PRELUDES AND PRONOIA

Had one of those magic times this past week-end, where it seems like every step has been planned by benevolent forces who are guiding you to a destiny that is both mystical, fantastical, and contagiously positive. You know, the ones where every stranger you meet smiles, every conversation reveals something new and wondrous, and every moment seems to contain some secret message just for you that, whatever else it might say, has the over-riding message that all is well, and you are on the right path. You are where you are supposed to be. Rob Brezny, the only astrologist I read with regularity, calls this feeling Pronoia, the sense that "the universe is conspiring to shower you with blessings."

What prompted this intense feeling of well being? I think the first and most important step was the decision to take my wife Lisa on a short, one night get-away to Manitou Springs, a mountain town nestled in the Rocky Mountains just below Pikes Peak, for Valentine's Day. We'd talked about going there many times- and for some reason I thought let's go there now. The town is supposed to be full of charm, and also ghosts, which we both find interesting. On top of that, it's not very far from Colorado Springs, home to the best theatre company in the state, the theatre at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, which was presenting Craig Lucas' play "Prelude to a Kiss" that week-end.

On top of the excitement of a short trip and a night of theatre, I had just finished the first draft of a new play, working title: Don't Get Too Comfy, Pal. Working on a new play is a strange, exhilarating, lonely thing. Finishing that first draft is quite a high. To use another Brezny-ism, it's touching the Divine Wow.

We stayed at the Avenue Hotel, this bed and breakfast that is exactly what I've always pictured a bed and breakfast to be: beautiful old house full of warmth; really cool staff happy to chat about local spots, the weather, or whatever passes your fancy; and a look and feel unique unto itself. So many hotels look the same these days- as do so many stores and restaurants and homes. I find comfort in places that are one of a kind. places that have evolved over the years through repairs and additions into one of a kind structures. We checked in, then walked Manitou Avenue- the main drag of the town. The town is in a knife cut valley, and the views every way you look are unreal. We got coffee at this groovy place called Marika's. I had something called a Dirty Hippie and Lisa got a Green Tea Latte. They tasted out of this world. Ever notice how when you're on vacation things just taste better? I wonder if it's because you're relaxed, and as such your senses work better. After our initial walk, Lisa took a bath in our room's claw foot tub, we got dressed, had a really great meal at this funky organic place called blah blah that had the coolest art work on it's walls, then headed down to the theatre.

Prelude to a Kiss is a really fantastic show, a sort of romantic comedy mixed with sci-fi that some would call magic realism but I just call good writing. It lures you in with comedy, keeps you leaning in with a very unique and compelling dilemma for it's main characters, and then dazzles with some serious discussion on love, life, aging, and asking the ever more pertinent question "who wants to live forever". This production was strong- directed by Garrett Ayers, who kept the action moving, with excellent performances from Kyle Dean Steffen as Peter, Cynthia Pohlson as Rita, a very funny Jane Fromme and David Hastings as Rita's parents Dr. and Mrs. Boyle- but the stand out performance in this show was Sol Chavez as Old Man, and also as Rita stuck in Old Man's body. His monologue in act two on what it is to grow old was beautiful.  Next up at the Fine Arts Center is Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Scott RC Levy, the company's artistic director. I can't wait to see it- and hope you all come see it with me. If you haven't gone there yet- do. The facility is amazing- it's connected to an art museum, and there's an Art Deco bar and restaurant that are outstanding. The shows are consistently excellent and the choice of material brilliant. I have seen almost every show in the past two seasons, and they have all rocked the planet.

We slept well that night, and awoke refreshed and ready for whatever the day would bring us. After a fantastic breakfast, where we met this really cool couple, Lisa got a massage- the second part of my Valentine's gift, and then we tooled around the town some more, exploring this place called Miramount Castle, playing old pinball games in this awesome arcade, and then having the best buffalo burgers in town at the Keg.

So, what am I trying to say? Seek joy- it's out there, waiting for you. We really didn't spend much money- we just took a little time to enjoy this life, this amazing journey we're on that has plenty of monotony and not enough spontaneity.

And here is something funny by my old friend Mike Kubit.

AS CINZAS DO VELHO

Ashes of the Old. That's the title of my play Burning the Old Man, as translated into Portugeuese by Geraldo Carrara for the Brazilian premiere directed by Luis Artur Nunes, which will open in Sao Paolo in March. I'm very excited about this production- the people involved, whom I have yet to meet in person, are dedicated, interesting, talented artists. I have been writing back and forth with several of the key players, particularly Alexandre Cruz and Marcelo Braga de Carvalho, and the discussions we have had about the play have been exhilarating. It is something rare and wonderful to discuss a play you've written with people in another country who like it so much that they have translated it into their own language and are putting up a production of the play. It makes you really think about what you have written, and why it seems to connect with people. For some reason, Burning the Old Man seems to be the play I've written that has touched the most people. It's by far the best selling of my plays- which are available at both Indie Theater Now and Playscripts, inc., and has also been featured in several scene books and also in Acting is Believing- a book required is many acting classes. I don't know why it's so popular, I only know that it is so. And that's groovy.



