Sweet Memory Will Die

Originally Posted 4-29-08

OK, so as this all ties into china in some way, so I'll give you a sneak peak.

HB Independent Article 1
HB Independent Article 2

A big part of the China trip was about parents and children. On the initial level simply by merit of being a school trip that seems obvious I know... but there's more to it than that. There was a kid who was reuniting with his mother. Point of fact one of the major reasons why I was there, was to act as body guard for this kid cause’ we didn't know what to expect.

Story goes his mom gave him up and his father brought him to America (presumably against her wishes) for a better life. 10 years pass. Fate conspires. Kid returns to his country of origin to meet his long lost and ever forlorn bearer... Heartwarming right? So why is everything in my gut screaming?

Maybe it's the fear that I may have to actually protect this kid. If everyone's so sweet and full of mirth then why have my fists been purchased? The school could be naturally wary because of the liability. It all seems pretty obvious to me; yet that's not it. My guts still churn and burn and it isn't the food.

She's this great woman, important with the communist party. Filthy in riches I don't even wanna’ consider. She soils the kid in money and stuff like a Disneyland dad with a new platinum card... but she's not really there. Unconsciously the kid senses something's gone south with the cheese. He doesn't vocalize it, but he cries at night in his room when it's dark and he's as alone as he's gonna’ get. She showers him in thousands of dollars (American and RKB) but she's never really with him when she's present. Always on a cell phone, or surrounded by security.

Our group is blinded by all the gifts and gourmet eats, but still I pause. Like the kid I didn't vocalize the stammer until long after I got home.

I don't buy any of it. Envelopes filled with thousands of dollars do not usually well forth from the downtrodden who give their children away to the ages for a better life. Something stinks and it does hula-hoops in my stomach on the flight back (conceivably it coulda’ been the 7.5 hours of turbulence but I doubt it).

I touch down in SF at the same time on the same day I left China... Time travel is still an oddity to my internal clock.

By the time I'm cresting my mom's porch my eyes are barely open. I flop on the couch and down and out for 8 hours or so. I wake up to AA canceling my flight back. I’m so over flying at this point that it barely registers.

Covington and I have been friends for at least the better part of a decade. I know him through his fuckhead of a brother in law, Jeff, who used to be my boss. One of few adult men I have ever verged on beating the life out of. Jeff of the family Stora is a piece of shit. Nobody not even Jeff has ever really disputed it. The dude tried to elicit a BJ from my ex on a drive home, and when I confronted him about it vaguely, years later he was quick to say she was drunk that night so her memory musta’ been fuzzy... That's funny Jeff I never mentioned what night or that you two were ever in a car together without me... That was the last time we spoke.

Jeff has a sister named Kia who was Married to my friend Covington. For ten years they were the power couple. She makes a fortune and that disparity in income never mattered. Covington worked, till she told him he didn't have to. He took care of her ailing mother. Did everything she ever asked. They were the measuring stick by which I measured many a relationship.

So one day while on vacation in Palm Springs she comes back to the hotel and says she's over it. A rich successful woman like her is exposed to attractive men and she is thinking of cheating, but before she does something to soil her countenance she wants to end it so she can be single. Free and clear.

FUCK YOU KIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So let me get this straight your clever plan to remain guiltless is to leave first instead of working things out? Wow what a fucking trooper you are. We used to kid about Kia being the milkman's daughter while the brothers were hell's spawn. Guess the forbidden fruit doesn't fall far from the rotting stump after all.

You know what the best part about being single is? The memory of it. The reality is it isn't the wall to wall pussy of perfect memory. It's just lonely people whittling the population down for personal happiness; retelling age old stories to new faces in the blind hope that some mirrored resonance will click. And yet we all drape ourselves in that illusion while we struggle. "Oh wouldn't things be easier if I were single?" Nope. So why are people coming back to this question?

Covington and I talked about it as we drove to the ATX and set him up with an appt in my complex. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this cockney little sod from East London close by… I’m just missing the words.

When I got home it came to my attention that friend Aaron's wife left him with a baby after a much shorter span of marriage for the same freedom. My old man was the same kind of animal. He left us for the same bullshit ring of brass. Somewhere deep inside; they all looked the same to me. Kia, Elise, daddy dearest and it was eating me up.

Spinning in my innards, all these profoundly cowardly and cruel people, bailing on the things that should matter… and for what? The ether of a memory that's only real on film. Nice work assholes.

When I came back from not so red as we’ve been led to believe China, I was battling SARs (not bird-flu because I only shop outlet so I couldn’t afford this season's debilitating illness). As antibiotics bayoneted their way through my immune system I kept falling asleep. It may not sound it, but that’s pretty unusual for me, since I barely sleep; then all of a sudden boom out like a light for 10 to 12 hours. Normally I wouldn’t complain about the extra rest, at the very least my eyes would be pleased… But my dreams really, REALLY sucked.

Behind my mind’s eye, these sometimes violent morality plays would run along. I never have bad dreams about real things, that’s not my bag. I usually like my nightmares for exactly that reason… so what the fuck, right?

Seems my subconscious was chewing on all of this. And it’s understandable in the ever glorious Hi-def of hindsight. When I moved to TX some of my walls came down. I didn't live in the same place where all my horror stories were born. There was no reason for all the brick and mortar… but then life hit. People started to mirror some of that ugly and I had to piece myself back together.

Is it wrong that I would happily drive out to the middle of nowhere, hit them, in the face with a shovel and leave their bodies for the wolves... is it worse that after I think I would want a coke? Not my place to judge, time to rebuild.

-P-