The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 26. Hidden Treasures in Suburbia & Wearing Masks

Greg set me free from the school bus.  The reason I'd lived in the same apartment complex as he did for six months and didn't know him was because he usually walked.  He not only walked, but he walked creatively, avoiding the busy main streets, cutting through alleyways and finding as much of the natural world as one could find in suburbia.

As much as I liked this new freedom from the bus, as much as I liked walking with Greg, I liked walking best on the days he wasn't going to school or was running late, because just like back in Sandstone, I preferred walking alone.

I did, however, use the routes he showed me.  One of these routes took me along houses set back along a long pond.  The developers had dammed a small creek, created a small lake and set houses around it.  From the street, one had no idea the pond was there.  It was the backyards that faced the pond.  They do this a lot in Dallas.  And although it may create temporary high land values, it doesn't work.  People want public spaces.  They want culture.  The neighborhoods that ultimately gain the most value are the ones designed around public parks.  Turtle Creek and White Rock Lake are perfect examples of this.  Here the exorbitantly wealthy live around parks open to the whole city, and it works quite well.  I'm not saying there isn't racism or prejudice towards the poor.  Turtle Creek is definitely over-policed.  Later, when my brother moved into the area, he was often picked up for having long hair and walking through neighborhoods where law enforcement felt he didn't belong.  But at least in the Turtle Creek and White Rock Lake neighborhoods there are no physical barriers keeping the general public out.  And the wealthy, to their credit, must enjoy some diversity, because it is the open park neighborhoods, not the gated communities, that are the most sought after real-estate areas in Dallas.  What good is a pond that nobody else can see?

Yet, the first thing the newly financially-arrived want to do is establish their own private paradise, and so, in the suburbs, there are creeks, and ponds, and small lakes that nobody but the homeowners see--unless, of course, you're a crafty teenager, like me, seeking out nature wherever it can be found.

There happened to be one particular place on a cross street where "my" pond could be viewed.  I'd stop for five or ten minutes and just watch the ducks sliding along through green water, leaving ripples behind.  Lush, neatly-trimmed lawns slanted down from brick houses to wooden docks, where long, untrimmed grass met the deep green waters.

Google Earth image of "My Pond" that I stopped at each day walking to school

And so I learned to walk the backstreets and the alleyways, looking for unseen worlds, a little oasis around a pond; an untrimmed wild of grasses behind a tall wooden fence, just off the driveway where they put out the garbage cans; a sudden view of ragged, wet woods around a creek that opens up for a moment next to a bridge.

This walk, however, always led me to Tim's house, where I would join his friends, Carl and Phil, and all together we would walk in safety to school, I no longer faced with the brutal reality of riding the bus.

I enjoyed their safety, but part of me died each morning when I arrived at Tim's.  Just as his house came into view, I'd stop (if only mentally) to step out of the real me and slip into a costume. The Steve that arrived at his house was loud, obnoxious, sarcastic, and bragged a lot, especially as my parents' income increased quickly.  We still lived in an apartment when I started referring to my friends as "poor peons".  I'm not sure why they didn't ditch me, but they didn't.  The funny thing is, if I remember right, Carl's father was nominated as a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics.  He mentioned it once, but he didn't make a big deal out of it.

Later, Phil would come to know the better me. However,  Carl and Tim would not.  Tim had plenty of his own character flaws anyway.  He was rather pompous for a little picked-on squirt like me; he loved Hitler and hated Jews.  But looking back, it is clear Carl had class.

Who knows, maybe Tim, like myself, had another version of himself he simply didn't let the world see.  I don't assume the Hitler-loving, Jew-hating Tim was the real Tim.  It could have been, but not necessarily.  Junior high is a time of masks.  Almost nobody is who they say they are.  Most don't even know.  I knew I wasn't the bragging, pompous son of the nouveau riche, but for some odd reason I thought that version of me was more likable than the kid who would like to spend his days feeding ducks.  How I could think that, I'm not sure, but I did.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 25.Time Alone with Shaved Fish

"A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words."

                                                            --Dr. Winston O'Boogie

Time alone.  I'd always spent a lot of time alone.  When I was seven, we lived on a ranch in northern Utah and had no neighbors.  I had a couple of friends at school, but at home I was my own best friend.  That ranch was a great place to be your own best friend.  We had two rivers, a creek, and a small lake on the property, along with who knows how many irrigation ditches.  We lived in an apartment in a great cinder-block barn.  Lloyd and I actually slept in a bunkhouse on the first floor, and the apartment was on the second floor.  I had the entire hay loft as my play area, which included two more bunk rooms.  In the spring, the great wooden door where they used to bring the hay to the loft would be open, and I'd look out on a deep green field and the horse my sister often rode.