I have a lot of writing going on at the moment. Things come in waves, I think. There are months where it seems like nothing is happening, and then there are months when everything is happening. Right now, I am working on a one hour musical in the style of Glee, re-writes for the June production of Rose Red; a new play based on a piece of art for the Rough Writers program at the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs; and also a weird paranormal comedy drama thing that involves two slackers, an old trunk, ghosts, and the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. On top of that, I am directing two high school plays: Moon Over Buffalo at the Denver JCC, and Our Town at The Watershed School. And on top of that, I have to find a film editor who works with Final Cut Pro X so that I can get my first short film, Strong Tea, done and out to festivals. Makes me feel like Bilbo, when he tells Gandalf he's like butter scraped over too much bread.

Lots to do, so of course I get this cold/flu virus thing that seems to be attacking the world like angry aliens from the planet Suck-It. Whatever this virus is, it is nasty. I have never felt so sick in my life. It makes me think that maybe the Mayans meant to say that the end of the world would start in December 2012, and slowly come about through a series of fevers, sniffles, and coughs.

But do I let that get me down? Hell no. Time to kick it in the ass.

So visit these sites, buy my plays, like the Facebook pages, and do whatever it is that makes you happy.

http://strongtea-themovie.com/
http://ascinzasdovelho.blogspot.com.br/
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Playwright/kelly-mcallister
http://www.playscripts.com/author.php3?authorid=1062

STEALING FROM CHURCHILL

It's snowing today in Denver. The high temperature will be in the twenties. The wind is blowing hard, and it cuts through your clothes and shakes your bones- as I just discovered while walking my dog Padfoot. Most of the state has either a winter storm warning, or a blizzard warning. By most standards, it's pretty miserable outside. And yet,  I love it. Hamlet may have found providence in the fall of a sparrow, but I find it in a snow flake. Whenever the gods send the white stuff, as it starts to slowly drop down, I take it as a supernatural sign, a medicine for melancholy sent by Raven and Loki and all who have gone before me. I am not alone in this belief. Countless movies use snow as the signal that all is right in the world; as do songs. Look at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life". George Bailey is on the bridge where earlier that very night he was contemplating suicide. Now, he desperately wants to live, regardless of what happens. He pleads, "Please God, I want to live again...I want to live again." And what happens, to let us know all is well? It starts to snow.

It only snowed once in San Jose when I was a kid. For one day in February, the gods smiled and sent a message that all would be well. The day had not started out very promising. I awoke to my sister Heather screaming, and my first thought was that my step-dad Vern had done something horrible. I had just gotten the worst hair cut ever at his drunken hands (see previous blog). But after a moment, it was clear that her cries were joyous ones, and that she was screaming "It's snowing! It's snowing! Oh my God! It's really snowing!" I looked down to see is my brother Jerry's bunk to see what he thought- but he wasn't there. Something strange was happening. Something alien and fantastical. I leapt out of bed, and ran to my window. There in my backyard was magic, White Magic from on high. The impossible, always hoped for yet never expected, had arrived. On my street! Snow. It couldn't be real...yet there it was. I dressed in about two seconds, pulled on a never used beanie over my head, and ran outside. It was everywhere. My entire street was carpeted. In all my nine years, I had tried to imagine what it would feel like to see snow on my street, but none of those attempts at visualization did justice to what lay before me. Up and down the street, kids were running around, screaming and yelling and laughing and throwing real snowballs. Real snowballs! Rarer than any gem. I looked upwards- and the sky was full of snow flakes. I caught some on my tongue. I made a snowball and threw it at nothing in particular. I jumped up and down. The whole world was a giant toy shop, and all the toys were free. And I was part of it! I ran up and down the street. Some kids were trying to make a snow man. Other kids just throwing snow up into the air. I saw Jerry and Heather up the street, and ran up to join them. And then I said words I never thought I would be able to say.

"It's snowing!"

We all ran around, insane with joy. A snowball fight broke out, and we all joined in. And then a snowball knocked my beanie off. I didn't really care, but I noticed some of the kids staring at me. Andy, one of the older kids on my street, who had a penchant for being a sarcastic jerk, pointed at my head, and asked, "What the hell happened to you?".

In all the excitement, I had forgotten about my hair.

