‘salem’s Lot – Impossible

“Henry Petrie spoke his verdict in four calm, considered syllables.
‘Impossible.’”

Earlier in the story, there is a scene (scene? chapter?) in which Matt Burke is discussing the very reality of vampires to Father Callahan.  There is a frank discussion on the use of holy water, crucifixes (crucifii?), & Father Callahan himself as representatives of the Catholic church.  Freud is involved, as are generalized observations about the new way of thinking by priests & the church itself.

I find this curious, much in the same way that I find Christians who mock Scientologists for believing in those alien things that are the core of their religion curious.

(of course, full disclosure, i also am of the personal theory that they’re all kinda quacked out, but hey, to each their own, right?)

So you’re telling me that you are going to laugh at someone for believing that beings from another planet exist - a statistically sound idea, if you consider how many planets are in the vastness of space; are we really that arrogant to think we’re the only ones? – you’re going to giggle conspiratorially over their beliefs while you believe – staunchly – in the following:

-  There is no such thing as Evolution with all of the scientific evidence to the contrary.
-  2000 years ago, some lady got pregnant without having intercourse & not only that, but the guy she was dating at the time, instead of leaving her ass (which would have been totally acceptable in that society &, let’s face it, ours), married her & raised the kid as his own as a poor carpenter.
-  This kid grew up to possess magical abilities, which he used to make water into wine, among other assorted parlor tricks like not getting leprosy for as much as he frequented their colonies.
-  He also hung around 12 other dudes &, of course, not a one of them was homosexual … cuz that’d be a sin.
-  In addition, his favorite chick was a “whore” (or so the guys who were in his gang wrote after the fact) but he remained a virgin.  Right?
-  Oh yeah, & when he died & was buried, three days later, not only was his body gone, but he would just appear to people.
-  & have I mentioned that he was God?
-  Oh, & also a dirty-blonde Caucasian with a perfectly manicured beard, thin nose, & blue eyes.
-  But let’s just glaze over the fact that he was also Jewish.  Jewish, bad.
-  & despite all of the inconsistencies & hypocrisies of the Gospels (why does god hate figs? how do they know what happened when jesus was born & when he died, but somehow all of his formative years are left out? he who is without sin may cast the first stone, but we’re not going to let women into our little club?), this is the end-all, be-all of spirituality & whomever disagrees is just wrong & deserved of public ridicule, even wars.

& while we’re on the subject, you’re going to now make a rust stain underneath an expressway a shrine because it kinda sorta
(not really)
looks like the Virgin Mary?  Or proclaim a piece of toast “holy”?  Please.

But yeah … laugh at the guys who believe in aliens…

…or vampires.

*In the interest of noting that this entry is bereft with sarcasm & is not intended to over-simplify nor generalize the whole of the Catholic church & its members but instead to draw sunshine, to use a vampiric analogy, upon those of the congregation who are less than Jesus-like … I must also add that – & I don’t believe this is much of a spoiler – the priest, Father Callahan, does believe … quite strongly, in fact … as a direct result of his vows.  ”For every action, there is an equal & opposite reaction,” so to speak.

‘salem’s Lot – Fish

“The Catholic Church is not the oldest of my opponents, though!  I was old when it was young, when its members hid in the catacombs of Rome and painted fishes on their chests so they could tell one from another.”

The Big Bad, in this story, writes this to the guys who have come to take him down.  There’s all sorts of Catholicism run amok in the latter half of this novel & this is no exception.

In my hometown, you either went to Catholic school or public school.  I went to Catholic school … for thirteen years, total.  &, just as one would expect, we wore uniforms.

The guys always had it easy: navy pants, light blue, collared shirts.  Us girls, while we could wear the same (albeit with white shirts instead of blue), had the option of wearing a blue plaid jumper as an elementary student or a blue & green plaid pleated skirt as a junior|high schooler.

Now you’d think with more options, we had it easier.  Not so much.  Girls, as it were, often do, in fact, like to wear skirts/dresses.  So it was a daily struggle with How Badly Do I Want To Wear A Skirt vs. How Badly Do I Not Want To Be Discriminated Against.

