On This Day: Your History

[Alex]

13th June 2020.

I spent the night with severe stomach cramps. In the morning I found a copy of a book called "Handbook for the recently deceased." I hadn't realised just how bad the pain had been I guess.

13th June 2014.

Spent the day arguing with football fans after being unwillingly dragged into a conversation about it. Every so often one of them would rally slightly and attempt to mock my team. Since I didn't have one, it meant these counterattacks faltered fairly quickly. Mocking sports fans is like shooting fish in a barrel though. 22 overpaid guys running up and down a field, kicking a ball.

[ER]

13th June 2014.

Spent the day arguing with football fans after being unwillingly dragged into a conversation about it. Every so often one of them would rally slightly and attempt to mock my team. Since I didn't have one, it meant these counterattacks faltered fairly quickly. Mocking sports fans is like shooting fish in a barrel though. 22 overpaid guys running up and down a field, kicking a ball.

I also hate when fans say "we" and "us" when talking about a team, just like they themselves are there on the field sliding through the sweat and mud puddles of steroid blood.

[Alex]

13th June 2014.

Spent the day arguing with football fans after being unwillingly dragged into a conversation about it. Every so often one of them would rally slightly and attempt to mock my team. Since I didn't have one, it meant these counterattacks faltered fairly quickly. Mocking sports fans is like shooting fish in a barrel though. 22 overpaid guys running up and down a field, kicking a ball.

I also hate when fans say "we" and "us" when talking about a team, just like they themselves are there on the field sliding through the sweat and mud puddles of steroid blood.

I've always felt that was a sign of someone who felt they had failed in life and was trying to achieve reflected glory by living vicariously through other people's achievements.

[ER]

June 14, 2022 Back home the heat index was 111, but in Ireland it was a more comfortable mid-sixties. I went for a walk in the afternoon and saw a Polish skinhead wearing a Bart Simpson shirt, and I almost asked him what the Polish caption said, but he was deep-scowling, and as I'd been told many times that Poles and Irish tended not to mix well around there, I refrained.

Toward evening was my grandmother's wake, held the traditional ten days after her death, and it was notably subdued by Irish standards. There was sobriety and the tone was religious more than a boisterous tribute. A quote favored by my grandmother was read at one point:

"The first step to humility is recognizing one is proud."

It was by C.S. Lewis, an odd choice for my exceedingly Catholic grandmother, given Lewis was a Protestant of Orange stock.

[ER]

June 15, 1994 In my diary I wrote: This was the greatest night of my entire life.

That evening, though I was only fifteen and a half, I got included among college students to go hear a girl I was exceedingly jealous of named Paige sing on stage in the uptown by the university, and meet up with Brian and his friend Dave, Dave's girlfriend Susie, and Susie's friend Taylor, who had a "Marilyn" piercing above her lip. They sat in this dive that had a cool ambience but also duct tape covering rips in the vinyl booths, as we killed time before the show. They ordered beers, and the server said normally she wouldn't bring them to a group that had someone underage in it, but she knew them so was cool about it, and they downed their beers, making me feel left, out but I'd have said no if I'd been offered.

The older girls were giggly, and Brian, who the year before had said I was his snare----as in trouble---put his hand over mine on the tabletop and announced to his friends, "This girl is some sort of genius. I swear. She's the smartest person I know, so I don't know why she gives me her valuable time, but she does."

That embarrassed me because it was definitely not true that I was anywhere near the smartest person he knew, but it also made me feel good that he'd say something ridiculous like that about me to his friends.

When we left Brian said if we looked more like a couple, cops maybe wouldn't notice I was fifteen, so he put his arm around me as we walked and he smelled like beer and spearmint gum and this aftershave smell, and I loved how his hair was doing that flip over and flip back thing in the breeze, not really long but longer than it'd been in his high school days, and I could have walked all night like that.

We went a few blocks to the club where Paige was going to sing, it was basically a building that'd been old row houses with the lower floors gutted and converted to a stage and audience area, nothing fancy but a gig was a gig.

