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May 26, 2005
Klymaxx
First and most importantly, there’s a horrible smell coming from the bathroom downstairs that wasn’t there four days ago when I bleached and Pine-Sol’d that bathroom to hell. It smells exactly like the decomposing body of a small mangy little mouse and I am part morbidly happy, part devastated to find it. That’s suburban excitement.
Now…
To tell this story, I have to finally introduce my boyfriend by name. I can’t keep writing “my boyfriend” forever. Well, his name is J. No, not the J of four years ago but bless that J’s heart. We’re still friends after all this time. He’s grown his hair out and decided to live off the land in Montana and he still smells like all kinds of oils and incenses. It’s in his pores and it’s amazing. Anyway, this is a new J, but he’s still a J. I noticed that almost all of my boyfriends in my life have had either the initial J or C as a first or last initial. I’ve had two CJ’s, one JC, a JK and a CC and now I have another J. Weird. Oh snap, Coral is a CJ too. Bizarre.
Shorty and Mercy – in full effect.
So as J was driving me and my parents to breakfast, my mother asked me if I got my high school reunion papers in the mail. I did and we, well I started talking about the straight up devastation of getting invited to your high school reunion. I’m old, I think. So Shorty chimes in with, “Well, don’t ever go to no high school reunion where they serve fish…” and J and I looked at each other assuming he’d have some kind of life experience behind this comment. J asked, “Why is that, Mr. Howard?” and my dad said, “E’rybody breath be stankin’ and shit…” and he sucked his teeth and got re-situated in his seat still visibly upset about the tiny screwdrivers.
The tiny screwdrivers, you ask?
Before breakfast, my dad was on a rampage. He was angrily stomping through the house looking for a tiny set of screwdrivers.
“They are in a tiny cassette tape box! Little screwdrivers. Every time I put something down in this house, it up and walks away. This is fucked up…”
I offered to take him to Home Depot to replace the missing screwdrivers but he refused claiming the price tag rises every time he has to replace something he’s lost. I tried to calm him down as this was his first real time meeting J. J, mellow little pea he is, just stood there calm as can be as if this was normal and then started looking around as well. Like he would know where they are.
This is normal, for my family, actually. My dad thinks he’s lost something. Everybody in the house gets cussed out and we all just stand by as he whirls around in a rage that is much larger than his body. He makes commentary on all the other things he’s lost in the past as he searches for yet another item he’s misplaced but believes to have been stolen. He yells about things he lost years and years ago. Including a chainsaw which I’ll get back to.
“The other day, I put down a $34 memory card and now, boom, it up and walked away. Ain’t that some shit?” he screams.
J says, “You should pat down everybody that comes into the house…” jokingly, but J doesn’t really know Shorty just yet so it’s not really a joking matter to my dad.
Luckily, instead of noticing that J is totally clowning, my dad agrees and says, “I know it was that little boy Jeremy…” My nephew plays video games with a little boy named Jeremy in the neighborhood. Jeremy is totally 3 feet tall and adorable, wavy brown hair in his eyes with a wonderfully pleasant and nerdy demeanor.
“The next time he come over, he ain’t getting his clothes back til he leaves. I don’t care if he butt naked back there playing video games. If he done took my shit, he ain’t getting his clothes back til he leaves…”
As you can see, the rage has put my dad in a position to believe that a child stole his tiny screwdrivers and as a result will be strip searched. I am the product of this crazy person, you see. J is trying his hardest not to laugh as he can see the anger is real.
I tell my dad to just chill out and that I’ll help him look when we get back from breakfast, so come on.
“Oh, what? You think they’ll magically reappear after I eat…”
He’s ranting as he buckles up and we start talking about other things. Stupid other things like high school reunions but I’m trying my create a “just brought my boyfriend home and would like him to think it’s still okay to go out with me” vibe. Every five minutes or so, my dad brings up the missing screwdrivers.
“And J, another time, just like the screwdrivers, my damn chainsaw turned up missing…”
Over breakfast, my dad tells J about the famous missing chainsaw but this time there is a new development.
“Meleesa, remember I looked all over Brandon for that damn chainsaw?” (He also pronounces my name wrong and that’s how I got the nickname Lisa Marie growing up when my name is totally Melissa Dawn, but what? I don’t know either.)
He turns to J to tell him the story.