Because, see, it wasn’t like the tv shows or Halloween costume shops portrayed.  These weren’t sexy skirts.  They were uncomfortable wool or polyester blends with unflattering pleats & they had to be worn at a certain length — & that length was not inches from ass … more like inches from knee.

(of course, that didn’t stop us from rolling the waistband up once we were away from the evil eyes of the faculty … namely certain nuns who would push their vows of chastity on us — sorry ladies, i hate to tell you but that didn’t work)

The Catholic school uniform was a badge, a public symbol that immediately placed us in a particular group.  We walked around town & everyone knew.

The public school kids, as kids are oft to do, reveled in ragging on us for this.  They taunted us with their ability to individualize their outfits, their non-conformity, their
(jeans on a school day)
proclaimed superiority as a result.  But no one word could make these points more clear than the word they’d shout from car windows, from across the street, from playgrounds:

“FISH!”

Yes, since before my parents were in school, the term “Fish” was used to describe a Catholic, especially a Catholic who went to parochial school (after all, if you were a Catholic who didn’t go to Catholic school, you were pretty much ridiculed by both sides – one for being too Catholic, the other for not being Catholic enough).

We all kinda thought it was stupid … I mean, it’s not like we ate fish all the time.  Besides, we were pretty elitist, thinking that public school kids were hooligans who had to resort to name-calling they didn’t even understand themselves because their quality of education was far inferior.  Right, my Sr. High friends who may have stumbled upon this?  Right?!  ;D (that’s a joke)

I had heard several definitions & stories about how the derogatory term had come to be:

-  Jesus’s multiplying of the fish in the Gospel.
-  Most of the 12 Apostles being fishermen.
-  The Catholic church’s former tradition of not eating meat on Fridays (apparently, they didn’t consider fish flesh/muscle “meat” — this is a bone of contention for me as a vegetarian when people say, “i’m a vegetarian,” as they’re chowing down on salmon….)
-  The Catholic church’s current, amended tradition of not eating meat on Fridays during Lent.

I had never heard of the drawing of a fish to indicate a solidarity in early Christians until now.  Funny how I could go through thirteen years & never know this, huh?  Guess you really do learn something new every day.

So now there’s this revelation (pardon the pun): The Ichthys, which is emblazoned on bumper stickers, email signatures, etc.

<°(((><

What was once an exhausting derogatory term intended to humiliate & alienate is now a sense of pride.  My younger brother, while enrolled at the same high school from which I graduated, was part of the self-proclaimed “Fish Tank,” the student cheering section for the athletic department.  They wore this badge of honor to all events, were infamous for it.  They owned it & took back the power as a result.

Nowadays, I feel more of a solidarity with people who “survived” Catholic school.  Those who were raised Catholic, but who either fell away from the church or who, like me, never truly felt a part of it to begin with.  Reformed Catholics, some call themselves.

But I certainly do empathize with the hush-hush, fish nature of being a Catholic.  Let’s see what else Mr. King’s going to teach me about my former religious affiliation….

‘salem’s Lot – Quotes

Been reading a lot, but not finding time to actually post, so here are a few quotes that got me thinkin’ (after all, that’s what this blog is all about — quotes that get me thinkin’):

“If the column of truth has a hole in it, they neither know nor care.”

When you live & die by what you think you know to be truth, you will do whatever it takes to maintain that level of ignorance towards the possibility of anything but.  This can be said about both religion & politics – two subjects we are warned at an early age to avoid broaching as subjects of conversation for what I believe is precisely this reason.

“‘It’s amazing how hard the mind can try to block out something it doesn’t like or finds threatening.  Like the magic slates we had as boys.  If you didn’t like what you had drawn, you had only to pull the top sheet up and it would disappear.’
‘But the line stayed on the black stuff underneath forever.’”

I remember maybe three days of June 1989.  & by three days, I mean if you were to piece my memories together, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, they would total three days.  It’s my mind’s defense mechanism, I am sure of it, but even the events I cannot (or perhaps will not) remember have left an invisible, indelible mark on my psyche for the rest of my life.