Andy started laughing. "Jesus, McAllister, you look like Frankenstein." I tried to think of something to say, but there were no words. Besides, Andy was right. I looked like a freak, a mutant of some of some sort. Other kids started to gather around me and Andy to see what was going on. "Who cut your hair like that?", Andy asked. I couldn't tell him my step-dad cut it in a drunken rage last night- our insane home life was a humiliation we kept to ourselves, a secret shame that we were all certain would ostracize us forever from the other kids if it ever came out. So I said nothing. "Who cut your hair?", Andy asked again. "The Shopwell Barber", I lied. Andy started to laugh. "Frankenstein! McAllister looks like Frankenstein".  The other kids started to laugh, and I started to cry.

Then Jerry stepped forward.

"Andy",he said, "you're right. He does look like Frankenstein. But you're an asshole. And in a few months, his hair will grow up, and you'll still be an asshole." I didn't know at the time that Jerry was paraphrasing Winston Churchill- I only knew I was saved. The kids all laughed at Andy- who wandered off to pick on someone else.

Soon, it was time to go to school. We begged and pleaded with mom to stay home, but it was no use. We trudged off to Strawberry Park Elementary, past other kids with parents wise enough to let them stay home. At school, all the kids were running around the big field, screaming and yelling and doing whatever we could with the snow. I threw a snowball at a girl named Amy I thought was cute, and got sent to our principal Mr. Van Workem's office. As I sat in the office, the sun came out, and I watched the snow melt away. I didn't mind all that much. For one brief moment, when I needed it the most, snow had come to my world. And when the snow failed, my brother stepped in.

By the end of that day, my new nick-name at school was Frankenstein. I never did tell any of the other kids who really cut my hair.

Now that world is gone- mom and Vern and Melvin the Great have all left this world, and Jerry and Heather and I all have our own lives and homes. But in spite of all that, or maybe because of it, I still often find myself drifting off to sleep, hoping against hope that I will wake up in the house on Belvedere in the land of Strawberry Park, and that when I do I'll hear my sister running up and down the hallway, her little girl's voice repeating the magic word:

"Snow...Snow...Snow!"

MEMORY GAPS, THE S.O.K.F., AND A STORY

I have a few gaps in my memory- moments that have been sucked into the great Black Hole of the Universe, never to be seen again by waking eyes. One of those gaps is when I got a concussion in the third grade. Or was it the second grade? It was the result of a pretty bad bike accident. Or so I'm told. I don't remember any of it. I remember clearly right before it happened. My brother and I were riding our bikes around the block as part of the initiation for our club, the S.O.K.F., which stood for Save Our Kids Future. To get in the club, we had made up a bunch of things you had to do- initiations, if you will. The initiations all had something to do with dealing with adults, dealing with their quirks and strangeness and what seemed to be a mass case of crazy. To be in the S.O.K.F.,  you had to walk through a room full of adults unseen; go to the store, shoplift a candy bar, bring it home and show everyone, then go back to the store and put it back; climb on to the roof of Strawberry Park Elementary School.  One of the  initiations, or dares, was to ride your bike around the block after dark. I was the youngest of our group, and so they let me do it a little before it got dark, and with my brother Jerry riding with me. I remember heading up our street, Belvedere Drive, then turning right on Saratoga Avenue, then turning right again onto Manzanita Drive- then it fades to black, like in the movies. The next thing I remember, I was walking out the front door of my house, several days later. I'm told that after the accident, in which I flew over my handle bars and hit the crown of my head on a brick embankment, I had amnesia, and didn't know who I was, where I was, or anything. But for me, I was simply on my bike one moment, walking out the front door of my house the next. But that's not the moment I want to talk about right now.

The other moment I can't remember at all happened one February night when I was nine. I had not gotten my haircut, even though my mom sent me to the barber, and I was in trouble. My step-father Vern came home late that night, full of alcohol and had called me into the kitchen to set me straight. And then Vern pulled out a giant butcher knife and informed me he was going to cut my hair. I'm told I screamed and hid under the table, and that my mother ran in and told Vern he couldn't do that. I don't remember any of that. There's just this black hole where all that happened. At some point, it was decided that Vern would not cut my hair with a knife. He would use a pair of shears, and I was dragged into the garage, sat in a chair, and told to sit still while he cut my hair. This is where my memories fade back in. I remember sitting on one of the chairs from the kitchen, that apparently had been dragged into the garage with me. I remember the harsh flourescent lights. I remember Vern was wearing a white T-shirt. And I remember those steel sheers. Somehow, my hair had gotten wet. I remember Vern pulling some hair forward, snipping, letting it go. I sat very still. As he cut, from time to time I could feel the cold metal of the shears on my cheek or forehead. I could hear each cut distinctly-it sounded like when a stack of papers got sliced in the paper cutter at school. Now and then, Vern would stop and tell me it was my own fault, that I had to learn to listen to my elders, that I had to learn respect God damn it- respect! I kept thinking he was going to plunge the shears into my eyes. I didn't move a muscle. I didn't look up or down or away.  I was a statue. At one point, he accidently cut my ear. I didn't make a sound. It took a very long time for him to finish. It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour. I really don't know how long it took- only that it felt like forever, like the rest of the world was gone, had never really been there in the first place. There was just Vern, the shears, the flourescent lights, and me. Then, I noticed Vern had stopped cutting. He was just standing in front of me, smoking one of his Camel cigarettes. He stared at me for a long time, right in the eye. Vern had strange eyes. Sometimes, they were kind and laughing. Other times, they were frustrated, angry, or sad.  And then there were the moments when all vestiges of humanity left them, and all that was left was pure rage. And these strange eyes could vacillate from one to the other in an instant.

