In My Mother's House Are Many...TONS OF SHIT I WANT GONE!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

The house is now almost spotless (cluttered still, but clean, and a whole lot less cluttered even), but something I’ve wanted to ask a cleaner before: how bad does a house have to be before you say “I ain’t touchin’ it?” For example, what’s one of the worst houses you ever saw that you actually worked, or did you ever see one and turn around and walk out?

My sister arrived Saturday night and from then until this afternoon she and her husband and I worked our respective aßes off cleaning, sorting through boxes, divying up Materline Gaul, and between what she took, what was condensed into other boxes, what was tossed out with a “nobody needs this and nobody would buy it a yard sale” logic, moved into the (also cleaned out) storage shed, etc., the place looks really good now.

There were no apologies of course- we didn’t want to break family tradition. There were instead the usual “if we apologized in this family, this is where it would go” statements. In one of her emails to me she managed to be condescending and infuriating but also conciliatory and- sad. Her writing is eccentric to the say the least, the word usage and imagery and rambling (worse than mine) and a “no thank you, I brought my own rules of grammar” style and above all the sense it should be read by a narrator in a bad southern accent while a tintype of my sister is on the screen, and for obvious reasons I won’t reprint the email, but the line that haunted me was “I understand the need to sometimes close doors to others, even those who you love and who love you, but please promise me I’ll never hear the key turn”. Odd.

Anyway, she was a totally different person. She swore she’d never once said I couldn’t have an estate/yard sale (which is just NOT true, she not only said but said it several times to me, to my brother, and in front of witnesses), but whatever- she also still didn’t take the big pieces of furniture that are her’s by concordance but swears she’ll return, and what she did take and what we condensed helped tremendously. (One thing you’ll never hear me diss about my sister, incidentally, is her work ethic- the woman’s a plow mule and a mono-manic one at that when it comes to getting things done.)

Last night we stayed up until about halfway twixt midnight and sunrise sitting around a chimnea fire telling war stories about our mother, laughing and saying “God damn what made her do things like that?” and “See, that’s the Mama I miss” often to the same story. The really hurtful thing my mother said to my sister in 2003 in response to some trivial or imagined slight that just majorly hurt her feelings, and how the next morning when my sister called frantic to tell my mother that her husband had suffered a stroke my mother drove the 170 milesto the hospital in Mobile in 2 hours and stayed with them 6 of the next 8 weeks “and I just honestly could not have made it without her in that time and she could not have been dearer or sweeter or more considerate”, or how she embarassed the hell out of my father at a party when he made a joke at her expense and the result was a scene and cape dragging worthy exit, and how she wrote articles and one of his Masters theses and a book on local history all under his name and let him take full credit (which he did) without ever mentioning it to those who praised him for it, and how she midwifed a cow who died in childbirth with a breach calf, wrapped the calf in a blanket and brought it home to care for it (she lived for many years as a family pet even when she had to be returned to the pasture) and dressed to the nines to go to a wedding reception for the governor’s daughter (who came to her funeral) all in the same day, or how she went without new clothes for years but found the money to buy my siblings new cars. We both have great love and respect for the woman without either of us making her into a saint, and we both see her legion of flaws without making her or thinking her a monster.

Anyway, another very hard day of work while waiting for the gas man and she departed and we’re totally cool again. Other than the frigging gay thing, which I’ll tell about later.

Sorry for the sidetrack, but I am curious to hear about the cleaning questions above.

A friend of mine in Atlanta wants to start a cleaning service called FIRST LADIES with his mom (professional cleaner for many years) and a couple of others. His own main contribution is the logo- drag queens dressed as first ladies, with a scowling Hillary trying to get a stain out of a blue dress and Mary Todd Lincoln scrubbing a rocking chair and Jackie Kennedy wiping off a plastic covered sofa with bediamonded fingers. I told him that while clever, I really think that’s kind of the easy part.

82

I never turned a house down due to its condition; size and owners, yes, but never condition. When it came to filth I was fearless, as I always wore rubber gloves, glasses, kneepads and kept a mask in my apron for when I was using bleach or toilet bowl cleaner. I wasn’t shy about saying I didn’t want to clean for someone anymore when they vexed me and I had a waiting list to pick their replacement from. The largest house I found I could clean on my own in 4 hours or less was 5000 square feet and that became my limit. Any bigger and I’d have to hire someone; didn’t want the headache.
If the house was trashed when I did my estimating walkthrough, I would tell the client it was $25.00 an hour for a first time clean, minimum of five hours. That way it was either worth my while or they declined to hire me.
Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen my share of urgh - older men have incontinence sometimes, or insist on standing to pee like when they were younger and had better aim; in more than one house it led to urine-soaked carpets, Pergo flooring, grout, wallpaper, walls, and laminate tiles whose patterns peel up from the acidity. I’ve seen a toilet (on a move-out clean for 4 guys) that was so caked with urine all over it that I started by spraying the whole thing with toilet bowl cleaner and working my way in. It appeared that for some time, they’d been playing a game by trying to hit the toilet from the doorway. One time, an elderly client peed his pants a bit in front of me while we were having a conversation standing in his foyer. I didn’t say a word and hoped like hell when he noticed later he assumed I hadn’t seen.
There are two places you don’t want carpet in your house, kitchen and bathroom (and garage, I suppose, but that’s usually not my problem.) because there’s no getting them clean (to my standards) again. Kitchen carpet gets stained fast and beyond keeping. I don’t get why anyone would even want them, but I’ve vacuumed kitchen carpeting many times. Bathroom carpet- blech. If you can’t throw it in the washer with some bleach, don’t put it on your bathroom floor. Hooray for hotel towels!