“…never pausing to wonder if she would be able to hammer it through a man’s chest if the situation called for it.”

I’ve often wondered about this.  On film & tv, it looks so easy.  Just jut the wooden stick/stake/pencil/broken broom handle into the chest of a vampire who is charging at you & poof! dead.  It goes through them as if they were already dust.  In my vampire monster nightmares, this is something with which I struggle.  The stake is next to impossible to just stab in there (trying to get it past the whole ribcage & all) & when it does, it misses its mark.  I hope to God that if there are vampires & I’m suddenly faced with one, my Mr. Pointy goes in as smoothly as they do in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer/Angel.

“But still: the fear.
It rose suddenly, emotion overspilling logic and the bright Formica reason of the cerebrum, filling her mouth with a taste like black copper.”

Once again, Mr. King describes the taste of fear, this one a little closer to how I describe my own brand of terror in my mouth like I did in this post.

PS:  I sometimes tweet singular quotes on my Twitter account, so if you’re reading this, find it interesting, & haven’t yet “followed” me, give it a whirl. @TheSKProject

‘salem’s Lot – Salem

Remember back when I told you that I had a black cat named Salem (after ‘salem’s Lot)?

It saddens me to report that he recently died.
(sometimes dead is better)

RIP Salem
1994-2010

‘salem’s Lot – Kid Fears

“If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.  And the fears locked in small brains are much too large to pass through the orifice of the mouth.  Sooner or later you found someone to walk past all the deserted meeting houses you had to pass between grinning babyhood and grunting senility.  Until tonight.  Until tonight when you found out that none of the old fears had been staked—only tucked away in their tiny, child-sized coffins with a wild rose on top.”

A grown man isn’t expected to be afraid of much.  Well, not much by the way of what we consider “kid stuff.”  The boogeyman.  Stepping on a crack & actually breaking your mother’s back.  Vampires.  So when Matt Burke admits that the fears of his youth have not, as he once thought, been conquered,
(because there he is, sitting right in front of him)
it’s a powerful statement.

My childhood bed sat abnormally high off of the ground.  A family heirloom,
(hand-me-down?)
it wasn’t one of those learner’s permit kind of beds that kids have these days.  It wasn’t in the shape of a race car or white-washed with pastel stencils or canopied with tulle.  It was a dark wood frame with a thick mattress & even thicker box spring.

All sorts of items could fit underneath my bed: diaries, me when we played hide-and-seek, everything my parents told me to put away before I could invite anyone over for a slumber party.

Problem was, if all of these things could fit, that meant that anything could fit.

Anything.

The layout of my childhood bedroom did not allow the bed to be situated near the door.  Which wouldn’t have been a problem if that didn’t also mean that the bed could not be near the light switch.

At approximately 9 o’clock every evening, I would perform what was perhaps my only real talent, athletically.  In the half-second after flicking the switch to the downward “OFF” position, I would make a running leap the length of 1.5 queen-sizers, not letting my feet anywhere near an arm’s length radius of the base of the bed, & land with a soft squeak of the springs smack-dab in the center of the rectangle.

Most nights, this was all that needed to be done in order to quell the stirring beast of fear inside me.  But there were the other nights,
(it can’t get me it can’t get me it can’t get me)
other nights when a shadow seemed to move in my peripheral vision & the
(it’s just a)
creature was imminent, certain, awakened.

Those were the nights when I would either watch the walls like a hawk, eyes working separate of one another, head snapping towards a flicker of light, a strong breeze tap on the window … or I would pull the cool, blue sheets up over my head & cocoon myself in as much darkness as I could manufacture, thinking that if I couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see me.  & if it couldn’t see me, it couldn’t get me.

But I outgrew that, right?

…Right?

I’d like to think that my kid fears have been replaced by my adult fears & that even if my kid fears are still prevalent, they are this way for very adult reasons.

For example:  I have a very specific, very visceral, very immediate reaction to being in water that is deeper than five feet.  Being 5’9″, five feet is about the height at which I can touch the bottom & still have my airways above the surface.  It doesn’t take weekly sessions with a psychotherapist to recognize that this is a direct result of my sister’s drowning, which took place in a high school swimming pool.  Kid fear of the water with a very adult manifestation/justification of said fear.