So there we were in that cold garage, the young statue and the man with a thousand faces- looking into each others eyes. I don't know what he was waiting for- he just stood there, looking at me. I could hear the hum of the lights. Finally, he looked down, grunted "get your ass to bed", and that was that. He pointed to the door back to the kitchen, which was between him and me. I had to walk past him to go to bed. I didn't want to run, or get too close to him- but I couldn't make it obvious that I was trying not to get near him. I stiffly walked past Vern and into the kitchen. On my way to the bedroom I shared with my brother, I stopped to look in the mirror in the hallway to see what my hair looked like.

Where just that morning there had been a mane like a lions, all that was left were patches of hair of varying length. At some points, it had been cut almost all the way to my scalp, at others, it was an inch or two long. There was some blood on my ear, and bits of hair on my shoulders. It was one of the ugliest things I had ever seen. I started to cry. Not loud, of course. That would bring another lecture on why I shouldn't be a cry baby. I made my way into the bedroom, and climbed up to the top bunk. I lay in the dark, quietly crying. My brother called up from the bottom bunk.

"Do you want to hear a story?", he asked. I gathered myself as best I could and said "Yes." Then Jerry asked, as always, "Do you want a scary one or a nice one?" Most every night, I begged for a scary story. But not that night. "Could you tell a nice one tonight?"

There was a brief pause, then Jerry said "Sure", and told me this story:

"Once, there was a boy named Bobby who had long hair. One day, he got sent to a new school, and when he got there, he noticed that everyone else at the school had short hair. And they all noticed how long Bobby's hair was, and made fun of him. Now, this happened right near the end of the school year,  so when school got out, Bobby decided he'd show them. That summer, he got a his hair cut really short. He figured he'd surprise everyone the first day of school with his short hair, and then they'd all like him. But when he got to school, everyone now had long hair. When they saw Bobby, they made fun of him for having short hair. Bobby couldn't believe it- he was miserable. So he ran away, and let his hair grow long again. He lived in the mountains, hunting for food and sleeping in a cave. Finally, when his hair was long again, he came back to the school- but now, everyone had this crazy new hair cut that was half long and half short. And they all made fun of Bobby again. But this time, Bobby didn't care, because he finally figure out that it didn't really matter what people thought about his hair. He was him, and that was good enough. And after that, he lived happily ever after."

We lay in our bunk beds. Usually after a story from Jerry, I'd ask questions about the monster or the ghost or whatever the main event was- and I felt like I should ask something. But nothing came to mind. So I just sat there. Finally, sleep came for me, and I drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, I woke up to the sounds of my sister Heather screaming. There was confusion, then the thought that Vern had done something. But then, I heard a word. A word that couldn't be. How could she be screaming that word?

"Snowing!"

I looked down from my top bunk to Jerry's- but he wasn't there. Then I heard my sister again.

"It's snowing! Oh My God! Snow!"

THE DEMON BARBER OF STRAWBERRY PARK

I had long hair when I was a kid. This was the 1970s, and long hair was cool. Hippies, the Grateful Dead, the musical Hair- these had all paved the way for young men to have long hair. And I lived in San Jose, California- part of the liberal, cutting edge, new age love fest that is known as the Bay Area. Not that I was in the middle of Haight-Ashbury, walking around quoting Timothy Leary to my fellow fourth graders. Life was fairly subdued in my neighborhood of Strawberry Park. Still, I loved my long hair. It was brown, and turned sort of blonde in the sun, and groovy. Often, I'd run as fast as I could down our suburban streets just to feel my hair fly behind me. My hair was my joy, and belonged solely to me. My enemy was the barber, and I visited him as little as possible.