If people can live in it, I can get it clean.
Oh, I forgot the move-out I did for a lady whose move-in I did the next day. I asked where her cat was, as when I moved her old house’s stove I found dry cat food. She looked perplexed and said her cat had died 7 years ago.

I could write a book of tales like that, and have threatened to do so, naming names.

ETA- your friend’s ideas is funny and not at all workable. NO ONE cares what their cleaning service is called, only that’s it’s affordable and reliable. I didn’t name mine till I put it on my resume afterward.

83

Nah, names do help sell, Merry Maids works in my area. It’s still the easy part.

84

So, uh, Nawth Chucka… you’re moving back to South Carolina, right? :wink:

Do cleaners ever do double duty as organizers? In other words, could I hire some uninterested party to help me whip my house into shape?

85

In order - yes, but not for a few years; then we’ll be in James Island.

Yes, they will if you locate an independent cleaner; I was able to be far more flexible as I didn’t have a franchise to answer to.
“Hey, can you cater the High Holidays?”
“Sure, black tie alright for you?”

“Can you fit 60 people in my 2 bedroom condo for my piano recital?”
“No problem, do I get leftovers?”

“My family member died today, can you set up shiva by 6pm?”
“Yep.”

“Can you scrape off the hanging gardens on my shower celing?”
“You betcha.”

It was the most fun job I ever had and if it weren’t for damn, stinking tendonitis, I’d still be at it. It’s not hard to find an independent, just ask around people you know.

86

I used to work for Merry Maids; pretty good system, but they were a bit concerned about things smelling clean at the potential expense of being clean.

87

I used Merry Maids. They were expensive compared to the other cleaning services, but worth the extra- you could eat off the floors when they were done. Private services are a lot cheaper but the quality varies so and if they’re not bonded especially you never know. I’ve had great luck and horrible luck with them.

Here’s a question: is it customary to tip maid services? I usually do, but I didn’t know if I should or if I was overtipping or not.

There’s one service I won’t use again due to the tipping issue. Last year I had my mom’s house cleaned top to bottom, one of those “I want to be able to lick the walls” cleaning. This was when she first became sick and was in the hospital and expected to come home- my mother was much better than I am as a housekeeper but frankly that’s not saying a lot (she was more straight/organized than actually clean) and so I wanted the house to be sterile when she returned for obvious reasons. The service I used quoted me a price of $100 or thereabouts, and I left a check for the amount and an additional $40 in $5 bills for the two ladies (I didn’t know how many it would be, hence the easily divisible $5 bills) as a tip. 40% tip, in other words.

They did an outstanding job, I have no complaints whatever about the quality of their work. What pissed me off is that they cleaned the refrigerator while there, as I had requested, but they forgot to include that in the bill, so- after I had tipped them $40- sent me a bill for the extra $10 for cleaning inside the refrigerator. Pissed me off- I would have paid the $10 had they asked me for that in advance, but the fact they didn’t and I paid their price and I gave a really nice (imo) tip all coalesce into the “cut off my nose to spite my face” thing- good cleaners, good price, but the $10 drives me nuts (the maids should have just swallowed the $10 and they’d still have been $30 ahead of the hounds).

Anyway, is tipping customary and what’s a good tip?

A friend of mine used to work for a cleaning service and also a catering service at the same time while in Denver and saw many of the same (extremely upscale) houses as both. She says that if anybody writes mystery or crime stories (which I don’t, so I pass it on) it’s the absolute most perfect job there is for a cat burglar or a demented stalker to learn about a well off person’s environs as you see everything. A former boss here who had once run a very successful cleaning company that she had sold told me about the houses in Montgomery she cleaned that belonged to prominent Christian right affiliated persons (and she named names) where there were fortunes in porn stored in cabinets in the walk-in closet, or the time she accidentally threw away a little baggie filled with “what looked like talcum powder or baking soda” from the bathroom of a very wealthy lawyer; she was naive enough that she didn’t understand why said lawyer called her in hysterics and cursed for a solid hour even after she offered to “buy any talcum you want to replace it” or give free cleaning services; one of her employed maids had to explain to her “Mrs. S… I don’t think that was talcum powder that lady had in that bag…”

I know one guy here who specialized in cleaning crime scenes and death scenes (including natural-causes death scenes that evidently some do not like to clean- basically taking the sheets off of beds and cleaning where an old lady died in her sleep). He said “They can tell you all they want to it’s an urban legend about the holidays seeing upswings in deaths and suicides, but at least around here it’s not- I always look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas because I’ll make enough money for vacation”. He once had to clean the site of a quintuple homicide that made national news. (He has some type of special bonding and training and usually works alone.)

88

I’ve said before, write the damn book.

I can see it now, Dedicated to Blanche and the SDMB.

