Moments with B
He was waiting at the bus depot when I arrived here back in the beginning of May. He stood, visibly excited, next to the Lincoln Continental his mother handed down to him when her sisters bought her a new Explorer. I had been changing bus after bus all night and most of the previous afternoon, I was tired and slightly miserable from allergies which, thankfully, had not left me in sneezing fits on any of the bus rides, and when I saw him standing there I asked myself if I was doing the right thing. I had asked myself this question a hundred times prior to coming, and since then I've kicked myself for coming here, for thinking this would be a good idea, for thinking it might be worth it. But in all those other instances, there's been some part of me that answers, 'yeah, it's the right thing to do, it's the only way to move forward, you're not an idiot, this is going to turn out for the better.' And it has...for the most part.
This one particular moment was different. I had a heavy red sports-bag over one shoulder, I was waiting for the faggoty old cockfuck bus driver to unlock the luggage compartmant underneath the bus, and for the brief time it took for the five or six other passengers to disperse, I saw his eyes searching the windows for me. My gut clenched and any happy thoughts or feelings of confidence shat out of my brain in a matter of milliseconds. My arms felt cold and clammy. I asked myself how bad it would really be if I jumped back on the bus and called home. This wasn't just two weeks. It was an indefinite amount of time, however long it would take me to do what I needed to do in college.
At that moment indefinite seemed synonymous with infinite.
~* * *~
He mumbled non-stop until we got to the house. It's a one story red-brick building with wood interior and a carport. Not a garage, which is like an enclosed space, a tiny little house that you build for your car to live in when you're not driving it. A carport is that same little house without any walls, except maybe for one that's part of the building you live in. It's just a ceiling, a shelter. And your car sits out there and mewls because it's tires get wet whenever it rains, or you park poorly with the back windows open and soak a goddamn library book until it's the size of War and Peace and the inside of your car smells like wet dog for two weeks. Anyway, this is important because this carport has two walls. One that's part of Herman and Eva's section of the house, and the other that's part of B's section of the house, which was built on a number of years ago when B grew sickly and his parents had to take care of him.
I mention this because when we exited from his Continental, he motioned me over to his side of the carport, not theirs. I also noted that niether of them were home. When he opened the door and led me into his section of the house, I saw that the couch had been folded out and made up with sheets, and I realized that I had been duped not by a lie, but by a simple lack of information.
"I need to talk to you about somethin'," he said. But it wasn't necessary.
He told me that Nanny is getting old and that she doesn't like to wear a bra or close her robe in the mornings anymore, that it pains her to do so. That he felt it would be better if I were to stay with him in his part of the house.
There was ample time to explain this over the phone, during the long period of days in which we'd been planning this living arrangement. He or Herman or Eva could have told me at any time. They could've told me on when I called them from the bus even, or B could've told me on the car ride. But I had never asked. I simply assumed I'd be sleeping across from them in his old room, just as I had during the two weeks I'd spent here the year before.
I was too tired to argue. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't protest the situation, the not-so-subtle manipulation to crawl his way back into my life. I spend my nights here in Herman and Eva's den anyway, and sleep in his section when he goes to work. During the first half of my time in college, back when I was civil enough to do whatever they asked and agree to every stipulation, I had to be in bed by three, so I'd wear headphones to drown out his monstrous snoring, which was honestly the hardest part of living with him when he was asleep. He is the only human being that I've ever wanted to horribly mutilate simply because of the sound of his snoring, but then, I'm biased. As for when he's awake? Well...
~* * *~
It took me four attempts of the Driver's Test to get my license. I don't mean the written, that was simple enough, I had that down the first time. I mean the actual driving, 'go outside, get into your car, put your seatbelt on, roll down your window and wait for me' test. That took me a month, one try a week. I had the same woman three out of four times, and she was a humorless automaton who gave me withering glances every time I saw her. This was the single most frightening woman I have yet to meet in my life. Everytime she got in the car I would tense up and feel vomitous. The first time I didn't make it out of the parking lot. She told me I'd pulled out wrong. The second time I was about to exit out of the parking lot when she said-
"Okay, what I want you to do for me is to put the car in reverse, pull us back into the lot and park the car."
