I\u2019m forty-seven now, but in my mind\u2014not in the actual visual world, but in my mind\u2014I\u2019ve still got my Mohawk. It\u2019s spiked with gel and gleaming hot pink as the day I played the Foxhole with my band.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at the Whole Foods looking for whatever my brother Michael has put on the list to mean \u201cquinoa (tri-color, washed).\u201d I don\u2019t know what quinoa is, but I figure it\u2019s healthy and that he thinks Riley, my niece, should eat it. And I\u2019m stressed because I can\u2019t find it, so I reach up instinctively to touch my Mohawk, as if to ground myself, but I feel nothing.<\/p>\n
In the actual visual world, I am bald. I do have a goatee, though. You\u2019re allowed to be bald if you have a goatee.<\/p>\n
I decide that quinoa probably isn\u2019t produce. I\u2019m getting cold standing by the vegetables, so I wander back toward the fish.<\/p>\n
The other night at dinner Riley showed me a Tik Tok of Sid Vicious. It was heavily edited with a distorted effect on black-and-white photos of Sid laid over rap music. When I quipped that Sid Viscous would have hated Tik Tok, she laughed and said, \u201cYou\u2019re so old.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pointed my fork at her. \u201cBeing old is punk.\u201d<\/p>\n
She snorted. \u201cPunk rock is old.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Michael came in and she slipped her phone back in her pocket, as if she\u2019d never had it out during dinner. She\u2019s good at evading his gaze, playing by the rules until the moment he stops watching. She doesn\u2019t pretend in front of me, though. Maybe because I\u2019m the fun uncle, and maybe because she knows I\u2019d never tell, even when I should.<\/p>\n
I moved into Michael\u2019s place around six months ago, when my girlfriend decided that we were breaking up. Around the same time, his ex had moved to Texas with her new husband, and Michael had full custody of Riley. He said I could stay for a while and help out around the house, run some errands, which is why I\u2019m at the Whole Foods, looking for quinoa in the exotic foods section solely because the name has a Q in it.<\/p>\n
The grains are next to the exotic foods, and lo and behold, there\u2019s an entire shelf of quinoa and couscous and \u201csuper grains,\u201d all in different colors, flavors, locales, all shockingly expensive. Riley will hate this stuff. She only likes to eat hot Cheetos. But Michael tries so hard to be a good single parent, and if that means purchasing seven dollars\u2019 worth of quinoa, so be it.<\/p>\n
The Foxhole was not actually a venue, but rather a damp basement below the local Denny\u2019s, where a kid in a different band worked. He had keys to the place and would turn it into a secret underground venue on the weekends after hours. He was integral in the East Bay punk scene, this ungovernable teen, but now I don\u2019t even remember his name. My band, though, was called The Brain Rots. I played guitar. I still have that guitar in my bedroom, which is really the converted basement of Michael\u2019s house. So far in my life, I\u2019ve spent a lot of time in basements.<\/p>\n
A few days ago Riley asked me why I never had kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want a cousin,\u201d she whined.<\/p>\n
I shrugged in response, told her I never found the right person. What I didn\u2019t say: that I remembered being sixteen, drinking until I vomited into the gutter, taking pills and swinging from the rafters below a Denny\u2019s while my parents thought I was at a friends\u2019 house.<\/p>\n
If I had a kid, and if that kid was like me, I didn\u2019t know how I\u2019d react. Most of the time I still feel like a kid myself.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m standing there debating between the different kinds of quinoa, wondering if I should pick one myself or call Michael to ask. He\u2019s at home, probably sitting at the kitchen table trying to help Riley through her math homework, a class she is currently failing.<\/p>\n
Last month, I went into her room to get my laptop she\u2019d borrowed, thinking she had already left for her sleepover. I found her sitting on her shag rug, clutching a box cutter in one hand, the other hand pressed against her wrist. It was a small exploratory slit, but it bled more than you\u2019d think, and some of it leaked onto the gray of the carpet in droplets. She cried so hard her mouth looked like a square. I got her gauze and band-aids that had Spiderman on them, the only ones I could find.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she said. \u201cI just wanted to see what would happen. Please don\u2019t tell my dad. Maybe this is just a phase?\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked so scared and forlorn, then, like the little kid she was, and I couldn\u2019t say what I knew: that phases sometimes become etched grooves in a riverbed, and that years later, she might find herself flowing in those same grooves, even when she thought they were long gone.<\/p>\n
Then my phone buzzes and it\u2019s Michael calling me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you\u2019re still there, can you pick up some ice cream, too?\u201d<\/p>\n
I wonder if the ice cream is because Riley\u2019s finished her math homework with no errors, or if it\u2019s because she\u2019s had an especially hard day. I ask Michael about the quinoa, and he says to get whatever I think is best. I pick out the one with the colors I like: pink packaging that reminds me of my old Mohawk that gleamed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What I didn\u2019t say: that I remembered being sixteen, drinking until I vomited into the gutter, taking pills and swinging from the rafters below a Denny\u2019s while my parents thought I was at a friends\u2019 house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-kaylie-saidin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17923"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18260,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17923\/revisions\/18260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}