89

When I worked for Merry Maids, my first day I was training in one wing of a huge house with my new boss while the other two maids robbed the second wing of a camera, clothes, cash and some figurine. They got busted and MM had to cough up and pay out of their insurance.
When I went on my own I couldn’t afford bonding; I also couldn’t afford to steal from my clients as I was in a particular area and one would hear from most of the others, leaving me without a job. That’d be bad.
Tipping is very kind; it’s also nice if you have beverages for them when they get there, which will make them work a bit harder for you as you’ve gone the extra mile for them. It shows you know it’s hard work and you appreciate it.
Sorry they messed up about the fridge cleaning; I wouldn’t have dared to bill someone later, I’d have said it when I was preparing to leave. If I were you I’d have sent it back unpaid.

90

I’m not really understanding this detour into cleaning. **Sampiro’s ** stories are always so linear…

91

Who are you? And what did you do with the real 5que?

92

So here’s something I find extremely irritating:

My parents had a miserably unhappy marriage. It lasted for 30 years somehow, but had my father not died it would have gone on, I’ve no doubt, I can’t imagine them divorcing. Both of my parents were born and reared in miserably unhappy marriages.

My father and his father both died at relatively young ages of heart attacks. My father was an alcoholic whose drinking probably hastened his death, and my grandfather was a heavy smoker whose smoking hastened his death (though not as much as my grandmother, whose actions the night of his heart attack possibly killed him). At least one of my great-grandfathers was an alcoholic and two of my grandmothers were drug addicts (morphine and heroin [back when it was a prescription narcotic]), and my mother died of smoking long after she began seriously suffering from it and was for several years a problem drinker (she basically went from moderate to very heavy and then back to moderate). My family has problems with addiction and those who have been the addicts have not lived to be very old.

My sister isn’t terribly bothered by my smoking. She’ll tell me “you really need to quit”, but it’s not a major concern. Neither is she bothered by my other lifestyle habits; she even forgets I’m this-close to a teetotaller and will ask me advice on making Margaritas or express irritation that there’s never beer in my fridge and will even tell me “drinking is healthy in moderation, you should really drink more than you do”.

My parents could both be horrible people, so could their parents (my grandfather Mustang was essentially sins of omission, the others were ALL commission and fiercely proud of it). She’s not concerned that I’ll be a bad husband or a bad parent but she very much wants me to get married (“I think an Asian woman would be good for you, as long as she’s not born in this country and can’t speak English well so she doesn’t act like American- they’re clean and they’re hard workers and you need both”). But she’s very concerned that I might be a homosexual, so much that she tried to grill me on it this visit.

There was an issue of OUT magazine (which if you’re not familiar is roughly akin to a gay[er] Vanity Fair or People, not porn or anything like). While cleaning the house she came across it and said “I’m going to assume this is ‘Earl’s’” (the name I’ll use hereinafter for the friend/ex boyfriend who occasionally stays with me- we’re now completely platonic). I said “Okay.” (I honestly don’t know if he bought that one or if I did.)

“Why’s Anderson Cooper on the cover? He queer?”

“Tis rumored. That’s why it’s actually a man in an Anderson Cooper mask- the whole closeted issue.”

“If he’s closeted I hope he stays that way. If he comes out I’ll never watch him again.”

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to have to worry” I reassure her. Anderson Cooper’s one of her favorite media figures.

“Toss it” she says to her husband. “I don’t want a fagazine in my Mama’s house.”

“It’s my house now” I tell her, “and I say what reading material is thrown away and what isn’t.”

“Fine. Then you toss it away.”

“Nope.”

“Why exactly do you feel so strongly about not throwing away a gay queer fag magazine?”

I tell her very truthfully “Because I haven’t read it yet.”

“You would read a fagazine?”

“That was moderately humorous the first time, but it’s not anymore so I’m calling it: time of death- now. And yes. Look at the other books here- there’s a conservative Christian magazine, there’s a book on Islam, there’s a book on reincarnation, there’s a Reader’s Digest with something about menopause. I’ve read or skimmed through all of them and I’m not a menopausal Muslim for Jesus.”

“I’m more interested in if you’re a fag.”

“Well it’s interesting you should ask…”

“So you are?”

“I didn’t say that, but it’s interesting you should ask.”

“Then you aren’t?”

“I didn’t say that, but it’s interesting you should ask. Very character defining almost.”

“Well I know what I saw on that website. You mind telling me about that?”

Ironically I recently showed my sister how to use Google and she soon after googled me. One of the things that came up was an autobiographical passage that I’d written on a friend’s blog by way of introduction- uncharacteristically concise, patterned after an author bio you’d read in a book. It’s extremely tongue-in-cheek.

An interesting thing about this passage: it’s not the first thing of mine that comes up when you google my name. It’s not even the first thing I’ve written that comes up when you google my name and read the full article- I have editorials and other stuff where I mention being gay but they’re long writings and you have to read down the article. (Also there’s a screenwriter specializing in horror and a professor and a white supremacist and others who have the same name as me so I’m far from the only person who comes up under my name.)

It is, however, the first article that’s me when you google the keywords [my name] gay Alabama, however. I found this out when I was trying to figure out how she found this as opposed to a lot more mundane library related posts. (My personal favorite thing under my name is a page where an article I wrote for Library Journal is translated into Thai.)

