D: 01/03/03

Work Diary, 1/3/02

When I was five or six, I spent an entire day at my mother's work. I
can't remember why; my parents were still married, and normally my
out-of-work father was the babysitter. I may have been sick - or
pretending to be, at least - or it may have been the time my father was
shipped off to the insane asylum. Either way, I'd spent the day roaming
the tunnels beneath the hospital where my mother worked. The tunnels
connected different hospitals, and were full of men and women in blue
jumpsuits who laughed and talked as if the hundred-degree heat above
wasn't providing them with patients all the livelong day.

Anyway, my mother got off work early. She grabbed me from the stacks of
files connected to her office - where I happened to be - and took me
outside to the parking lot. In the morning, when we'd arrived, the
parking lot had been dark, a dank and humid expanse of black that still
gave off the preceding day's heat. Now, it was full of cars, and so hot
and so miserable that our own car could only prove to be some sub-level
of Dante's hell.

I was right. I got into the car, and instantly my skin stuck to the
seats. If I'd known Latin, surely I would have screamed, "Have mercy on
me!" When I looked to my left, my mother was still trying to get in,
but the truck next to us was parked so close that her door opened only
a few inches. She cursed.

Then my mother stopped saying "goddamnit" and "shit." Calmly, she let
her door fall back against the car. Through the window I watched her
dig around in her purse, from which she produced a tube of lipstick.
Even as a child, I remember thinking, "Not now." I'd spent too many
times waiting for her while she primped in front of the bathroom
mirror. In the heat, against those vinyl seats, "now" would become an
eternity.

But my mother wasn't primping. She uncapped the lipstick, walked around
to the other side of the truck next to us, and wrote "PIG" in big
capital letters across its windshield. How did I know? Because by then,
I was already out of the car. Also I could spell.

Just as calmly, my mother put her lipstick back in her purse, stepped
around me, and got in on my side of the car. She slid over, said, "Get
in" (I did), started the car, and through a process of trial and error,
maneuvered the car out of its space. We drove home.

Memories like these sometimes drive me crazy. They are so crystal clear
that I can feel my heated skin. I can remember the color of my mother's
lipstick. I can even remember the color of the car's vinyl seats:
mocha, on the chocolate side, though that is my adult mind speaking.
But that's not what drives me crazy.

My mother was strong, despite her weaknesses. Had the owner of the
newly christened truck shown up, I have no doubt that my mother would
have conned her way out of it. Somehow, she would have made her point
clear. Somehow, she would have directed the truck owner's gaze from her
cleavage to her eyes, which were too bright to be called bimbo, too
deep to be called bitch.

What does drive me crazy is the wasted energy of a woman who could help
me now, in what apparently is called "my darkest hour." Somehow, I
don't have the strength to write "PIG" on my partner's windshield, most
likely because the word doesn't belong there, and most definitely
because the word should be on my own forehead.

I am still living on that hot Houston day. It keeps me going, along
with other equally hot, equally strange days. By all accounts, I am
still living a life I should have left behind. I am a pig, a bimbo, a
bitch. I am a man who drinks too much, gets drunk, gets wasted. I'm a
man who would never take lipstick and scrawl "PIG" on a
windshield.

And though I wish it were otherwise, it's not because I'm a man who
doesn't wear lipstick.