And there I finally met Paige, Brian's "sort of girlfriend," and I could see why he liked her. She was one-quarter Japanese, one-quarter Hawaiian, the rest, "reg'lur American" and was so amazingly pretty that honestly some bit of hope about ever having a chance with Brian died inside me right there. I mean OK, I was an all-American blonde, but this girl could've been a Hawaiian Tropic model. Yet after that shock of first impression I kind of spitefully observed she was built straight up and down like a boy, but her face was amazing, and her charisma went to eleven. I also discovered something I'd find the entire time I knew her, and that was she was also incredibly nice, especially to me. She kissed me and squeezed my hand and said she was glad I could come hear her sing, and said she'd heard so much about me. Then she asked Taylor to please not smoke before she went onstage, and I liked her for that, too, because I hated smoking.

She hung with us for almost an hour and we six sat at a table while two other bands played, and Brian and the rest had more beers, which did actually surprise me because he wasn't a drinker, and was always telling me how he never wanted to be a drunk like his dad, Joe, but he did seem to be handling it well and also wasn't consuming any more than his friends were, so I thought well, whatever. So Paige and I were the only non-imbibers at the table, because she told me she wouldn't drink either since I couldn't and she didn't want me to feel left out. (Oh, I hated her being so nice to me!)

Finally Paige went up on stage and I swear the room went quieter when she did, and right off she said, "Tonight I'm going to sing a song I wrote for someone I love."

I thought, oh s**t, she wrote it for Brian? She just said she loves him?

Then she went, "Mr. Kurt Cobain!"

Huge cheers when she said that name and I thought, that's a relief!

If her speaking voice was DJ perfect (she actually did do DJ work at parties) her singing was far above even that, reaching multiple octaves, and her original song was so beautiful I can still hear it now, almost thirty years later. It went:

"Tell my heart, tell my heart/That we belong together/Tell my heart, tell my heart/ What strength there is in silence/ Tell my soul, my hurting soul/He won't be coming home annnnnymore..."

She did three songs in fifteen minutes, all originals, and finally said, "Thank you, gang, all twenty-two of you here tonight were the best audience in town!"

Everyone at the table stood up and clapped and cheered, even me/especially me, and she grinned walking back down in her black silk shirt and looked so exotically cool, moving gracefully like a dancer, her perfect hair like liquid motion, and I knew I was seeing someone absolutely amazing.

Afterwards we walked down the street to Dominos and sat in a big corner booth, and the guys who'd played with Paige onstage, Rod and Brummy, were hilarious, both were stoned and mellow, and we got two big pizzas, and Rod and Brummy and Dave went around to the parking lot to fire a joint up, and offered me some if I wanted to come outside, and I said no thank you, and Brian, who was sitting between Paige and me, leaned his head back against the booth while sitting slumped forward at the waist, like a pose planned to look casual, though I don't think it was, and he said to them, "This one never does anything. She's my angel."

He said it like he meant it about me, and it was sweet but puzzling to hear. He turned to me and rubbed my arm and asked if I was doing OK, and I was, and Paige asked how tennis was going, and it surprised me she knew that about me.  I told her was going into the Jr. USTA tour when I turned sixteen and hopefully the full tour at eighteen, and she said she'd like to come watch me play sometime. She seemed so interested that God help me, I couldn't hate her, I realized I really liked her, even though she was going out with someone I was in love with, and she herself was so far beyond me I should've probably abandoned all hope of him being in my life.

(Ah, patience, young Grasshopper...)

At the end of the night Brian said he was giving me a ride home, and Paige gave me a hug and kissed my cheek and slipped her phone number into my hand and said, "Call me, we'll do something sometime."

I thought, she's so cool she doesn't even mind him taking me back without her?

To Brian though she said, "Let's see you walk some straight lines, or I'm driving her back."

He smiled at her and more than walked straight lines, he jumped up onto this stone wall and walked on it, because like my cousin Dana he had one of those lightning-fast metabolisms that sobered really quickly and was honestly fine, so Paige told him she'd see him later then---which I think meant she'd literally be seeing him later that night---and went on, leaving Brian to walk me to his car doing this thing he would often do across all the years we were together, something no other man ever quite did, putting his arm not so much around me as rested on my shoulders, like a bar, and that always made me feel protected, like an enclosing fence.

The area was high crime, but Brian said we had more to worry about with cops than anything else, and told me I could pass for a first-semester college student, but not more than that, and I said, "Hey, wait a second, when you first met me in seventh grade, two years ago, you said I seemed mature, like I was your age, a senior in high school."