Anyway, she found this on Christmas and mentioned it- sort of- on my Christmas card. Under the Good Tidings lines was “I found something on the Internet I need to talk to you about”. She then didn’t mention it for a while other than in passing, but ambushed me on the night after my job interview demanding an explanation. I played ignunt, because I honestly didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, and when I did find what she was talking about I laughed out loud. Of all things she could get worked up over…

I made the decision that I am not going to lie. I am not going to say I am straight or that I am not gay. If she learns I’m gay later, and I’ve no doubt she will, I can always say “I didn’t lie”, because I didn’t. So when she asked, this weekend, and I repeat,
“Well I know what I saw on that website. You mind telling me about that?”

I told her in all honesty

“Ah yes, my bio. I’ll tell you a secret- some of that stuff isn’t true. Between you and me I didn’t really grow up in a Hasidic orphanage in Korea before being expelled for Catholic tendencies and I never really overran Belize, both of which I stated in that same autobio.”

“M-hmm. But are you queer?”

“I didn’t say I’m queer in the bio. I said ‘some would say I’m gay’ but I say ‘I just haven’t found the right marsupial or farm animal yet’.”

“Are you queer?”

“I don’t feel the need to answer that question and I resent your tone. Love you though I do. And I really do.”

“Are you and Earl a… couple?”

“I will tell you this- Earl and I are not a couple. Unless you mean a couple of platonic friends. That we are. But we are not lovers, we do not have sexualationses, we do not do anything to each other’s naughty bits.” I could have been a bit more truthful by adding “anymore” but decided it wasn’t really a field I wanted to explore at the moment.

“Well I know you’ve had… I know you’ve been involved with girls before. So if you’re into exact words you can use that. I’ll ask it another way- do you float both ways?”

“Madame I will tell you honestly, without qualification, and in no uncertain terms, if it will put your mind at rest, NO. I do not float both ways.”

“Well which way do you float?”

“You just said that…”

“What way do you float?”

“I’ll tell you what: currently I’m not floating at all and it’s been so damned long I’m trying to remember, but when I find myself floating again I will make you some goddamned pictures and let you be the judge. How bout that?”

“Well I just want you to know that if you’re queer I am out of here. You hear me? You tell me you’re queer, I am out that door!”

“Then I promise I will not tell you I’m queer, at least not until after we’ve cleaned the bathtubs.”

“You better not ever. You better not be queer. If you’re queer you’re as good as dead to me.”

Cue flashback episode

93

The post above me makes me want to pull my hair out.

I know you’ve shared your sister’s take on homosexuality before, so I’ll be the billionth member to extend sympathy over this whole issue.

What a good **Sampiro ** thread. You know someone is an entertaining writer when you find yourself thinking, “Did he clean the house YET??!?!?!?!”

94

Flashback

Only fair to pit myself I suppose, as in this one, I don’t look very good.

I was 30 and living at home again temporarily (supposed to be) when she learned I was gay. This was a few weeks after learning I was gay, after the “suicide attempt” where she left a letter on my boyfriend’s door asking me to come home to see her one last time and to please bring her some Rolaids, and signed it “Love Mama” so I’d know who it was from (for in those days there were no shortage of suicide grocery lists).

I started to slap her when she said the above but stopped my hand in the air. In stead I told her to apologize. She absolutely refused.

“Fine. I’ll grand your wish.” and I left her house.

What I meant was ‘so far as our relationship goes, I am dead to you, you’re history, shalom’. She thought I meant that I was going to kill myself. She panicked and over the course of the rest of the night she drove over two counties desperately trying to find me, the only place she didn’t check being the place where I was, which was at a friend’s house- an address she didn’t know about. She banged on my boyfriend’s door but he wasn’t home (neither was he with me) and his roommate told me she was the most frantic person he’d ever seen. "Man- it was like she was trying to get somebody to help her pull her baby out of a well or something, kept saying how she had to make it right and she couldn’t live with what she’d done.

I went home after he told me about that, but there’s no causal relationship. I went home because I needed clothes and my cash. When I got there it was noon the next day and she was sitting in her chair even though it was a work day. She didn’t say anything but she hugged me, not crying, not showing any real emotion. When she let me go I went into my room and packed a bag. She came into the room and said, softly, “I really wish you wouldn’t go. You know my house will always be your home.”

“I do not live where I am wished dead. I do not eat at the table with people who say they wish I was dead. I do not share anything but a world with people who say they wish I was dead. But thank you for the offer.”

“I did not say I wished you were dead.”

“No you didn’t, I’ll grant you that. You said you would RATHER see me dead than gay.”

“You’re not gay.”

“I assure you. I am.”

“I don’t want you dead. You know that.”

“Then apologize for saying it.”

“I didn’t say it.”

“Then apologize for what you did say.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it’s my house and I’ll choose what I apologize for.”

“Then choose to apologize for what you said.”

“No! Don’t make me apologize for what I never said!”

“THEN APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT YOU DID SAY AND STOP SPLITTING HAIRS!”

“You’re planning to go to graduate school at the end of this year.”

“Yes.”

“If you leave I’ll need to find a roommate. I need to put as much as I can in my IRA and I can’t do that if I have to pay full rent. You’ll have to find an apartment for the next year and you can’t afford to live alone and you’ve never had good luck with roommates. Stay here as a roommate. It is a matter of practicality.”