Sweating through my shirt and on the verge of bursting into angry girly-man tears, I ask her why.
"Because you're driving on the wrong side of the road."
Now to finish this part of the story, the next week I travelled with B to Aberdeen just to get away from her, to take the test with someone else. As I had dreamed the night before, she was there. We rushed back to Laurinburg, my tail between my legs because her eyes had met mine when I'd stepped into the crowded Aberdeen DMV office, and I took the test with a tall, good-natured black man who actually let me take the entire test, three point turn and all, can you imagine? So the following week I had the woman again, I took the test and, with a stomach cramped tighter than a newborn's sphincter, I passed. I thanked her and I also apologized to her for the following, which is the whole point of this flashback:
During week number 2, after she had told me to go to the car and wait for her, I went out to my Buick Century and found B still sitting in the passenger-side seat. I got in and, feeling the tension growing, I said, "she's coming."
"So?"
"So she's going to have to sit there."
"When she gets out here I'll leave."
"B, please, I'm really tense right now, could you just go wait for me in the DMV?"
First there was silence. Then he huffed, unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the Buick. As I was taking deep breaths he stuck his head back in through the window and said, "Well, fuck you, asshole. See if I do shit for you again."
My eyebrows went up and I nodded. He stormed off.
Cue driving test, take two. Lights, camera, action.
Wrong side of the road. Humiliation. Yadda yadda yadda.
I sat there when she left and I felt like crying. I almost did. Just as I was about to let loose, to really wail and bang my head against the steering wheel and act like a total shit, I peered up at the DMV. I saw through the window, through the blinds, a flurry of motion. With ever-increasing dread I went back into the building.
Only to find B acting like a total shit in front of a dozen people.
"Do you know how much pain and grief you are inflicting on my family?" He asked, red-faced, his finger pointing an inch from the nose of the woman who had administered my driving test. His voice was octaves too high to be threatening, he squeaked at 'grief' and he was shaking with rage in his temper tantrum. A guy in white who looked as though he ran the place peeked out of his office with the same expression of 'what the fuck does this moron think he's doing' I no doubt had.
Except that I was soon overtaken by an even deeper sense of humiliation.
The black man who I would test with in week three stood up from his desk and said "Excuse me sir, but this was not her fault!"
"Who are you," B asked, "I'm talking to her!"
The official looking man stepped out of his office and approached B. "You have to leave," the man stated firmly, "we can't have you in here."
"What?"
"I said you have to leave."
"I'm not going until this woman agrees to stop-"
"Leave now, sir. Get out."
He did, thankfully, leaving behind one last gem, pointing at the man in white.
"I'll have your job, you sonovabitch!"
I wish the situation had lasted long enough for me to say something, anything that would've brought the situation to a close before that point; something that would've shut B up. Something that would've made him cry. As it is I simply stood there, shocked and mortified that I was related to this whiny, offensive little shit.
When we were back in the car he thrust his hands in between his armpits and stared out the window.
I tried to remain calm when all I wanted to do was slam his oddly shaped head into the dashboard repeatedly. "Do you want to explain that to me?"
"Sum'bitch tells me to 'get out', I'm gonna have his goddam job."
"Okay...you do realize that it was my fault I didn't pass the test and not hers, right?"
"That ain't the point, I'm not talkin' about that bitch, I'm gonna have his goddam job. And don't talk to me like I'm a child."
"Why were you yelling in a room full of people?"
"She is hurting us, Mark-"
"She is doing her job!"
"No, no," He said, furiously shaking his head. "Take me back to work."
I felt my face screw up into a mask of anger and frustration. My upper lips pulled back, the skin on my nose pushed against my glasses, my teeth clenched. I realized I probably looked like an idiot.
