This kind of man, p.3
This Kind of Man, page 3
***
The last thing on my mind that day was racing.
We took our time, slowly navigating the silent shoreline. I was absorbed in my own thoughts as he cruised ahead of me, whistling to himself. It occurred to me that I was unprepared to be without my old man, something I would never have imagined a year before.
At some point I passed him, he immediately overtook me, no longer whistling.
Instinctively I pumped my legs and regained the advantage.
I glanced sideways, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were set straight ahead as he pushed forward—in front—and began peddling in earnest.
Ever since his heart attack we hadn’t physically challenged one another. I figured we had outgrown it. But as the breeze whipped around our faces, I realized we would never outgrow it and we could never be friends. We were too much alike.
I lowered my head and began setting a pace, breathing through my nose. Just like every race in the past there were no words, no acknowledgment of the other one’s presence.
His new routines had paid off: He was cruising along and I had to push myself to keep up with him. From behind, I could see him straining; I noticed the sweat soaking his shirt and the improved tone of his calves. I took a deep breath and readied myself for a final push. As I pulled even with him, I thought I could hear him muttering under his breath. Was he motivating himself? Cursing me? Praying? Whatever he was—or wasn’t—saying, I understood in that moment that he needed to win. It wasn’t because he could no longer beat me that he looked so desperate; it was because he could win that he was peddling as though this was the last time he’d ever mount a bike.
But I found myself pushing harder because a voice still choking from the weight of memory reminded me of all the times he should have let me win.
I looked over at my father, then beyond him at the water. Nothing had changed: The waves still rolled in and we were still moving down the road, rushing to stay in the same place.
As we approached the whaling house, I made a noise I’d never heard before. It was, at once, an exhalation of air, history, and a familiar expectation. At that same moment, I gently squeezed my handbrake—just enough to slow myself down. I coasted past the finish line directly behind my father.
We dismounted our bikes and stood there, looking at everything but each other. I waited for him to say something, to ask the question I knew he had to ask. Finally, he did.
“Did you try to win?”
I never could lie to my old man, so there was no way I could look him in the eye. I didn’t say a word and cycled past him without looking back. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t turn around. I didn’t need to. If I had, I know I would have seen something I’d always hoped to see more of during my childhood: his smile.
***
The day I left for college I watched my old man cry for the first and last time. As I got on the plane, I felt guilty because I knew I was leaving him behind, and alone.
About a week before midterms, just as I was getting accustomed to my new life at school, my father died. It was his heart again.
***
I am not my son’s father.
When I found out I couldn’t have a child of my own, I first thought it was fate. Then I understood that it was yet another challenge: a different one, a good one. After being told so often I was adopted, it was like my pops was preparing me, in his ironic way, to be a foster parent. I grin constantly, imagining how my old man would find more ways not to recognize himself in me, a father.
I hear my friends lament what a bunch of babies we are raising these days. No spanking, no stern words, trophies for everyone, no preparation for the remorseless reality awaiting them in the real world, etc.
Maybe they’re right. But I’ve noticed no one hands out awards to adults, and life is a succession of battles not measured on scoreboards. If winning is the only thing that matters, then most of us are losing, every single day. And I don’t know if I’ll be around when my boy is old enough to be on his own. Until he is, I want him to see me on the sidelines, content no matter what the score is. I want him to hear me say so many of the things I longed to hear when I was his age. I need him to be unafraid of failure and know he will never let his old man down.
Now’s The Time
If not now, when?
He knows the answer. It’s all in his head: every reason, every word, every retort, all the things he might have said, or should have said. Or never had the right words to say. He always would find them, after (in his head), when it was too late. That’s the story of his life, he thinks. Every time the wrong decision, or even worse, the inability to make one.
He’s still not certain now’s the time to do what he’s doing. Walking, outside, in this weather? He’d already passed the familiar fire warning sign: A big Smokey the Bear, holding his shovel and announcing that the danger today was VERY HIGH. Usually, if not always, it was low, or occasionally moderate; a straightforward, stark HIGH would be considered a big deal. Very High? Unprecedented, and he hasn’t missed a summer here in more than two decades. Maybe they were making a point, a little scare tactic going a long way for irresponsible smokers or potential arsonists who might let off a firecracker at the wrong time in the wrong place. No one could deny it was hot: above ninety in a town that still treated air conditioning as a luxury. Hell, most houses hadn’t gotten cable TV until the turn of the century. Of course, all the new houses had AC and every other modern luxury—but these were a new class of people, the ones transforming this once obscure destination into the worst kind of poser’s paradise.
If not today, when?
