Pancake Breakfast

In addition to the pain of being the token "hetero" at any gay girl scout meeting (as well as many design groups in the city, as an adult), I also hated everything they did as an activity, because I had pretty much learned it already on my own, or with my brothers and my dad's boy scout troop, and it was all the cool stuff like making fires, swamping out canoes, basic CPR, hiking, and making fires. Done. Why did I have to do it again with these chicks? They were horrible. My mom was also invited along for girl scouting, and she took the opportunity to join this gay movement with a gusto that frightened me in its bitchiness. As the only straight kid, it meant that almost every conversation excluded me, plus I didn't have the right hair length (too long, curly, and feminine) to make it plausible, even as afterschool banter with these queer kids.

It was excruciating, but because my mom had felt excluded from our boy scouting excursions that we loved as a family, she clung to the all-gay girl group like a pit bull biting down on its prey with its jaws locked. Finally, as a mom, this was her métier: a bunch of short-haired, gender-challenged bitches who worked on becoming better fucking bitches like it was the only badge in the book. It was pure hell for me, and it went on for far too long. Because my mom thrilled with this same-sex "be-in" like we were beret-wearing hipsters listening to jazz music at a smoky club in the Village (except that would have been infinitely better for me as an experience), I was also forced to go to their gay day camp (run by another large butch female), and overnight trips that made me cry bitterly. 

The idea of it was so repulsive to me, because I knew what waited for me there: more hazing and brutal abuse, with the continued betrayal of a mother who liked gay kids way better than her own straight daughter, at times. I went on one camping trip with them, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life, in cruel contrast to the great outdoor experiences I had with my brothers and their friends, led by my dad in our childhood, and then on our own. We had barely made it through the night, when my mom (finally) and I decided it was enough. We conferred via a brief tête-à-tête by the morning campfire, sullenly cooking breakfast with wet wood that blew thick smoke in every direction. "Yeah", my mom finally agreed, "there's something really wrong with Chris (the troop leader). We should quit. Never again." Yes! Finally! Sanity had returned to my usually savvy New Yawk mutha. You're back on the right team!

Because of this joyous news, I moved closer to my mama as we tried to salvage pancakes over a poorly made fire that would flavor anything we made with charred wet wood, not anything like the gourmet "smoking" techniques you see on t.v. cooking shows. "This sucks", my mom declared, and I was overjoyed. Never again. I'd never have to see these fucking cruel bitches again on my free time, outside of the nasty jeering they performed for each other as they passed us by in the hallway. We were finally out of this hellish scene! They were so fucking crazy that everything we did sucked, which only pissed off their butch leader even more, as she saw her troop spinning out of control with lowered attendance for each passing weekly meeting, because of her incompetence.

I leaned against my once-again pretty mama as we whispered back and forth over the campfire. Sensing a disturbance in the wicked dark forces, the angry butch had, just moments before, pulled back a tent flap in anguish, as her little spies reported back to her about my breakfast badge that went up in flames with the poorly made fire and soggy pancakes. Sabotage, like ballet, is a big part of the bitchy gay world, and each passing second confirmed what I had pretty much known since birth: I do not belong here, and in case I ever forgot that fact—with momentary lapse of politeness and genuine conversation that's "normal" for Rockland County—they snapped back at me way harder than was necessary, because that's what being a bipolar gay scout troop is all about, like cheerleading and reality t.v. shows.

"Mom", I said to her quietly, "can you flip these pancakes for me? I have smoke in my eyes," at the exact same time as one big looming butch stood over us aggressively, who had also passed the night poorly, like we all had. And it was true. The smoke stung my eyes so badly that they watered and reddened badly. It really fucking hurt. But, seeing this tender scene between an actual mother and her biological daughter was more than this bitch could take. She snapped out, screaming and yelling at us, with her eyes bulging and her hands balled into fists. "THERE ARE NO 'MOTHERS' IN THE WILDERNESS!!" She jeered down at us hunched over the fire. My mom, not to be bested in "bitch-speak" by anyone (she's from the Bronx, and they made it famous), said back to her, "That's not true, Chris. We saw a mother bear with her cub, like, yesterday, right near this campsite." And that was true, too. 

