Anniversary of Birth / Death
Yesterday would have been my nephew's 24th birthday, instead it marks 4 days shy of the anniversary of his death.
I remember that summer of 1984. I spent the middle third of it in New Jersey at my brother's house. Tina (who would be the first of now 4 ex-wives) was pregnant with Juan - about 7 or 8 months along. Her family lived down the street, her aunt on the same side, her mom across from her aunt's. It was a shitty little pre-fab poor folk neighborhood. I see that looking back, but back then it was an actual house with a yard! Something I had never had at that point in my life. I would turn 13 that summer. I would enter 8th grade that fall.
My brother drove a Duster and worked the overnight shift on the flightline at McGuire Air Force Base. Sometimes in the early morning he'd talk in his sleep, dreaming he was still at work and presumably hungry, because Tina and I could always get him to talking by mentioning cheeseburgers.
It was also the summer that I discovered Prince. Tina would call back into the living room as I got ready for bed when the video for "When Doves Cry" came on the television. It was unlike any music I had ever heard before, and Prince's style and delivery both fascinated and disturbed me.
Juan Jr. was born after I had gone back to Brooklyn, to finish up the summer running around the Red Hook Projects, or riding around in the middle of a pack of bikes - representing our specific block as we roamed the wider neighborhood, simultaneously hoping for trouble and wanting to avoid it.
I probably got to see him most during the first few years of his life. I was down in Newtown, PA at boarding school a year later, and the air force base was in nearby Jersey, so my brother's place was a convenient meet-up for the whole family. But before my senior year my brother was stationed in the Azores, and I did not see them again for a long time, and when I say "them" I mean my brother, his wife, my nephew and my niece.
The years after they returned and my brother remarried I was too "busy" to see them much. I was in my early 20s and a weekend down to Maryland meant being trapped for 48 hours or more in a house with my family (not to mention the 6 hour drive that my sister could drag into 8 with the way she drives). I could think of no fate worse. I would rather be back in Brooklyn, or hanging in the village, playing gigs with my band, practicing, partying. . . It was a fun time in my life. If I went down to the Maryland house four times in the something like 8 years they lived there, it was a lot. And after that I went away to school again to finish up my undergrad work, and was hardly in Brooklyn, let along going all the way down to Maryland.
In the last few years I saw Juan Jr. sporadically. He went to live with his mom, and then back with his dad, and his dad's third wife, and then he was out in Texas, and then Florida, back with his dad. I don't know. I lose track. But those times were all when my brother dragged him along to visit in New York. We'd sit awkwardly in the living room of my mom's place, sticking to the plastic seat covers. Or at my uncle's place after when mi abuela was brought back from Puerto Rico and before she went into the nursing home. He was the age I was when I skipped out on those weekend family trips, but he had dropped out of high school, was still looking to get his G.E.D., looking to find something to do with his life, and I always wanted to say, "Sometimes that is not something you find out all at once. . ." But I got a palpable sense of the pressure on him from his family, especially since 10 years before I had been feeling that pressure - to get a job, to finish education, to do something, to stop loafing, to earn a living, to grow up. . . I was able to mostly ignore that pressure by burying myself in music and later in the life I made for myself away at New Paltz. I was all about doing things at my own pace. I still am.
I don't know what my nephew buried himself in to ignore the pressure. Maybe he didn't have anything to take the place of so-called responsibility - or maybe he had more of a conscience than I did. I wanted to say to him, "It can still work out. . ." But doubt and fear kept me from reaching out. I knew that my advice would not be appreciated by my family*, and I doubted if my own experience really applied to his situation. I had finished high school. I had gone to college.
I was against Juan Jr. going into the Army. I am still against anyone going into the Army, or any of the armed services. Last night I saw a commercial for the Navy targeted at young African-American men and women, playing up the technical skills and experience gained from enlisting. It mentioned money for college and an improved paygrade when you get a job in the civilian world. It did not mention shooting rockets at land targets. It did not mention death, destruction, psychological scarring or the dubious reasoning that leads to those consequences.
