home is burning

As we waited in a room designated specifically for waiting while the nurses and doctors finished sewing back up what was left of my little sister, Michelle’s, vagina after she gave birth to her second child in 11 months, I fucked around with my other little sister, Chelsea, the one who will not only not be giving birth any time soon, but the one who will probably not even be getting laid any time soon, just like me. I made retard jokes. She made fat asshole jokes.

“You’re so retarded you could have a retarded baby with no arms and a dick on the bottom of his left foot,” I said.

“You’re so fat you could have a baby made of poop,” she said.

“Well, we should put you back in mom so your brain can finish developing so maybe you won’t have Aspergers,” I said.

“Well, we should put you back in mom so your brain can finish developing, so maybe you won’t be an asshole,” she said.

In our family, discovery of sex jokes means that we have finally graduated into adulthood. Well, that’s not entirely true or I would have been labeled an adult at the age of 12 when I discovered then subsequently made my first thousand blowjob jokes. But it is a passage into a more developed, less mature adult mindset. I final realized that my little sister, Chelsea, was approaching this more developed state when she noted that she had discovered the second meaning to the Christmas song “Here Comes Santa Claus”.

Chelsea: Hey Danny, I used found out the second meaning in that song “Here Comes Santa Claus”.

Me: [Playing along] What do you mean?

Chelsea: [Making jack-off motion with her hand] You know, cum, like sperm from a penis.

Me: [Patting her on the shoulder] Chelsea, you’re finally a man now.

Chelsea: A man?

Me: I meant woman, well, an adult.

Chelsea: [Singing and making jack-off motion with hands] “Here cums Santa Claus”.

It’s hard for me to give a compliment, unless it’s to myself and about masturbation. Over the last year, my mom has done a wonderful job of rebuilding her life in the face of loss. I’m proud of her. When my Dad died, I thought she was going to be some bumbling lunatic stumbling around our house like a crack-head does around Harlem (Yes, I used the word bumbling and stumbling in the same sentence). But, thanks to a very special lady friend of hers, she’s bounced back. I, however, didn’t want to tell her this because I couldn’t find a mean way to do so. Then, over a lunchtime beer, I came up with this:

“Last year you were a pain-pill-popping psycho bitch, but you’ve really turned it around. Good job.”

She looked at me and said with sober eyes, “Thanks Dan. That means a lot to me.”

I try to jokingly get my little sister, Chelsea, to think and talk about the death of our father. I will ask her things like, “Hey Chels, do you know where Dad is?” or, while showing her a family photo, “Hey Chels, could you help me pick out one person in this picture that isn’t alive any more?” or, “Hey Chels, if you had to pick one thing that Dad is, dead or alive, which one would you pick?”

To get her thinking about old dead Bob Marshall, I gave her a simple task: name five things that you had a year and a half ago that you don’t have now, things that were living that aren’t any more.

She, while holding a banana, said, “Strawberries, bananas, milkshakes, and peaches.”

Using my counting and math skills, I said, “That was only four Chelsea. You still have one more. Think about something that isn’t a fruit or a milkshake, someone that was very important in making you, someone whose name rhymes with sad, mad, tad, rad, or had, as in, “I’m a tad sad and mad because I once had a rad _______.

Chelsea took a bite of a banana and said, “Apples. I don’t have apples any more.”

I recently pitched a hypothetical situation to Chelsea. I figure, at her age, with college on the horizon, she needs to sharpen that silly, fart-joke-loving brain of hers.

I gave her the hypothetical:

Me: Okay Chelsea, you have a pill in your right hand. If you take it, I die. You have a pill in your left hand. If you take it, Mom dies. You have to take one pill. Which one do you take?

Chelsea: Neither.

Me: No, Chels, you have to take one. Didn’t you listen to the rules, you stupid little fuck who has no self-confidence? The point of this whole thing is for you to make a decision about who you love and want to live on more: me or that shit-eater Mom.

Chelsea: Umm. Well, I would take half of each.

Me: What would happen then?

Chelsea: Have of you would die, and the other half would live.

Me: Could I pick which half died and which half lived?

Chelsea: Yeah, I guess.

Me: Well, I would pick the bottom half because my dick’s there.

Chelsea: But you use your mind more than your dick.

Me: Well, my dick and my mind are pretty much the same thing.

Chelsea: Oh, I never knew that. Then I would take the pill that kills you.

