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| A Failure to Thrive |
| 03.30.04 (6:57 pm) [edit] |
I had been relentlessly kicking for almost a month. So, when the floodgates finally opened, and I sensed a metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel, we can imagine a little smile appeared on my face. Mom, in obvious pain, woke Dad. He looked at the alarm clock, reading 2am, felt the puddle on the bed, realized the enormity of the situation, and did what he had to do. He put his wife in the car, drove her to the hospital, dropped her off in the ER, and went back to bed.
Seven hours of hard labor later, Dad got up and labored through rush hour traffic… to get the Denny’s breakfast special. Then he sauntered over to the hospital just in time to see two little feet popping out of his wife’s uterus (I was trying to be a little unconventional – upside-down—about the birthing process).
As you’ll find out, I proved to be an early bird later in life. I eat my dinners at four in the afternoon, get to class ten minutes before I have to, and get my papers done the day they are assigned. Why? I know the saying, “the early bird gets the worm.” That’s all.
Shockingly, when I did finally come out, by caesarian section, I was actually fifteen days late. I don’t know what the deal was. Maybe the womb was too comfortable. Maybe I was having too much fun in there. Maybe I got dizzy and just lost track of time.
Fortunately, I did finally come out. The gift of life, any life, is a miracle. But for Mom this one was special. She had eight pervious miscarriages.
I seemed a healthy enough baby: seven pounds and a few ounces. Wacky. Dad would always say that such wackiness resulted from my upside-down position in the womb. “It’s a sign,” Dad told Mom. She laughed.
She laughed when I spent much of my childhood standing on my head, possibly trying to get back inside that womb. She still laughs today when I dress myself in an avant-garde style, wearing things backwards, inside out or however they seem to fit (sometimes upside-down). “It’s your fault,” I tell her.
When I was pulled from Mom’s belly, I was nearly bald. I would have been, except that, right there, in front, was a swirling cowlick that stuck up where everyone could see. I was like Alfalfa turned around. I still have that cowlick today. It’s a part of me now. Fortunately, girls tend to like it, though the barbers tend not to.
The trouble wasn’t with the surgery at all. That went smoothly. The doctor incised into the lower three inches of Mom’s belly, and out came a baby. No harm, no foul. Well, not quite. As Dad watched his wife get cut open, he asked the doctor, “Does every woman have that thick a layer of fat?” Mom cringed. The doctor, in disbelief, said nothing.
After washing the blood and uterus parts off me, the doctor put me in Mom’s arms; he didn’t trust Dad. Dad peered down at his small, brown-eyed son. “He’s not nearly as good looking as his brother,” he said. I would always trust that Dad would say what he really felt.
Mom pretended not to hear him. Eight tries, and finally a living breathing baby; It wouldn’t have mattered if I were the ugliest thing on earth because in Mom’s eyes I still would have been perfect and beautiful. A mother’s perspective is never quite objective. But, then again, neither is mine.
“Let’s name him David,” Dad said.
“We can’t name him David,” Mom said,” “We already have one of those.”
It was true. They had adopted my brother David just eight months before. It was also true that he was a cuter baby than I. He had blonde hair, blue eyes and a good three pounds on me at birth; I think he had more shapely thighs too.
“Fine, then we’ll name him Danny, after my great-uncle who fought in the War.”
“Fine,” Mom said. “Like Daniel in the Lion’s Den.”
A few hours of post-womb sleep later, I engaged in my first carnal action: I suckled my mother’s breast. Was the instinct hunger, thirst, or maybe even quasi-sexual? Was it natural? It was the first time I had ever suckled; and the first time she had ever been suckled (David was adopted, so he had to use a bottle), so how could we know the difference between natural and unnatural suckling?
The trouble arose with the experimental drugs given to Mom for pain during the surgery. The drugs stopped milk production in her breasts. I sucked, but nothing came out… and Mom had no idea. How could she know the difference between a factory that’s producing and one that’s not producing if her factory had never produced before?
I knew the difference though; I could feel hunger; I could feel nothingness, but back then I didn’t know what knowing meant.
The doctors sent Mom home just two dayas after I'd entered the world. I still hadn't eaten.
I cried because I was hungry. Mom stuck her breast to my mouth because I cried. Dad held the pillow over his head because that just didn’t work. On my fourth day of life, Mom and Dad took me back to the hospital. I had dissipated. I wasn’t crying anymore. I had lost almost half my body weight, and I was struggling to hold on.
The doctors put me in an incubator with underdeveloped and life-threatened infants that had been born too early. Dad would joke later that if I couldn’t be born an early bird, at least I got to be with the other ones.