I am proud of Juan Jr., but not of the thing he was doing. It is a hard place to be at, even a year later. He died doing in our name as Americans the thing that it shames me to think that we are doing, allowing to happen. . . I can only think about the fact that he shouldn't have even been there. None of those men and women should even be there. . . I have said many times that he died for nothing. When some people hear me say that they are shocked. They think I am disparaging my nephew's memory. They want to separate the intent from the reality. They want to hold up the virtue of "serving one's country" in a vacuum and away from the means of serving and the possibility that it is not the country that is being served after all. But I cannot do that, not only despite the fact that he is my nephew, but also because of the fact that he is my nephew. I would rather have him alive and without having exercised that dubious virtue. . .
But I will go on to further contradict myself as I have been realizing lately that he did not die for nothing, he died for less than nothing. People die for nothing everyday, unexpectedly, expectedly, with fear and with courage and with ignorance. But Juan died for the hubris of a dubiously elected official. So, he did not die for a virtue, or even in an absence of virtue, but rather for the vice of another man.
When I was 23 I was playing gigs all over the Village and in shitty little bars in Brooklyn and Long Island with my band, Zuckermann's Famous Pig. Juan Jr only got to be that age for four days before an improvised explosive device blew up under his humvee, flipping it, killing him and others. When I was 24 I was spending the summer at my girlfriend's house up in Brewster, just chilling and having a great time, writing a lot of songs, having a lot of sex, sometimes getting high with her younger brother, playing Nintendo all night, and just waiting for the fall semester to begin. Juan doesn't get to turn 24. He doesn't get to do anything ever again. I said it before, and I'll say it again: You have to have a life in order to get your life together.
* I recall that during my early twenties when I was still drifting a bit, my mom and sister told me that the son of a family friend that had called while I was away. He was a few years younger than me, and was going into the Air Force, or Marines, or something, and he had wanted to say good-bye and to try to convince me to join as well, so it must've been the Air Force (this was the theme that played throughout my late teens and early to mid-twenties - join the Air Force, join the Air Force, join the Air Force) . "It's too bad I missed him, I would have tried to convince him to not join," I replied. This caused a huge argument. The Armed Services helped people. "At the cost of killing, being killed, and serving the interests of those in power," It was a pat reply. It was ground that had been tread over and over again, and that was without going into the whole issue of race and the armed forces, which I could go on and on about, if you let me.
I remember that summer of 1984. I spent the middle third of it in New Jersey at my brother's house. Tina (who would be the first of now 4 ex-wives) was pregnant with Juan - about 7 or 8 months along. Her family lived down the street, her aunt on the same side, her mom across from her aunt's. It was a shitty little pre-fab poor folk neighborhood. I see that looking back, but back then it was an actual house with a yard! Something I had never had at that point in my life. I would turn 13 that summer. I would enter 8th grade that fall.
My brother drove a Duster and worked the overnight shift on the flightline at McGuire Air Force Base. Sometimes in the early morning he'd talk in his sleep, dreaming he was still at work and presumably hungry, because Tina and I could always get him to talking by mentioning cheeseburgers.
It was also the summer that I discovered Prince. Tina would call back into the living room as I got ready for bed when the video for "When Doves Cry" came on the television. It was unlike any music I had ever heard before, and Prince's style and delivery both fascinated and disturbed me.
Juan Jr. was born after I had gone back to Brooklyn, to finish up the summer running around the Red Hook Projects, or riding around in the middle of a pack of bikes - representing our specific block as we roamed the wider neighborhood, simultaneously hoping for trouble and wanting to avoid it.
I probably got to see him most during the first few years of his life. I was down in Newtown, PA at boarding school a year later, and the air force base was in nearby Jersey, so my brother's place was a convenient meet-up for the whole family. But before my senior year my brother was stationed in the Azores, and I did not see them again for a long time, and when I say "them" I mean my brother, his wife, my nephew and my niece.
The years after they returned and my brother remarried I was too "busy" to see them much. I was in my early 20s and a weekend down to Maryland meant being trapped for 48 hours or more in a house with my family (not to mention the 6 hour drive that my sister could drag into 8 with the way she drives). I could think of no fate worse. I would rather be back in Brooklyn, or hanging in the village, playing gigs with my band, practicing, partying. . . It was a fun time in my life. If I went down to the Maryland house four times in the something like 8 years they lived there, it was a lot. And after that I went away to school again to finish up my undergrad work, and was hardly in Brooklyn, let along going all the way down to Maryland.