Need to get those steps in, he thinks sardonically, looking down at how tight his t-shirt is, keeping his beer gut strapped in like a hyperactive toddler in a car seat. Beer gut? It was also a pizza, chips, fast food, and not enough fruit & veggies, healthy living is for faggots gut. (Oops, can’t say that word anymore, of course. Even though he’d said it all his life, had been called it so often it was like taking a piss or brushing his teeth—just part of another boring and predictable day. He wasn’t even bullied, back in the day, because none of the bigger and brighter boys suspected he was anything less than straight. They regarded him, correctly, as another pockmarked loser lusting after girls who’d be offended if you asked them out; girls who’d be nauseated if they thought you ever jerked off thinking about them. He didn’t wear the word so much as a badge of honor as proof he was safely anonymous: not the antelope in the front or rear of the herd, not the first one the tigers would target when it was dinner time.)
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
How many times had he heard his father say this? Before he split, that is. Who knew what his old man was looking like these days. Was he still jogging—putting in that roadwork, as he used to call it—or had he let the law of gravity eventually do to him what it does to just about everyone?
It occurs to him that he hadn’t cared about what his old man was doing or where he was, much less how he looked, for a long while. He could almost kid himself into thinking he wasn’t still nurturing all sorts of hostility about how his father had left him and his mother. How he’d cashed in for newer models with less issues, upshifting to the second act of his life. Maybe he’d gone in an entirely different direction; maybe he was a priest or about to run for president. Mostly, he thinks: fuck him, wherever and whatever he was.
Cars keep passing him at a steady clip in both directions: all headed someplace or back to where they left. So many cars, so many individual lives, all with stories. His old man had a story. He had a story. It’s his awareness of this fact that has caused him unreasonable agitation, especially lately. The idea that he can (should, or shouldn’t) take charge of his own narrative—the things he can change —or else accept having no power of influence. To acknowledge all these potential scenarios is, in theory, possible, but if you don’t have faith in a higher power or your own ability to do anything that matters, it leaves you in a sort of desperate paralysis. You’re nowhere, nothing. And then what do you do?
Count the cars.
He counts the cars that pass him. Every other one is an SUV or something north of $50K per model. These machines less a means of transportation than passports; tokens of the same lifestyles that made white fences (repainted each season) and grass even cows couldn’t eat routine, obligatory. Fake toys for fake people leading fake existences, all made possible by a fake system that rewarded fakeness. The kind of world no one ever asked his permission to become a part of.
Almost time until the sun explodes.
It’s hotter than he’d ever remembered it being. If you listened to the lunatics on the news, the earth was suddenly unlivable and man had caused all this heat and drought, accelerating some apocalypse or implosion. Was it in fact hotter than it had been when he was a kid, or even a few years ago? It seemed like it, but how many things seemed different than when he was younger? Maybe kids don’t notice these things because if they get hot, they jump in a pool, or a lake, or the splash of a fire hydrant, whatever. You get sunburned, and bitten by mosquitoes, and don’t get to eat all the ice cream you want, or your favorite team never wins, but none of it matters because it’s all play and no worries. Maybe, he thinks, that’s the true reason retards seem so happy: eternally in the child’s mind, no bills or dates or jobs or friends or global warming to worry about. (Can’t say that word either, but it was another in a long list of insults he’d grown accustomed to hearing, once upon a time.)
A horn blast disrupts his reflections, and he looks up, already too late to tell if it’s someone honking at him, or at another driver, or just some asshole letting the world know he’s there (he’s certain, it’s definitely a he).
It was something his father would do—an alpha male move, since men can’t trumpet like elephants or roar like lions. A way of making sure everyone (anyone) is aware: I’m here. To do something like this would require either a confidence or obliviousness he can’t fathom. To genuinely not care what anyone else thinks? Even wealthy people don’t have that privilege. Especially wealthy people. He knew from wealthy people, having lived as a decidedly non-wealthy person in this town —a place that had become more popular, more expensive, less hospitable to those without means (stupid money, his father used to say) at a seemingly ridiculous pace. It did, he figures, mirror what was happening in the rest of the country (the rest of the world?)—not just the haves taking more and pissing on the heads of the have-nots, but a general acknowledgment that this was the way it was, and always had been; America was finally catching up with what happens, inevitably, with all empires. The only people working hard, day after day, were the underemployed trying to stay afloat, and the one-percenters making sure they kept a stranglehold on everything they could (and couldn’t yet) afford. The worst part, he figured, was that it wasn’t even personal; this was the world people voted for and fought wars to preserve.
“On your left!”
He half-freezes and watches the two women pass him, obvious tourists on rented bikes, taking in the sights and working up a sweat. So they could cool off in their private pools before firing up the blender for margaritas; maybe before they showered and got dressed up for a night on the town, or else some catered affair, all a business expense or tax write-off. The restaurant he used to work for made most of their profits with this kind of clientele, people who had the means to outsource everything, including the preparation and clean-up; their only job to eat, drink, and be perfect. Or miserable. Either way, strictly business. His mother had told him that was the gig to pursue—being the one shuttling the food or packing it up after, the kind of job that didn’t oblige heavy lifting (literally or figuratively) and often came with huge cash tips under the table (strictly business). But there was one reason—aside from the fact he didn’t want, under any circumstances, to be around these people—that he understood he’d never be seriously considered for that job: he was, once again, trapped in the middle, a native speaker who had neither the education nor the looks to put this class of people at peace, and not poor enough (i.e., white) to be fully exploited. The foreign workers, here seasonally because living year-round was financially out of the question, arguably had it best. They came in hot and left before it got cold (figuratively but especially literally). Not necessarily the ones exploited by the hotels—that was shit work to be sure, but all those lucky or attractive enough to gain employment in the hospitality industry, being in the presence of this plastic fantasy.
