"Hey Remember the 80s" or "History Lesson, Pt. 2"
I can't hear my favorite album. It's been more than a decade since my first listen. I've worn through one tape, one cd, three cd-rs, and now itunes is shot. It was the cassette, the first I bought when I was in sixth grade, that lasted the longest. I heard the song at 2 in the morning, and I had to have it. Somewhere in my parents house, I have half a dozen tapes of late night radio. Like television, radio is a different beast at 2AM. Unlike television, it is, or was, decidedly better. The songs would break the formulas I heard during the day, the formulas for speed and instrumentation. The lyrics were more meaningful, or less meaningful and more anachronistic. There was a lot less posturing and a lot less pop. I'd wait for the deejays to announce the songs and scramble for pencils and markers.
When I was little, I didn't believe in my imaginary friend. I think his name was Robert, but I would never call him my friend Robert, only my Imaginary Friend Robert. That's how I know he wasn't real to me. I think I saw children on tv with imaginary friends and felt that I should have one too, or maybe felt like I wanted another thing to draw and talk about. Robert had three brothers. I think that the friendship I had with Robert was like the friendship I had with a boy who lived by school. I couldn't go to his house, I don't remember why. I think it was too far, but now I know that those torturous rides to and from school were never really more than twenty minutes. I haven't thought about him in years, and I don't remember his name. He lived with his Mom and his brother in an apartment that overlooked the playground. His brother wasn't really around that often. His room was empty except for scraps and piles of old Fangoria magazines everywhere. We sat in his room and launched Madballs against the walls for hours on end . The rest of the time we played Nintendo, but we usually couldn't because the only TV was in the kitchen, and his Mom was usually watching that.
Seperated by time, however, I can no longer tell you whether or not I believed in Toon Town. For my sixth birthday, my parents took me and some friends to an afternoon showing of Who Framed Roger Rabit. For about a year after seeing the movie, I claimed to everyone who would listen that I was married to Jessica Rabbit. Roger was too, but it was more for the movie. Like in the movie, Toon Town was real. I went there after everyone else was asleep. To get there, you had to wrap yourself in a blanket, so that it is completely dark around you. In the darkness, you can't tell if the blackness ends an inch from your face or a hundred feet ahead so you crawled through it until you reached light and came out the other side. If someone didn't believe me, I cried and threw a fit. When I saw a making-of documentary that claimed an uncredited Kathleen Turner, some chubby middle aged blonde who wasn't even credited in the movie, played Jessica, I was outraged. Slander, I thought, Libel! Eventually, my parents became worried that this was more than a healthy imagination and took me to see a shrink. At six, this was was not the first nor last gradeschool shrink or specialist I would have to see.
At random points throughout early adolescence, boys will occasionally sprout erections. Groups like NAMBLA claim that this is evidence of existing sexual feeling in children, but it is actually completely spontaneous and, for me, rather torturous. The first and only erection I can remember before hitting puberty happened when I was five. I was out with extended family having dinner at Bakers Square when it happened. I don't know if it was because my five year old penis was not ready for the strain or if it was that the sensation felt so alien and unfamiliar that it registered as exruciating pain. I fidgeted and climbed under the table and excused myself and tried to pee it out in the bathroom with no luck before trying to explain it to my father in whispers and sobs.
Saturday mornings, as I sat facing the eternal flame and the Western Wall, I would stare at the single light on the wall until it burned the image of an amorphous green blob into my head. I would blink and then follow the green blob as it drifted across the room. It would nearly always go in the same direction but never on a distinct route. I entertained a number of theories as to the origin of the blobs. One was that, by temporarily damaging my retina, I was allowing myself to see things that were otherwise unseeable. They were clouds of germs, perhaps, or spirits. Perhapds some of the other students, the ones I didn't get, were aliens that fed off the stuff. I did this for years.
Sometimes I heard voices. Usually I'd hear them in my sister's closet. I would hide in her closet on days when I stayed home sick, in an attempt to avoid going to the doctor's office. There was a man's voice and a woman's. I could never make out what they were saying. Surely they were ghosts.
There was a noise that I heard on occasion, it was this loud dissonant thing like a screech that existed in my head and brought me to my knees every time I heard it. I haven't heard it in years, but if I think really hard I can almost grasp at it.
The first time I was sick, really sick with the chicken pox, I spent a week on the couchbed in the den. I made my parents clear Blockbuster of all the episodes of the Muppet Show. I watched them all day and late into the night, when the good programs came on.
The last tine I was sick, real sick where I lost all that weight (and how I wished to get that sick once the weight came back), I spent two weeks straight on Cowboy, Chris, and Ramon's sofa, drinking Gatorade and watching movies. I wasn't with anybody then, but there was always someone there so I never felt lonely.