"Alright, princess*," I said, "fine."
I pulled on the gear stick only to meet resistance.** After about five seconds of unsuccessfully pulling at the stick it dawned on me that I hadn't started the car yet.
During the trip back to the house B shrieks, startling me.
"WHAT?!" I ask loudly.
"THAT WAY," he says, "that way is FASTER!"
"Jesus Christ, I don't know these roads all that well, I haven't even be driving here for a month!"
"That way was faster!"
"Well, fine! We'll be back in three minutes, just hang on."
"But Mark," he says, choked up, "I have to get back to work!" He started to cry softly as I pulled into the neighborhood.
*Yeah, that's something I wish I'd never picked up. God dammit. Michael, this twenty-two year old assistant manager who came on board the day before I quit working at McDonald's walked into the back and said (these were his first words to any of us), "EXCUSE ME! Ya'll, you boys are bein' to loud back here! Now I can do your jobs better 'n any you can, you remember that! Quiet down, now. Quiet!" Now I'd been working the grill for two hours, I demanded that somebody else take over cause I was a fry guy, I fried whatever they wanted, fish, chicken sandwiches, nuggets, strips, etc. I did it fast and orderly and I'd been doing it for a month, and they knew that I fucking hated the grill and the one thing that I learned at McDonald's is that dude, if you do something else halfway decent and you don't like what you're doing, complaining is going to get you exactly where you want to be. Cause this shit isn't anybody's dream job and the manager will do anything short of blowing you to keep you working hard.
And so this new guy, Michael, I asked him when somebody was coming in to take over for me on grill cause I don't normally do grill and he shrugged. Just shrugged. So I said to myself, 'Okay, sure thing.' I slapped on nine frozen patties and I lowered the grill. Only I did this in the span of fifty seconds instead of thirty. The spatula moved noticeably slower in my greasy fingers. Burger production seemed to be dwindling, and Joan, the manager, had one person to look to to solve this. Michael appeared at my side minutes later and said, "Hey, I can do this job better 'n you, so unless you want me to do thi-".
"Okay, sport, have at it," I said. I held the spatula out to him. I had know doubt that he could do it better 'n me.
We stared at each other. He raised an eyebrow and said, "Melvin's coming in at nine." That was just ten minutes away. I nodded and went back to work. When Melvin came in he gladly took over for me, as he thoroughly enjoyed the grill. That night I washed my uniform and handed it in the next morning. There are certain things that you call people that let them know what kind of a personality you possess. And somewhere along the way I've apparently become the kind of jackass that calls people 'sport' and 'princess'. What's next? champ, chief, slick?
I fear for my future, though hopefully my approaching stint in the air force will rid me of such prickishness.
Oh, and before I could leave that night Michael had me mop and sweep the entire outside path. You know that red brick walkway you step up onto as you approach the McDonald's entrance? The thing that surrounds the entire building? Yeah, that thing.
Fucker.
**This is one thing that happens to me whenever I argue. No matter what. And it sucks beyond comparison. My sister can back me up on this because she's beared witness to some of my biggest tantrums. In life I am a spaz, certainly. But I can usually operate and control my basic motor functions without slamming into any walls or tripping head over feet. Usually. But if I'm pissed off, if I'm angry and tense, goodbye self-control, hello spastic city. Nine times out of ten, if I would leave my sister's room in a hissyfit, my shoulder would slam into her doorframe on the way out. And the other one out of ten I'd bump into something else on the way back to my room. When I argue with Pa, which is a very different style of arguing but still leaves me steaming, it almost always occurs in the very den I'm typing this in now. There's a stationary bike near my cubbyhole. If I leave that cubbyhole pissed, an article of my clothing will catch on the handlebars of the bike and snag.
These are just two examples. The reality is without limits. If I am pissed, I will bump, trip, snag, hit myself in the head with something or otherwise enter a Ben Stiller-esque situation where not only have I gotten into an argument, I cannot leave the presence of the other person without doing something stupid and giving them the upper hand because at least they don't look stupid.