One Sunday morning in February, 1976, my mother announced it was time for us to get hair-cuts, handed my older brother Jerry some cash, and sent us off to the dreaded Strawberry Park Barbershop. If barbers were my enemy, the Strawberry Park Barber was their king- known the world over for hair-cuts that made you look stupid, lame, and infinitely uncool. There were other barbers in the area- more expensive hair salons, places that weren't quite so awful. But the Strawberry Park Barber was cheap. Thus, our patronage. I begged and pleaded to be spared from this cruel and unusual punishment. I promised to do my chores, to clean the whole house- anything! But to no avail- Mom was adamant, and so we quietly got out our bikes, and pedaled to the House of Horror. We rode in silence, each contemplating how bad our hair would be in a short time. When we got there, the barber's chair was empty. My brother and I looked at each other, two condemned souls. Jerry bravely said he'd go first. I sat down on a chair, dejected, and tried to read one of the boring grown-up magazines they laid out for customers. You'd have thought they'd at least put out a few comic books to ease the pain, but no. So I picked up a copy of Time, and flipped through it, page after page- trying hard not to notice what was happening to my brother mere feet from where I sat. I didn't want to look up and have to see what they were doing to him. It was too much to bear.  But Time magazine just couldn't hold my attention for so long. I looked up, to see how Jerry was doing. 

It was awful. Jerry's hair was popping up in strange places, and combed back in what was called the "wet-head" look. He looked like Dagwood Bumstead- and I am not exaggerating. I don't know how they'd done it, but they had.  Jerry smiled at me, hoping no doubt to get some encouragement. I probably should have smiled back, told him it didn't look so bad, that come to think of it, his hair looked pretty good. Jerry kept smiling. I kept staring. Jerry asked me, "Well, how does it look?" I froze. what could I tell him? I didn't want to lie, but the truth was too horrible.  I don't know how long I stood there, staring at him, mouth agape. He asked again, "How does it look?"  I blurted out "You look like Dagwood!", and ran out the shop, jumped on my bike, and pedaled away as fast as I could. I often wonder what Jerry must have thought, sitting in that terrible chair as he watched me make my escape. But at the time, I just rode as fast as I could, as far from that damned barber as my bike would carry me.

I rode without thinking. I ended up at Murdock's Creek, a natural creek that had been altered by the city with a couple of little dams that made perfect pools for swimming. You had to climb a fence and over a trail to get there, which gave it a sense of isolation. There were lots of trees, and frogs, and I loved it.  It was the unofficial spa for all the boys of Strawberry Park. When I rode up that day, my buddy Noel, and a couple of other guys, were goofing around, throwing rocks, climbing trees- doing all the things that could make a normal day fantastic. As I rode up, everyone was daring everyone else to climb one of the trees that surrounded the pond and jump. "I dare you to climb up ten feet and jump". "I dare you to climb fifteen feet and jump." They were somewhere near twenty feet when I arrived. Noel turned to me. "I dare you to climb to the branch with the rope swing on it and jump!" I looked up. That particular branch was pretty high up. At the time, I had a sleight fear of heights. "Scared?", Noel asked. "No", I lied, and began to climb. It didn't seem so bad up there. I got the branch and looked down at everyone. Some of the guys looked impressed, which felt great. Then Noel called up, "I dare you to go higher." All the other kids started to chant "Higher! Higher! Higher!". So up I went.  After about five more feet, I looked down. "Higher! Higher! Higher!" I climbed, higher than I had ever climbed before. I could see over the tops of the other trees to the rows and rows of houses in the distance, and beyond them, the Santa Cruz mountains, covered with clouds.  I could feel the tree sway beneath my weight. I edged my way out on the last branch that I thought could hold me up, far enough out so I could drop into the water. I looked down. All the guys were silent, awestruck, even a little afraid. Perfect. "How's this?" I yelled down. "Awesome", Noel yelled back up. I looked down. The water seemed far away. A cold wind was blowing. What in the hell was I thinking? I didn't want to do this. But I couldn't go down  now. I'd never hear the end of it. I'd be a loser, a wimp, a nothing. And I did not want that. I took a lot of dares back then that I ended up regretting- did things that were stupid and dangerous but that seemed to impress other people. If you wanted someone to jump off a roof, make a prank phone call, or ride their bike over a ramp- I was the go-to guy.  And here I was, out on a limb way up in the air on a cool February day.

I jumped. The water was freezing, but I didn't care. I was alive, and all the guys were yelling their admiration. Life was good. We spent the rest of the day running around, discussing the latest issue of Spiderman, and told whatever dirty jokes we knew. I was shivering most of the time, but didn't care in the least. Life, for that moment, was perfect. At the end of the day, we rode off into the sunset, young heroes who could do no wrong. The incident at the barbershop was a distant memory.

Sadly, my mother did not find the days events amusing. She said she had told my step-father Vern what had happened, and that he would talk to me when he got home. Sometimes, on Sundays, my step-dad had to go into work for a few hours. Usually, he was home by four. But it was past four already, and he wasn't home yet. This was not good. The later he got home, the more likely he'd been drinking. At seven, he still wasn't home. A dread silence pervaded the house. Nobody said anything- by this time, we didn't have to- a storm was coming, and there wasn't anything we could do about it. Around eight or so, we got sent to bed. Still no Vern. Then, sometime past nine, I heard his car pull up, the front door open, the tell-tale uneven footsteps from door to kitchen. Not good. I could hear Mom talking with him, and then I heard him call.