That being said, there is a bull-headed side of me that refuses to accept any fear that paralyzes me in this manner.  I have a very real desire
(fear)
to conquer that of which I am most scared.   Jump out of an airplane when I am terrified of falling from great heights?  Check.  Snorkel in the ocean (essentially breathing underwater in depths much – much – greater than I am tall)?  Check.  Both at once by cliff-diving into a rapidly moving river?  Boom.  Done.

(aforementioned psychotherapist still isn’t needed to suggest that perhaps there’s also a smidge of the whole “defy death” theme there, too, but that’s a whole ‘nother post & mama’s gotta get some rest tonight)

So yay me, pat myself on the back, give advice on how to conquer fears by attacking them head-on.  Right?

…Right?

Until I awaken in a cold sweat, clinging to the blankets, sheets damp to the mattress, the dark of the room playing tricks with my eyes, a scream choking me in the center of my throat, eyes wild & wet with tears … because the devil himself made me his prey in a nightmare too vivid,
(there he is)
too tactile,
(sitting right in front of me)
too core-shakingly real to be anything but….
(wake up wake up oh jesus he’s going to take me down with him WAKE UP!!!)

& that is when I realize, not unlike Matt Burke realized, that those old kid fears are not staked after all, but merely tucked away in a tiny, child-sized white coffin I can all too clearly picture in my mind, twenty-one years after I first laid eyes upon it.

‘salem’s Lot – Autumn in New England

“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the mid-point of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed.  It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”

I miss the mid-seasons.  So often here in Chicago, there’s just Summer & Winter.  The Summers are glorious & the whole city is abundant with activity.  In the Winters, we hibernate … like Bears.

How I adore Spring, with its lilacs & tulips & slowly emerging green sprouts, its rain-washed pavement & freshly mowed grass, its pastels & open windows.  It’s the promise of sunny days to come; it’s Hope.

& Autumn, with its musty Friday night high school football scent & bitter corner-turns of wind, its settling into creaky rocking chairs & cider over memories, its dried oranges & yellows & pumpkin-tinted sunsets.  It’s a hunkering down for the dark days to come; it’s Resignation.

Yes, old friends these seasons.  & how I miss them.

‘salem’s Lot – Never Gonna Survive Unless We Get A Little Crazy

“Crazy people are sometimes able to counterfeit sanity remarkably well.”

After witnessing the impossible, Matt Burke attempts to defend his sanity to Ben Mears.  But Ben – an observant novelist – offers up this Devil’s Advocate piece of wisdom.

Crazy is a word that has gotten a bad rap.  It could mean fun-loving & exciting or it could mean legitimately mentally disturbed.  But more often than not, it has been used to describe a person who is simply more emotional than we are comfortable.

Think about it.  When was the last time you heard a guy refer to his “crazy ex-girlfriend,” only to have him describe her so-called crazy behavior & think to yourself, “That’s not really so bad; what’s the big deal?”  Or been called crazy yourself when all you’ve done is present an opposing viewpoint?  Or waved off someone’s wild behavior as “he went crazy last night”?  It’s a convenient definition that automatically absolves you of any responsibility in the matter &, in turn, endears you to the listener as someone who was simply a victim of insanity.

The thing is, there most definitely are legitimately crazy people living amongst us.  Some of them are easily identifiable: they talk to carriage horses, they claim to know the exact date of the Apocalypse, they have entire arguments with themselves on the bus.  Crazy?  Yes.

Then there are those whose crazy lies dormant.  On a day-to-day basis, they survive in society in a carefully crafted costume – a façade of who they so very want you to believe they are.  These people, these crazy people are, like Ben Mears stated, able to counterfeit sanity remarkably well.  It isn’t until there’s a catalyst to unleash the crazy that their true colors shine through.

& then there are the rest of us.  Those of us who recognize that in order to maintain our sanity in this volatile, frustrating, extraordinary, vibrant world, we must also maintain a certain level of insanity.  How else, do you reckon, we continue to believe in gods after all of the bad fortune that befalls us?  How do we get out of bed after a devastating loss?  How do we stay grounded when every little thing seems to be going our way?

