Ken Sparling - Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall

Back then I didn’t even know what getting a boner was. I hated it when I got a boner. No one else in my house ever got a boner. Even the cats didn’t get boners.

~

You know that story about Achilles? About how he was invincible, except for one small spot on his heel? I think that story is a lie. I think a bunch of fucking Greeks — ancient fucking Greeks — got drunk one night and made that story up. What I am seeing here is Greeks with bare chests shining in the firelight, sitting around, drinking nectar of the gods from pewter mugs.

That whole story makes me sick. The mother dipping the kid in the river Styx. The kid going on to become a hero and all the Greeks looking up to him, worshipping him, and then they turn him into an idol, and they still talk about him, right up to this very day. And then this guy — Penis, I think was his name — this guy Penis comes along and nails him in the heel and kills him. Jesus.

~

I need a haircut. There’s no question. It’s just one of those things. To tell the truth, I look like a pig. This is pig’s work though. I should not be doing this work. But there you go. Life deals its blows.

When I finish here I’m going up to redo a drawer. I don’t know what’s wrong with the drawer. I can speculate of course. The handle may have come off. There’s been a rash of that around here lately. Handles coming off. Last month it was door locks.

In this particular case, it may not be the handle at all. The whole drawer may have come off its sliders. It could be any one of a thousand different things.

~

What I did today, what I accomplished, what I survived.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem so bad out here on the balcony tonight with the whole day behind me.

I WOKEup, got out of bed, went downstairs, hailed a cab, and took the lid off a cup of coffee.

~

After they’d been married a few years, they went out and got a dog. The dog was there every night when they came home from work. When they’d had the dog for three years it ran out into the street one afternoon and got hit by a car.

He sat beside it on the street until she brought the car around to pick them up. The dog had a name, but that hardly seems to matter.

~

It breaks my heart to think about my father. So I don’t think about my father. I think about my mother. It breaks my heart to think about my mother, too.

~

There were separate things happening.

My mind was thinking, I’ll be a star, I’ll be famous, I’ll be a star , and going through all the usual posturing involved in being a star. My mind was actually doing interviews with itself. “How did you get started?” “What color is your hair?” “Did you feel you were selling out when you did the promotional campaign for Coke?”

My body was walking. That’s about all. My heart was beating and my lungs were filling up with air and the blood was coursing through my veins. I suppose the blood was coursing through my veins. I suppose the old eyes were darting this way and that. And the ears were hearing and the nose was sniffing. All the usual stuff a body does, with the added activity of walking from the car to the donut shop.

I think I was talking to myself, too. Muttering really. “Introducing — da da da da — Ken Sparling.” “Who is Ken Sparling?” “Ken Sparling is … ” That sort of thing.

When I got to the counter in the donut shop I stopped walking.

I stopped muttering.

I stopped thinking.

I had to get coffee.

I had to order it.

I had to open my mouth and say, “Two coffees please. Small. Just cream.”

On the other side of the counter, behind the apple fritters and the bran muffins and the plastic cups of fruit cocktail, was a good-looking girl with broken front teeth.

I said, “Two coffees please. Small. Just cream.”

Here was a coordinated effort. Nothing separate here. Mind, body, mouth — everything getting in on the act and the world beginning to take on an aura of chaos.

My mind was thinking, Good-looking, heavyset girl .

My mouth was saying the thing about coffee please .

The girl was smiling, saying something in a heavy accent. “Cream?” she was saying.

“Just cream,” I said. “Two.” I held up two fingers. “Small.” I pinched the air with my thumb and forefinger to show her small.

The girl turned her beautiful back to me and poured two coffees. I gave her $16.20.

“You want bag?” she asked.

“No bag,” I said, shaking my head, holding up the coffee.

On my way back to the car my heart was beating. My brain kept repeating, You want bag? You want bag?

~

There was this guy who used to take us down into the ravine across from the apartment where we moved after Mom and Dad split up. He used to take us down to walk along the railroad tracks. He must have liked Mom. I think he used to drink wine with Mom. I don’t know what ever happened to him. It was a terrible place to live. Mom used to say the ravine was the only good thing about living there.

Now we live in the town house, and I’ve got this cold I can’t get rid of, and I’ve been sleeping all day. Sammy is off at some birthday party. He’s been gone all day. When he’s here and I’m sick, I just lie there and try to get the energy to do something with him. Now, when he’s gone, I wish I would never have to wake up again.

~

Sometimes the guy across the street burns his leaves in his backyard just to get the neighbors angry. They stare out their windows, watch the smoke curl up from behind the guy’s house. Somebody always calls the fire department.

~

I kept saying: “You cannot have more ketchup, Sammy.” The tree outside the front window was blowing in the breeze.

Sammy wanted more ketchup for his potato puffs.

Tutti phoned. After I finished talking to Tutti I hung up the phone and put more ketchup on Sammy’s plate.

~

Travis and I are the caretakers of this place. What a life we have. We drive into the parking lot early in the morning in our brown cars. It’s so quiet, you can hear the gravel squeak under our tires.

No matter how fast I pick up the garbage, there is always more.

Travis says: “The whole of civilization lies out there in the parking lot. It’s all right there.”

My insides will not support my needs anymore. I am trying to structure the silence under my eyes. Sometimes you are lucky enough to have your hopes dashed in the moment of their conception.

~

When he would get the boot was long beyond him. Out there in a space he pictured out by the clouds somewhere. Partially, it was him that put it there, after he mulled it over, temporarily allowing it space in his thinking.

~

I get messages taped to my mail tray. They are written on pink slips of paper. Phone home right away , these messages say.

I go to the nearest phone, whichever phone is nearest when I read the message, I go over to that phone and I phone home from there.

“Hi, Tutti, it’s me,” I say.

“Dad found a train ride,” Tutti says. “We were over at the mall and Dad found a train ride for Sammy.”

My grandmother died on the weekend. She was blind and senile and then she got pneumonia. So Mom and I went to the funeral in Chicago. We drove to Chicago. It’s a ten-hour drive. When we got to Chicago, I phoned Tutti.

“We’re in Chicago,” I told her. “We’re at the motel.”

Tutti told me the story of how her dad took Sammy to Perry’s Pony Farm. Perry’s Pony Farm is this place in the country run by a midget named Perry. There are some mud fields, some half-dead ponies, and some chickens. I used to go to Perry’s Pony Farm when I was a kid. Perry always had this awful smile on his face.