Alone is what I knew best and liked.  When we moved to what I'll call Sandstone, I had a couple of really good friends, and I'd often walk home from school with one of them, but I enjoyed walking home alone more.  I loved strolling along the irrigation ditches; watching a cloud hang reflected back in the slow-moving water; being dazzled by the long, green grasses growing along the bank turned upside down in the rippled reflection.

So, when we moved to Dallas, and when, at first, I didn't have any friends, it was no big deal.  I could have cared less.  The teasing I received during school was deeply damaging, but the time alone just gave me time to explore my corner of this great big, new metropolitan area in a deeper way.  There was the library almost next door.  There was an LDS (Mormon) bookstore a block to the north.  I bought my first journal there, and for the first time in my life, I began to write down my thoughts in little three to four-line poems.  There was a Half-Price used book store about two blocks to the south and a record store about a block beyond that.

For Christmas, I received a Sony Walkman from my real dad.  I loved it.  I constantly had a tape going.  I walked down to that small record store and bought The Beatles:  1967-1970.  I still remember that record store well.  Sandstone didn't have record stores.  Pioneer Market sold a few albums, as did Steven's Department Store.  Bradshaw Auto Parts sold 8-Track tapes, but there was no proper music store.  So, I loved being in that small suburban store.  The odd thing is that I don't ever remember music playing.  It was as quiet as a library.  Perhaps that is what I liked about it.  As I flipped through the albums in the silence, I could hear the music in my head.  Then, I'd go over to the tape section, and get what I wanted.  The tapes were in big, plastic, locked files, and so I'd have to find the owner to unlock them.  She was an elderly lady who spoke very little.  It seemed I was always the only customer, which explains why the store closed a couple of years later.

The other tape I bought there was Shaved Fish by John Lennon.  I'd heard "Imagine" the previous summer in a Grand Central (like a K-Mart) in Sparks, Nevada.  I'd heard the song a few times before that, but I'd never paid attention to the lyrics.  That time I did.  I just stopped.  Until then I didn't know lyrics could capture such pure and innocent desires, an unselfish yearning for humanity to be more.  I didn't necessarily like, "Imagine there's no religion," (Lennon) but I knew that the religion I believed in, if lived fully, definitely would lead to everything else imagined in that song; I was hooked.  I went down to the record store looking for that specific song.  I found it on an album called Shaved Fish (Lennon, Shaved Fish).

Even though my brother brought me up on the Beatles, Shaved Fish blew my mind.  There was a rawness to Lennon's solo work that just pulled me in.  That "Day 4," a drum beat, and then "Instant Karma's gonna get you / gonna knock you right on the head." (Lennon, Instant Karma)

Wow!  There was a deep rough steel grit to it.  Even on "Dream 9".  It had all the psychedelic otherworldly quality of "Lucy in Sky,"  "I Am the Walrus" or "Glass Onion," but it was stripped down to just the glass river and the blank blue sky.  It was a round, glass table set out in the woods left to gather dew.  The symphony stayed home, and only the string section showed up, but oh how they could play!  And the lyrics:

Took a walk down the street
Through the heat whispered trees. (Lennon, #9 Dream)

I was stunned.

And so I wandered around my little section of suburbia, headphones on, listening to Shaved Fish.  I wanted to see the movie Reds.  I wanted to dream of a world less brutal than the one I experienced at school.  I wanted to be able to name pain as precisely as Lennon did in "Cold Turkey."  I wanted to touch the realness that one only touches through art.  I wanted to explore this new city, and I wanted to explore my own mind, which was just as new to me.

People made me feel alone and unwanted.  Time alone made me feel valued by some unknown presence as I connected with myself and the world around me.

References

Lennon, John. Shaved Fish. By John Lennon. 1975.

Lennon, John. "#9 Dream." Walls and Bridges. By John Lennon. New York, 1974.

Lennon, John. "Imagine." Imagine. By John Lennon. New York, 1971.

Lennon, John. "Instant Karma." By John Lennon. London, 1970.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 24. Once Upon a Suburbia, Part 3

One hot, muggy day early in the spring, which in Texas could have been as early as February, I met Greg, who probably saved my life.  I don't know if I could have withstood the bullying I received in junior high without a real friend.  He also connected me to Phil, who along with Marsh, are like brothers to me.  I would not have met anyone in what we call the gang--Phil, Lucy, Marsh, Andrea and Jim--without Greg.  I probably would have moved back to Utah with my parents after two years, and Dallas would just be a short, agonizing memory.