In the last few years I saw Juan Jr. sporadically. He went to live with his mom, and then back with his dad, and his dad's third wife, and then he was out in Texas, and then Florida, back with his dad. I don't know. I lose track. But those times were all when my brother dragged him along to visit in New York. We'd sit awkwardly in the living room of my mom's place, sticking to the plastic seat covers. Or at my uncle's place after when mi abuela was brought back from Puerto Rico and before she went into the nursing home. He was the age I was when I skipped out on those weekend family trips, but he had dropped out of high school, was still looking to get his G.E.D., looking to find something to do with his life, and I always wanted to say, "Sometimes that is not something you find out all at once. . ." But I got a palpable sense of the pressure on him from his family, especially since 10 years before I had been feeling that pressure - to get a job, to finish education, to do something, to stop loafing, to earn a living, to grow up. . . I was able to mostly ignore that pressure by burying myself in music and later in the life I made for myself away at New Paltz. I was all about doing things at my own pace. I still am.
I don't know what my nephew buried himself in to ignore the pressure. Maybe he didn't have anything to take the place of so-called responsibility - or maybe he had more of a conscience than I did. I wanted to say to him, "It can still work out. . ." But doubt and fear kept me from reaching out. I knew that my advice would not be appreciated by my family*, and I doubted if my own experience really applied to his situation. I had finished high school. I had gone to college.
I was against Juan Jr. going into the Army. I am still against anyone going into the Army, or any of the armed services. Last night I saw a commercial for the Navy targeted at young African-American men and women, playing up the technical skills and experience gained from enlisting. It mentioned money for college and an improved paygrade when you get a job in the civilian world. It did not mention shooting rockets at land targets. It did not mention death, destruction, psychological scarring or the dubious reasoning that leads to those consequences.
I am proud of Juan Jr., but not of the thing he was doing. It is a hard place to be at, even a year later. He died doing in our name as Americans the thing that it shames me to think that we are doing, allowing to happen. . . I can only think about the fact that he shouldn't have even been there. None of those men and women should even be there. . . I have said many times that he died for nothing. When some people hear me say that they are shocked. They think I am disparaging my nephew's memory. They want to separate the intent from the reality. They want to hold up the virtue of "serving one's country" in a vacuum and away from the means of serving and the possibility that it is not the country that is being served after all. But I cannot do that, not only despite the fact that he is my nephew, but also because of the fact that he is my nephew. I would rather have him alive and without having exercised that dubious virtue. . .
But I will go on to further contradict myself as I have been realizing lately that he did not die for nothing, he died for less than nothing. People die for nothing everyday, unexpectedly, expectedly, with fear and with courage and with ignorance. But Juan died for the hubris of a dubiously elected official. So, he did not die for a virtue, or even in an absence of virtue, but rather for the vice of another man.
When I was 23 I was playing gigs all over the Village and in shitty little bars in Brooklyn and Long Island with my band, Zuckermann's Famous Pig. Juan Jr only got to be that age for four days before an improvised explosive device blew up under his humvee, flipping it, killing him and others. When I was 24 I was spending the summer at my girlfriend's house up in Brewster, just chilling and having a great time, writing a lot of songs, having a lot of sex, sometimes getting high with her younger brother, playing Nintendo all night, and just waiting for the fall semester to begin. Juan doesn't get to turn 24. He doesn't get to do anything ever again. I said it before, and I'll say it again: You have to have a life in order to get your life together.
* I recall that during my early twenties when I was still drifting a bit, my mom and sister told me that the son of a family friend that had called while I was away. He was a few years younger than me, and was going into the Air Force, or Marines, or something, and he had wanted to say good-bye and to try to convince me to join as well, so it must've been the Air Force (this was the theme that played throughout my late teens and early to mid-twenties - join the Air Force, join the Air Force, join the Air Force) . "It's too bad I missed him, I would have tried to convince him to not join," I replied. This caused a huge argument. The Armed Services helped people. "At the cost of killing, being killed, and serving the interests of those in power," It was a pat reply. It was ground that had been tread over and over again, and that was without going into the whole issue of race and the armed forces, which I could go on and on about, if you let me.