Why does that suck so bad as to be beyond comparison? Because there is nothing worse in an argument than to say something final, like "suck my asshole, fuckface," or "I didn't want your stupid Legos anyway" or "Alright, princess, fine", and then have to stumble for a second while you bump against a door, snag your coat on the stationary bike or dick with the gear shift because you haven't even started the car yet.
This one particular moment was different. I had a heavy red sports-bag over one shoulder, I was waiting for the faggoty old cockfuck bus driver to unlock the luggage compartmant underneath the bus, and for the brief time it took for the five or six other passengers to disperse, I saw his eyes searching the windows for me. My gut clenched and any happy thoughts or feelings of confidence shat out of my brain in a matter of milliseconds. My arms felt cold and clammy. I asked myself how bad it would really be if I jumped back on the bus and called home. This wasn't just two weeks. It was an indefinite amount of time, however long it would take me to do what I needed to do in college.
At that moment indefinite seemed synonymous with infinite.
~* * *~
He mumbled non-stop until we got to the house. It's a one story red-brick building with wood interior and a carport. Not a garage, which is like an enclosed space, a tiny little house that you build for your car to live in when you're not driving it. A carport is that same little house without any walls, except maybe for one that's part of the building you live in. It's just a ceiling, a shelter. And your car sits out there and mewls because it's tires get wet whenever it rains, or you park poorly with the back windows open and soak a goddamn library book until it's the size of War and Peace and the inside of your car smells like wet dog for two weeks. Anyway, this is important because this carport has two walls. One that's part of Herman and Eva's section of the house, and the other that's part of B's section of the house, which was built on a number of years ago when B grew sickly and his parents had to take care of him.
I mention this because when we exited from his Continental, he motioned me over to his side of the carport, not theirs. I also noted that niether of them were home. When he opened the door and led me into his section of the house, I saw that the couch had been folded out and made up with sheets, and I realized that I had been duped not by a lie, but by a simple lack of information.
"I need to talk to you about somethin'," he said. But it wasn't necessary.
He told me that Nanny is getting old and that she doesn't like to wear a bra or close her robe in the mornings anymore, that it pains her to do so. That he felt it would be better if I were to stay with him in his part of the house.
There was ample time to explain this over the phone, during the long period of days in which we'd been planning this living arrangement. He or Herman or Eva could have told me at any time. They could've told me on when I called them from the bus even, or B could've told me on the car ride. But I had never asked. I simply assumed I'd be sleeping across from them in his old room, just as I had during the two weeks I'd spent here the year before.
I was too tired to argue. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't protest the situation, the not-so-subtle manipulation to crawl his way back into my life. I spend my nights here in Herman and Eva's den anyway, and sleep in his section when he goes to work. During the first half of my time in college, back when I was civil enough to do whatever they asked and agree to every stipulation, I had to be in bed by three, so I'd wear headphones to drown out his monstrous snoring, which was honestly the hardest part of living with him when he was asleep. He is the only human being that I've ever wanted to horribly mutilate simply because of the sound of his snoring, but then, I'm biased. As for when he's awake? Well...
~* * *~
It took me four attempts of the Driver's Test to get my license. I don't mean the written, that was simple enough, I had that down the first time. I mean the actual driving, 'go outside, get into your car, put your seatbelt on, roll down your window and wait for me' test. That took me a month, one try a week. I had the same woman three out of four times, and she was a humorless automaton who gave me withering glances every time I saw her. This was the single most frightening woman I have yet to meet in my life. Everytime she got in the car I would tense up and feel vomitous. The first time I didn't make it out of the parking lot. She told me I'd pulled out wrong. The second time I was about to exit out of the parking lot when she said-
"Okay, what I want you to do for me is to put the car in reverse, pull us back into the lot and park the car."
Sweating through my shirt and on the verge of bursting into angry girly-man tears, I ask her why.
"Because you're driving on the wrong side of the road."
