2.2 – Strange New Experiences

Marty rode his bike all over those hills – far beyond the boundaries of what could be called his ‘neighborhood.’  It seemed as though he covered hundreds of miles on his high-handled, banana-seated Schwinn Sting Ray.  Many of the hills were steep, and his bicycle had no gears.  The street on which he lived in Terra Linda was one of the steepest, and he had to zigzag sharply to cut down the grade.  The summer before middle school started, he discovered a cool fishing hole about a mile up Miller Creek, and that became his secret hideaway.  He and his friends Steve and Geoff used to grab their fishing poles as soon as they could get outside, and ride down to The Hole.  They soon learned to bring food so they could hang out all day.  The long summer days gave them a great opportunity to get away from their stressful domestic situations.  All the kids he knew were having trouble with their parents, their brothers, or other authority figures.  They never caught any big fish, but they shared a lot of laughter, which was sorely missing from their homes.

Coming home in the evening when Marty’s dad was in the house was like trying to sneak back into prison after a botched escape attempt.  He would be in the either the garage or ‘hobby room,’ getting drunk, working on one of his projects, and grinding his teeth.  Marge was most often upstairs in her bedroom with the door closed, and sometimes he could hear her crying.  Julie and Susie preferred being shut inside their rooms at night, too.  Julie played her records as loud as she dared, and talked on the phone all the time with her boyfriend.  Susie lorded over a fantasy world of stuffed animals and Barbie princesses: a psychological refuge from being mercilessly ridiculed by her father.  To avoid detection, Marty usually climbed up the balcony to his room.  One night he was too tired after a long ride, and quietly let himself inside the side door (farthest away from the garage).  He carried his shoes and tiptoed towards the stairs to avoid invoking the wrath of G.O.D.

“Marty, is that you?” The slender boy nearly jumped out of his socks.  The imperious Voice came from a couch in the darkened living room, known as “The Forbidden Zone,” where nobody was allowed to sit on the furniture.

Surprised and nervous, Marty hastily tried to think up an excuse.  “My bike got a flat tire, and I had to…”
“Come here.”  His Highness sounded drunk and pissed off as usual, and Marty didn’t really want to get a lecture.  He could never talk to his father without feeling worse than before he started.

He stuck his head inside the doorway while his feet still crept toward the safety of the stairs.  He saw a dim regal outline sulking on the throne of his ‘comfy chair.’  “I’m really tired, I had to walk all the way home.”

“Is that your jacket on the stairs?”  It was not a question but an accusation.  Marty glanced culpably where he’d left his jacket draped on the balustrade that morning, when he saw that the day would be a warm one.

“Oops, sorry,” he responded too quickly, and reflexively moved to hang it in the closet, hoping for a quick exit.

“Is that where your jacket goes?”  The thunder of G.O.D.’s acerbity crackled in the air with disdain.  The stress in the room was palpable, like humidity.  Marty had learned over the years that the sarcastic rhetoric required an answer; if for nothing else than a tribute to its superiority.  A drop of sweat trickled in his eye.

“No sir.”  He shifted his weight on the hard entryway tiles that were making the bottoms of his feet ache.  “I’ll take it up to my room,” he added hopefully, and turned as if to go upstairs.

“No.”  The Voice hammered a nail into the boy’s skull, and fixed him in mid-turn.  “Where does your jacket belong?”  The darkness prickled with intense disapproval for Marty’s breach of protocol.  Ice cubes tinkled in a Manhattan glass, and it sounded as if G.O.D. was getting up, but Marty moved quickly.  He grabbed the jacket, slid over to the closet, and in one motion stuffed a hangar into its shoulders and shut the door.  As he turned to escape, however, the angry menace was blocking the way to the stairs.

“Hang it properly, dammit!”  G.O.D. rarely cussed in front of the children, and never actually hit them, but the fists of his mind and belt of his tongue lashed them constantly.  Panicked, Marty was beginning to fear for his physical safety.  There was something dangerously unfocused and out-of-control about his father’s ire.  He was getting red in the face with some pent-up distortion of anger that was totally out of proportion to the instant offense.  When he got like this, the kids referred to him as “G.O.D.-zilla” and tried to avoid being crushed.

“What’s going on down there?”  Mom to the rescue!  Marty’s hope soared like a rocket.

