Fickle
26th May 2005, 04:21
I don't do this often here, but I just wrote it, and I'd dig on some feedback. I'd post it in the art forum, but nobody goes there but poets and I'm not much of a poet.
It's a story. As it is, it's not complete, and I get nervous posting things here as the traffic is huge a times, and I don't trust everybody here (mostly the n00bs), but I figured after all this asshole talk I'd share something a bit deeper than my mental shits that I take daily all over this forum. It's not long, but as I said before it's not finished, there is definately some other things milling about in the background and foreground that will be explored, but this is something I like, and since I haven't been able to write for a while, I figured that when I got an epiphany I'd share it with you. I'll post it elsewhere too, a lower traffic area, so after a day or so I think I'll ask to close the thread or something, just so I don't read it posted by some douchebag in his blog or something.
So here it is, give me some thoughts. Thanks.
It was raining and was supposed to keep raining until at least the end of the week, maybe longer. That was what the papers said, anyway. "A slow soaking all week, and perhaps even into next week" is what it had said to be precise, but who believes weather reports in the newspaper? When they were wrong it was standard and when they were right it was divine. It was a cold drizzle that soaked your bones and made you wish that summer would come faster, whip in and suprise you with sunshine, warm your bones from the cold of Winter and this soggy Spring.
My clothes were soaked on the outside right through to my skin. I was somewhat warm though, what little meat on my bones sending steam up from my underclothes, just enough to think you were going crazy watching smoke rise from your chest as if your lungs were smoldering. My pants squashed under me as I turned to my cooler and took out a ham and cheese sandwich wrapped in plastic from it, balancing my rod in one hand. If only dad could see me now. Munching a wet sandwich, fishing from the trestle in the rain. I think he would have smiled.
My dad and I used to go fishing every now and again, when he wasn't down at the local pub pickling himself or out at work. I remember we used to fish on only the horribly bright days, as if God had turned the contrast up on his television, but we only went if his drinking buddies were busy with their families or nobody needed plumbing done in town. I hated it when he came with me fishing. He would turn my light lunch and long walk into a whole production, complete with enough acts to make Shakespeare cry.
First was the lunch. Sandwiches were painstakingly made as if we were going to hang them up on a wall instead of keep them in the same cooler as any fish we caught and eat them with sticky, tar-blackened hands (those were the days they still tarred the trestle to keep it from rotting away). The second act was loading the truck. Dad's truck was a giant blue Ford from the seventies that squealed when he made sharp turns. Loading it should only have taken five to six seconds, depending how many people were going (sometimes my friend George came down from the end of the road to join us), but to my father, every rod had to come, every rod had to be inspected, the tackle box had to be stowed away in the corner of the pickup. The man even counted his sinkers, as if someone had been secretely fishing with his sinkers while he was gone. I bought my own sinkers.
The Third act was driving. This took the least time, simply because the place was only a mile and a half from the house, so even when we stopped to pick up beer ("twelve pack of Bud, Victor") it only took about five minutes. But the walk to the trestle was one of my favorite parts of going fishing. I would walk and think about what was going on at home, or intentionally not think about it. I would find myself on those slow walks through town before the traffic became something more than old men driving to breakfast and young women looking for yard sales. I would rationalise how I would ask Becky Thompson to the dance on Friday, about who could help me change my grades on the progress reports so I wouldn't have to hear anything from my parents. These walks were my alone time, and even though psychologists nowadays seem to trump it up too much, I'll grant those alone times were important. They were to me, anyway.
When we got there it would be time to unload, my dad cracking a beer and me slogging the stuff to the bank. That was the other major difference. My dad didn't like to fish from the trestle, he liked to fish next to it. He would inform me the shadows of the old bridge was where the fish liked to hide, but never explained how fishing from on top of the bridge kept your bait from under it and nearer to the fish. I never said anything because it was better not to argue with Dad, not easier, but better. Sometimes when he came home drunk he remembered the things you'd said to him.
All day long we would sit and do the Father and Son thing, talking sports and television, the kind of talk that avoided all the things you really wanted to say for the sake of the moment. I loved my dad, and despite his actions sometimes, I knew he loved me. But these are things men can't say to each other at certain times, and with me and my dad, it was always one of those times. We would sit and think up something neutral to say, something that sounded conversational but was just meaningless. When I got older I came closer to saying the things I felt, but never came full out and told him when he had been a jerk the night before, or how school really was, or that he looked like he'd lost weight, or even that I loved him. I could never tell him how I felt, and he could do no more than me in the same respect. I could tell when he wanted to breach a subject, he would hem and wipe his face, his eyes blearey or just wet with some emotion being fought back. He would finally try and blurt it out, retract, and then soften it, to try and keep me from being upset. Nothing hurt him more than hurting me, despite his actions after nights of hard drinking. He was a big bear, but you could tell inside he was all marshmallow, at least for me. He loved me, and I loved him back, but we could just never get it out to each other. I think that was the real reason I hated going fishig with my dad. When we went together we didn't fish, we fought the want and need to be father and son, despite having the perfect oppurtunity to be just that.
I was alone now, though. I was alone and sitting in the middle of the trestle, in the middle of town, feeling the rain patter on my slicker and eating my wet sandwich, thinking of my dad. I wanted him there then, to appear before me and try to talk to me. I wanted to hear the hems and I wanted to see him rub his hair and wipe his face in a slow movement that exposed how bloodshot his eyes were, how he needed sleep. I wanted him there then, but of course that wasn't going to happen. He'd been dead since Tuesday.