Insanity in moderation keeps sanity prevailing.  & it certainly does in ‘salem’s Lot.  Would you be able to deal with a child vampire sucking the blood dry out of a grown man if you didn’t allow yourself a little madness?

Let’s get a little crazy.

‘salem’s Lot – Confession

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

It has been three years since my last Confession.

My First Confession
(reconciliation.  they call it reconciliation now)
was when I was seven years old.  One of the Holy Sacraments, we had to confess our sins before we could accept the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of First Communion
(eucharist.  they call it eucharist now).

I’m still not quite sure what sins – mortal or otherwise – a second grade kid would legitimately confess, worthy of all the pomp & circumstance, but we were terrified, regardless.  We were taught that there were two distinct ways in which to receive the sacrament: semi-privately, in a confessional, behind the thinly veiled wall OR face-to-face with a real live Priest who could look you in the eye & recognize you when you walked into church every Sunday morning.

Gulp.

Naturally, we all wanted to kneel in the anonymity of the the small, darkened room & wait for the old religious man to slide aside the square of wood.  But, as is the case so often in religious rites in youth, we didn’t have much of a choice.

“You five!  To the left!  You five!  To the right!  MY right!  You five!  Come with me up to the altar!  No talking!  & stop dawdling, Nicole; we don’t have all day!  Michael!  Spit out that gum.  Spit. Out. That. Gum.”

Seriously?  Up to the altar?  Seriously?  Up to the altar only meant one thing: Face-to-Face Confession.  & not just with any old Priest, no  no … with the Monsignor – or worse! – the Bishop!

Palms sweaty, mind scrambling to think of sins alternately mild enough as to not permanently brand me with the 7 year old version of the Scarlet Letter but significant enough to give me some legitimacy – show the big man that I wasn’t messing around, that I had actually given this some thought – I genuflected in front of the giant, hanging statue of Jesus on the Cross.  His eyes followed me as I walked towards the chair directly across from the Monsignor.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  This is my First Confession,” I began.

It was all so very formal.  There was a strict adherence to the tradition of the rite.  I say this.  He says that.  I divulge my deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secrets to a man who seemed to be ten times my age (& very seriously may have been).

“I kicked my sister.  I swore curse words at my brother.  I stole a quarter from my parents’ dresser when I heard the ice cream truck coming by so I could buy a Push-Up.”

Very serious crimes against humanity, indeed.

“Say three Hail Marys & three Our Fathers.”  Six little prayers, three minutes, & two tiny, pointy indentions on the cushion of the kneeler & my sins were absolved.

The guilt, oh man, the guilt.  A lifetime of guilt starts with this.  First Confession.  You have wronged.  You must reveal your wrong-doings.  You must do penance.  You must, you must, you must.  If not, you are destined to go straight to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect your 40 gold pieces….

Twenty-four years later, I found myself walking past a Cathedral &, without thinking, meandered in, dipped my fingers into the bowl of water, made the sign of the cross with my right hand, & shuffled my way downstairs to where they were holding Confession Reconciliation.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  I have no idea how long it’s been since my last Confession.”

Much less formal, but with no diminishing respect, I muddled through the steps.  ”Am I supposed to say something here?”

& on that day, I confessed my darkest deeds
(to an envious man).

Things of which I was ashamed.  Things of which I had never dared speak aloud to myself, let alone another human soul.  Things that did not involve tattling or lunch money or using the Lord’s name in vain.  Things I’d done for which I genuinely feared eternal damnation, or, at the very least, a lifetime in limbo.

Surprisingly, the Priest, instead of issuing the standard couple-a prayers here, handful-a prayers there, well, he talked to me about the stuff I’d just admitted to him.  He went off-book because I think he could sense that I am an off-book kinda gal.  & for the first time in my life, after 13 years of Catholic school, heck, after long abandoning any form of organized religion at all, I actually felt better after leaving the dark, musty basement.