“Where I can pay half the rent, half the utilities, and be wished dead.”

“I won’t wish you dead. I never said I wished you were dead.”

“You said as good as.”

“Think about it.”

To my eternal chagrin, I ultimately took her up on her offer. I really couldn’t afford my own apartment, she really did need to put as much as possible into her IRA, and I really have had the most miserable experiences with roommates, and my whole reason for being there then was that car repair and other expenses had left me broke. So I remained, but it was not a happy time.

I spoke to her as little as I had to, I did not share meals with her, and I tried to be somewhere she wasn’t at all times when we were both awake and off work. Essentially I slept there. I would not host a party with her (which I had done a few times) and so she never had one again. We were more or less civil to each other, with minor flare-ups, but it was not the same relationship. I had spent my life bestowing glamour on her, doing all I could to make her seem and feel more than she was. I corked the bottle and put it back on its shelf, if she wanted self-esteem or laughter in her life then I wasn’t going to take it from her or do anything to keep her from getting it, but neither was I going to bestow it. I was tired of being Atlas to her ego and self-image and she could find someone else.

She fell one day getting out of the van she drove at work, freak accident. Her employer was very good, paid all expenses (it was OJI but not really anybody’s fault), but she developed blood poisoning and needed constant care. So I did not go to graduate school that year but went the next instead so I could remain with her as caregiver. To my credit, and for some odd reason ego compels me to say, that I never expressed resentment over this, she was my mother, it was my duty. And I loved her. I still told her I loved her. But upon occasion I also told her I wanted to hear an apology for something she said in July 1997. The answer, depending on how the question was phrased, was always either ‘I never said that’ or ‘No’.

The glamour embargo continued. She was a bitter 63 year old woman of no extraordinary accomplishments and I absolutely refused, for the first time in my life, to do anything whatever to make her feel like she was anything else but a bitter 63 year old woman of no extraordinary accomplishments. I had not seen her this miserable since we were broke. I hated it. I hated myself for not doing more to make her laugh, to make her happy, to build her up again, “Madame is the greatest former lady wrestler of them all”, to take something moderately funny she had said or done and retell it in such a way that it was not only hysterical but she believed she’d said or done it that way and was truly a character for having done so, or reminding her of something truly remarkable she had said or done when she needed to be reminded of it, or exposing her to new things that she’d enjoy (she had a major sweet tooth and it was fun finding things like Tiramisu that she’d never had but loved. I even found myself browsing grocer’s aisles and starting to instinctively buy that interesting looking thing with the pineapples, or instinctively thinking “Oh, Mama’s gonna LOVE this story” when something funny happened at work, or instinctively want to say “What’s wrong” when she was obviously upset and somehow make her see how great she was. But-

I couldn’t. I wish that weren’t the case, but I couldn’t.

Unless she apologized.

And she wouldn’t.

One night we were watching a documentary on the making of the musical Ragtime on PBS. She was mainly doing her crossword puzzles and not really paying much attention, but when Marin Mazzie, a truly beautiful voice, sang (in its entirety) We Can Never Go Back to Before, she looked up and paid attention. She was visibly affected by the line

Back in the days
when we spoke in civilized voices…

and had a tear in her eye after

back in the days
when everything seemed so much clearer.
women in white
who knew what their lives held in store.
where are they now,
those women who stared from the mirror?
we can never go back to before.

We went outside to smoke later the same evening and out of the blue she said (it had nothing to do with the conversation of that evening- repeated here as a paraphrase of course) “I just want you to know that I never… I want you to know that I want you to be happy. Even if I don’t agree with everything you do. I love you more than life. Which isn’t saying much, but I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything, anyone. I don’t ever want to not have you in my life. When you go away… I want you to know that I’ll miss you and that you’re taking my world with you.”
That is your choice, I told her. Your world should be with you.
“I’m proud of you. I want you to know that when I hear other people complain about their children, all the things they’ve put them through, I think, my son never did that. He was always a joy to be around. It was when I wasn’t with him when I was miserable. I am so proud of you. What happiness I have is from you.”

I told her that I loved her very much and I was proud of her. I also told her that I needed to hear an apology for saying she wished I was dead. She told me “There are things you’ve never apologized for…”

“Like what?”

"Things that were hurtful… that… "

“Name something.”

“It’s not important. It’s… I have fought with depression and anger my entire life”

“And they have won hands down. May I have an apology please?”

“No. Whatever it is you want an apology for I probably meant at the time I said it and it would be hypocritical.”

“Fine. We’ll have to leave it at that, I suppose. But please don’t ever think I’ve forgotten.”

“If you ever forgot something that offended you I’d go to St. Margaret’s Hospital and demand to know what the fuck they did with my real baby.”

As much for my benefit as for hers I uncorked the glamour. Things returned to normal, that being relative, and she was happy again, at least as happy as she ever was. I kept her laughing and feeling she was very special, and in some ways she was, at least to me, until I went to grad school, and then I was constantly back home again doing likewise.
She was in ICU most of the summer my first year and once again I was nurse. She had horrible gashes from an emergency surgery- a lathryscopy had failed and her gall bladder had to be quickly removed the old fashioned way and gangrene had set in and she had to have other surgeries. I spent the summer as her home healthcare giver doing some rather hands on stuff- packing wounds, taking care of some serious needs, and hearing the words no son ever wants to hear, no matter how heartfelt they are, from either of his parents-

Please don’t tape over my anus- that idiot nurse assistant did in the hospital once and it wasn’t comfortable.

