I read this essay in class.
Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s
station wagon. We face glowing white headlights of cars following us,
our sneakers pressed against the back hatch door. This is our joy—his
and mine—to sit turned away from our moms and dads in this place that
feels like a secret, as though they are not even in the car with us.
They have just taken us out to dinner, and now we are driving home.
Years from this evening, I won’t actually be sure that this boy sitting
beside me is named Ben. But that doesn’t matter tonight. What I know for
certain right now is that I love him, and I need to tell him this fact
before we return to our separate houses, next door to each other. We are
both five.
Ben is the first brown-eyed boy I will fall for but will not be the
last. His hair is also brown and always needs scraping off his forehead,
which he does about every five minutes. All his jeans have dark squares
stuck over the knees where he has worn through the denim. His shoelaces
are perpetually undone, and he has a magic way of tying them with a
quick, weird loop that I study and try myself, but can never match. His
fingernails are ragged because he rips them off with his teeth and spits
out the pieces when our moms aren’t watching. Somebody always has to
fix his shirt collars.
Our parents face the other direction, talking about something, and
it is raining. My eyes trace the lines of water as they draw down the
glass. Coiled beside my legs are the thick black and red cords of a pair
of jumper cables. Ben’s T-ball bat is also back here, rolling around
and clunking as the long car wends its way through town. Ben’s dad is
driving, and my dad sits next to him, with our mothers in the back seat;
I have recently observed that when mothers and fathers are in the car
together, the dad always drives. My dad has also insisted on checking
the score of the Cardinals game, so the radio is tuned to a staticky AM
station, and the announcer’s rich voice buzzes out of the speakers up
front.
The week before this particular night, I asked my mother, “Why do
people get married?” I don’t recall the impulse behind my curiosity, but
I will forever remember every word of her answer—she stated it simply
after only a moment or two of thinking—because it seemed that important:
“Two people get married when they love each other.”
I had that hunch. I am a kindergartener, but the summer just before
this rainy night, I learned most of what I know about love from watching
soap operas with my mother. She is a gym teacher and during her months
off, she catches up on the shows she has watched since college. Every
summer weekday, I couldn’t wait until they came on at two o’clock. My
father didn’t think I should be watching them—boys should be outside,
playing—but he was rarely home early enough to know the difference, and
according to my mother, I was too young to really understand what was
going on anyway.
What I enjoyed most about soap opera was how exciting and beautiful
life was. Every lady was pretty and had wonderful hair, and all the men
had dark eyes and big teeth and faces as strong as bricks, and every
week, there was a wedding or a manhunt or a birth. The people had grand
fights where they threw vases at walls and slammed doors and chased each
other in cars. There were villains locking up the wonderfully-haired
heroines and suspending them in gold cages above enormous acid vats.
And, of course, it was love that inspired every one of these stories and
made life on the screen as thrilling as it was. That was what my mother
would say from the sofa when I turned from my spot on the carpet in
front of her and faced her, asking, “Why is he spying on that lady?”
“Because he loves her.”
In the car, Ben and I hold hands. There is something sticky on his
fingers, probably the strawberry syrup from the ice cream sundaes we ate
for dessert. We have never held hands before; I have simply reached for
his in the dark and held him while he holds me. I want to see our hands
on the rough floor, but they are only visible every block or so when
the car passes beneath a streetlight, and then, for only a flash. Ben is
my closest friend because he lives next door, we are the same age, and
we both have little brothers who are babies. I wish he were in the same
kindergarten class as me, but he goes to a different school—one where he
has to wear a uniform all day and for which there is no school bus.
“I love you,” I say. We are idling, waiting for a red light to be
green; a shining car has stopped right behind us, so Ben’s face is pale
and brilliant.
“I love you too,” he says.
The car becomes quiet as the voice of the baseball game shrinks smaller and smaller.
“Will you marry me?” I ask him. His hand is still in mine; on the
soap opera, you are supposed to have a ring, but I don’t have one.
He begins to nod, and suddenly my mother feels very close. I look
over my shoulder, my eyes peeking over the back of the last row of seats
that we are leaning against. She has turned around, facing me. Permed
hair, laugh lines not laughing.
“What did you just say?” she asks.
“I asked Ben to marry me.”
The car starts moving forward again, and none of the parents are
talking loud enough for us to hear them back here. I brace myself
against the raised carpeted hump of the wheel well as Ben’s father turns
left onto the street before the turn onto our street. Sitting beside my
mom is Ben’s mother, who keeps staring forward, but I notice that one
of her ears keeps swiveling back here, a little more each time. I am
still facing my mother, who is still facing me, and for one last second,
we look at each other without anything wrong between us.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” she says. “Boys don’t marry other boys. Only boys and girls get married to each other.”
She can’t see our hands, but Ben pulls his away. I close my fingers
into a loose fist and rub my palm to feel, and keep feeling, how strange
his skin has made mine.
“Okay?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, but by accident my throat whispers the words.
She asks again. “Okay? Did you hear me?”
“Yes!” this time nearly shouting, and I wish we were already home so
I could jump out and run to my bedroom. To be back here in the dark,
private tail of the car suddenly feels wrong, so Ben and I each scoot
off to our separate sides. “Yes,” I say again, almost normally, turning
away to face the rainy window. I feel her turn too as the radio baseball
voice comes back up out of the quiet. The car starts to dip as we head
down the hill of our street; our house is at the bottom. No one speaks
for the rest of the ride. We all just sit and wait and watch our own
views of the road—the parents see what is ahead of us while the only
thing I can look at is what we have just left behind.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
a video i made from a time lapse test that didnt go right.
but it ended up working after all.
(watch it in HD...do it.)
(watch it in HD...do it.)
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