Uncle Bobby and his friend Nolan keeping score
Today the junk man came to clear out the garage of my grandparent's house. My handyman J is onsite to oversee things in my absence, and he let the junk man in to clear the garage. It had been filled with so much crap I could not even get through it most of the time. Some things I inherited. My grandfather's tools, with which he built the addition to that house. Some crap was left by dad and brother after each aborted DIY home repair project that they insisted they could do better than a handyman and then left half-finished. To be fair, my brother got dragged along and only came to keep dad from doing more damage--but still. A lot of paint cans and random junk. I had the junk man take pictures of the graffiti that my Uncle Bobby had left back in 1960. I'm going to turn them into a photo collage for my mom and gift it to her for Christmas. I had hoped to still be there when the garage was cleared out. Administrating from afar through my phone felt...empty, mostly. Emptiness punctuated with periodic spikes of searing pain.
The reason it hurt so much is that I've worked hard over the past several years to get my house ready to actually have a housewarming. For many stupid and awful reasons, the last 15% of the work didn't get done...until I was ready to move. That 15% consisted entirely of the unfinished projects left behind by my dad and brother. I never got to have the housewarming, and it's the only home I have ever had that was truly MINE--and it's unlikely in this economy that there will be another one. I hate missing opportunities for stupid reasons, especially if those reasons are caused by other folks who should know better. C'est la vie.
Even so, the unfinished touches of my house didn't stop me from having people over, thank goodness. I even joined a board game bubble during the pandemic and we rotated who hosted. I'm glad I didn't let the unfinished touches stop me, because those geeky, queer board game friends were the people who showed up during the last days in my house. They helped me finish the unfinished DIY, clear the cabinets, shuffle furniture to Goodwill--all of it. I had no housewarming, but I did have a sort of a going-away gathering with my people who I know love me. That helped lot. The truth is, I've enjoyed seeing my grandmother's house become whole once more, even if I never get to live in it myself. But it still hurts like hell to be giving it all up because of stupid reasons caused by other folks who should know better.
That house has seen a lot. The births of two babies. The deaths of two grandparents. And the untimely passing of my Uncle Bobby, at age 14, when a neighborhood drunk mowed him down for a laugh early one morning while Bobby did his paper route. I'm sure the drunk thought it was great fun to chase down the kid on his bike who was out being industrious. Right up until the drunk actually hit him. The drunk though enough to toss Bobby's brand-new bike out of the road and into the weeds. Then he drove home, where the neighbors saw him hosing down his car in his driveway early in the morning. It was November, about a week before the JFK assassination, and back then that time was very, very cold. Nobody washes their car in that kind of cold unless they're hiding something. The accident had been front-page news for a week before the funeral. The mayors of both Tulsa and Sand Springs came to my uncle's funeral and offered condolences to my grandparents.
A year or so later, my grandfather accidentally hit a terrier at the same bend in the road where my Uncle Bobby was killed. Mom and Grandma were in the car when it happened. Mom said he gently scooped up the dead dog, wrapped it in his jacket, and drove around till he found the address on the dog's tag. My mom's stomach turned to ice when they pulled up. It was the house of the man that everyone KNEW killed my uncle. My grandfather was quite and steely as he carried the slain pet to the porch and knocked on the door. When the drunk answered, mom said he looked like he'd just been shot and remained mute the entire time. "I'm sorry about your dog," my grandfather said, "I hit him in the road." Then he gently lay the animal down on the porch, got back in the car, and drove what was left of his family home for after-church dinner. Mom said nobody spoke at all the rest of that night. Like I said: the house has seen a lot.
I am absolutely enraged at the fact that I have to surrender my ancestral home--such as it is, admittedly--because it was unsafe for me to continue living in the state where my house resides. Yet today, as I looked at those pictures and remembered those stories, I only felt incredible grief. The devouring kind that lulls you into letting it take over if you aren't careful. As I tallied my losses for the very first time, that grief bloomed into the cold realization that I'm truly homeless. I've been houseless in New York City before, so I'm not as frightened of this roof-over-head situation as I could otherwise be. It's that Oklahoma was my home--such as it is--and I don't think I can ever go back there. I certainly can't go back for a while. And as I looked over those pictures of my uncle Bobby's childhood hieroglyphics, all I wanted was to go home. Home back to my house, where my family memories and history are. I fantasize that if I just showed up at my house tomorrow, my stuff would all still be there, and my bed would still be there, and I could finally, finally take that nap that's been eluding me. But I can't, and the junk guy today just proved it.