Now to finish this part of the story, the next week I travelled with B to Aberdeen just to get away from her, to take the test with someone else. As I had dreamed the night before, she was there. We rushed back to Laurinburg, my tail between my legs because her eyes had met mine when I'd stepped into the crowded Aberdeen DMV office, and I took the test with a tall, good-natured black man who actually let me take the entire test, three point turn and all, can you imagine? So the following week I had the woman again, I took the test and, with a stomach cramped tighter than a newborn's sphincter, I passed. I thanked her and I also apologized to her for the following, which is the whole point of this flashback:
During week number 2, after she had told me to go to the car and wait for her, I went out to my Buick Century and found B still sitting in the passenger-side seat. I got in and, feeling the tension growing, I said, "she's coming."
"So?"
"So she's going to have to sit there."
"When she gets out here I'll leave."
"B, please, I'm really tense right now, could you just go wait for me in the DMV?"
First there was silence. Then he huffed, unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the Buick. As I was taking deep breaths he stuck his head back in through the window and said, "Well, fuck you, asshole. See if I do shit for you again."
My eyebrows went up and I nodded. He stormed off.
Cue driving test, take two. Lights, camera, action.
Wrong side of the road. Humiliation. Yadda yadda yadda.
I sat there when she left and I felt like crying. I almost did. Just as I was about to let loose, to really wail and bang my head against the steering wheel and act like a total shit, I peered up at the DMV. I saw through the window, through the blinds, a flurry of motion. With ever-increasing dread I went back into the building.
Only to find B acting like a total shit in front of a dozen people.
"Do you know how much pain and grief you are inflicting on my family?" He asked, red-faced, his finger pointing an inch from the nose of the woman who had administered my driving test. His voice was octaves too high to be threatening, he squeaked at 'grief' and he was shaking with rage in his temper tantrum. A guy in white who looked as though he ran the place peeked out of his office with the same expression of 'what the fuck does this moron think he's doing' I no doubt had.
Except that I was soon overtaken by an even deeper sense of humiliation.
The black man who I would test with in week three stood up from his desk and said "Excuse me sir, but this was not her fault!"
"Who are you," B asked, "I'm talking to her!"
The official looking man stepped out of his office and approached B. "You have to leave," the man stated firmly, "we can't have you in here."
"What?"
"I said you have to leave."
"I'm not going until this woman agrees to stop-"
"Leave now, sir. Get out."
He did, thankfully, leaving behind one last gem, pointing at the man in white.
"I'll have your job, you sonovabitch!"
I wish the situation had lasted long enough for me to say something, anything that would've brought the situation to a close before that point; something that would've shut B up. Something that would've made him cry. As it is I simply stood there, shocked and mortified that I was related to this whiny, offensive little shit.
When we were back in the car he thrust his hands in between his armpits and stared out the window.
I tried to remain calm when all I wanted to do was slam his oddly shaped head into the dashboard repeatedly. "Do you want to explain that to me?"
"Sum'bitch tells me to 'get out', I'm gonna have his goddam job."
"Okay...you do realize that it was my fault I didn't pass the test and not hers, right?"
"That ain't the point, I'm not talkin' about that bitch, I'm gonna have his goddam job. And don't talk to me like I'm a child."
"Why were you yelling in a room full of people?"
"She is hurting us, Mark-"
"She is doing her job!"
"No, no," He said, furiously shaking his head. "Take me back to work."
I felt my face screw up into a mask of anger and frustration. My upper lips pulled back, the skin on my nose pushed against my glasses, my teeth clenched. I realized I probably looked like an idiot.
"Alright, princess*," I said, "fine."
I pulled on the gear stick only to meet resistance.** After about five seconds of unsuccessfully pulling at the stick it dawned on me that I hadn't started the car yet.
During the trip back to the house B shrieks, startling me.
"WHAT?!" I ask loudly.
"THAT WAY," he says, "that way is FASTER!"
"Jesus Christ, I don't know these roads all that well, I haven't even be driving here for a month!"