I was given a fifty-percent chance for survival. Of course, I didn’t die. I lived. Can you imagine if I died? Well, I wouldn’t be here. This story wouldn’t be told.
Dad says my failure to thrive at birth explains a lot about who I am today. Mom says it explains nothing. I think they may both right.
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| Broken Promises |
| 03.29.04 (3:50 pm) [edit] |
My name is Greg Lewis and I’m real only if you want.
If you don’t want, then keep me here; don’t read between the lines.
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[b]Why This… Why Now?[/b]
It’s true. I’m not drinking with my buddies tonight because I want to begin writing this book. Silly; they don’t understand. "What’s the point?" they say. "Why write about your life now? You’ve got so little experience. Who could you possibly be speaking to? What could you possibly say? What are you thinking?"
"It’s not what I think that matters" I say while trying to imagine an acutely philosophical rebuttal, "but what they think I think."
"You still have to think something. Every writer has some direction."
"Oh fuck off!" I say.
I wouldn’t really say that. Or I might, but in a jocular manner that wouldn’t betray my infuriation with any and all questions pertaining to substance or content in life.
Of course I have a reason for writing. Is it a good reason? Who knows? Whatever I write will be marred by the truth and falsity of my own experience. You can decide whether it’s at all meaningful to you. In the mean time, I want to share something special.
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[b]Life and Girls [/b]
I’ll be the first to admit it. I don’t understand girls. Okay, there, I said it. So what if it’s out in the open. It’s something I deal with everyday. I figure, in life, there are girls, and there is everything else.
I’m just as miffed by girls as I am by everything else. It’s all so crazy. I’m hoping God put me here to try and make some sense out of it all… because I want to do it with you. Your proximity to my story validates me somehow. And if there’s one thing I need in life, it’s validation. No, that can’t be right. I’m not supposed to have needs-at least, not dysfunctional ones.
Well anyway, I think my relationship with girls is a metaphor for my relationship with life. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe girls and this world are just part of a virtual playground created by my consciousness, possibly my self-consciousness.
A college professor once told me that life should be interpreted as a subjective narrative. Our truth, our fiction, and our nostalgia all help to inform our collective and subjective imaginations. Yet, I don’t know (or care) what that means. I do know, however, that girls are just as complex as the rest of life if I say so, or if I believe so.
But hell, there’s so much more to life than lust, and love, and lust. Right?
Don’t be so sure. Girls are more important than you may care to admit. They help boys like me to understand life in a context of pleasure and pain and passion and intensity that I couldn’t possibly experience sans interaction.
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[b]The Nature of Truth[/b]
I like to get crazy on Saturday nights. I drink with friends, dance with girls, and try to forget. Usually it works… especially when I touch a girl and move with her. Because I imagine that such momentary forgetfulness might never end.
Last Saturday night, I went to a club with some friends. I didn’t drink and I didn’t dance. I was tired. I was tired of being tired. So I stood against a wall and watched.
Jessica approached me. She peered into my eyes, and said, "Greg, we’ve never had a real conversation... you know, the kind where two hearts feel like one. Do you mind if I come to your room later so we can talk?"
She didn’t want sex.
"Greg, when I first met you, I didn’t like you at all."
"What?"
"Well, it’s not that I didn’t like you. I was, well, intimidated by you."
"Huh?" (I never imagined my boyish grin and small sixty-six inch frame could be intimidating…)
"It’s just everything you do and say seems more genuine than it could possibly be."
"Hmmm."
"And Carinne says you are a pathological liar"
"WHAT?"
"I didn’t believe her. Well, I did. But I don’t now; because I know you."
A pathological liar? Too genuine? These are words I wouldn’t have expected… had I not heard them just two weeks before. Heather, after sharing an innocent kiss with me, asked a friend Eve to give her the dirt. (Yes, it’s true, girls kiss and talk.) Eve replied, "Greg’s a great guy… except, he’s a pathological liar." Twice in two weeks. This needed to be dealt with, or at least, thought through.
Am I a pathological liar? Hell fucking no. There. Done! It’s thought through.
Okay, not quite.
In my interactions with anyone I seek to be as truthful as possible. Sometimes, to be safe, I even tell too much of the truth. I cross that imaginary line a lot. I jump over it, taunt it, and sometimes even defile it. And you wonder why.
Because all I can offer is my experience. Sure, I can quote books and plagiarize the experiences of others, but that’s not the same. Their truth is not my truth, and inevitably something gets lost in the translation. So, when you wonder who I am, I will tell you. I will be genuine and I will be straightforward. I understand that you might not be used to such unabridged communication, but please don’t call me a pathological liar. I tell the truth-whatever that means.