I did meet Greg.  Like I said, it was a hot, muggy day.  The clouds were low, black and boiling.  I got on the bus.  There was the usual pushing, shoving, and over-the-top laughing.  Some guy grabbed one of the twins and put her on his lap.  She giggled and squealed, and said, "Stop it!"
in something that was between a playful giggle and a panicked scream.  As a teenager, I assumed that was all for show, and thought that she liked it.  Looking back as an adult, I'm not so sure.  Everything during those years is so tumultuous.  It's hard to know what's real.  Now, I doubt she knew what was going on inside herself.  Her brain was probably telling her attention--good; being grabbed, loosing control--not good.  And in the chaos--the screaming, the pushing, the shoving, the laughing uncontrollably because it hurts to much to cry, who has a chance to analyze how they actually feel inside?  I don't know how anyone makes it through puberty alive.  But most of us do.

I was shoved.  There was an empty seat next to a gangling guy looking out the window.  It was a choice between either getting up and being shoved again or asking if I could sit down.  He said yes, pointed to the clouds outside, and said, "It looks like a tornado might form."

He said that so nonchalantly.  My heightened senses--all that pushing and shoving and yelling--just skyrocketed.  Tornadoes were definitely not part of my childhood.  This was new.

"Really?"

"Yeah, see how that cloud is swirled a bit, and drops down low in the middle, like it has a protruding belly button."

I don't exactly remember if Greg described the cloud that way, or if he used the word "protruding," but he could have.  He was a smart kid, and he wasn't normal.  There is no way to be normal in junior high and act intelligently.  Intelligent people care about others, feel empathy, act carefully--in the best interest of not only themselves, but also those around them.  Intelligent people see the big picture and move with measured, reflective responses.  No, junior high is the time the normal person just shuts down all rational thought and acts on selfish, hormone-driven, ego-centered instinct.  Anyone decent is going to stick out like a protruding belly button during those years.

Greg protruded.  He was tall, he was lean, but had a curved back.  He dressed like a hick--snap-up plaid western shirts and blue jeans--but he didn't seem to like anything country.  He liked opera and theater.  He wasn't normal, and unlike me, he didn't even try to be.  He liked Neil Diamond.  He liked fast cars, but unlike those other kids who drew them all over their binders along with the Ozzy and Van Halen logos, he'd actually done his research and knew what he was talking about.  He especially liked small, European sports cars.  He dreamed of becoming rich, and he had very concrete plans.  I don't think most people's lives unfold anything close to their expectations, but my guess would be that his did.  He was smart; he knew what he wanted; and most importantly, he seemed totally untouched by the world around him.  He was teased like I was teased.  The difference was he just didn't give a damn.  In his mind, he was already running a big corporation, driving race cars, jetting around the world.  To him this whole junior high experience was just a picnic in the woods with mosquitoes.  Sure, the mosquito kids were annoying, but it wasn't the end of the world, and it wasn't like he'd stick around and get sucked dry.  He'd hop in a little Italian sports car and speed off with some jock's girlfriend to his real life in a mansion just over that hill.  Sure, he was failing all of his classes, but what did that matter?  Unlike the rest of us, he knew junior high is not real life.  He'd listen to music and dream his way through it, and when the moment was right, he'd step into the light and claim his prize.

I quickly lost contact with him during high school.  If I remember right, he moved.  Maybe back to St. Louis, his hometown. However, I did once hear from a mutual friend that somewhere around 11th or 12th grade Greg became an A student and went on to college and received some award.  It surprised my friend.  In ninth grade we all knew he constantly received C's and F's (there were no D's in our district).  But, it didn't surprise me.  It was part of his plan.  Dream through the ridiculousness and act once the game was real.  I knew nothing about Buddhism then.  I doubt he did either, but Greg was the first Buddhist I ever met, and perhaps the only truly proficient one I know.  Most Buddhists, like all truth-seekers, including myself, seem to be caught forever in that striving phase that must occur before arriving.  The Greg I knew in junior high had already arrived. He was just sitting things out, killing time.

