Searching For Henry V
I haven’t written much this week. My body aches. I melted down 3 times Tuesday night. I had to go into the shower and cry, sitting in the corner with lukewarm water raining onto my naked skin and body. The tears seem as if they are coming out of a dry and arid mental desert having struggled their way over the dunes and wanting to make sure that they came out whole. Making sure that I know they are there.
I sit in the corner and cry. I fight the self-hatred of not being enough of a shark. Not wanting to manipulate people. Not being able to market myself on the dime. Dodging hammers all the while.
Earning a living implies you have to earn the right to live.
It’s a long shot. Al Muller, my community college drama teacher, encourages me to go to Los Angeles. “Go to Los Angeles. See what you can do.” Al sees a future for me. A possibility of a place. I mean, Katy bar the door, I’m down deep in the Stockton drama scene with characters that would have made the Preston Sturges stock company blush. It’s my life now. A new life. So I apply to UCLA inspired only by Al’s golden, golden words. Al, my fucking Prince Valiant. Al, my Henry V. The only teacher I ever wanted to study for. And that year, I have my first martini, my first sex ever with a woman, and I kiss the dry, cigarette frosted lips of Lori Pozzi.
That spring, I felt like a god
The letter arrives. The thoughts that I would never have a life after high school have vanished. I have made it. Made it into UCLA. The Tillie Lewis Theatre, New Romantics, The Style Council and Spandau Ballet, Goodwill bought clothing, porn at the Bijou, theatre mountebanks and that dear, wonderful, son of a bitch Al Muller….got me in.
I’m somebody now. Someone who dad and mom could possibly be proud of. That the disappointing, troublemaking, class clown…the bastard child of Jennie Fields…..wasn’t a bastard after all.
“I got accepted to UCLA”
They both sit in the living room together. That’s a rare event. It’s 5:30PM. The sounds of the milking barn are starting up for the evening’s milking. The living room is a pastiche of catholicism. An image of Pope John Paul looms over mom’s right shoulder. An open Stockton Record lies at my dad’s feet. I have a different voice. It comes out like a child. I mean, I am still sleeping on the floor in the living room, right? I hold the acceptance letter in my hand. Unable to remember when I ever talked to them together. Approaching them like this. Asking them for some sort of benediction
I don’t know if I even say “mom and dad?”
“What are you going to do for money?”, Dad replies.
I run again, somewhere, and cry. I don’t even remember where. Indoors or out. Tank house or Zombie’s hut. I just never knew that I could cry that hard.
