Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.
I used to donate a lot of blood, starting back when I was eighteen. I gave at least a couple of gallons over the years, maybe twice that, before tattoo sessions and piercings and low iron and sex with a guy that had HepC knocked me off the list first temporarily, then for good.
Something else I did a lot of was this—I took my kid almost everywhere with me, from the time he was born. Henry couldn’t have been more than four months old on his first long distance road trip. And not much older than that the first time he attended one of my readings. I took him to movies, restaurants, rock shows. I took him to bars, too, mostly (but not always) because I was doing a reading. He was the youngest kid ever let into Emo’s (he was three) and he even had his own special skanky chair at the gone-but-not-forgotten Electric Lounge, where I took him weekly for poetry slams. Austin being Austin, of course I had an opportunity to take him to mixed-use events, which is how it came to pass that he had the three-in-one chance to go to a bar/concert/blood drive with me. KGSR used to sponsor the Hearts for the Arts Blood Drive at La Zona Rosa, an event where you could listen to live music and give a pint and have a pint afterwards.
By that time, I was a seasoned donor and I asked the phlebotomist if the kid could come over and watch me get stuck. I wanted him to see how easy it was, maybe instill a little of that do-good spirit, understand that it didn’t hurt a bit. So there I was, lying on the table, and in goes the big, fat needle, and I feel this burning sensation rip through me. Which I’m absolutely certain is not right. And I’m trying not to scream, lest I freak the kid out. The phlebotomist, apparently less concerned, says, “OH SHIT,” having apparently gone through my vein, a first for me.
The arm swelled up and turned black around the needle hole pretty quick and I got to chalk up another hatch mark on the running scorecard, under the column Parenting Errors. That side of the card was pretty full already, and I’m only referring to my take on the matter. I’m certain there were other folks who watched the way I raised my kid and who, in turn, raised their eyebrows, eager to mark off even more points for what they deemed bad behavior on my part. (For what it’s worth, Henry hates needles to this day.)
It’s pretty easy, when one has an only child that one raised on one’s own, to get self-righteous when that child turns out to be a young adult as swell as my kid. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had the cop call in the middle of the night. We’ve done the truancy court thing. He’s called me some names that still make me wince if I let myself think about it. But in the end, I’m looking at a human about to turn 18, and he is compassionate, hilarious, gentle, creative, and one hell of a guitar player. (He’s not bad on the theremin, either.)
Maybe it had nothing to do with nurture. Maybe I just lucked out in some big old lottery and landed me a good one, foolproof from the get-go, no matter how many errors I made. I like to think the story goes more like this: In large part because I was a single parent, I needed help from my friends. I couldn’t often afford babysitters. I had to work. And sometimes I just needed a break. Other times friends just wanted to take him for a while because he’s just damn enjoyable. So in the end, whole village and all that, I wound up with a kid raised in part by a pack of wild gay men, any number of girlfriends, at least one single straight guy that liked to take him out as chick bait, and, upon his return to our lives last year, even the kid’s biological father, who happens to be a good friend of mine.
This amalgamation of cool, nutty, different-view-pointed influences gave me what I have today. He is independent, employed (the longest standing employee at his workplace, having been there since he was fourteen), and calm. And he knows when and how to effectively tell me when I need to back off. He might be the only human on the planet capable of this.
Such was the case a week ago. His ’93 Cadillac was acting up so I gave him a lift to Ruta Maya where he was to drop off a deposit to rent the space for the EP release party for his band,
Sea Fields of Elephants. I stayed in the car. He was gone a long time, finally emerging to report that the barista had treated him like shit. He passed along this information matter-of-factly, not seeking a response. But even though I know how important it is for him to practice taking care of himself, remnants of Mama Bear emerged from hibernation and I said, only half-jokingly, and in my best Jersey girl fashion, “You want me to go have a word with her?”
“No,” he said, firmly. “Besides, if you did, it wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t change her or make her treat anyone better.”
Where had he learned this? Certainly not from me, not all those years before I got into the Buddhism and the meditation and learned how to stop taking out everything from growing up with a shitty dad to having a hangover on some poor minimum wage customer service worker. If there is a hell, I think mine will be spent atoning for the shit I used to give those folks by being forced to slice boiled ham, very thin, for an endless line of pissy housewives in the netherworld.
I did ask why he chose that venue, as I’d had a bad experience when I booked a show there last year. Let me say that Ruta Maya is a fine establishment, a nice space. But they subcontract their booking to a group of folks I think have questionable practices, something I feel justified in saying since I’ve been booking shows all over this city for at least fifteen years. I know from the good, the bad and the ugly.
Hen told me the decision was made, it was a known venue to the band’s fans, and that was the end of it. I backed off. At least for the moment. Then came the night of the gig.
When the band, which had brought in a big audience, ran over ten minutes past the 9 p.m. end time in their contract, rather than let them play an encore (as so many bands have done for so many times over the year), the booking people shut them down at the soundboard. It was a nice way to ruin an otherwise awesome evening and I couldn’t resist. I kept my tone calm, but I had to have a few words with the woman in charge to ask her what the hell she was thinking. As my son might have predicted, I did not change her ways. In fact, she got pretty fucking bitchy about the whole thing. And then I watched as my son shifted from irked—at the booker, at his mother—to the place where he could settle in to enjoying the fact that the show had otherwise been great.
Meanwhile, the Cadillac? The brakes were so bad, a rotor broke off, and the guys at the $99 brake place walked me around the lift several times, sucking in their breath and, in a manner reminding me of that long ago phlebotomist, saying, over and over, “He’s lucky he made it here alive.”
I said to them, more than once, in the interest of having them stop this behavior since all it was doing was feeding my already anxiety-prone inner neurotic, “Look, we’re here now, let’s just fix it.” Which they did to the tune of $99. Times ten. Really. A thousand bucks for four brakes. Can you imagine? But he’s still my baby, even as I try to let him go, and so of course I ponied up the dough.
When Henry was very little, back when we spent hardly any time apart at all, I was flying away for a work trip. I made another one of my many famous errors, telling him if my plane crashed, I wanted him to carry on, like Simba in the Lion King. My heart was in the right place. But being three, he burst out crying.
I travel a lot these days. A whole lot more than when he was little. Tomorrow I leave for yet another research trip. I will see my son before I go, and I’ll heap on him all sorts of unsolicited, predictable advice about staying safe while I’m gone. And then, as a nod to that long ago parenting error, I will say to him, “You know what to do if I crash, right honey?”
And he will look down at me, since he’s nearly a foot taller, and he will say, in his most excellent, most sarcastic voice, “I know—carry on, my wayward son!” And he would, he will, and I’m certain he’ll be very polite about