He goes, "Nah, I was just flattering you to seduce you."

Oh, as if!

And his fear almost came true, we had just started off driving in his car when a police cruiser came up behind us like a shark out of a reef. Yeah, great, if the cop stopped us there he'd be out alone with a minor in his vehicle, late at night, after city curfew, and the minor's parents didn't know she was out there. He also still smelled faintly of beer and was slightly not old enough to drink either but did on a fake ID. Wow...

He stayed ice-cool but it freaked me out so much it was like my heart quit beating, and when the cop finally turned off onto a side street I started doing that nervous laugh thing I do, which he said he'd missed hearing, then told me then he could just hear the cop asking him, "And how old is the young lady with you tonight, sir?"

So he played a Weezer CD and we drove on through the uptown, black people standing around on every street corner, some staring us down, most going on with their lives on a blistering summer night. We were almost back when I remembered my manners and told him it was a great night and thanks for inviting me, and he said he was glad I could come. Remembering Paige knowing about my tennis playing, I said he really did brag on me to his friends like he said, didn't he? He said of course, I'd always been special to him, and then he called me by this nickname he'd made up that was like my name, Evelyn, turned into letters: FLN.

I hated for the ride to end, hated to see my neighbor Gerald's yellow bug light burning on his porch, and I thought, when I'm in college will it be like this for me too, like it is for him and his friends, doing cool stuff all the time? Will he and I still know each other then? Will we always know each other? It was how I wished life always could be.

He let me off from up the street, and I went into my house, told my mom hi and prepared to fall into keeping up the lie I'd told about where I'd been that night. I took my dog, Charlotte Sometimes, outside and looked at the sky, and the only thing that made me sad after such a great time was knowing no matter how much I wrote about it in my diary or tried to memorize the way I felt then, time was going to make me forget little bits of it, and never get it exactly right if I ever told about it one day.

[ER]

June 16, 1989 It felt like a big deal that I rode a bus alone downtown to meet my dad for lunch. I went to the federal building where he worked, and because he was running behind, I sat in an outer office and played checkers with his secretary, a nice lady named Jean, who regaled me with stories about living in Norfolk, England for seven years while she was in the Air Force, and I tried not to look at the pomegranate-colored scab on her cheek where she'd had a small skin cancer removed.

When my dad finally emerged he took me to a place called Red Squirrel, famous for double deckers, and we spent almost an hour before he walked me four blocks north to the immense downtown library, where I stayed the rest of the afternoon until he could drive us home, and life seemed particularly special after a day like that.

My dad was into Apple before most of the country had heard of it. In the mid-'80s he sported a rainbow-colored Apple decal on his car's bumper, and he even had a picture of a more round-faced, friendlier-looking Steve Jobs hanging in his study. On this day he got his third Macintoch, meaning he'd owned the original, the SE, and now the IIcx, which came with a whole megabyte of RAM for a mere $1,500.00. We were on a waiting list to get a second phone line put in dedicated to the Mac alone, but before the techs came almost a month later, the deal was Mom and I had to check if my dad was on his computer before we tried to make a call.

Here's a confession unveiled now for the first time: I liked that chirpy modem sound so much I sometimes used to pick up the phone on purpose, just to hear it.

[ER]

June 17, 2015 Encountered the creepiest bagger in Kroger's history, someone I never saw in the store before or since, who kept chatting at me in this monotone so dull I couldn't make out more than one word in three. He reminded me a bit of how Andy Warhol probably looked at that moment, and if this dude wasn't a high-functioning zombie, I don't know what he was. He had this mop of frizzy white hair that surely had to be a wig, pale skin, and even his eyes looked glassy. My three-year-old clutched my arm and leaned away from him when we left the checkout and she kept her eyes on him, clearly determined not to turn her back. I don't know what the bagger's deal was except he didn't seem sick and I don't think he was an albino, but I can truly say I've never encountered anyone outside Halloween who so completely had the sepulchral appearance of an extra from a horror movie, so if he was doing the look for shock value, he deserved an extra ration of brain.

[RCMerchant]

29 years ago, my son Eddie was born.
I named him Edward Clyde Merchant. I have 3 grandkids by him. 2 by my oldest son, Jed.