When I first came home to visit after leaving for college years ago, I excitedly approached our racist, Holocaust surviving Polish cleaning lady, Stana, hoping for a warm hug and a pat on the ass, maybe even a, “Wow, it’s so great to see you, Dan. Home isn’t the same without you.”

Instead, Stana took one look at me and said, “Oh, Danny, your face is so fat. You leavin’ for college and you is comin’ home with fat face.”

The grin faded from my fat face as I was slapped with the first comment that implied that I was getting older and more irresponsible with my body and health. I had been called many things throughout my life, mainly complimentary, things like, “Awesome,” or, “bad ass,” or, “Big Dick Dan,” or, “Awesome, bad ass, Big Dick Dan,” but I had never been called, “fat.”

Those simple words created what psychologist would call a complex. I now saw myself as owning a fat face. It soon became a part of my identity. I would say things like, “I have such a fat, fucking face,” and would assume everyone saw me as, “That fat ass with an even fatter face.” I tried exercising, but found it hard to lose weight in just my face. I tried sucking in my cheeks, but that seems to build cheek muscles that made my face even fatter.

I was finally able to grow a scrappy beard, that I currently sport.  I figured that people would mistake the fatness in my face for the fluffiness of my beard. Additionally, it seemed to give my face a thinner shape. 

I came home from graduate school sporting the aforementioned beard. I woke up and walked up stairs to Stana’s pleasant humming. I expected her to say, “Danny, you is lookin’ so good. Stana is bettin’ that you is gettin’ at sort of, how called, pussy in Los Angeles.”

Instead she said, “Oh Danny, you is need to get yourself together. You is lookin’, how called, homeless. You is need pull self, how called, together. You is shavin’ beard, and cuttin’ hair, and maybe one day, you is be a handsome boy again.”

So, in the eyes of Stana, either I shave my beard and have a fat face, or keep it and look like shit. Either way, Stana is no, how called, approvin’.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is coming to speak to the writing program I’m in at USC. It’s really not a big deal, just one of the most famous, legendary names in entertainment coming to speak at one of the world’s best writing programs that I’m in. I told my Mom.

Me: Mel Brooks is coming to talk in a couple of weeks.

Mom: [Silence]

Me: Mom. Do you know who Mel Brooks is?

Mom: I’m not fucking retarded.

Me: Sorry, you just hesitated so I was thinking maybe your age mixed with the chemo…

Mom: Do I know who Mel Brooks is? I should be asking you that. 

The Lou Gehrig’s storm hit our family with the ferociousness of a hurricane made only of machine guns and the most poisonous of the poisonous jellyfish, all of which were also experts at shitting on our faces. The storm killed my Father, weakened my Mother, left our house an un-kept junkyard, and planted the old I-have-a-chip-on-my-shoulder-because-my-Father-is-dead on my siblings and I.

Despite all the loss, we did end up in the green in one area: Funeral Wine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Note, when speaking about alcohol, if a writer uses ten or more exclamation points, he or she is an alcoholic]

My Mom, always being sort of a dumb ass, shit fucker when it came to math, vastly over-estimated the amount of wine we needed for the funeral’s after-party. I’m not sure that it is actually called an after-party. I think most people use words like “Reception” or “Open House” or “Last Remembrance” or “Let’s let the shittiness continue as we all stand around in hot clothes taking about how great a dead person was and how much it sucks to be here talking about him or her in the past tense.”

To me though, it was the after party. It was the end of what was and hopefully will be the most difficult year of all the living I’ve done and will do. It was the closing of a chapter, and the beginning of forgetting about hard times. Nothing helps me forget names, faces, proper word pronunciations, societal rules, and anxiety provoking events like wine. It has a nice warmness that let’s me think in more peaceful, happy terms. God I sound like an alcoholic.

After the after party was over, after we had awkwardly thanked everyone for coming and agreed with strangers about what a great man my father was, my sister, Tiffany, and I huddled together to help collect up all the things we had brought: all the pictures of my dad, all of his running medals, all of the flowers, the leftover programs with a picture of his pre-Lou Gehrig’s face. Much to our surprise, we ended up with four full cases of wine.

Me: Holy fucking lord. Tiff, check out how much wine we have left over.

Tiffany: Shit.

Me: [Slightly drunk and thus slightly miscalculating] This will last us forever.

Tiffany: [Less drunk and better at math] I bet this lasts a year.