One evening he came over to the apartment and knocked on the door, holding a kitchen chair.  My mother let him in.  "Grab a chair.  Let's go sit in the field.  That fog is amazing."  So, we did.  The fog was so thick that in the center of that five-acre field, the city lights all but disappeared.  Greg didn't say a word.  He just sat there in silence as cool mist slowly dampened our clothes.  I enjoyed it, but I started to get cold.  He could have sat there until he grew moss.  However, noticing that I was cold, he said, "That was amazing; let's go." 

I wish a little of Greg rubbed off on me, but I can't say that it did.  Still, although he was only a friend for a brief while, he was a good friend, and more importantly, he connected me to Phil.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 23. Once Upon a Suburbia, Part 2

After visiting the library, we drove by my old junior high school.  I snapped a photo, but I made no connection to the place whatsoever.  I wanted to.  I knew I wouldn't like it, but I wanted to because I love my life, and I don't want there to be any holes in it.  Perhaps Barbara Streisand was right, or almost right, when she sang, "What's too painful to remember / We simply choose to forget."  Perhaps it's not always a choice though.  Perhaps forgetting is sometimes forced upon us by the mind seeking escape.  Perhaps will is not always involved, at least not conscious will, when it comes to memory.

Here's the thing.  I can remember every kid in my second grade class, but I just can't get my mind to enter the hall of that suburban junior high school.  And I want it to.  I want to be there and feel again as I felt then, because that is part of what writing is, an act of recovery.  A recovery of the past.  A recovery of the self.  A recovery of truth.  A journalist writes not because it is easy, but because it is necessary for democracy.  A historian writes not because the past is pleasant, but because it is vital that the past doesn't get buried.  A novelist writes not because it is easy, but because it is necessary to capture our deepest desires, our deepest fears, the parts of us we can't slip easily into idle conversation.  Writers write to keep into human dialogue what the rest of humanity chooses to leave out because it's too painful to remember.  Good writing isn't escape; it's engagement with life at the highest level, which is why it was frustrating to look at my old junior high and get nothing when I absolutely know that place caused me great pain.

I teach at a residential treatment center, and one day one of my students asked me, "Mr. Steve, How do you get past something really terrible in your past?"  Without much thought, I gave him my honest answer.  "I don't really know.  I know lots of people have incredibly horrific pasts, but I don't.  I had great parents, and nothing really bad ever happened to me.  You'll have to talk to your therapist about that."

We're trained to say "You'll have to talk to your therapist about that."  Our youth will avoid the hard work of therapy by going through unofficial channels to receive "help".  But, I was being honest too.  I haven't had to deal with any of the big issues so much of humanity has to deal with: no violence, no rape, no sexual abuse.  I've been lucky.  Divorced parents is as bad as it got for me, and that happened when I was two, and so I have no memory of it.

School was my only hell.  Yet, it was hell, and I want to get back there because there are some things one can only learn by reentering what hurt the most.  There is a writing exercise by Natalie Goldberg called, "I don't remember."  To do it, you just write down, "I don't remember" and write whatever comes to mind.  Supposedly, the act of admitting that you don't remember eases up the pressure and allows thoughts hiding out in the deep caverns to venture towards the day light.  We'll see:

I don't remember my first day of school at that suburban junior high.  I don't remember pulling up in the bus.  I don't remember the blue hall and long line of lockers.  I don't remember the fear I had of forgetting which hall contained my locker as all the halls seemed to look alike.  I don't remember the frequent dreams I had of not being able to find my locker, of wandering around the school endlessly, looking for it. I don't remember that kid Scott who reminded me of a friend I had way back in kindergarten--how he looked so cool with shaggy, long blond hair that curled around his ears.  I don't remember being shocked by his Texas accent, or the fact that he was actually a dumb, cruel shithead who had a dumb, cruel shithead friend, named Steve.  I don't remember shop class, or Miss Moore, who was young and slender with red hair and freckles and a heavy Texas accent.  I don't remember how she flirted with Scott and Steve and ignored their cruelty to me.  I don't remember listening to the Eagles "Hotel California" on the radio in shop, hearing the lyrics, really understanding them, and feeling I was really there--locked in the Hotel California, egos consuming each other with steely knives to avoid being eaten alive themselves.

I don't remember sitting alone at lunch, or Mr. Gray--the gray haired black vice-principal that came in and yelled "Quiet" at the lunchroom every day, walking past me in his gray suit and protruding belly, never seeming to notice that everyday I sat alone, not knowing how I felt so claustrophobic with the loneliness closing in tight around me like a thick darkness.  I don't remember opening up my Tupperware sandwich container and hating that my mother packed my lunch in it because I was teased terribly for having it.

