{"id":18042,"date":"2023-05-17T16:03:02","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T20:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=18042"},"modified":"2023-05-19T14:21:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T18:21:10","slug":"undertow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/undertow\/","title":{"rendered":"Undertow"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading Sonia Sanchez\u2019s<\/em> Does Your House Have Lions?<\/p>\n

Like losing thoughts, they go in silence<\/em> \u2013 Phillip Larkin, \u201cFaith Healing\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I.\u00a0 Sydney<\/h5>\n

It felt like too much sometimes. When Sydney was younger, like a toddler, he had fair hair, a sandy brown, and by the time he married the color had changed to a rich brunette, so if you\u2019d used the color for ink it could have been read.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know much about the rest. He didn\u2019t have many opinions, as a young man, so much as actions were his\u2014in cars, on fields, in classrooms, in friends\u2019 houses, and often they didn\u2019t even need the drink. In a yearbook picture\u2014a candid shot\u2014his entire face looked like an opened eye.<\/p>\n

White straight cis middle-class until you drove somewhere, or got to a state of connection with somebody, that felt like a frontier, yeah, and temporarily not want it, cast it aside like a husk you were too powerful in the first place to need, if only so you can feel its embrace when you eventually return home. To parents that paid for you. As a young man he felt like politics had little to do with him and when that turned out false, by middle-age he got conservative.<\/p>\n

You want to list the characteristics in somebody\u2019s face that make it look kind, and you want that appearance to mean more.<\/p>\n

At twenty he went to California to see if his world held up there, too, worked all kinds of jobs and entered a bar where some open-mic night was on, one night.<\/p>\n

Not that he didn\u2019t have something to express but music, which was the art form he\u2019d always felt closest to, wasn\u2019t the means he would have chosen. It just wasn\u2019t in him to go up on stage like that, but such a quality wasn\u2019t anybody\u2019s lack. However it was evident to him, who always got awed by such dark sonorous rooms, that the performers who risked it were full of something that was nice to have. That people like Sydney needed. As he got older he was slower and slower to commend anybody that drew attention to themselves, but piss-poor musicians, close to the source, were some for whom he reserved acknowledgment of integrity.<\/p>\n

Instead of music he worked and watched television and ate and saw his friends a handful of times every year. He was married and had a family too but that all, it seemed, required a version of him that wasn\u2019t alone, that wasn\u2019t where any music could have come from, wasn\u2019t part of his identity when he listened to the radio. Who he was when being a husband and parenting\u2014that amalgamated identity had cracks and through them his soul came like rainwater. No part of what he did, however, was more or less his.<\/p>\n

When he listened to you he\u2019d lean his entire upper-body into the edge of the table and cross his forearms on the wood or laminate surface, so long as the plates had been cleared already, and there wasn\u2019t a plastic placemat to imprint some stupid textured pattern on the skin. I never saw him cross his legs. Talking, his hands, gesticulating, never went above his shoulders, and his voice had two ranges of pitch he used for argument. If you were sleeping in a bedroom above that of him and his wife, Eve, it would be his baritone that you\u2019d hear in tranquil volley with a quieter woman who sat up in bed.<\/p>\n

