I’d like to tell you a story, I’m not much of a writer but I’ll try and paint it as well as I can. This all happened a couple years ago, and has come to the front of my mind every time I meet a friend’s parents, or go to a movie theatre and stand behind a big loud, excited family. This was the beginning of my departure, of my independence from any imaginary creation I’d sculpted in my mind about my life, or my family. In the program there were certain seminars you were required to complete with your parents: PC1 (Parent and child), PC2 and PC3 which is when we were allowed to walk on your own two feet the whole fucking way home. It was PC2 and everyone knew exactly what the problem was as I sat there with my little triplet of parental masturbation. The lights dimmed for one of those really trite cry along to Celion Dion moments. You’re supposed to hold the person next to you’s hand and pray to god that they can’t see the crooked smirk escaping in the left corner of your mouth. If my tongue could have, in these moments, it’d jump out and start free-styling about the holocaust and how everyone should get up, go home, and plant a god damn tree. But it couldn’t, so it stayed, it stayed inside silent, always silent and hot as fuck.
The facilitator took stage, she was an exhausting woman. Even the shape of her just made mu eyes water with tired. “Well alright, alright, take a deep breath, let it alllllllll out, children hug your parents, and parents hug your children, cherish them. Okay, let’s take forty five for lunch, and while you’re enjoying the Burger King supplied for you, please think about What. Got. Us. Here. Today. I expect a one page summary from each and every one of you by the end of lunch. Take care!” The facilitator turned away from the mic and was immediately swarmed by mentally unstable and frantic parents, “What exactly is our assignment?”, “I don’t think my kids going to want to do the assignment, what if my kid doesn’t do it, will he still be able to come home?” “Wait, so is the Burger King free, cause I already spent all my money on the plane ticket and this school and my kid… “
After shoveling the shit the parent’s laid in front of her the facilitator returned to the mic “Can the person with the 1984 blue Honda please go and turn off their lights? And remember NO SMOKING or alcoholic beverages, that means you too parents!”
It is impossible to eat during a three day seminar where you, your parents, a hundred other kids and their parents touch on every subject you couldn’t talk about during the dinners at home for the last fifteen-sixteen years, everyone just sat, clicking pencils and making up things to write down. I just chewed my pen hard, so hard in fact it was as if when my teeth hit lead a taxi would show up and take me wherever I wanted to go. I had to get a second pencil. Surprisingly I would have gone straight back to the program, straight back to the white walled, barred up cell that I had been living in for the last ten months, nothing was safer to me than the bunk I slept in high above Seattle, high above and away from the family I had known. What. Got. Us. Here. Today. Each word swam circles in my head, passing the focusing point often but not long enough to take note. The question felt too heavy to clutch but I knew the answer. In my parents eyes what got us here was my “little cocaine issue” and the fact that I enjoyed spreading my legs a bit too often for such a little girl. But that was just a result of the reason. WE got here because in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, in the middle of the living room my father took and took and took.
I sat and gawked at my food, and when the time for lunch was up I had written one sentence big enough to fill the sheet on paper. My parent’s glared at me for not taking the fucking thing seriously, but I hardly doubt they’d want me to tip my cup over and spill this shit in front of everyone. They probably just wrote about the rape, drugs and cutting. Fuckers, I should’ve just let it all out.
If the room that the two hundred and some odd number of chairs were set up in could shoot it’s self in the head, I believe it would have. The walls ached of fresh white paint and the floors smelled and looked like they were wet with sweat. Everyone took their seats, dirty with that Just-From-Lunch-I-Took-Three-Shots-and-Smoked-Five-Cigarettes-and-Covered-It-Up-With-Perfume scent. It was rank but I enjoyed it. It was most real these people had been the last two days. The stench of all their soiled secrets felt like home. Each of my parent’s breath smelled of their favorite beverages. Wine permeated from my left and beer and vodka from my right. I have never really been too keen on my father. He drives his John-Deer to get the mail for fuck’s sake. I am pretty positive that in the last month I have read more books then he has ever even held, let alone read. However, when I was little I could have sworn that he was John Travolta or Patrick Swayze’s brother, he danced like the most handsome man you’d had ever seen. Tan skin, the brightest blue eyes and a leather jacket that never smelled of sweat, just Camel cigarettes and the sweetest juice you’d ever drank.
Silence began to saturate the room. “Who wants to be the first to read their summary to the group?” The cow who shouldn’t be allowed to use the any voice amplification device again said. Hands rose. “Ah, yes, you, what’s your name? Michael? Everyone welcome Michael Smith”
The show began with a smack. He was seventeen years old and had a lot of fucking words. He stood; he was rail thin and shook like a tree in the mid-west spring.
“Uh, hello everyone. I’m not really sure what got my family here, but I can tell you where it all started for me, what lead to the drug use and being so promiscuous. When I was younger, when I was little, I was always so curious about the way a woman felt. The way that they might feel inside, how I could make them feel good. These thoughts caught up with me. These fucking thoughts caught up with me… “
I was right. This was it. The two nights of drinking and smoking cigarettes had finally trapped everyone; this was the fucking breaking point. The audience started shifting in their seats, making up excuses to leave and checking their watches and cell phones. This was god damn bona fide beauty. I wanted to kiss this kid for fucking up these people’s worlds, this was real, and these were the things that no one says aloud.
“I touched her, she was so fucking young. You don’t understand. I watched this girl get excited to get her ears pierced, I used to watch her get ready for school, this tiny baby adorable girl, I fucking touched.”
Cough. Silence. Eyes. Cough. Shift.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, I was thinking, I was think.. I wasn’t thinking. My dick was hard and she was coming of age, she had soft skin… she had.. she had what looked like soft skin. She had the rosiest cheeks…” His eyes welled up, and his hands started to tremble so vigorously that the piece of paper he was reading from shook like a flag in the wind. A white flag. I give up. You win.
This is the kind of thing that would normally make my stomach dance a dance that I could never learn; my feet are crooked when it comes to this. But just as I was about to let out the lightest slight of nervous laughter my father started crying. He started crying like he was competing. Every eye in the house was dry, every mouth was open, and every head crept in his direction. He brought his worn hands to his face, and in one big gasp let out “I’m so fucking sorry”.
Now, they all knew. Fire slithered up my cheeks, and I too began to cry, while my two mothers sat, puzzled. This was so fucking embarrassing. Like hey dad, why don’t you just grab a fucking sign and hold it high above your head! “I molested my daughters!”. This was the first time when the silence had broke about this. My dad cried louder and louder, until the facilitator decided it was time for another break. I sat in the corner and cursed him. Each family huddled and stared at us, coming up with their own conclusions, probably tasting of candy compared to the reality of it all.
The sentence that I had written:
I bet you the floor under our carpet is dirtier than yours.
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