Oh sure, I still harbor all sorts of guilt about what I’ve done, what I’ve said, what I’ve thought.  But looking back upon it now, I suppose, in the grand scheme of good vs. evil, I’ve still only stolen a few quarters out of the dresser.  & the good that I’ve done, the penance I’ve demanded of myself, more than makes up for it.

There is a lot of religious symbolism in this novel &, if I’m remembering correctly, a whole lot more questions to be asked later on, questions to be tackled
Face-to-Face.

’salem’s Lot – Say Uncle: The Ruination of the Schoolyard Bully

“Say uncle.”

With those two simple words, Mark Petrie swiftly ended Richie Boddin’s reign as school bully.  There is something both victoriously satisfying & profoundly sad about the moment that karma rears its head to a bully.  Most bullies are merely insecure children who, pityingly, can only scratch that pathetic itch through making others feel just as bad about themselves as they do.  So when a bully meets his/her fate, one can only feel justifiably triumphant, right?  But for those of us who have a duality of empathy, one may feel sorry for the guy/gal.  Because, after all, bullies never go down softly; it’s always a tragic display.  Goliath falling like a sycamore with a thud.  Max Baer spitting blood from too many hits.  The Soviet Union team skating around the rink in a daze.
(ok, maybe they weren’t all bullies, but they were definitely not the underdogs)
Regardless, it may be satisfying, but it’s never pretty.

I was fifteen years old when I bested my high school bully, Tina.  My crime was twofold:

1. Tina’s friend Jenny was dating my ex-boyfriend, which, in high school, naturally made me persona non grata.
2. I was dating Tina’s ex-boyfriend.  No explanation needed there.

In the tangled web we weave when we are in high school, this made us mortal enemies.  In any other circumstance, I’d have been fine.  I will smack-talk with the best of them, but I was a lover, not a fighter – even Sophomore year.  A few catty remarks here & there, okay.  But I drew the line.

Tina, however, well, Tina was a Senior at the public high school.  At. The. Public. High. School.  Us Catholic girls, as much as we would deny it, were generally slightly frightened of the Senior High School girls.  They were rough around the edges, jagged.  They had to be; their graduating class was three-four times what ours was.  Rumors spread of daily cat fights in the hallways across the street from our white-bred, religious institution.  Girls weren’t afraid to get bloody & they fought dirty.  You didn’t piss off a Senior High School girl, if you could help it., nevermind an OLDER Senior High School girl.

Apparently, I couldn’t help it.

Being that the two unsuspecting boys in question were both on my school’s varsity basketball team, there were several awkward moments in the gymnasium, the cafeteria, the halls, &, as you will soon find out, the parking lot.  Jenny came to support her boyfriend & Tina came to stalk her ex.

(I’m also of the theory that Jenny was scared of me – I can be intimidating when I’m feisty & she was meek – so she wanted Tina to come as a sort of bodyguard.  The accompanying theory is that Tina just wanted to kick some Catholic girl ass.)

After a couple of weekends of dirty looks, yells of “Bitch!” masked by coughs from the stands, & outright threats against my person, even a relatively demure pacifistic Catholic teenaged girl starts to steam.  This was, after all, MY school, MY gym, MY team, & MY boyfriend.

(I wasn’t even sure if I liked the guy, either, which made it even more ridiculous.  He tried to move too fast too soon & wasn’t paying much attention to my favorite word, “No.”  But Tina was pissing me off & so I kept dating him.  Ah … teenagers.)

One night, I had plans to attend a party.  & by party, I mean a bunch of us girls were driving out to a deserted road through a corn field on the outskirts of town with a couple of cases of beer & a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.  Ever the loyal girlfriend, I sat through the first half of the basketball game.  Come halftime, though, I had more important things to do.  So my friend D & I exited the school out the back door into the dimly lit parking lot.

Let’s stop here to tell you a little about my friend D.  My best friend since the third grade, D & I had been through a lot together.  We both kissed Michael Jackson on the lips – his posters anyways.  We both started dating older high school guys when we were still truly awkward ugly duckling thirteen year olds.  & she was by my side every moment when my sister died.  She was a rock to me in so many ways, but confrontation?  Confrontation was not her strong suit.  She was about as threatening as a baby chicken & half as scary.  God, I loved her then, but the girl was not the person you’d want waiting in the wings to tag team Goliath in case the slingshot failed or your aim was weak.

