The Rents: Part 1 - Who Are These People?

The following was originally written April, 2007.

It began as a typical morning…

I awoke on the couch 20 minutes before my alarm was to sound. The color of the room a little off as the sun had yet to fully rise. A cat brushed by my feet that were propped up on the arm rest at the opposite end. I’m too tall for most couches, but despite this little fact I rarely make it to my own bed anymore. I rolled over and intended to continue my usual morning ritual, which consisted of what I like to consider a gradual waking process. Most people would just see a lazy asshole on the couch hitting the snooze button until it was absolutely time to get up. But fuck them, life’s all about perception.

That’s when I hear…SLAM!

SLAM!

SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!

It’s my mother trying to get the washing machine to start up. The switch on the lid that activates it sticks, and I had showed her the night before my remedy. But after 15 hours of washing every piece of fabric in my house, I think the thing gave up and finally broke.

I sat up, sighed, and then stumbled to the laundry room to save myself, more than my mother. No dice, the machine is fucked. No surprise to me at all. When I arrived home from work the day before to discover my parents had actually made good on their threat to visit, my mother was already doing my laundry. By the end of the evening she had done more laundry than I had in the last 6 months. I think my washing machine felt abused.

I’m not a morning person. I can get up and be functioning, but don’t talk to me. Or I guess you can talk to me, but don’t expect a response. At least nothing more than a grunt.

I decided that my morning shower would be good solitude from the onslaught of Sam and Julia at 7 in the morning. Why is it that my parents are incapable of acknowledging the passage of time?

It’s not 1989!
I’m not 13!

It’s 2007!
I’m 31!

I’ve managed to make it on my own for a while now!

But this never seems to matter. They don’t approve of anything of my lifestyle. My line of work, the friends I keep, my love of travel, my tattoos, my clothes, my connoisseurial interest in Beer, Wine, and Tobacco, my interest in motorcycles. I can’t begin to imagine the kind of life they want me to lead. But all this frustration does have a bit of payoff as it makes me feel a bit of the rebel.

After the shower and dress I found I had more time than I usually allow myself in the morning. As of recent I’d been a little lazy, so normally by the time I’m through with my shower its rush, rush, rush and out the door. But today I found myself with an opportunity to eat in.

My mother had discovered the brand new packages of blueberry bagels and cream cheese that had gone untouched amongst my food stuff for the past two weeks. I enjoy blueberry bagels and cream cheese. After all, I had purchased them. But on discovering that I do not own a toaster they had become useless to me. Could someone actually eat an untoasted bagel? Honestly I hadn’t even gotten that far in my thinking. Without a toaster I had completely banished any thought of bagels and cream cheese. Luckily my mother was there to put a new perspective on things.

So here I was, six minutes left on the clock before I was out the door and on my way to work. I thought I could relax, read my David Sedaris book, and eat my bagel all on the comfort of my couch.

In comes my father. He sits on the ottoman in front of the chair. As he puts on his socks he inquires as to what I’m reading. I immediately have my usual reaction when my father asks what I’m doing. I think:

“What the fuck do you want to know for”?

Let me ‘splain…

No, there’s no time…

Let me summarize…

DAD
What’cha readin’?

ME
David Sedaris

DAD
Who’s that?

ME
He’s a writer.

You can see where this is going. Plus, if I were to explain that he writes comedic true lifestories about his (fucked up dysfunctional, not entirely unlike our) family…oh, and he’s a homosexual…there would be no end to my father’s bad, terribly bad, horribly terribly bad jokes.

(CUE MOTHER)

Just then my mother walks in the room as if on cue. She carries a wooden handled brush with long bristles. The kind of brush I imagine one removed lint with. She then begins brushing my father’s fine thinning white hair. My dad looks at me with a sheepish grin and says:

“I’m like an old horse, I get brushed every morning."

I cracked a half hearted smile that I hope communicates:

“I knew you were going to say something dumb like that.”

See, that’s my dad. You always know its coming. His eyes light up, and he gets that stupid grin on his face. Here comes a stinker. It’s my mother you have to watch out for. You never know what she’s going to say. You could never prepare yourself for hearing 2 beats after my father’s comment…

“And you’re hung like a horse too!”

But that’s what she said. Did you get that? Are you listening? My dad said:

“I’m like an old horse, I get brushed every morning.”

And my sweet little old prim and proper mother followed it up with…

“And you’re hung like a horse too!”

There I sat on the couch. One leg propped up on my knee. Book in one hand, blueberry bagel with cream cheese in the other.

My entire body tensed. I curled up into a tiny little ball deep, deep, deep inside my chest and wept. Inside my head I screamed.

I prayed that my exterior did not betray my horrified interior. I sat unflinching eating my bagel and reading my book. At any moment I imagined a bird would land on me, mistaking me for a statue.

Then my brain did the worst possible thing it could have at that moment. I actually thought:

“Thank god for heredity!”

Why!?!

Why would I do that!?!

For one brief moment, my father and I stood naked, side by side. Two generations of family jewels on display for the world, with my mother standing proudly by.

Sometimes I hate my imagination.

I scarfed down my bagel, said good bye and ran to the car. In the sanctity of my car…

I screamed out loud.

The entire drive to work I plotted ways of running away from home.

How sad…since it’s mine.


-D