills. It was the best party, yet. Wish you were there.