It's a story. As it is, it's not complete, and I get nervous posting things here as the traffic is huge a times, and I don't trust everybody here (mostly the n00bs), but I figured after all this asshole talk I'd share something a bit deeper than my mental shits that I take daily all over this forum. It's not long, but as I said before it's not finished, there is definately some other things milling about in the background and foreground that will be explored, but this is something I like, and since I haven't been able to write for a while, I figured that when I got an epiphany I'd share it with you. I'll post it elsewhere too, a lower traffic area, so after a day or so I think I'll ask to close the thread or something, just so I don't read it posted by some douchebag in his blog or something.
So here it is, give me some thoughts. Thanks.
It was raining and was supposed to keep raining until at least the end of the week, maybe longer. That was what the papers said, anyway. "A slow soaking all week, and perhaps even into next week" is what it had said to be precise, but who believes weather reports in the newspaper? When they were wrong it was standard and when they were right it was divine. It was a cold drizzle that soaked your bones and made you wish that summer would come faster, whip in and suprise you with sunshine, warm your bones from the cold of Winter and this soggy Spring.
My clothes were soaked on the outside right through to my skin. I was somewhat warm though, what little meat on my bones sending steam up from my underclothes, just enough to think you were going crazy watching smoke rise from your chest as if your lungs were smoldering. My pants squashed under me as I turned to my cooler and took out a ham and cheese sandwich wrapped in plastic from it, balancing my rod in one hand. If only dad could see me now. Munching a wet sandwich, fishing from the trestle in the rain. I think he would have smiled.
My dad and I used to go fishing every now and again, when he wasn't down at the local pub pickling himself or out at work. I remember we used to fish on only the horribly bright days, as if God had turned the contrast up on his television, but we only went if his drinking buddies were busy with their families or nobody needed plumbing done in town. I hated it when he came with me fishing. He would turn my light lunch and long walk into a whole production, complete with enough acts to make Shakespeare cry.
First was the lunch. Sandwiches were painstakingly made as if we were going to hang them up on a wall instead of keep them in the same cooler as any fish we caught and eat them with sticky, tar-blackened hands (those were the days they still tarred the trestle to keep it from rotting away). The second act was loading the truck. Dad's truck was a giant blue Ford from the seventies that squealed when he made sharp turns. Loading it should only have taken five to six seconds, depending how many people were going (sometimes my friend George came down from the end of the road to join us), but to my father, every rod had to come, every rod had to be inspected, the tackle box had to be stowed away in the corner of the pickup. The man even counted his sinkers, as if someone had been secretely fishing with his sinkers while he was gone. I bought my own sinkers.
The Third act was driving. This took the least time, simply because the place was only a mile and a half from the house, so even when we stopped to pick up beer ("twelve pack of Bud, Victor") it only took about five minutes. But the walk to the trestle was one of my favorite parts of going fishing. I would walk and think about what was going on at home, or intentionally not think about it. I would find myself on those slow walks through town before the traffic became something more than old men driving to breakfast and young women looking for yard sales. I would rationalise how I would ask Becky Thompson to the dance on Friday, about who could help me change my grades on the progress reports so I wouldn't have to hear anything from my parents. These walks were my alone time, and even though psychologists nowadays seem to trump it up too much, I'll grant those alone times were important. They were to me, anyway.
When we got there it would be time to unload, my dad cracking a beer and me slogging the stuff to the bank. That was the other major difference. My dad didn't like to fish from the trestle, he liked to fish next to it. He would inform me the shadows of the old bridge was where the fish liked to hide, but never explained how fishing from on top of the bridge kept your bait from under it and nearer to the fish. I never said anything because it was better not to argue with Dad, not easier, but better. Sometimes when he came home drunk he remembered the things you'd said to him.
All day long we would sit and do the Father and Son thing, talking sports and television, the kind of talk that avoided all the things you really wanted to say for the sake of the moment. I loved my dad, and despite his actions sometimes, I knew he loved me. But these are things men can't say to each other at certain times, and with me and my dad, it was always one of those times. We would sit and think up something neutral to say, something that sounded conversational but was just meaningless. When I got older I came closer to saying the things I felt, but never came full out and told him when he had been a jerk the night before, or how school really was, or that he looked like he'd lost weight, or even that I loved him. I could never tell him how I felt, and he could do no more than me in the same respect. I could tell when he wanted to breach a subject, he would hem and wipe his face, his eyes blearey or just wet with some emotion being fought back. He would finally try and blurt it out, retract, and then soften it, to try and keep me from being upset. Nothing hurt him more than hurting me, despite his actions after nights of hard drinking. He was a big bear, but you could tell inside he was all marshmallow, at least for me. He loved me, and I loved him back, but we could just never get it out to each other. I think that was the real reason I hated going fishig with my dad. When we went together we didn't fish, we fought the want and need to be father and son, despite having the perfect oppurtunity to be just that.
I was alone now, though. I was alone and sitting in the middle of the trestle, in the middle of town, feeling the rain patter on my slicker and eating my wet sandwich, thinking of my dad. I wanted him there then, to appear before me and try to talk to me. I wanted to hear the hems and I wanted to see him rub his hair and wipe his face in a slow movement that exposed how bloodshot his eyes were, how he needed sleep. I wanted him there then, but of course that wasn't going to happen. He'd been dead since Tuesday.