For him, dying would start early with kidney stones and abrasive particles in his small intestines and things of that sort; the further he got into it the more racist he sounded and the more his wife observed how little she\u2019d gotten to know him. If I were him I\u2019d feel insulted reading this\u2014because I have more of an ego, I\u2019m trying hard to write exactly what that means, because he would accept that different people have different ways of seeing things and think no more on the subject. If you write about somebody you love and don\u2019t say how much you love them, then the closest you can get to a good evoking is to narrate the shadow of their heart. I think Sydney had a lot of patience and his wife would observe, startled, whenever it stopped. This short story is about his gay son, Robert, and the fact that Sydney had few ideas about gay people\u2014when would he have to think about them?\u2014really saved Robert\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you now that keeping straight men and gay men from talking to each other is canceling a source of power that can intervene on how fucked up patriarchy is. Evidently, gay ones are watching straight ones and falling in love with them sometimes\u2014this narrative, and invariable betrayal, is the bone of much art made by gay men, I\u2019m thinking of a few things made by white cis gay men but I won\u2019t assert that it\u2019s only us for now. Fuck what I just said\u2014it\u2019s the observation, and the fact, as I\u2019ve watched it in action, that the last thing a straight dude expects is to be watched. Sometimes I think one of the most important elements in the changing of somebody\u2019s consciousness is surprise. So maybe this isn\u2019t a program, but\u2014if Robert and Sydney really talked to each other about how one felt alienated by the other sometimes, because Robert too pushed his father away, for reasonable fear that bringing him closer would cause Sydney to say what he really thought of faggots, then who knows what would have happened. Their lives aren\u2019t over. I\u2019m just describing an event.<\/p>\n

Robert, in addition to being gay, was also far out on the Left\u2014and when sparring Sydney would assert that his opinions were noble and everything but for now, Robert didn\u2019t own anything, and that made a difference. Robert didn\u2019t know how to express that Sydney presently, and always had, owned something Robert could never. Not property\u2014but property was a symptom.<\/p>\n

Between Sydney and Eve, there was a marginal but imperative class distinction. Their parents had all been working class, but Eve had one sibling while Sydney had four. So imagine\u2014the same money, roughly, going to each household. While eating a steak dinner one afternoon in August, the bottle of barbecue ketchup was almost at its end, and instead of opening a new one Sydney gracefully went to the sink, filled the brown-bottomed bottle with water, shook, and poured his result over the meat. Eve looked a little repulsed, while Robert and his younger sister Ruth were fascinated.<\/p>\n

In his thirties, Sydney changed diapers, gave his children baths, got them ready for school as Eve needed to report to work earlier, drove his children and even neighbors\u2019 children to the school mornings, and took care of all the outdoor work to be done as his own father had for the house where he\u2019d spent childhood. If a hallmark of the white liberal is doing incessant villainous lip-service to the fostering of all humanity, such poison was absent from Sydney\u2019s talk. Even Eve, who was always more moderate, judged politics with a policy of noninterference\u2014the more she kept to herself, the better, because trouble might come when all her energy might be required.<\/p>\n

He worked through lunches. He got home late. Probably the most moving visible moments between him and Eve were when, driving, a song came on classic rock radio that they remembered hearing when they hadn\u2019t known each other\u2014in a hippie\u2019s high school English class, for example. That \u201cAfter the Gold Rush\u201d song by Neil Young\u2014neither of them were environmentalists, Sydney said the earth was going through a natural warming period and Eve only really paid attention to political candidates\u2019 positions on public schools like where she worked, but for the moment where activism set to music was tenable, observed if not enforced, that car with the kids in it felt like church. Or\u2014better\u2014a vigil for what had been lost, for the planet dies more every day.<\/p>\n

Sydney would say things to his teenage children like, \u201cYou guys know I\u2019m worth more dead,\u201d talking about life insurance, and for a second this sounded like his measurement of personal success.<\/p>\n

Watching guys he wanted to talk to, but couldn\u2019t bring himself to, Robert for years said or whispered or thought\u2014\u201cWhat the fuck do I do, Dad?\u201d But Sydney was never in hearing. Just, faced with anybody\u2019s silence that had a male temperature Robert traced a synthetic or true continuation, as if context could dilute, from Sydney\u2019s old comportment, on the couch by himself all weekend long. Sydney wasn\u2019t indifferent towards him, but, growing up, Robert learned why indifference happens. So when at eighteen he just up and left without a trace, part of it was to get a reaction out of someone male.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

2. Eve<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Eve was quiet all the time, you almost wondered if she\u2019d never wanted to seem particularly vulnerable. Ruth and Robert saw her when she broke, but it was more of a fracture, each time. She told them, confessing, that she cried all the time but they hardly ever saw her do so. In her Robert identified with the struggle of when to be alone, when to seem imperturbable, when to seem professional, when to close the door and when to have people over.<\/p>\n