The junk guy, Harley, was more reasonably priced than I expected. By day, he's a handyman; he just moonlights in junk. I told him to salvage as many tools as he could and give them to guys who are just starting out on his crew but didn't have a rounded out enough tool belt to really work. Harley was surprised at that and thanked me profusely. I feel that my granddad is glad for his tools to be going to people who need them instead of just being pitched. The cleaners come next week, followed by the photographer. Things are finally starting to fall together, but it's been pretty pricey.
The downside of all of this is that there are always massive cost overruns when fixing up an ancient post-war saltbox tract home purchased with GI Bill money. It's located on soft riverbed soil , nd the house has settled at least 3/4 of an inch. in 70 years. Every board in the place is twisted just enough that if you try to replace a drywall panel, something is guaranteed to be sticking out somewhere. The house is framed in old-growth Douglas Fir. Time and age have made that wood so hard that trying to drill through it feels like trying to drill through iron. Your wrists are gonna hurt for a while afterwards. Unfortunately, most of the issues that needed fixing involved drilling through 70-year-old Douglas Fir or replacing drywall and having to do it "just so," or else there'd be a crack in the ceiling even after you've taped and mudded the seams. Every. Single. Job. took three times as long as it should have on any other house, and honestly, J and I both might have a bit or repetitive-stress wrist injury from all that drilling.
With my wrists and arms this sore, it's almost been a blessing to not have much freelance stuff happening at the moment. I landed three great gigs that started the first week of June. I had to resign from one of them because I had no time to do it. The other gig pushed my start date back to August. The third gig, my bread-and-butter cakewalk of a writing coach gig, has yet to give me students. The extra time I've had to finish my house and get the hell out of Dodge has been fantastic. Thing is, it's been expensive and I have no idea where or when my next few income streams will be coming from. I've added a tip jar to my blog on the off chance folks help me go to Starbucks' once a month from here on out. On the plus side, I'm in a stable and settled environment. I CAN do the work when it comes, whenever that is.
In the meantime, I'm trying to enjoy my time with my older brother and my nephew. Of course I'm terrified for all us queers, and kinda concerned that my brother isn't taking things as seriously as he ought. But it's hard to say what level of concern one ought to have when they're trying to find a job and keep food on the table for his son. Larry got fired by his bigot boss right around the same time that my hideously underpaid adjunct gig did. He's also been trying to find work. So we sit, together in his office, doing the sorts of things one does to get a job, while also watching analysis of the Depp-Herd catastrophe. I've missed working in the same space with people you really like. Job-searching is a full-time job, as it turns out. It would just be nice if we were getting paid for all this intensive labor.
But then again, the coffee breaks we take from our labor are pretty fun. Today we sat in the shade as the last half of golden hour drenched the walls of the back porch. I was vaping my CBD/Delta8 THC cartridge, and Larry had his trusty Marlboro Light 100's. I'd just finished eating a Ghiardelli chocolate square. As I talked, I gestured with my hand. At the sight of my out-turned palm, Larry did a double-take. I asked him what was wrong.
"What's that on your hand?" He looked at me like he had just seen a ghost.
"What are you-" I flipped my hand over to reveal a large reddish-brown mark gashed across my palm. "This?" I asked.
"Yeah, that," Larry said, "What did you do to your hand?"
I brought my hand up to smell if it was chocolate. It was, so I licked the delicious chocolate gash right off of it. My brother had a look of veiled horror on his face as he watched. "It's chocolate.," I finally said.
"Oh thank God!" He said, visibly relieved.
"What did you think it was, Larry?" He looked down and away. I thought a second and then asked, "Fam, did you think I had a stigmata on my hand or something?" Larry said nothing. His face wore the look of someone who halfway thought ti was possible for me to have a stigmata.
"Larry," I said, cocking an eyebrow, "Ain't nobody ever gonna have a stigmata show up on their THC8 vaping hand." He laughed. The tension lightened.
"Well sis," he finally said," you have to admit: with you, that ain't so far-fetched."