Yesterday, Elijah Chris and Ramon came over to watch the game. So did Devon, Nell, Sosa, and my father. Before they came and after they left, Sarah and I watched the Muppet show, and I held her in my arms and she felt warm even though I had the fever, and memories flooded back. I told her things I thought I'd forgotten, little factoids that I couldn't feel anymore but vaguely remembered.
I don't think that I can write this right, without listening to my favorite album, but I need to write something, even in silence. I'm under 200 pounds again, and coughing. I wish there was someone around to watch movies with.
When I was little, I didn't believe in my imaginary friend. I think his name was Robert, but I would never call him my friend Robert, only my Imaginary Friend Robert. That's how I know he wasn't real to me. I think I saw children on tv with imaginary friends and felt that I should have one too, or maybe felt like I wanted another thing to draw and talk about. Robert had three brothers. I think that the friendship I had with Robert was like the friendship I had with a boy who lived by school. I couldn't go to his house, I don't remember why. I think it was too far, but now I know that those torturous rides to and from school were never really more than twenty minutes. I haven't thought about him in years, and I don't remember his name. He lived with his Mom and his brother in an apartment that overlooked the playground. His brother wasn't really around that often. His room was empty except for scraps and piles of old Fangoria magazines everywhere. We sat in his room and launched Madballs against the walls for hours on end . The rest of the time we played Nintendo, but we usually couldn't because the only TV was in the kitchen, and his Mom was usually watching that.
Seperated by time, however, I can no longer tell you whether or not I believed in Toon Town. For my sixth birthday, my parents took me and some friends to an afternoon showing of Who Framed Roger Rabit. For about a year after seeing the movie, I claimed to everyone who would listen that I was married to Jessica Rabbit. Roger was too, but it was more for the movie. Like in the movie, Toon Town was real. I went there after everyone else was asleep. To get there, you had to wrap yourself in a blanket, so that it is completely dark around you. In the darkness, you can't tell if the blackness ends an inch from your face or a hundred feet ahead so you crawled through it until you reached light and came out the other side. If someone didn't believe me, I cried and threw a fit. When I saw a making-of documentary that claimed an uncredited Kathleen Turner, some chubby middle aged blonde who wasn't even credited in the movie, played Jessica, I was outraged. Slander, I thought, Libel! Eventually, my parents became worried that this was more than a healthy imagination and took me to see a shrink. At six, this was was not the first nor last gradeschool shrink or specialist I would have to see.
At random points throughout early adolescence, boys will occasionally sprout erections. Groups like NAMBLA claim that this is evidence of existing sexual feeling in children, but it is actually completely spontaneous and, for me, rather torturous. The first and only erection I can remember before hitting puberty happened when I was five. I was out with extended family having dinner at Bakers Square when it happened. I don't know if it was because my five year old penis was not ready for the strain or if it was that the sensation felt so alien and unfamiliar that it registered as exruciating pain. I fidgeted and climbed under the table and excused myself and tried to pee it out in the bathroom with no luck before trying to explain it to my father in whispers and sobs.
Saturday mornings, as I sat facing the eternal flame and the Western Wall, I would stare at the single light on the wall until it burned the image of an amorphous green blob into my head. I would blink and then follow the green blob as it drifted across the room. It would nearly always go in the same direction but never on a distinct route. I entertained a number of theories as to the origin of the blobs. One was that, by temporarily damaging my retina, I was allowing myself to see things that were otherwise unseeable. They were clouds of germs, perhaps, or spirits. Perhapds some of the other students, the ones I didn't get, were aliens that fed off the stuff. I did this for years.
Sometimes I heard voices. Usually I'd hear them in my sister's closet. I would hide in her closet on days when I stayed home sick, in an attempt to avoid going to the doctor's office. There was a man's voice and a woman's. I could never make out what they were saying. Surely they were ghosts.
There was a noise that I heard on occasion, it was this loud dissonant thing like a screech that existed in my head and brought me to my knees every time I heard it. I haven't heard it in years, but if I think really hard I can almost grasp at it.
The first time I was sick, really sick with the chicken pox, I spent a week on the couchbed in the den. I made my parents clear Blockbuster of all the episodes of the Muppet Show. I watched them all day and late into the night, when the good programs came on.
The last tine I was sick, real sick where I lost all that weight (and how I wished to get that sick once the weight came back), I spent two weeks straight on Cowboy, Chris, and Ramon's sofa, drinking Gatorade and watching movies. I wasn't with anybody then, but there was always someone there so I never felt lonely.
Yesterday, Elijah Chris and Ramon came over to watch the game. So did Devon, Nell, Sosa, and my father. Before they came and after they left, Sarah and I watched the Muppet show, and I held her in my arms and she felt warm even though I had the fever, and memories flooded back. I told her things I thought I'd forgotten, little factoids that I couldn't feel anymore but vaguely remembered.
I don't think that I can write this right, without listening to my favorite album, but I need to write something, even in silence. I'm under 200 pounds again, and coughing. I wish there was someone around to watch movies with.
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