She hated us even more for having the right facts. "That's not what 'scouting' is all about! You have to 'pretend' she's not your mother to earn this badge!" Yeah, fuck you, lady. I'm, like, ten years old and scared. Anyway, I choose my mom and my family, you fucking freak. And that was it. "I don't care!" Fuck this, bitch. I threw down the spatula, and walked away from the campsite to pack up my gear. Lady— or whatever the fuck you think you are—you can take your fucking gay girl scout troop and shove it, and just like that, I was done. So was my mom. The spell over her was finally broken, and I had my real mom back. That was the best thing out of all of it. I got my family back. Shove that, butch! No badge in the world can cover "loyalty", when it comes to blood bonds. We'll always win.

Leprechauns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun:_Origins

Sometimes the line between reality and legend can become a bit blurry, especially if you live in a Celtic kind of town that can seem exactly like the Irish villages overseas from whence we came. Nua Nua*, indeed! Much like family anywhere, we share a lot of the same personality traits, too, which is fun and confusing. Did I meet you already? I'm sure of it. You look so familiar....do you have a "doppelgänger**"? Homelands are fun, as we reconnect through the ages, making new links and strengthening those old tribal bonds that cannot be broken, no matter how thick the mists off the moor, or the fog bank rolling in from the Hudson may be. It's where the heart is.

My family often talks over one another or finishes each other's sentences, to either comic or irritating effect, depending on the context. The new version of the old game show "Family Feud" tells a similar tale told in real time, as first one sibling and then the next answers questions during the lightning round at the end of the show, hence the repeat answers that are acknowledged with more time given for the second round. It's funny and nerve-wracking to watch.

The same is true with my friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances here in town. We live oddly connected lives, whether it's through shared blood or associations of other kinds. I've made lots of new friends here, who always seem to be joined to me genetically, too, and it makes me feel the comforts of home all over again, so I thank you for that. As we enjoy re-connecting with one another here in real ways that feel right, we also share a symmetry that's aligned through the commonality of our thinking styles, habits, and tastes.

My neighbor is like that. He's Italian and Irish-American like my mom's side of the family, a link that can be easily seen and felt with the ease of our conversation, especially about food and family values, meaning he likes to eat a lot, and so do I. We've talked about diet, healthcare, fitness, nutrition, weight loss (or gain), and his part-time work as a coin collector for vending machines. He's got two jobs actually (the second is at the high school), because he has a college-age son to provide for, and another boy in the Navy. G-d Bless! We crossed paths at the local laundromat early in my new tenancy, owned by his friend who looks like he stepped right off a boat anchored in the harbor to come ashore in this century, lured by the promise of streets that are rumored to be paved with gold, which means he and Mikey are leprechauns.

Seriously. When my brothers were little, they loved the clinking of coins, the way babies like the tinkling of keys. They're the first toys kids play with, because most fathers carry one or the other in their pockets. They had those coin-collecting booklets from the post office, and all of us had piggy banks for our spare change, because in our households every penny counts, and you never know when just one penny will make a difference someday. It's good to be thrifty! Besides home economy, we learned to identity different types of coins by looking at their states and creation dates updated at the U.S. Mint.

My brothers went on to other serious nerd passions like stamps, comic books, baseball cards, and movie memorabilia, which my oldest brother presumed to be the very first fortune he would cash in, as the money he needed for his Ivy League school. Even though we didn't like his arrogance about his IQ level, he wasn't wrong. He really did go to a highly desired Ivy League school for his prestigious MBA. Way to represent New York! I was so proud at his graduation, staying in the old stone, ivy-covered dorms that give our best schools their nickname.

But, my oldest brother was depending on something else besides chance by investing in his skills (which naturally pays off for him), and bad luck was what got his precious collection. Faulty wiring or a rogue squirrel ignited a boiler fire near his basement room at my mother's house in New City, which then traveled upstairs to my middle brother's room, guaranteeing that their collectibles would definitely be lost to either smoke damage or the burning fire. They used to share a room when they were small, before the oldest got a room built downstairs for his teenage years that used to be part of our split ranch's two-car garage, so their joint collections were in both rooms that were hit. Luckily, no one was home at the time.

