X. – on riding the Rotor.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
June 29, 2000
Dear Mike,
So, so you think you can tell, a green field from a cold steel rail, a smile from a veil? Wish you were here. That’s only the name of the album. Remember the orange Datsun B210 and the blow torch? I thought that while I write this stuff about the kid, I’d listen to my ancient records. He’s not here right now. He’s over at my mom’s watching The Usual Suspects and recovering from the Cobra, which is a killer ride at this carnival we found today, downtown next to the river. He can’t handle those rides very well, but he agreed to go on the Cobra with his sister, twice, which I thought was sweet. Afterwards he lurched back to the van, clutching his bottle of coke and making fake barfing sounds, and saying stuff like anything for the kid and I just remember how no one would go with me on the Cobra when I was a (barfing noise) kid and (more barfing) I just couldn’t do that to her (falling on the grass, motionless). Really sweet, because G. giggled and said that when he was being nice to her, he was the best brother in the world.
The other day he bought himself a hat that said Porn Star on it and I was kind of upset about it and I asked him not to wear it. Then my sister and my mom also asked him not to wear it, and he said maaaaan, would you all just relax. But O., I said, do you know what a porn star is? No, mom, he said, what’s a porn star? And I said, weelll, okay, it’s when a person becomes very good at– and he said Yes mother, I know what a porn star is, I was kidding, god. And then he told me it was a brand, just a brand, or maybe he said a band, I can’t remember. And I said, well, okay I’m gonna get a Porn Star hat for me too, and one for Auntie M. and one for Grandma, and we’ll all wear them, if it’s just a brand. Fill your boots, he said, and stalked off. So, it was kind of a dilemma. Take his hat away or just let it go or buy him a different one. I suggested that, a different one, and he said yeah, please get me one with Paddington the Bear on it. So, finally, my sister called and said she’d give him twenty bucks not to wear the Porn Star hat and he said he’d think about it. The next thing I know my sister’s beaming and he’s twenty bucks richer. How pathetic is that? What do you think you’d have done? Have you even heard of that brand in Uganda or Greenland or wherever you are? Now when we see a kid with a Porn Star t-shirt or hat or bumper sticker, O. says to me, go get ‘em mom. An older kid he shoots hoops with across the street gave him a Swank magazine the other day and I caught him trying to smuggle that shit into the house. Guess dope’s the next thing. No money offered for the mag if that’s what he was thinking.
Today is my birthday and I’m drinking orange juice and champagne right now. He stayed up til two in the morning last night making me a mixed tape of songs he knew I liked, stuff like Randy Newman and Paul Westerberg and Tom Waits and the new Neil Young and even the Clash, and it’s so sweet because he actually had to listen to all these old guys while he made it, which was a form of torture for him, so it means a lot. I’m listening to Christmas Card right now, Tom Waits. Really nice, you know Charlie I’m pregnant, living on Ninth Street, above a dirty bookstore…you remember. You do. Strange thing is I can’t remember your birthday. We were together long enough to put together this funny, intense, shy kid who stays up late making compilation tapes for his old lady, but not long enough for me to remember the day you were born. Weird life. Was it April something?
So today I’m thirty six and you get to stay twenty three forever, in black faded Levi’s and an SNFU t-shirt and converse sneakers, smoking an Export A and cooking penny wieners in some shitty apartment kitchen with the Cramps playing and no furniture. Soon I’ll be old enough to be your mother! Sometimes I do think I see you on the street, and if I’m with O. I sometimes look over at him and wonder if he thinks he sees you too, if he remembers much from when he was, what, four or five and you went mini-golfing with him and then left forever and I want to ask him but at the same time I don’t want to ask him. You take up a lot of room for a guy who’s not here. Maybe you’re living under some kind of witness protection program and you’ll never return as your original self, ever. Well, you did hang out with quite a few thuggish guys there for a while. You might have turned them in, maybe.
I remember once, when I was about thirteen, I was riding the Rotor at the Ex with a boy named Jacques and he was about fifteen and there we were spinning around and around and then, you know the Rotor? the floor drops out and you’re stuck to the wall. I just stayed in one position but Jacques crawled around on the wall and while he was doing that he crawled over to me and said where have you been all my life. At first I thought he had to be joking but he seemed kind of serious so I said uh, I don’t know, nowhere. And then, because I was a polite kid, I asked him where he had been all my life, and he said right here, baby, riding the rotor.
Anyway, it’s kind of hard, at thirteen, to know what to say to that, don’t you think? Remember Land of Dreams by Randy Newman? I just want you to hurt like I do, honest I do, honest I do, honest I do? Well, I don’t actually, cause I’m thinking you already do.
Later, mystery man.
X.