I put as much of a positive spin on it as I could and again went to extremes not to make her feel like it was an imposition, because as anybody who’s been caregiver knows it is and it isn’t. But I think being there and taping those wounds is some serious karma points.

So I graduated some months later and a job was available locally in my field, good pay, a college I had graduated from, and one of my co-workers was a professor I particularly liked (though we’d only met via TV- it was a distance course). I considered applying for it- and my mother, all for the idea, made the comment “And you can stay here, save your money- it’ll work out great!”

“Well, I’ll probably get my own place eventually.”

“Well it’s an option but you’re welcome to stay here indefinitely of course…”

“Yeah, but some privacy is in order…”

“Why?”

“If I should have friends over.”

“Are you ashamed of me?”

“You know better than that.”

“Well… oh. I’d rather hoped you’d gotten that phase out of your system.”

“It’s not a phase. At least if it is it’s been going on since LBJ and this is either Bush or Gore, however they decide.”

“It doesn’t need to be discussed.”

“But if I get that job I think you’d agree, I should get another apartment.”

“If you’re going to be having spend the night visitors then I’d prefer you get it in another city.”

“Fine.”

“You choose fags over me, in other words.”

“I choose non-ultimatums over ultimatums from people who I should think I have proved my loyalty to sufficiently not to receive ultimatums from. But then I would have thought that I would never hear said-same person say they wished I was dead.”

“And you didn’t.”

“Or words to that effect— ‘rather you were dead’, I know. But what I never heard was ‘I am sorry I said that’ or even that you revoke it with apologies.”

“And you never will.”

“So you would still rather see me dead?”

“I will not answer that question. Because I do not have to. You know the answer.”

“Then be redundant. Would you still rather I be dead?”

“I will not be hauled to Canossa in my old age and forced to recant something that I just honestly can’t imagine you have any doubts about especially in my own goddamned house!”

“Fair enough. This is your house, you can make any rule you like. And that is why I will never live in this house, I will never live in this city, rather than cause you inordinate embarassment.”

“Fine!”

And so I did not ever live in the same city she lived in again. She kept me well informed of jobs in the city- amazing how someone who has no connections in the library field and doesn’t surf the Internet somehow knew when there was any kind of public, academic, special or other library job available, but I refused to live in her city. I visited her constantly- too constantly most would argue- I was in almost daily contact with her, but I kept my bargain. And during one of our few major arguments in the last few years she accused me of refusing to move back to Montgomery strictly to spite her or because I was embarassed of her. I answered her

“My refusal to move back to Montgomery is because you never apologized for a remark about my being dead that I need to hear an apology for. It’s a need Mama. I know that you’re sorry for it, I really do, but I need to hear you apologize and specifically say that you did not mean it. If they offered me a $500,000 directorship of the brand new $500 million ALABAMA LIBRARYOPOLIS tonight, I would not take it until I heard you apologize for that sentence.”

“Then I guess that means in two years you’d be out a million dollars because you’re not going to hear it. It’s been too long and I think the whole thing is ridiculous.”

“Fair enough.”

I never returned to Montgomery. I turned down a job at Auburn University 45 minutes away when she made a comment about how she always knew I’d be back. Ironically, that one she did apologize for, but by then I’d turned it down and frankly, as I told her truthfully (though I don’t think she realized I was being honest) I didn’t want the job in the first place. When her health started failing I took a position I suppose I did swallow some pride as I took a position I really didn’t want in Tuscaloosa because it was 100 miles/90 minutes away rather than 250 miles/4 hours away as the job I actually liked was, but it was an effective compromise.

As horrible as it sounds, when she became terminally ill I was still considering not moving back to Montgomery, but I’m glad to say that I swallowed my pride and did. I was going to be her primary caregiver and live in her house at last, something she’d wanted and lobbied for since she bought the place. Ironically, her death from a blood clot (or kidney failure or lung cancer or pleurisy or whatever exactly you want to blame it on- it was all of the above and I think kidneys and some long word I looked up but can’t remember were dual causes of death on the certificate) a week or two before she came home derailed the plan, so since her death, in a moment of supreme irony that my father would have loved, I live in her house, but she ain’t heah.

The point is that I have issues with women in my family saying that they wished I was dead. Or, technically, phrases that involve my being dead and their preference to see me as such to a gay alternative. And my sister enacted those issues.

But I love her.

And more to the point I want the equity in this house.

To be concluded.

(And I warned you this one didn’t make me look good, now didn’t I? But in interest of fairness I should like Heinrich IV stand in the snow myself for a post.)

95

I loved my mother very much. I in fact took her to see Ragtime three times (one official B’way show, one non-equity tour, one college) and she loved that song each time. I can say that I forgave her for the comment, I just couldn’t live with her until she apologized, if that makes sense, though had she lived I would have been living with her and I’m sure I’d have lost most of my hair and probably taken out a couple of joggers with a bazooka by now as well. (As it is hair is one thing I’m well blessed with- at least on my head- my chest is embarassingly hairless- but I digress.)
She never apologized, I never pressed the matter again after she got sick or long before, but while I forgave I can’t say I ever forgot. I’m not sure forgetting is possible.