“Shut your face and go back to bed!”  The big lizard turned to engage the real enemy.  Marty’s hope exploded in mid-air.

Emboldened by the sudden distraction, and muttering something about his bike, Marty slipped out the front door and scrambled up the balcony.  He wasn’t tired anymore, due to the rush of adrenaline from the fight or flight response.  From the relative safety of his room he hugged his knees and listened to the big monster destroying Tokyo in his parents’ room down the hall, complete with expletives and the sound of crashing objects.  Knowing this was an escalating conflict in a war that had been going on for quite some time, he put on another Jim Croce record really loud to drown it out.

“Well it’s bad, bad, Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town…”

Marty was getting old enough to want something more from his father than just being told what he was doing wrong all the time.  Sitting silently in the dark, listening to the music, he couldn’t remember ever playing catch with his dad, getting a compliment from him, or having any fun at all when he was around.  With resolute sadness, he realized for the first time that he wished he would just go away.  His wish came true later that year.

“Badder than ol’ King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog.”

Thanksgiving was going to be interesting in our new living situation, Marty mused to himself at school, just before the long weekend.  Most kids were talking about travel plans or ski trips, but Marty wondered if there would be any holiday at his house at all.  This would be the first big event without Good Ol’ Dad around, and nobody knew what to expect.  He usually turned holidays into a phony military pageant, with a strict but mysterious protocol the kids never really figured out.  As it turned out, this would be the best Thanksgiving they’d ever had.

Marge announced she was going to have some friends over, and didn’t bother to ask any of her kids what they wanted to do.  Jimbo slept over the night before, and Jack showed up later with a couple of guests.  One was a tanned, short man, strong and plump with long black hair and a walrus mustache.  He wore a battered cowboy hat and boots, with a leather vest that couldn’t be buttoned over the pot belly under his best t-shirt.  He had the squinty, wizened face of a Tibetan Sherpa and remarkably sharp, black eyes that missed nothing.  The woman was quiet and much taller than anyone else in the house, with wide hips and long, straight hair the color of wheat.  The pot-bellied stranger walked directly over to the eldest male with no patronizing guile, and stuck out his hand.  “I’m Otter.  Pleased t’ meet ya.”  He smiled unabashedly, showing off a missing front tooth.  Marty liked him immediately, and shook his hand.  He had an axe-handle grip that would impress Captain Hook, and moved as if he was walking on snow. “An’ that’s Rabbit, my old lady.”

“Rabbit?” Susie asked, suddenly interested in the formalities.

Marty was tempted to play along with what he thought was a game, and introduce himself as a frog, but just said, “Hi, I’m Martin.”  The formal name welled up from some unexpected response to the situation, in which he suddenly felt as if he had to appear more of a man.

“I’m Maggie,” the tall woman said in an unexpectedly deep voice, stooping slightly to shake the boy-man’s hand.  She didn’t look like an “old lady” at all.  She had compassionate eyes that flashed behind a face that was worn down by the cares of the world.

Jack brought a huge ham, and Marge had been cooking a turkey since before dawn, so there would be plenty of food.  Maggie was bearing a pumpkin pie and a plate of half-eaten brownies.  She saw Marty looking at the latter and warned, “Oh-ho no, I’m not your mom, you’ll have to ask her if you can have one of these.”  She had a tired but happy look on her face.  Later, Marty learned she had already eaten some of the mysterious brownies she brought for dessert.  Julie suddenly became very interested in that plate, and her eyes followed it into the kitchen.

Jimbo supplied the adults with fresh beers, and showed Otter around the place as if it was an unusual cultural museum.  They laughed at the far-out wallpaper design, the plastic chairs and tables, and the groovy wet bar in the family room.  As carpenters, however, they were impressed with the huge deck Marty’s dad had built with his own hands, which was big enough for a full basketball court.  Maggie (or Rabbit?) chatted in the kitchen with Marge, and Jack was clumsily setting up the large folding table he had brought, and giggling for no reason.  In a flash of insight, Julie leaned over and whispered covertly to Marty, “Those are pot brownies!”  He was about to inform her that he didn’t care in what sort of container they had been cooked… and then he understood.

