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It’s always been jumbled, the furniture competing, with clenched teeth and sharp elbows, for the honor of the Most Wrong-looking Object.
One should joke in the face of adversity; there is always humor, we are told.
I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers.
Any complaints will be handled quickly, and with severity.)
It’s an effort, I’m guessing, to let him know, if it weren’t already obvious, that as much as I want to carry on our parents’ legacy, he and I will also be doing some experimenting. And constantly entertaining, like some amazing, endless telethon. There is a voice inside me, a very excited, chirpy voice, that urges me to keep things merry, madcap even, the mood buoyant. Because Beth is always pulling out old photo albums, crying, asking Toph how he feels, I feel I have to overcompensate by keeping us occupied.
I am making our lives a music video, a game show on Nickelodeon—lots of quick cuts, crazy camera angles, fun, fun, fun! It’s a campaign of distraction and revisionist history—leaflets dropped behind enemy lines, fireworks, funny dances, magic tricks. Whassat? Lookie there! Where’d it go?
This is obvious stuff. This is just common sense. I mean, give me a goddamn break, okay? You have got to help me out every once in a while, little man. I’m exhausted, overworked, dead half the time, and I just can’t be dressing someone who’s nine years old and should be perfectly capable of dressing himself.
They are crinkly and no longer have random sex, as only I among them am still capable of. They are done with such things; even thinking about them having sex is unappealing. They cannot run without looking silly. They cannot coach the soccer team without making a mockery of themselves and the sport.
but now unstoppable, insurmountable, ready to kick the saggy asses of the gray-haired, thickly bespectacled, slump-shouldered of Berkeley’s glowering parentiscenti!
They are what my friends and I, growing up in public schools, always envisioned private school kids were like—a little too precious, their innate peculiarities amplified, not muted, for better and worse.
then break into a fabulous Fossean dance number, lots of kicks and high-stepping, a few throws and catches, a big sliding-across-the-stage-on-their-knees thing, then some more jumping, some strutting, and finally, a crossing-in-midair front flip via hidden trampoline, with both of them landing perfectly, just before the
when her own life-fabric is pulled taut, when there is suddenly no margin for error, no room for the loosey-goosey,
Spike Lee Major Tom Dick and Harry Connick, Jr. Mints Most of the names are
After graduating he tried Chicago first, but tired of constantly running into people from Champaign. They were all there, the whole school—so few make it out of the state. To most, Chicago was Oz, anything beyond it was China, the moon.
You wouldn’t believe what people will believe once they know our story. They’re ready for anything, basically—will believe anything, because they’ve been thrown off-balance,
are still wondering if any of this is true, our story in general, but aren’t sure and are terrified of offending us.”
it’s the waiting that’s the killer—the waiting to be wherever you plan to be.
The drives in central Illinois, those miles, so straight, where you could drive eighty, ninety, the windows down, corn gone, just raw gray fields, where you felt like you were plowing through time itself, like you were a huge loud missile tearing the earth in half, leaving grateful ruin in your wake—but
and at that moment everything would be wiped away, all the times you feared her or wanted to run away, or wondered how she lived with him, protected him, you wanted only her laughing like she did when she was on the phone with her friends—Yes!
was time to give the boy something to be pissed about. How else would he succeed? Where would he find his motivation, if not from the desire to tread over me?