Alone she felt that things would work out well. In some of the most questionable moments, she talked about spirits and things floating around her, birds and butterflies, and professed she\u2019d always felt that in some remote past life she\u2019d done terrible things so in this one she\u2019d never wanted to cause anybody harm.<\/p>\n

There was really no agenda with her, besides that. If we\u2019re focused on Robert\u2019s experience for some of this story, I can relate that she told him from an early age just that being gay is \u201charder\u201d\u2014but how that statement didn\u2019t carry any exclusiveness or shame I don\u2019t know. For a while Robert would think it should have sounded that way, victimizing\u2014but once some time had passed he re-heard it as it had been stated, only as observation, and a connection his mother had made to an experience that wasn\u2019t hers. Many parents suspect their children are gay. This was never communicated to Robert\u2014but also, it was never implied that Eve or Sydney assumed he couldn\u2019t be. Eve took better care of her and her husband\u2019s position on this because homosexuality was a weird thing to bring up with any straight man.<\/p>\n

As teenagers she and a next-door neighbor felt the culture didn\u2019t tell them what they really wanted to know about sex. They didn\u2019t think it shameful, they didn\u2019t think it frightening\u2014both of them, as teenagers, just sensed that it was a necessary part of life and saw it stupid how people put all kinds of cloaks of shame and invisibility around it. As Eve grew up she didn\u2019t protest, she didn\u2019t take to the streets, she didn\u2019t call herself a feminist\u2014indeed, she was more consistent about going to Catholic masses and getting what she wanted for guidance from there, it was what her mother and aunts and other ancestors had consulted and they had lived. At the same time she never vilified anybody for being too far left, even as she identified as moderate. When riots happened she came from a place of understanding\u2014she was sorry to see the trouble, because she wanted to cause no one trouble, but part of teaching which was her profession was, ideally, understanding that the experiences of young people as well as anybody older might seem strange to her. However, all of them, all her students, had to be valid if her job was to be successful. She didn\u2019t work to change the curriculum so much as she tried keeping to what she knew worked\u2014what kids liked, what made them read and write and remember literacy.<\/p>\n

Maybe what she saw in Sydney many many many many years before was another person cognizant of how monitoring one\u2019s own conduct, being vigilant about it, wasn\u2019t the same thing as thinking oneself the center of the universe. That you had to do good especially when people weren\u2019t watching. There was more space for this in patriarchal femininity than patriarchal masculinity, and some results of that are evident in Sydney and Eve\u2019s lives, separate and together.<\/p>\n

If one of them could be brought out on the streets for a riot\u2014Eve would. Robert remembered, at eight, being taken to a union demonstration outside of a local park; every union having problems signing a contract, teachers\u2019 unions and others, would rent an inflatable rat that either bookended the picket line or went at the center of rotating people holding signs. This was also where Robert learned about indifference. Because, Eve explained, her bosses weren\u2019t evil, they didn\u2019t mean harm\u2014but they were irritating and harmful because they did not listen to the needs of people who worked for them, whose numbers were greater, who needed more support and were paid less. They worked for years without a contract, teachers from other school districts began picketing with them, a favor which Eve and her coworkers would later repay, and when the thing was signed no, it wasn\u2019t ideal. Progress still had to be made. But the solution was never to vilify, dissolve, or do anything to weaken unions, labor. After decades of working in the private sector, Sydney would get laid off. With a generous severance package\u2014but he still got laid off, and sometimes Robert would wonder if the severance package, in an invincible way, didn\u2019t end up hurting his father more.<\/p>\n

For a long time Robert was never betrayed but expected more from people, all kinds of friends, than they could give. Eve shared this experience but never talked about it, because betrayal, being older, was something she\u2019d known.<\/p>\n