And that's what my new friends here in town remind me of: sweet hometown boys who still like the cheerful sound of change clinking in machines that indicate there's a profit to be had by their labors. I find it charming, adorable, and sweet that they've made a successful business out of a laundromat and the machines that serve us, and that they get along really well, too, just like family, because real families always look out for one another. Always, my dears. Always.

http://lucky-charms.wikia.com/wiki/Cereals

*   https://www.bible.com/versions/884-oc1970-cuinn-tiomna-nua-1970 
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger

Black Eyeliner

"I HATE pichas! I look so weirdly dwarfish and outta praportion  in them! Ugh, she could wayeh a papeh bayag and still look good. I know! I KNOW! I hate huh, too! Don't stand next to huh in pichas!"

By now you know that I grew up in the 80s, right after Punk Rock and New Wave hit it big, and that my family life is less than stellar; the music has changed, but not my peeps. At least, not much. When I was small, we thought my mom's minuscule youngest sister was a kid, because mentally she is. She was 16 when I was born and because she's handicapped, we treated her like a favored pet, because if we didn't, she might come at you with a really sharp knife from the kitchen drawer that she snatched with rare Hobbit-like quickness in under 40 seconds, made odder still by the fact that she is chronically lazy and almost completely physically inept....except in highly important cases of mania, like someone noticing she is very small and unpleasant.

It had some funny moments (like only people who grew up around serious disorders can have), which was driven home for me last week through the animated show "Bob's Burgers", about an eccentric family with a wacky "New Yawk mutha" who has a (surprise, surprise), paranoid tinfoil hat-wearing younger sister who has to hide underneath a tent to go to sleep at night. In her ample spare time, she also creates weird games called "Gail Force Winds" with rules that she can change at anytime, like blowing your game pieces off the board because you're 9 and you don't yet realize that she is clinically schizoid because she acts like a kid you go to school with, and that's why she slept on your grandparent's couch for most of her adult life, with the exception of that time when she had a series of creepy basement apartments, first in my Mom's house (where she was thrown out for competing with my mom's compulsive rules about germs and cleanliness), and some other house in New City...with weird games that had fluctuating rules according to her mental state.

I was fine for awhile growing up, hiding out among a gaggle of grand-kids who are much much stranger than me (some have obvious Autism), but once I hit puberty and started to outgrow her, she went nuts, which was bad enough, because I was the teenager coping with all these changes, like my dad running away with his barely legal secretary, and me losing my childhood forever...but I digress. I began showing markedly different traits than my mom and her short, fat sisters. Like some nightmare fable, they grew wider and uglier from their abusive lifestyles, while I sprung up and grew leaner, with a beautifully perfect oval porcelain face to match, which they noticed sarcastically every time there were two of them in a room against me. Unfortunately for me, I had the body to match, too: perfectly long legs that went on for days to match the rest of my athletic frame, with perfectly proportioned hands and feet to match, beautifully sized and featured extremely well.

After the awkwardness imposed upon me by my mom's poor taste in hair and clothes, my coming out phase was disastrous for me. I grew up to be a supermodel at a normal height, so there would be no giraffe jokes that I could hide behind. I was....well, perfect-looking, and I grew more so with each passing day. I learned how to style my hair really, really well, found a great hairdresser on my own, earned my own money and bought my own clothes, then experimented with makeup that wasn't my mom's cast-off Mary Kay cosmetics, made for someone twice my age. I wasn't wildly punk or new age, but that didn't matter. I was gorgeous and normal, in fact, brilliant at school with lots of friends, hobbies, and interests, which I began not hiding as I blossomed verbally, too.

My handicapped maternal aunt with my paternal grandmother. They knew.

It was under this cloudy sky that I stupidly accepted one of my aunt's summer invites to go to her rented beach house with the younger sister, without my mom or any of my brothers. My mom was cautious about it, and so was I: they are really incompetent. But, we figured, my mom wanted some space and I loved the beach. Who cares, right? They have a house at LBI and I love to swim, which they can't do well. I'd maybe make a few new friends and be at the beach most of the time. It was a complete disaster. The first day out, I was walking with my youngest aunt to the beach when something happened; we passed by a house with two teenage boys about my age playing a board game outside, on the second floor deck of the house their family rented. "Hi!", one of them waved to me from the balcony, "Hey, how are you? What's your name? Do you want to come up and play a game with us?" Maybe! I was thirteen and I really liked boys, but, no, thanks guys, I'm going to the beach with my aunt. Maybe later?