Me: [Bringing to light the fact that my little sister Michelle is an adopted Native American who, despite my best efforts to dethrone her, remains to be the most wild and reckless drinker in our family] Yeah, as long as Michelle doesn’t get to it. [Holding up hand for a high-five that Tiffany decided not to participate in]

It was a blessing, a pure, unadulterated blessing from God, whoever and where ever he or she is, if anywhere at all. I figured maybe my Dad had something to do with this over-estimation, that he knew we would need the wine to help us mourn his loss. I’m sure my Mom came to him and asked how much wine we should purchase for his funeral after-party. I’m sure he had a small, more reasonable number that he plugged into some formula:

Reasonable # of bottles of wine for a funeral after-party X # of years with Lou Gehrig’s disease X # of caretakers that actually wiped my ass at some point X 14 = # of bottles of wine for funeral after-party

I pictured him in bed having the conversation with my Mom. 

Mom: Bob, how much wine do we need for your funeral after-party.

Dad: [Taking a second to realize how strange it feels to be part of the planning committee of his oh funeral, having always assumed that someone else, everyone else would plan such an event, that dying meant your work was over, that the living had the responsibility]

Mom: Answer me god damn it. I can’t plan this whole fucking funeral by myself. I need your help. It is, after all, your funeral. Do you think 20 is enough?

Dad: [Mouthing the word “More”]

Mom: Thirty?

Dad: [Mouthing the word “More”]

Mom: Fifty?

Dad: [Mouthing the word “More”]

I imaged my mom writing down the word wine and next to it placing the number 100.

So the funeral ended and we were up to our balls and pussies in wine. Sure we couldn’t ask our Dad for advice any more. We couldn’t watch another Jazz game with him. We couldn’t go on a walk with him and talk about politics or which pet we liked the most. He wouldn’t be there to see any of us have children. He wouldn’t help us pick out our first home. He wouldn’t be at the table for Thanksgiving dinner. He wouldn’t make plans to visit us over Memorial Day. But, fuck, we had enough wine to not have to think about any of that for awhile.

Tiffany and lifted the boxes from the car and set them down in our elevator (No big deal), the same elevator that we had placed in our house so we could get our dad in and out in his mammoth wheelchair, and sent them to the basement. We unloaded them and set them down around our basement bar.

“Holy fuck, we are set for awhile,” I said looking at the 6 or 7 boxes.

And we were.

Any occasion that popped up we would go to the basement and grab some funeral wine.

Mom: What should we bring for Easter dinner? I don’t feel like cooking.

Me: Well we’re obvious just bringing funeral wine. The read question is white or red?

Or

Me: I’m going to Park City to act like a rich asshole for a couple of day.

Mom: Okay, you got everything.

Me: Yep. Oh wait, I’m going to bring some funeral wine.

Or

Me: [Entering party] I hope everyone likes wine, because I brought two bottles of the shit.

Party-goer: That fucker brings wine everywhere.

Or

Me: [To myself] I think I’m going to get drunk alone tonight.

Me Too: That’s a great idea. Why don’t you go downstairs and pour yourself a glass of funeral wine. Fuck using a wine glass. Use a regular glass so you can hold more. Then you can unwind and take a load off, after all you’re depressed and nothing cures depression like drinking alone in a dark basement while thinking of all you lost.

Me: Great idea. You think I could take down two bottles.

Me Too: Well, you did last night, so I’m not going to bet against you.

I would often catch Tiffany down in the basement.

Me: What are you doing down here?

Tiffany: Just reloading on some funeral wine.

Me: Yeah, I hear ya. I drank two bottles last night.

The supply seemed endless. Every time I thought we were finished, that we would have to find another source for free alcohol, another box would pop up. It wasn’t until my last couple of weeks in Utah, just before my jump to Los Angeles, that we finally ran out. It was sort of an emotional bottle of wine. I got to it before the rest of my siblings, and, like several other bottles before it, I decided to drink it alone on our back porch, an area that my dad considered his favorite part of the house.

As I drank it, I reflected on how everything changed so fast, how we had gone from being a functional, well-adjusted family to a bunch of winos in just two years. We had to rebuild, start over, try to fill the many gap my dad’s absence left. I reminded myself how awful it was watching him die, sitting next to his bed trying to understand the words he forced out of his mouth with all his might. I reminded myself how I dropped the ball a couple of times, like when I started fake vomiting every time he took a shit so I could get out of cleaning it. I reminded myself of how he always wanted the best for us and how he thought going off his respirator was in our best interest as well as his. I reminded myself of how he told me that I would be successful at anything once I decided what I wanted to be successful at. I reminded myself that he loved us and we loved him.

