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01.20.03 @ 2:23 a.m. // once upon a summer.
it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, and we, apparently, have difficulty employing the use of semicolons. i was six years old that first summer, the rest of them ranging from twelve to seven. our bikes were what initially brought us together, followed closely by the fact that we all found ourselves facing a summer in dire need of wasting. dan's father was an alcoholic and his mother had an affinity for prescription drugs. they were both abusive, and his sixteen year old brother spent most of his time running away, only to somehow turn up again a few weeks later. his parents' arguments could be heard all across the neighborhood, his mother screaming their dirty laundry to the world and his father responding with a drunken slug. it was nothing new. charlie and luke's parents were getting their second divorce. their father worked insanely long hours to make ends meet, and when times were at their worst, had a tendency to turn to alcohol. their mother did her best to remain normal, but sometimes even a six year old could notice the mask slipping. they lived in a small house, one in desperate need of repairs, one that they were extremely reluctant to show to the world. i was the only one of the bunch that was ever invited in. their world was small and broken, but they somehow retained the air of "good, decent folk" despite their shortcomings. mary had already been through three divorces in her short life, and both of her stepfathers had abused her in some way or another. there was always some dispute going on in her house, though unlike danny's family, you had to look a little closer to see them. still, most everyone knew dysfunction abounded behind closed doors. i think she wore it like an invisible sign. by far, my home was the most charming. no one hit me, my parents weren't separating, and i had no stepdad to scream at me. my dad, in a recurring theme, had a drinking problem. i find that strange to say now, since that's no longer the case and i count him among my best friends today. nonetheless, there was a constant supply of alcohol around, and he and my mom fought with alarming frequency. that summer also commenced my sexual abuse at the hands of various individuals. we all knew, to a certain degree, what the others were living. each one of us knew the others knew things about us that we wished more than anything we could just forget. we did our best to forget; reality was not welcome on those summer evenings, riding the length of our street several dozens of times, talking about nothing. looking back, it was all surprisingly 'something' for a bunch of broken or breaking kids. we found unlikely solace in one another. mary smoked, and danny drank, and the remaining three of us were more or less straight laced, in spite of our surroundings. i remember charlie telling dan once that he really shouldn't drink, to just see what it did for our dads, and i remember dan looking at his feet for a long time before throwing the bottle against the fence and crumpling to the ground. the four of us sat next to him for a long time, staring into space and thinking-- i really don't know what we thought about. nobody said anything. eventually, we probably ended up on our bicycles, logging miles to no where and kicking up the red east texas dust behind us. things changed for us, slowly but surely. mary's sister married upon getting pregnant at fifteen, though she was not hesitant to tell anyone that her real reason for matrimony was not out of any sense of propriety but simply presented itself to her as the easiest means of escape. danny's brother successfully ran away for good the following summer, probably just as well. josh entered our lives, bringing with him new problems for our group's collection. both his parents had been killed in an auto crash relatively recently, and we learned that he was now to spend the summers with his grandparents in our neighborhood. josh didn't have a bike, so some evenings we'd just sit on the trampoline his grandparents had purchased to keep him amused. in retrospect, i see the ugliness, but we overlooked it then. on most every summer evening, the entire world disappeared, and reality took on whatever dimensions we fancied. somehow, despite everything, those summers (there were two and a half of them) remain near and dear to my heart and encompass some of my favorite childhood memories. somehow, the worst of times really were the best of times, at least from four pm to nightfall. do you want to know the rest of the story or would you rather stop here? danny's father died about five years ago from alcohol poisoning. his brother had shown up again and was living at home to care for his mother, who, last i knew, was trying to clean herself up. danny is married now. mary turned out fairly stable, to the shock of almost everyone, and as far as i know is away at school right now. she found the Lord, and she realized she was not bound to carry on in her family's footsteps. she no longer smokes, by the way. josh disappeared from our world just as abruptly as he entered it. i haven't the slightest idea what became of him. his grandpa died a couple years before i moved away from the neighborhood, and i felt a loss disproportionate to my actual affection for the man: i didn't even know him. but i knew his grandson, who had already lost so much, and i knew he had a neat trampoline in his yard, and i knew his wife made us cookies from time to time. charlie went on to aspire to scientific heights, attempting to become someone with a peculiar number of initials after his name and infinitely smarter than myself. i don't know how it's going. i saw luke a few years ago, and made smalltalk with him, and he never recognized me. he seemed to be doing pretty well, though. and i'm telling you this story.  last | host | next |