Calypso

by David Sedaris

Another is that he’s very good to old people, a group that in the not-too-distant future will include me. It’s just this damned middle-aged period I have to get through.

On the round clock beside it, the numbers lay in an indecipherable heap, as if they’d come unglued. Just above them were printed the words who cares?

“Just awful,” my father whispered. “A person’s life reduced to one lousy box.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Actually there are two of them.” He corrected himself. “Two lousy boxes.”

Our father was a figure of authority, while Paul is more of a playmate.

How could anyone purposefully leave us—us, of all people? This is how I thought of it, for though I’ve often lost faith in myself, I’ve never lost faith in my family, in my certainty that we are fundamentally better than everyone else.

This, with the chuckle that means “Wouldn’t it be funny if what I just said was funny?”

That might have been part of its appeal to my father, but it had nothing to do with mine. Music is the only way I didn’t rebel against him.

Opinions constantly shifted and evolved, were fluid the same way thoughts were. Ten minutes into The Exorcist you might say, “This is boring.” An hour later you could decide that it was the best thing you’d ever seen, and it was no different with people. The villain at three in the afternoon might be the hero by sunset. It was all just storytelling.

“He used to drink the liquid out of tuna cans.” The story of my argument was insignificant now, dwarfed by this larger and infinitely more fascinating topic. I let go of my anger, all of it, and leaned back on the beach blanket, feeling palpably lighter, giddy almost. Feeling related. “Oil or water?” I asked. Gretchen leaned back as well and brought her cigarette to her sun-blistered lips. “Both.”