We got about ten feet out of the double doors when we heard them open up again behind us.  The hairs of the back of my neck intuited that whomever it was wasn’t here to accompany us to the gravel road.  Before the shaft of light could indicate that the doors were closed, I heard one menacing word.

“BITCH!”

Unmistakably Tina’s voice, & by the sound of the footsteps, a) she was not alone, & b) she was gaining ground quickly.  We picked up our pace.  D’s torso hardened to a board & my palms began to sweat.  The taste of metal filled my mouth & all I could think was, “Why D?  Why D?  Anyone, ANYONE else but D.  I.  Am.  Fucked.”

“I am going to kick your scrawny little ass.”

Tina was a full six plus inches shorter than me – a petite girl – but pure muscle.  Scrappy, snarling, she breathed down my neck.  She had to have been several feet behind me still, but I could feel her ass-kicker presence on my heels.

“You’re gonna wish you never fucked with us.  Who in the hell do you think you are?  Fucking bitch acting like you’re so fucking important.  Ooooo!  I’m so popular!  Oooo all the boys love me!  Ooooo I’m so pretty!  Let’s see how fucking pretty you are when I break your nose.”

(ohmygod my face my face not my face please god not my face)

“Turn the fuck around & face me.  What?  You scared?  You should be.  You’re not going to recognize yourself in five minutes.  Think all the guys will love you then?  Think you’ll have a boyfriend then?  Fuck you, you fucking whore.”

(think fast think fast how in the fuck am i going to get outta this)

“Fucking bitch & your fucking bitch ass friend.”

(car door car door the car’s locked keys keys keys oh fuck)

“Take my boyfriend.  Who in the fuck do you think you are?”

(i’m going to die right here right now & d’s just gonna watch from behind the car)

“I’ll teach you to fuck around with other girls’ boyfriends.”

(what the fuck is she talking about? they were broken up)

“Bitch.”

(think think think think think think THINK DAMNIT)

“Say goodbye to your pretty face.”

My face again.  I had had enough.  I whipped around, which totally caught them off-guard.  I thought D was going to pee her pants right there.  Looking straight into Tina’s eyes, I heard these words come out of my mouth, as if I was merely a witness to my own awesomeness.

“Listen bitch.  Tina is it?  Yeah?  Question.  How old are you?”

She stuttered inaudibly.

“Eighteen right?  You’re eighteen.”

She nodded, trying to find her defiance again.

“Okay, well, that’s very interesting because me?  I am fifteen years old.  Fifteen.  You’re eighteen.  Which means you’re not a minor anymore.  I am, but you’re not.  So here’s what’s going to happen.  I’m going to let you throw the first punch.  You get to start this fight.  But after you do, I’m going to finish it.  I’m going to kick the ever-living shit out of you once & for all.”

I stepped into her, straightening my spine to accentuate our height difference, mustering all of the intimidation I could.

“& after I kick your ass, I’m gonna call the cops.  & guess who is going to go to jail?  The fifteen year old minor who got jumped?  Or the eighteen year old who jumped her?”

Tina & Jenny’s jaws both visibly dropped.

“So.  You ready to fight … bitch?”

In the silent pause that stretched across the parking lot, my shoulders dropped, my saliva became tasteless again, & my heart rate evened.

“That’s what I thought.”

With one smooth motion, I pivoted on my heels, walked to my car, unlocked it, motioned to D to get it, & turned the ignition.

We got three blocks away before I exhaled.  ”Ho. Ly. Shit.  That.  Was.  AWESOME.”  I was looking forward but could tell D was grinning at me when she said this.

“Yeah.  Yeah.  Fucking had  no clue what I’da done had she decked me.  Let’s party.”

I was never bothered by Tina &/or Jenny &/or really anyone else for the remainder of my teenaged years.  There were a couple of close calls, but they were directed towards friends &, quite honestly, I had a newly developed sense of badassedness – in that I could talk a good game … enough to get out of some really sticky situations.