If you can’t beat them...
He thinks about the girl at the store, the one that could have been, but probably not. The one he had gotten to know in that unique way where you see someone often enough to “know” them, but without knowing the first thing about them. How many times a week did he see her and exchange pleasantries as he checked out, his beer or snacks tiding him over for a day or two? She was younger, part of the new wave of worker (Lithuanian? Portuguese?). That one time, having rung him up and nodded goodbye too many times to count, she eyeballed his 12 pack and said: “nice choice.” Suddenly there were countless ways for him to play this. “Too bad I have to drink them alone,” he might have said. No, too forceful, also kind of admitting he didn’t have anyone (female or male) to hang out with. “I’ll save a few for you,” he might have tried, but would she have understood the humor, could he have managed to quickly follow up his comment with an invite? “What’s your brand?” he should have attempted; anyone could pull that off. Easy, a lay-up. He could have gone harder with “What kind does your boyfriend like?”, something that bold requiring a definitive response, unfolding a whole history of possibilities. Instead, he’d weakly nodded his head and held out his hand for change.
And after that he had to replay how he’d blown it every time he checked out, because he always had less than eight items, and she was always working the quick check-out aisle, too new or dumb to have been promoted to the regular lanes, waiting on grumpy housewives or Ivy League nannies or semi-aliens, like her, who were combining odd jobs and under the counter wages, inevitably for wealthy, wasp-y bitches, the kind of people who played croquet in their manicured fortresses.
Time to water the grass.
There were exactly two types of lawns on this island: withered crab grass forever in need of more rain—or man-made hydration—than were on offer or affordable, and the expansive lawns so green they looked like carpets—more science experiment than actual color. The types of lawns adjoining with properties that belonged to the people for whom no expense was an obstacle. The kind of people who made (or, more likely, inherited) the kind of money that made these fabricated lifestyles their own kind of scientific experiment.
He watches the two girls approach: late teens, cheerleaders or class clowns biding time before college, or marriage, or whatever fill-in-the-blank fairy tale their parents had already paid for. They could have been daughters of the girls who’d alternately tormented and ignored him when he was their age.
“Excuse me,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“What time is it?”
They look at him, then at each other.
“You’ve got a watch on,” one of them says.
“That’s my whole point,” he replies, grinning.
They give him a look he’s familiar with: confusion tinged with, well, no other word for it: disgust. They walk on and he pauses, adjusts his backpack, then keeps going in the opposite direction, very much still the main character in the story he’s writing about himself.
No time to whine.
Speaking of which, maybe it did taste good, the stuff he used to bring by the tub-load to the recycling bin the summer he bussed tables at the country club. Fancy pants. Five-hundred-dollar dinners for a family of four, featuring a round or two of cocktails, apps all around—usually shrimp cocktail or clam chowder—salads, entrees, a bottle or three of wine, desserts for the kids, after-dinner drinks, usually something undrinkable (he knew from sampling too many floaters—the swill warming like sewage in a snifter). Bottles of vino, even the cheapest shit at least $50 a pop, usually upward of one-to-two hundred. And the big timers, five car families with friends and no worries in the world, ordering like they had to spend their money before it burned holes in their bank accounts. I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll burn your house down, he thinks, recalling all those faceless monsters, the unquenchable hatred he felt for them, and his co-workers, especially the wait staff, the girls in particular, all slumming it for the summer before heading back to school and taking classes to learn how to take over the world. God how he despised them, unable to fathom how they lived enough to envy them.
Time for a wild card?
He thinks about hitch-hiking—speaking of old-fashioned ideas. He remembers his father saying: This whole island used to be a haven for hitchhikers. To and from the beach, to the grocery store, the package store, you name it. It was a much different world then. A whiter world (facts are facts no matter how out of fashion). That was one thing he had figured out: Yes, back in the bad old days that seemed so good now it was whites who worked the unthinkable jobs, being condescended to without shame or exception. But there was a type of understanding; there was still the conceivable possibility, however illusory, that someday, you too could join the ranks of these elite stiffs. That’s what he realized made him kindred spirits with the displaced ditch diggers and fresh out of luck farmers: There were now people not only willing to do that work, but do it cheaper and with enthusiasm. How can we expect to ever change that pattern? Not happening. The world keeps turning and finds new ways to make things suck more for people like him. He sticks up his thumb and makes a bet with himself: if anyone picks me up, I’ll tell him (obviously it will be a him) to take me to the water. Maybe I’ll even jump in, fully clothed. It’ll be a plot twist, a revision to the work in progress.