While it may seem a petty enough thing- an apology for something you have no doubt the person is sorry for- it was probably the biggest monkey wrench in my relationship with my mother. But it was not in me to turn my back on my mother (the Chang-Eng liver tunnel being what it was). I’d have worried constantly whether she was happy, if she was eating right, if she was laughing, if she was enjoying anything, etc… As evidenced by the fact that I talked to her almost everyday and still worried constantly whether she was happy, if she was eating right, if she was laughing, if she was enjoying anything, etc… The glamour embargo bothered me as much as it did her (yes, I’m quite familiar with the term enabler- why do you ask, Two-Dogs-Fucking- wait, I think I cross refe… anyway, the point is-

I love and respect my sister. I even usually like her, regardless of how much we argue or disagree vehemently about. Which sounds familiar.

What doesn’t sound familiar is that, love and respect and like (and pity) her though I do, I am quite certain I could render her excommunicate and delivered forthright unto the diabolical buffetings and even re-use the snuffed out candle when the lights go out and not be racked with guilt. I know this about myself. I don’t have the bond with her I did with my mother, there’s nothing that has to be covered with gravy before summoning the rat terrier.

That said, I don’t want to. I really want to have a relationship with her always, she’s the only person who really knows what our childhood was like (we talk about this all the time when we’re together- “You know that you could go back in time and film it with a camera crew as a straight-up documentary and people would still swear you’re making this shit up! We had a St. Bernard who died on his wedding day and had to be thrown out the door so his former owner couldn’t see him, a cow who lived in the house and a bunch of crazy old aunts who pissed in the yard and a daddy who sang Bonnie Blue Flag to his cows and drove a Toyota that looked like a pregnant skateboard and hauled cow feed in his Cadillac and I’ve been married to [brother-in-law] 25 years and he knew these people and even he still acts like I’m making it up!” (Our brother also knows these stories, and while it may surprise some to know it he L-O-V-E-S to get me to tell them to his friends and his kids because “you tell stories a lot better than the rest of us”, and the weirdest thing of all was when my sister read portions from my book and not only loved them but said she’d finance its publishing if need be (I don’t think so) because she doesn’t want these people to be forgotten. (“[Our brother] can tell his little Ipod carrying Banana Public wearing SUV driving spoiled teens who look just like us but they’re gone think ‘this is quaint’, these people are strangers to them, and I’m probably never gonna have kids unless I adopt and I don’t really want to do that, and you say you don’t want kids- that means if somebody doesn’t write it down Mama and Daddy and Kitty and Carrie and Grandmother and all of them are just- Gone With the Wind- and that’s been taken- you know what you should call your book? Fireworks in the Fog. Last year they had a fireworks show down on the beach during a thick fog and it’s the weirdest prettiest thing you ever saw, doesn’t make much sense but then Gone With the Wind doesn’t really say Sherman burns Georgia and a woman gets married a lot either does it?”

Anyway, I want to always know her. At the same point I don’t want to be closeted. At the same point I don’t want to go through the same coming out shit with her that I went through with my mother and I can tell you flatly that I’m not going to put up with a 10th as much from her, and she assures me I’ll be disowned.

One thing I told her during our recent Springer fits (you can take the kids out of the hills of Alabama but…) was that if she doesn’t honor my mother’s wishes and let me keep the equity on this house I’ll never speak to her again. I think it struck home more than really intended.

“You’re telling me that for the sake of a few thousand dollars you’d disown your sister?”

“Yes.”

“A few thousand dollars?”

“It’s not the money. Correction: it’s not just the money. And you know it.”

“What I know is that if there’s one thing I’ve got plenty of and don’t need more of it’s money and if it runs out I can make more. You can’t make more family. Not at my age anyway. And if I could they wouldn’t share Weokahatchee. So don’t go saying you’d cut blood off for a few thousand dollars!”

“All the more reason you should do what’s right about the house.”

“What’s right is relative.”

“Mama was a relative. She wanted me to have the house.”

“I have no use for it. I just say things to get you riled up.”

“Congrats. It worked.”

Anyway, I have no idea if I’ll get to keep the proceeds from this house. If she learns I’m gay I’ve little to no doubt she’ll keep a third just to spite me, and if that happens I really will stop speaking to her, which I hope doesn’t happen because I really do love her. At the same point, while I think the notion of Gay Pride is as silly as Left Handed Pride or Blonde Pride, I have absolutely no shame in the fact that I’m gay and if she wants to disown me over it, she may. I’ll be fine, I can make a living, I’ll have a third of the house proceeds and almost no debt, whatever. But I really do want to keep knowing her.

And I actually want her to know I’m gay. The only reason I never told her was because 1) my mother specifically asked me not to “because I can’t deal with the Bible beating” 2) no really good time ever presented itself [family gathering “and let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy site oh Lord our God, Amen. Pass the corn. You know, speaking of things I’d like to accept in my mouth, did anybody see the Real World when they were in…”] 3) I didn’t want to deal with the bullshit either.

