HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Glenda,
Hey, you want to get intimidated? Just stand right there while I back off a few steps with these three baseballs. Quarter for three, right? Hey! I paid a f**king quarter! Anyway, as I was saying before my horse got loose ("Lower the weapon!"), I got another card from my second most faithful correspondent, Harry Young in Chicago and the guy is nearing his Master's degree in HIEROGLYPHICS, working on modern glyphs whose meaning only he can impart, and just generally carrying on. He sure picked a strange major. "What's your major!?" Hieroglyphics," "Gyrowho?" He's an interesting guy. An Okie with a nuclear physics professor father and a thick Oklahoma accent, always calls me Z, always did, and when I met him, he had this reputation for not liking many people, thinking people shallow. I was shy and intimidated (redundant?) when I met him and he didn't talk much, so I left even worse, and it was always like that, except he called me Z. I heard one day he approved of me, and thought I was okay. I was so happy. Funny what some opinions can mean to you. I guess because he was supposed to be so strict in his judgments.
Bless your heart, you must be so full of writing and words and thoughts and life and yourself, it must be a great change from Atlanta, Rhodes, low lifes. You ain't bored. I'll always come and get you when you are. Actually, you usually come to me when you are, but if you ever just can't move, I'll come and carry you. You ain't heavy, you're my sister. I got ready to write "your" my sister. Remember that great movie ad in the Portsmouth Times? "HE KNOWS YOUR ALONE!!!!!!" I swan.
I saw a snake yesterday with diamonds on his back but no rattler, and f**ked with him with a stick til I saw I was scaring hell out of him. I wanted to take him prisoner for a moment, just to know I could, and make him listen to rock music, but I let him go, and he went. I saw him in a cemetery. Think there's an omen there? I don't think so. Maybe it means Maybelline will start elongating lipstick tubes and lather the dead in red and crushed berry and frost pink. One never knows, do one?
Glenda, tell me truly: do you believe I'm the Vicar of Christ? Or higher than that? I know this: I do have my own cross to bear. I carry it up Calvary on my nose, like a trained seal. All the lances in the side and all the rocks on the toes in the world can't make me carry that mofo on my back anymore. I just can't do it that way. It's plain secondary math. Do you still love my writing? I sure let me hair down when I write to you. I really feel free. I try to write like this to others, but I feel weird and misunderstood before I even mail it. I'm afraid I actually UPSET some people with my normal letter.
(Segment of a letter Mike wrote in the 80's)
Mike,
I was so pissed at you, for dying the year before we got our first black President. Beside myself with disbelief. Then you turned up in my dreams last week, first time in a while. You said "So what do you want to do? Sue me?" I hope it wasn't rude of me to point out you weren't likely to pay up even if I won.
Here the holidays are upon us again, second time without you here to sing Christmas Carols. ("Deck the walls with balls of folly, oddleoddleodd eloggfoggog.....") I can still hear you. Does that mean Einstein was right? I mean, his wife? Of course, I didn't see you for several sets of seasons before you went, but I recall the tradition. We all sit down around the holiday feast, the first dish is lifted and begins its tour of the table, and you bring up some HORRIBLE scenario from the darkest corners of the Family's history, just to watch us try to skitter away from the topic. This year, no Mikey to be our little monster. So I've been searching for a passage from one of your letters geared toward stirring up awkwardness without really messing with anyone dear too badly in your wake, and found some stuff to consider. Just stuff about fights you saw or almost got into or suchlike. But wait! How ironic! I have stumbled upon a passage from one of your letters that discusses our friend, Harry. At first, I thought he'd like to discover he'd figured in one of your letters to me. Then, I thought, what if Mike's description of him or something Mike said about him offends Harry? Then, I thought: "Hey! It's Mike making trouble at the holidays again! Season's Greetings!" So I have chosen this piece of this letter to post immediately prior to Thanksgiving. Harry has my blessings to skitter away from your words or else to enter a message or post THRASHING you if you have misrepresented or offended him at all. Mikey only vexes those he loves at the Holidays.
There could be other reasons that you got so goshderned doom-minded at the holidays. I mean, besides SADD. Am I the only one uneasy about the number of "Oswald did it" specials on TV lately? I know JFK was killed 45 years ago on the 22nd, but I just can't help but quake inside to see so much getting-in-front-of going on just as our first black president is fixing to mount the office. It was always that time of year, right before the official Holiday season kickoff around the turkey. No wonder you were always pensive and morose and cantankerous around then. The JFK murder was your outrage. A shame your ex wife never returned the book you wrote on the subject. I for one would have loved to read it. You made the best presentation of that poor little hooker with her head driven over.
I still remember that season, forty-five years ago. November 22nd. We were all pulled out of school a few hours early and put on the busses. Dad's thirty-fifth birthday. Dad was home, too, in full uniform, sitting in front of the television, where all was unfolding. He sat there for days and days. I finally asked him to let me take his boots off. I remember I was sitting on the living room floor by the coffee table and you were on the couch, when they brought Oswald out. All the sudden Dad was up like something tripped a spring under his chair. "HEY HEY HEY HEY!!!!!" And then he was just suspended there, one boot on the floor halfway
between the TV and his favorite chair, knee bent, and bobbing, one leg out behind him butt high, one hand reaching frozen a foot from the screen, and all hell breaking loose on the TV and me saying WHAT?! What?! What?! I just knew first Oswald appeared, then Dad was out of his chair and then the people started swarming all over the screen. You said Dad was up before Ruby moved forward. I asked Dad why he jumped up before the shot. He said because he recognized a classic reveal in the way the cops flanking Oswald were serving him up so nekkid and unshielded. Dad told me he recognized the exact behaviors displayed by guards who WANT the crowd to take their best shot. He was reaching for the trial that got away.
Wait! OMIGOSH! In the words of that Great American Philosopher, Brad Dourif, Was I raving? Mike! Did I just channel you?
I'll be with your little brother who misses you and his family and Mom for the Holiday meal. Couldn't you have waited until then to trot out the usual abysmal ruminations? I have to admit it WAS funny, watching the square dance that ensued: "Here, take these yams and no keep that grim opinion and pass it back that way. With the yams. Back to Mike. Mike's not having yams? Oh hell, fine then, just give it to me. Here's my response. Deal with it. Gimme that stuffing and take this depressing observation......."
Happy Thanksgiving, Mike. We love you. Don't be late.