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[b]Tears[/b]
Sometimes I look in a mirror and I cry. I look deep into my dark brown eyes until I see red. I then fall to my knees because my legs can’t support what my eyes might have seen. I cover those eyes and I cup the fluids that I imagine are vital. I wonder why. Why the fuck am I crying?
Is it a possibility unrealized? A passion unachieved? A past remembered? A past forgotten? Is it happiness? Happiness out of sight? Happiness within reach? What is happiness, anyway? If I could understand why I cry, then maybe I could at least figure something out.
Lately, I haven’t been so lucky. Instead of crying, or flailing on the floor, I stare bleakly into the distance. I cannot feel what I feel. It’s too exhausting, I tell myself. It’s not worth it anymore. And I walk away because I figure that’s all I can do.
Greg has a theory. He thinks I cry because I am fat. I see myself in the mirror, and I realize I can’t get away from me. He thinks I’m out of control. I need to work harder until I can no longer pinch anything off my stomach. I’ve done it before, he reminds me. I’ll do it again: skinny like the male models, skinny with discernible, stratified muscles. But be careful, he says. Stay in control. Too much control, if need be. Because if I don’t, I’ll lose it and get fat again. He says it’s all in my head. Except it no longer is. It’s on paper. You know and I know.
Of course, I don’t really need to lose more weight. Even Greg knows that. But he thinks I do. And I do too.
I have a different theory. It presupposes a murder and a truth that cannot be proven. Why not? I’d need to utilize statistics and percentages, and such methods are unreliable. Numbers, like words, can always be manipulated to tell a truth. Unfortunately, it will never be the truth. There’s a world of difference.
Many times we mistake our own truths to be universal truths. But they’re ours and nobody else’s. We shouldn’t fool ourselves.
So, when I tell you that I kill, please believe me. When I tell you that for so long I’ve wanted so badly to stop, please believe me. And when I tell you that I can’t stop, even now, even though I’ve want so badly to stop, please, again, believe me. I know you won’t.
That’s why I think I cry. Maybe.
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[b]Dancing[/b]
I’ve probably done most of my learning and growth since kindergarten. But when I look to a foundation for my life and my ways, that formative first year of school sticks out in my mind. Why? Probably because that’s when I met my first true love.
No, it wasn’t a girl. This was a different kind of love: a love of form, of body movement, and of aesthetics: a love of dance.
Near the end of kindergarten, I participated in a school dance performance. On the night of the show, over four hundred friends and family members filled the cramped auditorium.
For months I had practiced my insignificant background role. I held a cane and swayed idly back and forth through the second dance number. This was typical and basic choreography easy enough for even the most distractible five-year old. But I wasn’t just any distractible five-year old.
(Before I continue, I must admit that I have (selectively?) eliminated any memory of this night. I only know it really happened because my mother captured the entire event on film. She further immortalized my antics by sending copies of the tape to half of Santa Monica)
Donovan, the popular kid who always wore purple pants, was dramatically bellowing ‘The Jesus Rock’. I swayed back and forth behind him with nine other not-so-biblically clad background dancers.
I got bored with the swaying cane routine pretty quickly. The music wasn’t at all conducive to such placid and restrained movement. So I undid a button on my flowered Hawaiian shirt. But that wasn’t enough. I unbuttoned it all the way.
As Donovan began the chorus, ("It’s the Jesus Rock, yeah, yeah, It’s the… "), I stepped in front of him, twirled my shirt in the air, threw it into audience, and used my cane to engage in phallic and lavish break dancing moves.
Donovan stopped singing. I danced on. Jesus’ other disciples stopped swaying. And I danced on. Eventually the music stopped playing. And I danced on. I didn’t know better or maybe I just didn’t care.
Years later, as I watch the end of the tape (the elementary school principal carries me away as I kick and flail and the audience cheers), I know that must have been a defining moment in my young life. Fuck the music, fuck the routine, fuck the clothes, and fuck the people who won’t understand anyway. I’m going to dance.
That’s it. That’s where I think it began.
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[b]The Great American Novel[/b]
We are all so fragile and easily shattered during our childhood and adolescent years. If only we could have had someone there to protect us. But for reasons I don’t understand, so many of us don’t. We endure needless and excessive pain. And then we are asked to survive, and also, to love and give back.
We try. Sometimes we succeed, and all to often we fail. Either way, we will look back and try to connect the dots and erase the lines that we imagine never should have been drawn. If only we had known.
So we tell our stories, mostly for external validation, but also because we hope that somewhere it might teach someone something. Or at least, it will make somebody laugh. Or cry. And then, somehow, it will all be worth it.
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