[ER]

Happy birthday to him, RC! 

[RCMerchant]

^ Thank you!

[ER]

June 18, 2015 Went to Starbucks that evening to do this self-tormenting game I was fond of for a while and stood in line to get waited on by the young woman with whom my husband had cheated on me. She had no idea who I was and I never could summon an active dislike for her since she didn't know he was married when they messed around, or even know his real name, and he'd even dumped her cold without so much as a text, poor kid, but sometimes I'd get an urge to go be near her and keep a clandestine eye on her. Every time I was there I'd evaluate her, and found her friendly (obviously), with strong charisma, a nice body, really killer ass, a decade younger than me, sure, but I'd think....she isn't worth a man risking his whole domestic life just to get inside her, you know? I'd also always leave her a five buck tip on a three buck tea, and when Edie saw me do that one time she laughed herself silly going, "That girl has no idea she's getting paid for having sex with your husband!" Ohhhh, funny.

[Alex]

18th July 2017.

Everywhere I went people kept wishing me happy father's day. Each time someone said it, it was like I'd just been stabbed and the knife was twisted sideways. Losing Lilly-Beth still felt pretty raw. The first few times it was said, I did my best to take it in the spirit it was meant and not lash out at anyone, but they just wouldn't stop. The first person that said it, did so in a very awkward fashion that seemed unnatural and made me wonder if he'd been asked to say it. Eventually, while we were going up the escalator in Tesco's and Kristi was trying to point out some father's day presents being sold off to the side I had a bit of a breakdown. I wouldn't look around to see what she was pointing to. She asked me if she had offended me in some way and I just couldn't keep it together any longer and broke down in tears in the middle of the supermarket. Although I've never asked her I've always had the suspician that Kristi meaning well had asked people to treat me like any other dad. I know she'd been reading articles about women who had lost babies and did they count as being mothers in the time leading up to this. Maybe if she'd waited a few more years. Maybe what works for women just didn't work for me. That was the most pain I'd been in since she died. When we got home I stuck a post up on social media telling people to stop sending me fathers day messages.

[ER]

June 19, 1989 I actually remember when my Uncle Pat called my mom long-distance on her twenty-ninth birthday to say hi and also give her the joyful news that he and my aunt had a newborn daughter, Celia Teresa, their third girl in a row. I ran to the phone to tell him congratulations, and said I was happy for them all, and couldn't wait to come over and meet my new cousin. In retrospect that joy was ironic considering the negative role Celia would go on to play in my life, but not knowing this, I would grow to be close to her for many years, and just as I've often called Tyler "my son who is not my son," Celia was the little sister I never got. I've pondered a thousand nature vs. nurture questions as to what went wrong with her, concluding she is a bona fide sociopath, but the happiness the news of her birth brought that day would sour amid the pain radiantly beautiful Celia would eventually bring into my life.

[ER]

June 20:

1992: Didn't likeThe Stand, despite being repeatedly told it was King's masterpiece.

1998: Took a whale-watching excursion in Bar Harbor and saw minke whales, puffins, and what could possibly have been a mako shark.

2004: The Man in Austin talked me into reading the anticlimactic Da Vinci Code, which he loved.

2005: Attended an all-acoustic Alanis Morissette concert marking ten years since JLP was released.

2015: Went to a butterfly show with my children, young cousins*, my Aunt Sarah, and my visiting maternal grandmother, who later went to dinner at Sarah's house and met her Jewish son in law for the first time. (Hell did not freeze over.) I pondered that my ultra-Catholic grandmother was once a vividly pretty girl of fey charms, who, so she abashedly told me, used to flirt with boys back in her youth. I could not imagine the serious, rosary-toting old lady being that way.

2016: My dad showed me the ring he got to propose yet another marriage to my mom.

2022: A bronze sculpture of the Capitoline Wolf, donated by Mussolini in 1931, was stolen from our local art museum.

* Earlier I said "niece and nephew" instead of cousins???? What Freudian corner of my mind did that come from? 

[Alex]

2005: Attended an all-acoustic Alanis Morissette concert marking ten years since JLP was released.

How did you find her live? I went to see her once and I came away with the conclusion that either she owed her career to auto-tune or that she was having a very bad night.