“Oh-h-h.” He nodded sagely, and tried to remember what he’d read about marijuana brownies.  Marty’s only memory of weed was when he was about four years old, and some customs men at the border looked at the stuffed squirrel he always carried, and speculated with winks and grins that it might be a hiding place for illicit contraband. “I don’t have any marijuana in my squirrel!” the little boy cried at the time, not wanting them to cut open Rocky…  Snapping back to the present possibilities, his mind projected ahead for what possible hiding places in the kitchen might be accessible to Maggie at her higher altitude.

“Are we going to have pot brownies for dessert?”  Julie was beside herself with rebellious glee, and excitedly sought her usual outlet for breaking news.  “I’ve got to call Dick.”  Yes, her boyfriend was named Dick.  It wasn’t really necessary to make jokes about that – some facts were just too conveniently ironic – but Marty could never waste an opportunity for a joke.  For him, every moment was a cartoon that required a caption.

“Are you still ‘hanging out’ with Dick?”  The severity of the taunt was in proportion to the distance he was from his older sister, which was sufficient that she couldn’t punch him.  She reduced the aperture of her eyelids and glared at him malevolently.

Jack was laughing at the conversation, and having undue difficulty with the table, and it occurred to Marty that he’d probably eaten some brownies, too.  Then he realized that Jimbo and his own mother were surely partaking of the illegal substance, as well.  He helped Jack get the contraption upright and covered with a tablecloth, and they brought mismatched chairs from all over the house to complete the arrangement.  Susie helped set the table, while Marty struggled to fold the napkins the way fancy restaurants do.  Marge and Susie started to bring in the food, and the feast was on.  The smell of meat drew the men back inside, and Rabbit laid out some freshly baked bread he hadn’t seen her bring in.  He checked, and there was no marijuana inside.  Julie came downstairs, scanning the table.  “Where’s the brownies?  Can I have Dick over?”

Marge rolled her eyes.  “No Dick.”  Otter and Rabbit froze, mouths agape, wondering if they had stumbled in on a very personal conversation, and their wondering faces turned to her.  “Dick’s the name of her boyfriend,” she scolded them, and they looked relieved and contrite.

“She likes Dick,” Marty droned on cue for the thousandth time in a bored tone, the way a comedian recites an old line.  He moved his legs defensively before Julie could kick him under the table.  The adults all roared, with a mixture of bawdiness and embarrassment.  Susie looked perplexed; unaware of the jest as usual.

As if Marty’s lame, worn out repartee had broken the ice, Marge decided Julie could have half of what she called a “clowny brownie,” and her newly-teenaged son could have a quarter.  “What about me?” Susie whined, knowing the answer and hating that she was left out again.  Her older siblings gobbled the funny-tasting treats and drummed their fingers on the table, waiting for something to happen.  Susie folded her arms stubbornly and kicked her chair.  Rabbit hoped the kids wouldn’t overdose and die.  Otter winked in their general direction, and helped himself to another plateful of turkey and pumpkin pie.  Jimbo stroked his beard thoughtfully, eyes half closed, like a bemused god of Olympus contemplating the foibles of mortals.  Marge had a hand over her mouth like, “Oh my god, what have I done?”  Marty felt nothing.

 “Boom!”  Jack broke the silence, fingers expanding from his scalp in a mock explosion of the brain.  “Two more innocent youths corrupted for life.”

Otter winked again, “You can’t go back now.”  Marty still felt nothing.

“Whoa, I think I’m stoned,” Julie said melodramatically.  What was the big deal?  Marty puzzled, still not feeling anything.  Soon the adults got tired of waiting for their brains to detonate, and the conversation turned to growing pot, a topic about which Otter apparently had a shaman’s knowledge.  He wove tales of his adventures in such an entertaining way that the kids became enraptured.  Minutes went by, and they drank his words the way kittens lap up milk.

“But you have to watch and separate the males from the females if you want good buds.”  This caused Marty to burst into uncontrollable laughter.  It was by far the funniest thing Otter had uttered in a long and fascinating yarn.  The merry boy looked around and nodded, because everyone else was laughing, too!  What a funny story!  He had to remember it so he could tell Steve.  Wait, what happened with the males and females again?  Then he realized everyone was not laughing with him; they were laughing at him.  On no!  He was stoned!!  There goes my chance of getting into college, Marty snickered inwardly, and realized that the world was full of cartoons, and he could watch any channel he wanted.