Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Portrait of the artist as a young ER patient
I grew up in a fairly typical suburban home. My parents weren't divorced -- at least, not then -- and neither were the parents of most other kids I knew. We led a middle-class lifestyle -- nice clothes, but not too nice; nice cars, but not too nice; nice house, but not too nice. I and my sibs got along at times and fought at times, typically when material possessions were at stake and not because of any intrinsic antipathy for one another.
My brothers and I were typical boys, which meant we spent a lot of time in the emergency room growing up -- stitches from all kinds of falls and other mishaps, broken collarbones from backyard football. Then there was the weird stuff. Like, one time about 10 of us neighborhood guys went sliding down a mudslide and my brother was the one whose ass found the buried pitchfork. My other brother was once bitten, deeply, mid-thigh, by a German shepherd while both he and the dog were sitting next to each other, minding their own respective businesses. My dad once nearly severed several of my toes while shutting the bathroom door; 35 years later, neither one of us can figure out how it happened. As I say, typical.
What was not typical, although I didn't realize this at the time, was the frequency and degree to which my father resorted to whippings to try to keep us in line. Now, he didn't beat us as that term is understood today -- no punches to the face or anything like that. But every other dad I'd ever seen use a belt swung it, like, once. My dad would swing it three, four, five times. And he must've figured out early that swats on the butt don't hurt much, because he always aimed for the back of the thighs instead. Some of those welts lasted for days and stood out so vividly we'd wear long pants to school the next day even if it was early June and 95 degrees out.
As each of us got to be old enough to be confirmed in the church, he would solemnly tell us that if we were old enough to be members of the church, we were old enough not to be beaten anymore. Even at 12, I knew that meant I was getting old enough and big enough that he figured that one day soon I might kick his ass, even though I had no intention of trying. I recall shrugging after that conversation, figuring that the promise inevitably would be broken and so not placing much value on it in the first place. And so it was broken, with all of us, most spectacularly with my youngest brother, whom my father pulled a belt on in the middle of Bourbon Street when we traveled to New Orleans the summer I was 18 (my brothers would've been about to turn 17 and 15, respectively). I recall two things about that incident, both surreal: how everyone else around us on the street was trying to pretend like they weren't seeing what they were seeing, because if they admitted to themselves that they'd seen it then they'd have to do something about it; and how glad I was that I was drunk at the time.
My brothers and I were typical boys, which meant we spent a lot of time in the emergency room growing up -- stitches from all kinds of falls and other mishaps, broken collarbones from backyard football. Then there was the weird stuff. Like, one time about 10 of us neighborhood guys went sliding down a mudslide and my brother was the one whose ass found the buried pitchfork. My other brother was once bitten, deeply, mid-thigh, by a German shepherd while both he and the dog were sitting next to each other, minding their own respective businesses. My dad once nearly severed several of my toes while shutting the bathroom door; 35 years later, neither one of us can figure out how it happened. As I say, typical.
What was not typical, although I didn't realize this at the time, was the frequency and degree to which my father resorted to whippings to try to keep us in line. Now, he didn't beat us as that term is understood today -- no punches to the face or anything like that. But every other dad I'd ever seen use a belt swung it, like, once. My dad would swing it three, four, five times. And he must've figured out early that swats on the butt don't hurt much, because he always aimed for the back of the thighs instead. Some of those welts lasted for days and stood out so vividly we'd wear long pants to school the next day even if it was early June and 95 degrees out.
As each of us got to be old enough to be confirmed in the church, he would solemnly tell us that if we were old enough to be members of the church, we were old enough not to be beaten anymore. Even at 12, I knew that meant I was getting old enough and big enough that he figured that one day soon I might kick his ass, even though I had no intention of trying. I recall shrugging after that conversation, figuring that the promise inevitably would be broken and so not placing much value on it in the first place. And so it was broken, with all of us, most spectacularly with my youngest brother, whom my father pulled a belt on in the middle of Bourbon Street when we traveled to New Orleans the summer I was 18 (my brothers would've been about to turn 17 and 15, respectively). I recall two things about that incident, both surreal: how everyone else around us on the street was trying to pretend like they weren't seeing what they were seeing, because if they admitted to themselves that they'd seen it then they'd have to do something about it; and how glad I was that I was drunk at the time.
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