Then, I reminded myself that I still had half a bottle of wine sitting next to my sentimental ass.

I called myself a fag for getting all emotional and filled my cup to the top again. I lifted it to the sky and said, “Cheers Dad. Thanks for everything, especially all this delicious, mother fucking funeral wine.”

My sister, Tiffany, and I often have to drive my Mom to and from her doctor’s appointments. She had one recently, an endoscopy to widen the hole between her stomach and her intestines. To us, these appointments are more of a routine than anything. When your Mom has cancer for 17 years or whatever it is, you get desensitized to the whole mess. We don’t get worked up or nervous. We just view it as a chore, like taking out the garbage, or picking up dog shit, or taking out the garbage full of dog shit. When we pull up to the Huntsman Cancer Institute, we the only thing we feel is boredom. To entertain ourselves while the doctors take an inexplicable amount of time to make an appearance, we often like to give our Mom shit about this or that. She, for years, has hassled us about our personal life.

“When are you going to get married?” “So who are you fucking these days?” “Does it suck not being loved by someone you love?”

We could never give her any shit back. What would we have said, “Shut up Mom. Why don’t you mind your own business and go back to fucking our Dad.” But now she’s a widow, a single widow looking for companionship. She has found that with a friend of hers, a female doctor friend of hers, which means we can now give her shit, and let her experience some of the uncomfortable awkwardness that comes about when dealing with discussing decision driven by our genitals.

Tiffany: Why don’t you want to date a doctor or something?

Mom: Claire is a doctor.

Tiffany: No, a male doctor.

Me: Mom wants to do the fucking. She doesn’t want to get fucked any more.

Mom: Stop it you guys.

Me: Hey, I’m all for anyone who wants to deal with all your bullshit. If this doctor wants to, that’s fine with me. Maybe she can start driving you to these bullshit appointments.

Tiffany: You packed a lot of “bullshits” into that last statement.

Me: Thank you.  

Mom: I’m just looking for companionship.

Tiffany: Yeah, when are you going to get married?

Me: Gays can’t get married in Utah. Fuck, we’re lucky they let non-Mormon’s get married. 

Tiffany: Maybe you could get married in Vermont or one of those states that don’t hate gays.

Me: Yeah, I could be your best man.

Mom: Just leave me the fuck alone. I’m about to have fucking surgery and you’re giving me shit.

[Long Pause]

Me: So have you purchased a double-sided dildo yet?

Death is sort of an awkward subject. No one really wants to talk about it or read a blog that is based around it. Anytime I bring it up people have a few different reactions.

Me: My Dad is dead, just died last year after I wiped ass for a year. And no he didn’t die from me wiping his ass too much or too roughly.

Person: [Silence]

Or

Me: My Dad is dead, no longer living, gone forever, in heaven jacking off on supermodel’s faces.

Person: [Silence, then] So what did you think of the new Quentin Tarantino movie? Pretty badass right, the Jew Bear and all.

Or

Me: My Dad is super, duper dead.

Person: Dude, do you have to always bring that depressing shit up? I mean, we’re standing here drunk and you have to talk about that? Can’t we just talk about pussy and how us males have a natural inclination to want to fuck it?

Since no one wants to talk about it, or listen to my fat ass bring it up, I have sort of roundabout ways of broaching the subject. Example:

When introducing my gay brother, Greg:

Me: Hey everyone, this is my gay brother Greg. Be nice to him because he just lost his Father.

When describing my Mom:

Me: My Mom is hanging in there, sort of adjusting to becoming a widow, battling cancer, going to the movies with friends.

When someone else dies:

Me: Poor Teddy Kennedy. Well, now he knows how my Dad feels.

When seeing something exciting on TV:

Me: Wow, what a dunk. Lebron James is amazing. My Dad would have loved that.

Picking out clothes:

Me: I wonder if they have this is light blue. I just want something that matches my Dad’s urn.

Asking for directions:

Me: Excuse me, do you know where the closest gas station is?

Person: Yeah, take your second right, then there’s one on the left hand side.

Me: Okay, wow, that’s super close to where my Dad’s funeral was. Anyways, thanks.