However, I do remember refusing to tell my mother that I got teased for the container because I knew exactly how low and stupid it was to isolate someone just because their lunch came to school with them in a Tupperware container, and I knew my mother was proud of the lunch she made me, and I knew that I'd rather live with sitting alone with my Tupperware container than to adopt a paper sack because the wolves wanted it that way.  I remember knowing if I ditched the Tupperware container, it would just be something else anyway.  I remember opening that Tupperware container as if I were claiming my seat on a bus in some horrible place like Montgomery, Alabama, and thinking to myself, "Okay, shitheads of the world, take this."

I remember not always being so honorable.  I remember rolling a penny down the hall with another long haired kid who always wore Pink Floyd shirts.  I remember him saying,  "This is how I identify Jews;  they'll pick it up every time."  I remember how sick I felt inside as I laughed--how I was terrified he'd find out I was Mormon.  I remember thinking how he was cool, and that I hated that I was selling out my soul to be with a cool kid, but that I did it anyway.

I remember how in class a beautiful girl with long, glossy brown hair, and deep, chocolate eyes sat in front of us.  I don't remember his name at all, but I remember her name was Brandy.  I remember how he'd play with her hair, and she would let him.  I remember being amazed at that.  I remember how she would turn around and talk to us, laugh and smile, and how it felt so amazing to not be isolated.  I don't remember thinking, "It might not be right to roll a penny down the hall and yell 'Jew!' at the person that stopped to pick it up, but boy this moment makes it all worth it."   But part of me must have had that exact thought, or I wouldn't have done it.

I remember one day a big, overweight kid with acne troubles targeted me as a friend at lunch.  For a couple days, I accepted.  He drew pictures.  I drew pictures.  The difference was, I drew landscapes--lakes and trees, old barns, and tilting outhouses.  He drew tanks, and bombs, and guns--lots and lots of guns.  People blowing apart.  He knew their names.  Not of the people blowing apart--at least, I hope not.  But of the guns.  He knew them intimately.  I don't remember thinking, "We're in danger here at school,"  but I should have.

I do remember feeling sorry for him, but knowing there was no way I could ever provide him the friendship he needed, I avoided him.  As lonely as I was, our worlds were just too far apart.  I could roll a penny down a hall and yell "Jew" to fit in, especially if it was to sit next to someone who was deemed cool enough for a girl like Brandy to turn around and smile in our direction, but I could never spend my days drawing tanks, and bombs, and guns.  I had too much fun drawing aerodynamic people.  I saw other kids designing aerodynamic sports cars, and I thought to myself, to heck with that.  Why not design aerodynamic people?  Short; squat; big, aerodynamic noses on jelly-bean shaped heads; spoilers on their butts.  You could stand them up in a hurricane, and they would not move.

I was in a hurricane.  I wanted to be able to stand and not move.  I hated myself when I'd roll that penny down the hall.  However, I was proud that I never asked my mom to pack my lunch in a paper bag.  I was also proud that I never drew a tank or gun.  I was proud that although sometimes I would fantasize about taking the head of one of my tormentors and smashing it against the locker, most of the time I realized each of us was just doing his best to survive.

I wrote my first poem that ninth grade year.  I don't remember all of it.  Part of it went like this:

Whose beast are these, who kill to cry
Who drink the blood of their brother's sigh?
These, these--are His to keep,
which he loves, forgives, and hopes to keep.

I was proud of that poem.  I still am.  However, I also know I rolled a penny down the hall and yelled "Jew" at the small kid who stooped down to pick it up.  I hope in his mind he told me to go to hell and now proudly displays that penny as a trophy for having overcome, if only for that moment, the stupidity of the world.  I wish I had my Tupperware sandwich container.  I'd mount it on the wall in a gold frame to remind me of my better self--how at least a part of me was willing to fling a righteous middle finger at the world--to proudly hold up a cross, a poem, an act of forgiveness, instead of just conforming to cruelty.

That test never ends. It's what fuels the anti-immigrant movement, and it's what got Christ nailed to the cross.  It's ultimately what we are here for:  How will we stand when the winds of humanity are blowing in the wrong direction?  We are here to learn to fling that metaphorical finger rather than roll the penny and yell "Jew" in order to fit in.  Our soul and our God demand to know ultimately where on that question we stand.

I hope I prove to be as aerodynamic as those squat, little figures I drew because we definitely live in a time when the winds of humanity are blowing in the wrong direction.