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| "Wild Turkey Walking" by Wing-Chi Poon - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wild_Turkey_Walking.jpg#/media/File:Wild_Turkey_Walking.jpg |
It's hard for me to describe my parents to friends and acquaintances. How to tell them that, entertaining as they may seem, these were the young people who were supposed to comfort me after school with a big warm hug and cookies with milk? "Ohhhmigoshhh...", as that dawning recognition spreads over their faces, I know I freaked out my new friend with that particular little exercise. Puts it in a whole new perspective, right? Exactly. And so I began a tradition of prep work before any family interaction, or, if this friend of mine is also a little dense or arrogant, I may toss them into it fresh, with no lube (as they say).
My dad lives in a place so extreme, that the people who live there ask me and my friends the same question every time we pop up there, like celebrities from outer space just there for their intense scrutiny: what do we think of West Texas? The same question, every single time, from people who see Rockefeller Center and other famous things only on t.v. What do you think we think?! It's weird, and it's the complete opposite of our reality as native New Yorkers. I turned the tables on my dad's liquored up friends the last time I visited him on Thanksgiving, by revealing the deep dark secret that my father and stepmother are actually New Yorkers (!!!), and that my dad actually gave birth to his kids while living there! That really threw them for a loop. I then asked them how they felt about New York City when they visited, to watch them squirm uncomfortably in their chairs this time, thrown as we were together from holiday invitations given out in desperation, rather than any type of familial loyalty.
On that visit, I gave my cousin a breast cancer tote bag that I bought for her, in support of her while she battled Stage Four lymphatic cancer (during which my dad frequently called me for advice), and she gave me her warm thanks, which is more than I usually get, strong-armed as I am into getting a two-way ticket to "Nowheresville", but not much else besides the obligatory room-and-board that comes with any hotel stay. My dad's weirdo friends gave my cousin obscene gestures behind her back when she wasn't looking (making her the focal point for their Conservative-fueled righteous indignation), choosing to attack her for being a societal dependent when, in truth, she doesn't choose to be an addict, which is weird coming from my father's mentally ill Vietnam vet friend with the long-term PTSD and his brittle yet openly mannishly aggressive wife. Who the fuck are they anyway? Better than us? They like to pretend New Yorkers are this disease that spreads, while they hide their trauma and sicknesses from full view, choosing instead to use them as weapons in their lives covertly.
Me? I prefer the honesty behind my cousin's bubbly yet fake persona. Liar that she is ("When do addicts lie?" with the answer: "When they open their mouths", ba-dump bump), but at least I know that she's family. The rest of them try to pat me down for spare change that I don't have, while going on their expensively outfitted Californian pony rides and generically bland cruise vacations. Susan's at least upfront about her needs and what drives her real agenda. Not so with my dad and his crowd, people who buy heavily into the "rich white man game", which means they all pretend to be Conservative Right-Wing Christians* out west for money and job security. "Who's the bigger liar at the table?" is not a game that I like to play.
But, occasionally, when the moon aligns with the rest of the planets just right, we can have a good time, mostly by chance or my doing, or plain ole luck, because my family out west doesn't think I'm worth enough of their time to even plan events that I'd enjoy, open as I am about my lifelong preferences. I know, right? What's to miss?! Sometime our interests overlap, like my love of the outdoors and hiking, because it fits neatly within my dad's conformist "white man" persona, the one who likes to seem like a masculine hunting and fishing guy. And so, one holiday me and my ex (the upstate Indo-European) found ourselves in an old pickup truck following my dad and his family, while he picked up some domesticated animals to dump onto his ranch, because that's about as much as he does for other humans and lifeforms, sometimes.
You just happen to be part of his schedule, like the delusional diva from "The Met" who thinks the spotlight is always on her. It's creepy, but that's his "Mad Man" generation to a "tee": they use old t.v. shows and movies like they're guidebooks to life, instead of entertainment with the occasional deeper fare thrown in, but mostly likely not, because my dad's wife doesn't "cotton to cussin'", which is part of the homespun act they put on for their new friends far out west, people who don't put together "New York" with "secretary" and "mistress" right away like we do. Wholesome, right? We usually play along with their routines because it's not worth pointing out, which is exactly why me and my ex made fun of my dad all the way from Colorado to New Mexico, about his next harebrained plan for restocking the world with hunted animals (like wild turkeys) on just his corner of the world, hoping that it spreads out from his ranch at the epicenter, so he can take all the credit for it. Professional, n'est-ce pas?
It's not exactly like working for the "Department of the Interior" for the U.S. government, is it? Nope, but that's exactly what he does: he forces his family and friends to witness him buying these poor animals and then releasing them onto his land (and his land only), to often be brutally slaughtered by the predators that live there, even as we tell him that animals migrate, and he doesn't own them or control them in any way, with extremely limited success. He may or may not understand the intent, or it might be him acting out in his delusion of grandeur because he simply doesn't care, so much does he want credit for his bizarre little experiments. It was horrifying actually. Over the years, he released Bighorn Sheep** and other animals without notifying anyone about his intentions, just to play G-d with His Creations.
That's why, over our Thanksgiving break, our dad made us watch him pick up some turkeys he bought to "grow" out at some dirty farm (the horses this farmer had were filthy up to their knees from the mud and feces he kept them penned in), by making us herd Wild turkeys onto his trailer. When we remarked on the unsanitary conditions to him as proof of his uncertain goals (he got caught behaving inappropriately and wastefully again, basically), he assured us that he would report the farmer he'd just paid thousands of dollars to do a job badly to the appropriate authorities, but I highly doubt that happened. We made fun of him with my youngest bro in the second truck all the way down to "his" ranch land (charmingly named "The Flying Asshole"), a place that's off-limits except to him and the county's Game Warden (by law), bumping over the hills and gullies to witness him doing yet another stupid thing that was waste of time and money.
On his signal, we manned the bolts to his trailer, and on the count of "three" we opened the gates to the it, to see a fast flurry of feathers pass briefly before our eyes, before the turkeys did exactly what wild turkeys do, and roost high on the treetops of the only tall trees that exist around there because it's near a pond; atop the ranch's small stand of big Cottonwood trees. For years afterwards, we jokingly asked him if he'd had any signs that they were still alive, and he'd do his "little boy" routine: pout while looking down at his hands, explaining to us one more time that they'd probably been eaten by predators, just like his foolish dreams about the non-native Bighorn sheep that we knew became coyote fodder under his watch, but we still allowed his big public display of making a show about caring for them by hiking us atop "his" mountain (competing with us the whole way uphill), with binoculars to look for them from afar.
He released them to get them killed, because he's too arrogant to consult an expert who'd guide him through it, just like his horse riding "lessons" and during a dozen other really dangerous activities where people in my family (including me) almost died under his watch. So, you can keep Thanksgiving this year, peeps. You can leave me the turkey and the "Indian" boy, though. I know what to do what them. They're the kind of natives I like.