"That way was faster!"
"Well, fine! We'll be back in three minutes, just hang on."
"But Mark," he says, choked up, "I have to get back to work!" He started to cry softly as I pulled into the neighborhood.
*Yeah, that's something I wish I'd never picked up. God dammit. Michael, this twenty-two year old assistant manager who came on board the day before I quit working at McDonald's walked into the back and said (these were his first words to any of us), "EXCUSE ME! Ya'll, you boys are bein' to loud back here! Now I can do your jobs better 'n any you can, you remember that! Quiet down, now. Quiet!" Now I'd been working the grill for two hours, I demanded that somebody else take over cause I was a fry guy, I fried whatever they wanted, fish, chicken sandwiches, nuggets, strips, etc. I did it fast and orderly and I'd been doing it for a month, and they knew that I fucking hated the grill and the one thing that I learned at McDonald's is that dude, if you do something else halfway decent and you don't like what you're doing, complaining is going to get you exactly where you want to be. Cause this shit isn't anybody's dream job and the manager will do anything short of blowing you to keep you working hard.
And so this new guy, Michael, I asked him when somebody was coming in to take over for me on grill cause I don't normally do grill and he shrugged. Just shrugged. So I said to myself, 'Okay, sure thing.' I slapped on nine frozen patties and I lowered the grill. Only I did this in the span of fifty seconds instead of thirty. The spatula moved noticeably slower in my greasy fingers. Burger production seemed to be dwindling, and Joan, the manager, had one person to look to to solve this. Michael appeared at my side minutes later and said, "Hey, I can do this job better 'n you, so unless you want me to do thi-".
"Okay, sport, have at it," I said. I held the spatula out to him. I had know doubt that he could do it better 'n me.
We stared at each other. He raised an eyebrow and said, "Melvin's coming in at nine." That was just ten minutes away. I nodded and went back to work. When Melvin came in he gladly took over for me, as he thoroughly enjoyed the grill. That night I washed my uniform and handed it in the next morning. There are certain things that you call people that let them know what kind of a personality you possess. And somewhere along the way I've apparently become the kind of jackass that calls people 'sport' and 'princess'. What's next? champ, chief, slick?
I fear for my future, though hopefully my approaching stint in the air force will rid me of such prickishness.
Oh, and before I could leave that night Michael had me mop and sweep the entire outside path. You know that red brick walkway you step up onto as you approach the McDonald's entrance? The thing that surrounds the entire building? Yeah, that thing.
Fucker.
**This is one thing that happens to me whenever I argue. No matter what. And it sucks beyond comparison. My sister can back me up on this because she's beared witness to some of my biggest tantrums. In life I am a spaz, certainly. But I can usually operate and control my basic motor functions without slamming into any walls or tripping head over feet. Usually. But if I'm pissed off, if I'm angry and tense, goodbye self-control, hello spastic city. Nine times out of ten, if I would leave my sister's room in a hissyfit, my shoulder would slam into her doorframe on the way out. And the other one out of ten I'd bump into something else on the way back to my room. When I argue with Pa, which is a very different style of arguing but still leaves me steaming, it almost always occurs in the very den I'm typing this in now. There's a stationary bike near my cubbyhole. If I leave that cubbyhole pissed, an article of my clothing will catch on the handlebars of the bike and snag.
These are just two examples. The reality is without limits. If I am pissed, I will bump, trip, snag, hit myself in the head with something or otherwise enter a Ben Stiller-esque situation where not only have I gotten into an argument, I cannot leave the presence of the other person without doing something stupid and giving them the upper hand because at least they don't look stupid.
Why does that suck so bad as to be beyond comparison? Because there is nothing worse in an argument than to say something final, like "suck my asshole, fuckface," or "I didn't want your stupid Legos anyway" or "Alright, princess, fine", and then have to stumble for a second while you bump against a door, snag your coat on the stationary bike or dick with the gear shift because you haven't even started the car yet.