And that was it. She went completely bat-shit insane. She gnashed her teeth in that crazy way she does, baring her large teeth in her huge head that sits on a short squat body, pulling her lips back in a snarl that bares her gums, hissing at me, spitting curses, calling me a slut with black eyeliner and that's why those boys wanted to talk with me, yeah (building up steam), because I look like a WHORE!! in that makeup and that's why I attract attention I shouldn't have and it was all my fault and I look like a slut. She spit out words like daggers, so insultingly out of place to what happened on a mild Jersey Shore beach day that I knew immediately what was happening: she was going to try and destroy me over my beauty, and if she caught me alone, she'd do something really bad to me.

It was such a bad betrayal by a woman who had pledged in front of G-d and family to protect me (she was supposed to be my "godmother"), that I didn't know what to do. My beach day was ruined, which was part of the point, and I was in tears; hysterical, scared, shocked, scalding child's tears, with no responsible adults around: not my mom, or my dad, or my grandparents. No one was there who would help me. I made a scene back at the house anyway, to drive the point home in front of my mom's sisters and my younger cousins, so that they would know it was real, though I knew they'd probably cover their asses and lie about the situation later on. I was bereft. I have never felt so lonely and isolated in all of my life, save for one or two times after that. I was trapped, because I couldn't drive away. There were no phones, so I had to walk by myself to a payphone to call my mom in tears.

She felt terrible, and she knew I was telling the truth. She knows her sisters. We talked about her driving down to pick me up, but I wanted to stick it out. Rockland County is many hours away, and as single mom, her life was hard enough. I calmed down a little bit, wandered around the ice cream hut until sunset, then slowly went back to the house. My cousin talked to me a bit, which helped. He lived with his mom's madness every day, too, and his father had died recently from cancers caused by smoking and alcoholism. He understood, which helped me calm down enough to stick it out for the rest of the vacation, because I had a witness who could testify later, on my behalf.

I didn't talk much for the rest of the summer, and from then on out, I knew my aunt was so sick, that she could kill me in the wrong mood, or if I was alone with her for too long. I turned inward against myself, and after the insults that stung successfully manifested itself directly in my markedly changed behavior, the sisters snapped at fake "slut" slurs as the ammo of choice. I would go on afterwards to have sporadic periods of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll brought on by family madness, fueled by the fact that I might as well try and act like a slut, since I looked like one anyway. I was doomed no matter what I did, which opened the door wide to a series of adult male predators. And to think that I once thought, as a young kid, that I looked like an 80s rock star.

A year later: me and my bro at the beach (I was 15) with a friend and my mom, wearing my "slutty" 80s eyeliner. We did it, man. We won, because we survived. BTW - "quel tan" in this photo, bro! Rock on!

To all my peeps: I told you I wouldn't drop this, because Rockland kids shouldn't punk-out on one another, ever. Here you go, man, for that next time your moms gets drunk and mad at you for breathing at her the "wrong" way, or your dad gets slap happy with his stupid asshole drunk friends when the family BBQ turns bad after nightfall...without the horribly nigthmarish "Annie" foster care bullshit to hurt you even worse. 

I kept my word, didn't I? Yes, I did. Because I want you to make it, guy. I don't want to be the only one at the top anymore, you know? And call the cops in town. They're my friends as grown-ups. You can trust them to help. We went to school together. They know me. Also, in this century, we leave a paper-trail that's mile wide and a mile long until we get the help we need for one another. Do it. This Mommy doesn't lie to cover her ass. (I might to help you, though. Acting chops also help me to not get knifed in a drunken bar fight gone bad, ya dig ;) We have to stick together in this world to make it.

http://www.informationrockland.com/Search.aspx
http://bit.ly/1C2Rrnf 

Focus

Doubly exposed, with a tensely unhappy look.