BUT

Until she knows I’m gay we’re never going to have an honest relationship. I hate being closeted to her, gender flipping (which I no longer do but admit I have done in the past), pretending I’m a fuss-budget sloppy bachelor- a Felix Madison or Oscar Unger as the case may be. I want her to know, which is to say specifically I want her to know and after taking some time to adjust be cool with it, but whether that’ll ever happen or not I have my doubts.

In any case, after the whole “good as dead” comment I responded with a polite “Fuck you” and strangely within a few minutes we were outside telling Mama stories and laughing and saying “Oh my God why did she do that stuff! Oh, remember the time she shot at the Snively boy on New Year’s Eve- or at least he thought she was shooting at him. Had it coming to, he was mean to Old Shep… it was really just a Roman Candle she was aiming because her gun was in the house… and that time the Mormons came and BB sat in their lap and she said 'They’ve been reading the Book of Nephi. Wanna Coke? Sorry, keep forgetting…” and she had no idea how majorly offended I am.

And earlier today I said I have no feeling of glee towards Jerry Falwell dying, and I don’t, but only because it comes too late to stop any damage he did. The way I’m most different in the Waking from on the Dope is probably in religion: in The Waking I’m not 2% as likely to attack religious beliefs. While my sympathies are totally in line with Christopher Hitchens, religion is not the least bit abstract with most of the people I’ve known: I most definitely have known people, good people and intelligent people even, who I think could as effectively spend their time praying to a formica statue of a half-goat/half-pinecone as in their churches but who at the same time I honestly think would be screaming and crying themselves to sleep were it not for the ultimately hollow tree. I’m not going to tell the sweet co-worker whose beloved son died of aneurysm when he was 14 that “Oh, you’ll see him again one day- when the Alzheimer’s sets in- maybe- but I doubt it- mostly he’s just maggot meat”; I’ll fold my Full House to her theological pair of twos everytime, because it gives her comfort that I cannot replace. (Personally I find comfort in lack of faith, but that’s another topic and a different kind of comfort.)

The same’s true of my sister. She peppers conversations constantly about that minister or this minister and their absolutely true tales that can all be found told better at Snopes.com. But it gives her comfort, it makes her believe that all will work out in the final reel and that she’ll see those she’s loved and lost again and this time they’ll all be happy and eating cornbread and Mustang’s ketchup gravy, and I don’t want to take that away from her even if I think it’s as full of shit as Elvis after a five day Cheese’n’Rib Fest.

But why do they have to tack on the homophobic bullshit? And why can’t these same good people line-item veto it out? I’ve yet to hear one get so worked up over divorcees who remarry and yet not only is that condemned it was condemned by Jesus himself in THREE (3) of the Gospels (that’s 1.5 times the number that mention the Virgin Birth or Beatitudes and 3 times the number that mention the Wise Men). Nope, it’s queers. I’ll see Mama and Uncle Joe and Jed and George Washington and Jesus and the Skipper too in that great hereafter and it keeps me hanging on… and all the queers will be in Hell. (Not that they’ve ever done anything to me, but Paul says they’re icky and the Book of Mildew Sacrifice & Other Everyday Tips says they’re abomna abdoman abomsi gross, and that’s enough for me, cause gotta see Skipper and Mama again."

Ah, tis madness. And then when you throw in the genes it’s even more fucked up.

Anyway, that was my week, how was yours?

96

Sampiro, next time you are over this way I owe you a dinner at whatever your favorite resturant here is. Just let me know when.

97

Not nearly so entertaining, since you ask.

Can we get another story next week please?

98

I’ve read every word here, Jon, and am sympathetic with your accumulated pain at not being being able to be honest with a basic way of being to your sister. My gut reaction is that you should wait a bit, and get through the Mamaleum dispersion before tackling that. It would just add another layer of outright tension to dealing with it all.

Again, your writing is just superb. I’ve spent time here reading your writing over the stacks of books by the bedside, because it’s so compelling and heartful. One l’il tidbit pulled out…possible title for the Book, which will surely come out, as it is pouring out, generously, here:“What’s Right Is Relative”.

I know you’re wrestling deeply with how to have some truth with your sister,
and can only wish you best in navigating that. My guts say that, even if she is an idiot and dismisses you initially, she won’t be able to live without you in her life, and her harshness won’t last over decent thought.

Damn. And Best.

99

Is “uncorking the glamour” a Southern or personal phrase? I’ve never heard it before, but really like it.

100

Thanks – I, too, love to read anything you write.

Here is a suggestion: maybe you should write it for your sister. She responded better to your email than to your talk in this story, and having her read it first will give her a chance to get over it and think about it before she talks to you. At least it will give her an opportunity not to say something unforgivable, and then be backed into a corner by her own pride like your mom. And, of course, do it AFTER the house thing is totally settled…

I have some people I love who are like that – are much better for being allowed to think it over first.

You can throw in some sentimental truths while you are at it: You know me, sis, and you already know whether I’m a good person or not. I wouldn’t let anybody comment about your choice of companion or what you do in your bedroom, and I know in your heart you would do the same for me. This can’t be easy for you to hear, but I’m still me. I didn’t do it this way because I didn’t want to confront you, I just wanted to give you some privacy before we talked, which I’m ready to do anytime.

Send her a selection of some of the things you’ve written for us, and put this latest one as the last one.

Best wishes–I hope this goes well for you, you certainly deserve a break. I cheered when the house stuff worked out between you and your sister.