"Kelly! Get your little ass in hear. Now!"

I was scared. Dad, as we called Vern by then, had never beaten us or anything like that. At least not yet. But I was certain it was only a matter of time before he lost it and killed one of us. He'd gotten pretty angry before, and broken some plates and stuff, and it didn't seem like that much of a stretch for him to just go completely psycho. Sometimes late at night, as I lay in bed, I would hear him in the kitchen, opening drawers. We had this one butcher knife that was ridiculously huge, and I had this idea that he was looking for it, and that once he found it he would walk down the hall, open my door, slowly walk up to the bed, and cut my throat.  Whenever I could, I pushed that particular knife far back into the drawer.

"Kelly, God Damn it!"

I climbed out of the top bunk, looked at Jerry, who tried to smile for me. I slowly walked to the kitchen. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, I hoped. Maybe I'd only get grounded, or spanked or something. Maybe they'd take away my bike. That wouldn't be so bad.

I stepped into the kitchen. He looked extremely pissed. Sometimes, it seemed like actual waves of anger would come off of Vern. I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Come here", he said.

I didn't want to do that. He knew it. I knew it. He pointed to the floor, right in front of him. "Come...", he said, and pointed again for emphasis, "...here".  This was something he'd do, pointing to the floor in front of him, commanding you to "come here". His entire body was tense, and I remember thinking he kind of looked like a snake about to strike. I still didn't move. He frowned, and his eyes somehow got meaner.

"NOW!"

I inched my way towards him, step by step. I've taken many walks in my life, even some pretty long hikes- miles in the mountains and through Europe and once almost all the way around Manhattan in the middle of the night, but I have never taken a longer journey in my life than those few steps I took that night in the kitchen of the old house in Strawberry Park.

Vern crouched down so that we were face to face- our noses almost touching. I could smell wine on his breath- sour and mixed with cigarettes. "I understand you had a little trouble at the barbershop", he said. slurring his words just a bit. I looked down and mumbled, "Yeah".  He cocked his head, as if he was looking at some strange, slightly disgusting animal. "Yeah. From now on, you do what you're told. Period." He liked to use the word "period" for emphasis a lot. I always thought it sounded stupid, but didn't think this the right time to tell him. "Is that understood?", he asked. "Yes", I said, trying to sound as contrite and pathetic as I could. But something about my answer was wrong. His nostrils flared, and he snorted out his breath like a bull. "Yes, what?", he demanded. I had no idea what he was talking about. Yes was a pretty direct answer, I thought. Yes. Positive. Affirmative. What had I said wrong? Should I have said "Yes, Dad" or "Yes, wise and powerful one" or "Yes you crazy son of a bitch?". He kept looking at me, expecting something. Then it hit me. Of course! "Yes, sir". He held his glare for a moment, then sighed. "Alright".

And that was that. I couldn't believe it. Was that all? Fantastic. I turned, and headed back to my room- but he stopped me before I got out of the kitchen. "Where the hell do you think you're going? Your mother wants you to get a hair cut, and you're going to get a God damned hair cut".

And then he turned, opened a drawer, and pulled out the butcher knife.

"Come...here".

AFTER THE WOMBATS

Things were pretty rough after Daddy Jay headed north to Alaska pursued by Wombats. Money was tight. Mom had been an elementary school teacher before she had us, and hadn't worked in years. Now, she had three kids, a mortgage, and an ex-husband who wasn't paying alimony or child support. At this time, there was a glut of teachers in Strawberry Park, meaning no work in that field other than some substitute teaching- which doesn't exactly pay the bills for a family of four. We didn't know any of this. My brother, sister and I were busy being kids, and things seemed pretty much like before. Maybe we all got hand-me-downs more often when it came to clothes, and maybe we didn't go out to eat pretty much ever, but life didn't seem too weird. Yet.

Then, things started to disappear. That was a little strange. First, it was all the old stuff in the garage. Mom had all this old furniture in the garage- things she had inherited after her mother died, a beautiful set of  mirrors, chests, things like that. To me, they were just unused stuff, but Mom was hoping to one day live in a big house where we could use all those beautiful antiques. One by one, they vanished. And then Juliet disappeared. Juliet was Mom's '57 Chevy. It was sky blue and white and very cool, and she loved it. Mom talked about Juliet like it was a person, an old friend who she had had many adventures with. Then one day, she was gone. Within a few years, Mom re-married, and so began life with Vern.