“Look here, I took my serial number from the chainsaw and I went to every pawn shop looking for that thing. Nobody had it. I just knew my son pawned it, with his Pawn King ass but I couldn’t find it.”
By the way, five Thanksgivings ago my brother was named Pawn King because he went through a pawning phase when he needed to buy equipment that would help him become the greatest MC that ever walked the earth. But, dude, you’re from a tiny suburb of Tampa which in order to get to, you have to go through strawberry fields and cow pastures so um…
“Well, a couple weeks ago I noticed this Jamaican guy that just moved in the back of the neighborhood had a chainsaw. Later on, I went to look at the chainsaw and guess what? There wasn’t no serial number on it. I knew it was my chainsaw. I think your brother traded it for a couple of joints…”
Joints though, dad? A chainsaw for two joints? Cool Jamaican reference. What happened to that pawning theory? So did my dad just creep around this man’s tool shed inspecting his chainsaw?
“Yes, I did” he said proudly.
My mother and I looked at each other with a familiar eye roll as this story was just insane. Just like all his other stories and highfalutin ideas. (Highfalutin is the best and worst word at the same time.) My dad, man. He’s always been a fascinating conspiracy theorist.
Later that afternoon, when J was getting the backyard tour where my mother takes the time to name every plant and its origin, J noticed there were no really large trees. He pulls me aside and says, “Babe, there are no trees back here that would call for your dad to have a chainsaw…” I said, “That’s just it, dude. This is the Howard family. Catch up…”
Right before dinner, my dad walked up to J and goes, “Da da da da!” and J looked up and my dad was holding the tiny screwdrivers that had, in fact, magically reappeared. J asked him where he found them.
Whispering, my dad goes, “I left them up on the shelf. Shhhhhhhhhh. Don’t be blowing up my spot…” J swore he wouldn’t say anything and then he came to find me in the other room (which was essentially breaking J’s rule of never leave him alone at any time) and told me everything.
Other highlights include my dad air drumming at the dinner table. Where most families turn the music off to enjoy a meal, my dad brings the speaker into the dining room, increases the volume and air drums to his favorite parts. J is a musician so this is just awesome for him. J is constantly tapping and drumming on all surfaces, including me which hurts sometimes but I try to suck it up as this is his passion. They both really love Jimmy Smith, some jazz organist so they’re yelling across the table talking to each other. J’s business partner really loves Jimmy Smith too and for his birthday, J flew Jimmy Smith and his band to Long Island to play a private show for him in his office. J is telling this story to my dad, who’s in disbelief. My grandfather really loved Jimmy Smith, so much so, it was included in his obituary so there was a moment there where I really knew I am supposed to be with this person.
Ladies (and gay men and lesbians that should totally be allowed to be married), you know the feeling I’m talking about. When you just know stars are aligned and there’s no way anyone could have this much in common with you or a member of your insane family. He’s just…
There were several times where J and my dad were doing the same things with their bodies as they talked and it freaked me out. I’d always noticed some Shorty characteristics about my boyfriend but when they were together in a room, it was just unbelievable. They had a nice long conversation about the value of having a perfect moustache, another obsession they share. I had a stupid moustache, straight out of control, until yesterday when I discovered a threading place in the city and wow! Do you thread? Way way way better than waxing and I didn’t leave there with Melissa Eyebrows of 2000, thank goodness.
Anyway, they have so much in common, I almost can’t take it.
There’s so much more, but I have to go now. Paco, the dog I live with, has gotten into a bitter rivalry with me over J. I have to go make sure my precious belongings aren’t getting chewed up. I keep telling J that he does it specifically and only to my stuff that I love, but J says I’m paranoid.
Oh really?
So far Paco’s dragged my beloved pashmina through a huge dirt/hair pile that came from his own body (the sweeping is just wow). Eaten my Hello Kitty blanket (gift from Coral). Annihilated these hand-painted wooden fruits that sit inside of a solid wooden sculpture of a squatting Filipino man that is older than I am and has been bestowed upon me reluctantly (I begged) by my mother. I cried over that one. Oh, and let us not forget how he’s totally chewed through the heels and toes on the best ever Klymaxx Meeting in the Ladies’ Room style 80s black slouch leather high heel boots that were insanely difficult to find in my size so yeah, I’m paranoid?
But such is life. The things we deal with to date the incarnations of our fathers.
Posted by melissah at May 26, 2005 12:07 PM