All my life, my mother has taken really bad photos. It's always been weird to me, because before I was born and for some short time afterwards, my mom loved painting. I still have the precious little watercolor that she made me for my baby room, of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet floating on a watery green background that was supposed to reference grass, but I don't mind the abstraction. My first oil paint kit was my mom's old discarded one that I pulled out of the back of a basement closet. I was reminded every time I opened it, with it's old brushes, linseed oil, and postcards that she used for reference. She wasn't very good, but she also didn't stick with it. There's one painting I found (now hanging above her bed at my putting) that she did of a landscape from a photo. It has some brilliant elements, but just like me with a fondness for science, her vocations led her elsewhere.

Which made her utter lack of ability with cameras even more troubling. Why? She hated posing for pictures, gladly showing me her sulky pouting baby pictures in black and white that my grandparents made her pose for. She cited all sorts of excuses: she hated getting her hair set with curls, she didn't feel like posing, or she was "too busy" to take a good shot. Baffling answers all, but they didn't tell me the real story, because unlike my mother, I could read pictures like they were books. Her photos were all over the place; bad angles, blurry shots, jarringly off composition, always out of focus, or she had a really tight, forced expression of her face when she did pose.

Cutting me out of the picture, and getting away with it.

I didn't really make the connection until many years later, years after I expertly learned the businesses of visual communication, and the various methods of those mediums, because it's that complex. My mom hates posing for photos because she looks crazy in them, and she knows it. It gelled for me with my oldest brother and his wife: with all their compulsive traveling, not one single travel shot produced by them (they also shun the creativity of most social media). Not one. Oh, years of oddly posed Christmas cards of them that they framed for us as "gifts", my savvy marketing family even hiring a professional photographer for their staged Greenwich, CT shoots, but not once did they pick up a camera. They'd admire it in others, market themselves through the medium and put it on their walls, but not once have I ever seen one of them take an actual photograph. They say they don't need them or like them either, which is doubly weird, because they work out to maintain their images all the time. But, I suppose if I had a suicide mom and kids on serious psychiatric medication (like my brother and his wife), I'd hate reminders, too.

Ditto with pictures of me. Not one of me on any of their walls. My mom has these strange plastic-wrapped bundles of pictures, sometimes correctly labeled for the individual in the photo, and sometimes not. They come to me as she finds them stored throughout her household, or when her cleaning lady moves old furniture around. Her handwriting on them ranges from the perfect schoolgirl of her youth to the much more recent scrawl of her senior years. I have no idea why she randomly selected some pictures to be packed away in baggies and some not, except for the obvious proof that these photos show me, like time capsules of her madness: because she still struggles to make sense of the world around her, and who the people are in the photos.

Posing behind me, like I'm a trophy fish on the wall or a decorative lamp.

 
Nowadays, I use them as a form of art therapy for her, just like her onsite caregiver Lynette does in much more vivid detail with her, one image at a time: who are these people? What do they mean to you? Do you remember taking them, or how you felt at the time? More and more, I feel like all of my very learned expertise comes down to the feeling Anne Sullivan must have had breaking through Helen Keller's massively intricate self-defense system: I have done all this for her, to break through the walls of her mind that are like prisons for the many facets of her fractured self. I use my art to break through, very often to her, violently and aggressively, as you can plainly see why here. 

Some days, I simply sign the same messages of hope and loss, love and anger, here on this site and through other media outlets, over and over again until you get it. And sometimes, like this perfectly framed summertime photo obviously taken by grandfather for its' astonishingly stand-out clarity, I get help exactly when I need it, through a man who openly supported my art and personality without prejudice at great contrast to our unhealthy and immediate family. I can feel the power of His Eternal Undying Love, spoken loud and clear across the ages, through one simple, humble, and very beautiful photograph of a little girl trapped and angered by the madness of others, because that's exactly what my healthier grandparents lived through with their children and grandchildren, too.

It was the summer of '75 for me and my awesome Grandpa.

For the Many Faithful of the World: today I give thanks for the loving, beautiful, and gifted grandparents who were essential to my good health growing up. I would not have survived this life without them. Their patient care was often just a phone call and five minute drive away. I also give thanks for all of you who have survived the cruelty of other people's madness to achieve great personal success, by breaking through the many walls around you to greatness. Long may you reign in peace with us. Amen to you.

 (for Bernard and Ann, two of His Most Faithfully Devoted Servants)

Here's a hint: I'm the one in the middle.