Mother and son loved each other very much but sometimes there didn\u2019t seem to be a place for it that wasn\u2019t also weak. When Robert, at eighteen, left, she knew he was alright but wondered why in hell he hadn\u2019t talked more.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

III. Ruth<\/strong><\/h5>\n

My mom and I love each other very much, we don\u2019t talk about it though because we\u2019re different. It\u2019s hard for women to talk about how different they are from each other when the difference is something that we love. There\u2019s little precedent so we\u2019d rather it came out as if by mistake, to take some of the pressure off. However\u2014I really do, and I see the two of us as kind of parallel lines, hers starting before mine, mine going on after hers ends. We\u2019re alive.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d change parts about my dad, but\u2014not for me anymore, just to make him happier because there are some general things everybody should do that applied to him would make a difference. He should talk more. He should go to a protest and take part in it. He has a child who\u2019s a woman and a child who\u2019s a gay man. On top of living in this fucking world, that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way to be happier other than being healthier\u2014because any other joys just aren\u2019t sustainable. I think my generation\u2014I won\u2019t give it a name\u2014young as we are have gotten something right so far, which is deciding once and for all that life doesn\u2019t end after youth. Maybe because the economy\u2019s tanked and crimes against humanity are still happening all over the world\u2014because we want to see a different world we won\u2019t just fuck off and pretend to be voyeurs, or whatever. We\u2019re not above everything. We\u2019re in it. That\u2019s a change from my parents\u2019 generation\u2014who, even when they were younger, tried keeping to themselves, I think. But maybe everybody has that suspicion about their parents. Should have gone this way, that way. My brother, for example, at eighteen left and told nobody that he had a boyfriend and a whole life set up in North Brooklyn\u2014he wanted to see what would happen, which was fucked up, but understandable. It took us like a week to track him down. We just asked his friends, none of whom we\u2019d met before. Then again, this was my parents, I stayed out of it.<\/p>\n

Something I learned from Robert was what foolishness it is to take yourself out of situations where you might get close to people just so you don\u2019t hurt anyone. Pain is like life. But if the pain is all you think about you\u2019re fucked. Remember growing up? How that was painful too? And even your first kiss might have seemed painful because it was new. It was great, but\u2014also a challenge.<\/p>\n

You really can\u2019t escape. And if you think you have to, you\u2019re so fucked.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you what I\u2019m nervous about\u2014we can\u2019t use the current model of political power where we do whatever we want to get influence and then plan to use it well once it\u2019s ours. Too often, once it\u2019s ours, too much damage has already been wrought by our ambition. Ambition eats you alive because you\u2019re taught to supplicate it in yourself and others. No.<\/p>\n

We need a separate network. The bare bones are there but we need the flesh to it, you know, we need a political body of a new state, which is promising because we are here, we are showing up, young people are getting attention but we can\u2019t just stop at the attention what we need to do is attend, go farther, because time\u2014we know it, we know it better, we are knowing it more every day\u2014time is just going, running out. I\u2019m not afraid of my own death. I\u2019m afraid of letting other people die\u2014I am a white cis straight American, and that will happen they say for my security.<\/p>\n

One night I was with Robert in his apartment his boyfriend was out we smoked a joint and for once the streets they had nobody on them and we passed a few blocks until he said, \u201cI\u2019m alive, you know\u201d and I told him what I\u2019d always believed which is that \u201cYes, you\u2019re alive, I\u2019m alive, and there has to be more of us. The miracle and the drive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something I learned from Robert was what foolishness it is to take yourself out of situations where you might get close to people just so you don\u2019t hurt anyone. Pain is like life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1817,2926,2923,1093,2925,1409,2924],"class_list":["post-18042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-coming-of-age-2","tag-escape","tag-family-saga","tag-gay","tag-phillip-larkin","tag-queer","tag-sonia-sanchez","writer-ryan-schulte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042","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=18042"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18508,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042\/revisions\/18508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}