A few months after this incident, I found out that besides similar tastes in men, Tina & I shared another thing in common.  She, too, had lost a sister.  When I heard this, I immediately painted her defeat at my hands with a bittersweet hue.  I almost extended my hand in friendship (as I have often done since to once-perceived “enemies” of mine to great success – no sarcasm, honestly).  I told you; I have a duality of empathy.  We were part of a horrible club of little girls who had to grow up too fast; we just chose different ways to deal with our membership in this club.

There is humanity in the bully & sometimes we forget that until we are forced to shake it out of them.

Sorry I made you say uncle, Tina.

‘salem’s Lot – Magic

“What was he doing, coming back to a town where he had lived for four years as a boy, trying to recapture something that was irrevocably lost?  What magic could he expect to recapture by walking roads that he had once walked as a boy and were probably asphalted and straightened and logged off and littered with tourist beer cans?  The magic was gone, both white and black.”

If there’s anything (other than horror) that Constant Readers can say most marks the bulk of Stephen King’s books, it’s an innocence – the losing or attempted reclaiming of.  In fact, it’s what draws me most to him as an author, I suspect.  As for me?  I know a little bit about this subject as well.

All of the magic of my youth was sucked out of the air the moment the words, “Niki, she died,” came out of my aunt’s mouth.  That’s often the case, isn’t it?  It takes a powerful, powerful force to vanquish the magic of innocence.  Whether it’s death or a divorce or another unspeakable act of violence or cruelty, the strong might of imagination & naiveté can only be toppled by something swift & cutting as these.

I lived in my Iowa hometown until I graduated from high school.  During my two years at a state school, I came back during summer vacations, but then, when I moved to Manhattan in the Autumn of 1995, I left small-town Iowa life for good.

That was fourteen years ago.  The exact number of years I got to spend with my little sister.

I get back to my folks’ home about 3-5 times per year.  & it never ceases to amaze me.

Most people assume that nothing about small towns ever changes.  It’s the same old gas station where you bought your first underage alcohol purchase.  It’s the same old family surnames buzzing on the gossip circuit.  It’s the same old faces in the same old dive bar on the same old main street.

But it’s more than that.  There’s a lot that stays stagnant, but the changes that are made are subtle, almost imperceptible … not unlike the people who reside there.
(& i mean that in the best possible way)

Like my Dad’s progressive Parkinson’s, some times those who are in the presence of the changes day in & day out don’t necessarily see them.  It takes a knowledgeable outsider to mark the differences, to be aware of the evolution, to feel the magic.

When I drive around my childhood hometown, I travel the same roads that held me as I wept from heartbreak, that protected me as I learned to drive an automatic, that bruised my bicycle-riding knees.  & yet, even though I thought I lost the magic that day in June of 1989, I can still feel it weaving its way through these same roads.  It’s in the sound of basketballs bouncing on driveways, the giddy glint in the eye of a little girl who is running home to write in her diary that she just had her first kiss, the hand-holding of a mom & her son as they wait in line at the local mall to tell Santa their biggest gift wishes this year.

It’s a new, colorful sign on an old family-owned business.  It’s a round-about where an intersection used to be.  It’s a surprisingly forward-thinking conversation around the Thanksgiving table.

The magic hasn’t left.  Not completely.  & sometimes, just sometimes, when I drive routes I’ve driven a thousand times, when I smile at the hushed whispers of local gossip, when I eat at the infamous Taco Tico … it all comes flooding back.

When we go back to our hometowns, not unlike Ben Mears, whether we actively search for it or whether it’s more a subconscious desire, we’re all seeking to recapture the magic.  How quickly we forget that, like Dorothy & her red shoes, we’ve had the magic inside us all along … sometimes we just need a trip down Memory Lane to pull it out of us.

I had that magic when I first pulled The Shining off the shelf where my mom kept her novels.  I had that magic when I cried the second time I read IT, knowing then what I knew of sibling loss & the big bad monsters that move so lithely from our nightmares into real life.  & I still feel that magic, even as I revisit Stephen King’s novels once again.

Thank you, Mr. King, for keeping this magic alive.