My step-father Vern was a complicated man. One of my first memories of Vern is from when I was five or six years old.  I was hanging upside down from a branch on our magnolia tree in the front yard and saw him walking up to our house. I shouted out "Daddy". He smiled and said "not yet".  He came across as really nice. He laughed a lot, told jokes, and let us watch Get Smart when we visited him at his apartment. He even got us a dog shortly after he and Mom got married. We had only had one dog before, a little white dog named Spot that Daddy Jay had given us. Spot ran away around the same time  my father left. We named the new dog Gigi, and I loved her very much. Life was pretty sweet. For a bit.

Something was shifting in house. At first, it was hard to pin down, just a tension that seemed to fill the air. Mom would get a little jumpy when we got loud or left our toys out. And in the mornings, especially on the week-ends, we were told to stay quiet until Vern got up. And he would sleep in pretty late. Sometimes, Vern would swear. It was exciting to hear these forbidden words, but also kind of creepy. Adults weren't supposed to talk like that.  And sometimes, Vern would yell at us. Now, being a kid, I was used to grown-ups yelling now and then. But there was something different about Vern yelling. More intense. More scary. Mom said Vern had had a hard life, and so he drank too much sometimes, and we needed to be understanding, that he just got into bad moods from time to time. Well, it was true about the bad moods, and we learned quickly that if Vern was in one of his funks, it was a really good idea to be on our best behavior. Life became something like dancing with a polar bear. Still fun and exciting, but now much more dangerous, and if you weren't careful, you would most likely get an eternal lecture on how stupid you were and how meaningless life was and told that you should never have to be asked to clean your room, you should just do it. Shouting and crying and fear were regular dinner guests. And somehow, I became Vern's favorite. He'd tell me jokes at dinner. I'd pour his wine- red with ice cubes. I'd ask him to tell me about his life, and he'd tell stories about being in the army and sitting through a hurricane on a base in Florida, or when he ran a television repair store near Sacramento, or about the Porsche he used to drive. And this seemed to calm the savage beast, to make him happy. And when he was happy, he was nicer, less prone to yelling, or throwing things, or getting into big blow out yell fests with Mom after we went to bed. So making him happy was job number one. I learned how to make him laugh, mostly through trial and error. If I said certain things a certain way, Vern would laugh. You could tell when a laugh was needed, when things were heading south, as they say. Usually, there would be the inciting incident- Vern would ask if we had done all our chores, or been good at school- some quotidian thing like that. And he would only ask if he knew that we hadn't. So he'd ask the question, there would be a moment of silence, and if you didn't manage to make him laugh, the interrogation would begin, dinner would be effectively over, and who knew what would happen next? Usually it would be yelling, but there was the occasional glass thrown, and on one infamous night, he back-handed my sister in the face. Vern was a big, scary man- and we were little kids, scared out of our minds. So whenever possible, when the moment came, if at all possible, I'd make him laugh, the moment would pass, and we'd all breathe a little easier.

But comedy would only work up to a certain point, for so many glasses of wine. After that, all bets were off, and the thing to do was shut up and look for the closest escape route. It is a very curious thing to watch someone change right in front of you, to morph themselves in a sort of slow motion imitation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; to see the eyes blur and grow mean,  smell the breath become danker and danker,  physically feel tension and anger fill a room, like an acrid fog. Curious and terrifying. And heartbreaking.

By fourth grade, I had abandoned all hope of Daddy Jay ever coming back. Life was harsh, and nothing could change that. There was only one thing I secretly hoped would happen, one thing that might bring a little bit of magic back to the world.

Snow.

I  realize that might sound like a fairly dull dream to a lot of people. But you have to understand, it never snowed in San Jose. Ever. Not once in my life. The only snow I ever saw was on tv and in the movies. Snow was glamorous, even mystical. You could go sledding, have snow fights, eat snow pies, make snowmen. I had a few vague memories of going up to the mountains, way back when Daddy Jay was still around- and I remember it being fun and that I loved it. And I wasn't alone in my hope for snow. Every kid at Strawberry Park Elementary wanted snow. If it got below fifty degrees, we'd look to the sky, and dream.  So snow was it. I became an avid fan of the weather reports- but the news was never very promising. Still, many nights I'd go to sleep wishing fervently for snow, praying to a god I wasn't so sure was up there anymore to make it snow.  Snow would make it all okay. Santa would return, with Melvin the Great sitting in his sled. Vern- or Dad, as we called him by then- would stop drinking. Everything would be all right again, all thanks to the Messiah called Snow. It was the last bastion my soul had against an encroaching reality.

A WOMBAT ATE MY FATHER

It's funny the things I remember. Crickets, tomato soup, Lincoln Logs. Good things. Red wine with ice cubes,  long silences, knives. Bad things.  I grew up in San Jose, California, at the time a quickly growing city nestled in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley, which used to be called the Valley of the Hearts Delight but was morphing into the urban sprawl of Silicon Valley, land of strip malls, tract housing, and freeways. I can still smell the cherry trees that grew near my house, see the weathered barnyards covered in moss , hear the sound of thousands upon thousands of crickets at night- so loud they'd wake me up in the middle of the night from time to time. My mother used to tell me that when she first came to San Jose, in 1953, a person could tell where they were by the scents of blossoms. Peaches were one area, oranges another. In my first memories, the area we lived in was surrounded by orchards of all kinds- but each year, more and more of them disappeared,  replaced by 7-11s, Dennys, and multi-plex theaters. The  nightly orchestra of crickets shrank into a sad little blues combo, and then vanished altogether, replaced by the distant roar of the new freeway.

Our home was your typical ranch style suburban home that most people my age seem to have grown up in- three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a dining room, a living room, and kitchen connected to a garage.  Our particular neighborhood was Strawberry Park. I went to Strawberry Park Elementary, bought my comic books at Strawberry Park Drug Store, walked down Strawberry Park Drive to get to school. The weird thing was, there weren't a lot of strawberries. Just houses, vacant lots, the occasional church, and what was left of the orchards. To the west were the Santa Cruz mountains, dark blue and full of secrets. to the east was Mount Hamilton- gold and dry and covered with patches of Oak, giving the the appearance of a great chocolate chip cookie. Beyond the valley was the real world, which as far as I could tell from tv was full of hippies and bell bottom jeans and Felix and Oscar and Hawkeye, and the Zodiac killer, and Viet Nam, and some place called OPEC, and Jacques Costeau. I'd made a few forays into the real world- once to Alaska on a cruise with my mother and father shortly before they divorced, once to Disneyland with my father just after the divorce, and several times to Pacific Grove where my Aunt Alice lived. But for the most part, life was Strawberry Park.

I shared a room with my older brother Jerry, and Mom let us decorate it as we saw fit, in order to help stimulate our creativity. We had a dark green ceiling, wood paneling on the walls, and a multi-colored striped shag carpet that sort of looked like some ogre had eaten a couple of boxes of crayons and then thrown up.  On the wall was a muskrat skin we had gotten in Alaska, an up-turned horseshoe over our door for good luck, a poster of a tiger, and also a poster of King Kong. We had bunk beds, and I got to sleep on the top bunk. I don't know if this is because I whined about it, or if Jerry just wanted to bottom bunk. As the youngest, I often got things by using my pest skills, which were advanced for my age.

Every night, after the lights had been turned off and Mom said good night, Jerry would ask me if I wanted to hear a story. We all loved stories in our family. Mom was a former school teacher, our father a frustrated writer- and they were both full of stories and nursery rhymes. Whenever we drove anywhere, we'd read out loud. I remember very clearly hearing my sister Heather read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe one summer over the course of several drives back and forth to Aunt Alice's. So, every night, lights out, house quiet, Jerry would call up: "Want to hear a story?" He didn't really have to ask, because the answer was always yes. It was just the ritual, and that was that. He would ask, I would say yes, then he would ask what kind of story, and I would always request a scary one. He would say no, I'd get to scared and cry to Mom, I'd swear I wouldn't- and after going back and forth, he'd tell me a scary story. And what stories he'd tell- always original, always somehow incorporating our lives. Blue zombies who lived in our closet, rattle snakes at the foot of the bed- there was even one that had the Creature from the Black Lagoon coming out of our fish tank. Usually, I would get scared, and then he'd switch a story about nothing all that exciting, like a boy floating down a river in a raft or walking to school or something, and I'd drift off to sleep.

My life seemed full of dreams and magic, but by the summer after third grade, things started to change. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny had all gone the way of the dodo for the reasons they always do. But there were starker changes in our suburban home in Strawberry Park. New monsters, not quite so fantastic but much more real, had begun to arrive.



My father left my mother, and my brother and sister and I, when I was four. He had always been obsessed with Alaska- and had decided to go live there. My siblings and I always hoped he'd come back someday to see us- but any hope of that ever happening diminished in direct proportion to the number of letters he sent us. When he first left, there were letters practically every week, full of stories about Melvin the Great, his made up version of himself who went on madcap adventures with his much smarter side-kicks Hairy, Feather, and Belly. Melvin traveled around in a throne that sat on top of a Volkswagen Bug. He always wore a crown, had a bottle of magic pep potion in his glove box that gave him super powers, and was constantly fighting the evil Wombats. Each letter with a Melvin the Great story was illustrated by my father, and I treasured them. I'd read them over and over, never tiring of the stories. We all checked the mail-box a lot in those days. But as time wore on, the letters came less frequently, from weekly to monthly to not at all.  Mom explained to us that Daddy Jay, which is what we called him, had stopped paying something called Alimonyandchildsupport, and we probably wouldn't see him much anymore. By fourth grade, all letters from my father had joined Santa in oblivion. We assumed the Melvin had been eaten by a Wombat.

To be continued...