further confessions on the origins of personal rein
By: Thomas Krawford
Tags: Autoethnography, Ann Arbor, Narrative, Family, Philosophy

The following narrative is but one element of a larger and perhaps more ambitious performative thought experiment, whose goal is to infer, within a reasonable range, a probable past and present of its author; in the hopes of communicating to, at the very least, his family, friends and maybe even a few co workers; not just the writer’s intention, but also a conceivable future for all those concerned.

It was almost as if he was an out of control horse about to jump off a cliff to a bottomless pit, and somebody at the last minute pulled hard on what must have been some kind dangling reins of a hyper misconception; a sudden action that caused his head to jerk back and actually see what he was about to do; finally coming to the realization, that this thing he was about to engage in with was no girl; she was his sister.

That’s where we left our young man; wrestling with a self control he neither understood or could figure out a way to not let it take over his life entirely; no girls; and as, it would turn out later in life when he seriously questioned his sexuality, no men either; no close friends; and, ironically enough, no mortal enemies as well.

No one; nothing was allowed past a certain point; at least not yet; and as all these inner commands came to the surface of his waking general self, from a place he simply could not, truly name; from time to time, his conscious awareness grew restless, turbulent even; visibly unsettled, as puberty, with its characteristic swirl of hormones and anxieties, real or imagined, issued in the natural changes therein; firmly taking a hold of both his behavior and thought.

As our young man matured; the declaration made to his parents, and eventually, also to a few concerned school administrators; who in calling him to the office of Lahser High School, a few days after the beginning of his first year at the secondary level; after carefully examining his educational transcripts; and after asking him why he hadn’t gone to a better school; our young friend responded with a; what must have sounded like, at the time, an idealistic and naive reply: I wanted to learn about life; to wit, said proclamation, apparently dwindling into a kind of archaic textual obsolescence; the older he grew and the restless and confused he became.

However, before getting too far ahead, let’s go back to the summer after St. Hugo of The Hills. It was also after his circumcision and for some reason, he didn’t know why, his spirits were remarkably light; unusual, given the changes his sister was going through; changes this writer wonders today, were not connected to her stay a year or so earlier, at Camp Stapleton.

In addition, the relationship between our young man’s parents; since not only the boy but his sister as well, had chosen not to go on with parochial schooling; a rocky marriage since Chicago; now, was worsening.

So why was the young boy feeling so, what we can safely guess from where we stand today; optimistic?

It’s difficult to pin down the exact origins of his overall good mood from our contemporary point of view. The upcoming summer was to going to be, as it turned out, unusually balmy; with temperatures stubbornly parking themselves in the ninety to one-hundred degree range for weeks at a time; staying that way throughout of most of the tropical-hazy days and all through the many passages of sauna-humid nights; for some reason, the young boy frequently enjoyed; the tastes and feelings of swelteringly sticky, hot humid weather; not all of the time, but sometimes; foregrounded by several well placed fans; or in the case of his family’s Bloomfield Hills apartment home, an air conditioning unit that rarely, if ever, broke down; summer, from his view, was just fine.

Yet, the next few months would not be uneventful. The season came on the heels of his successful circumcision; a procedure that left him with an odd kind of relief; for he, as all males of most ages and many sexual preferences probably have at one point or the other, done; had noticed other boys’ penises; many of which did not look like his own.

At the end of theirs, for example, a definite tip emerged; what the writer of this narrative might compare to a natural Clovis tip; a point which the little boy thought much more efficient; more so than the shriveled wrinkly nub at the end of his; which he would often have to pull back the sides of and clear away lint and other debris from; random detritus that sometime collected there; if left unattended for too long.

After the operation, our young man marveled at how new it felt; like he had been given a brand new penis; one that looked like the other boys’ penises; but better; because after all, it was his and to him; he considered it — unique.

Before he could figure out a way of celebrating his new founded sense of natural animal freedom, his mother received news that her father, his grandfather had died; his death coming from what many believed; his mother’s sister, Connie and her husband, Jim; to name a few; was the inevitable result of far too much drinking and very little regard for his own well-being; for far too long a time.

The young boy’s mood then changed slightly; although not exactly; to match his mother’s hazy sort of ambivalent acknowledgement of the news; her long and quiet living room stares out onto the grass covered and tall treed lawns; penetrating views into landscaped hills; the apartment complex, where they lived; her blank and empty extended glances as she wandered through their home over the next couple of days; passing the word to the rest of the family; preparing things for the long drive down; packing clothes; informing her employer; the whole time; neither crying nor sighs of regret, nor any outward indications of excessive remorse; just a matter of fact flatness and recognition of the appropriate thing to do; propriety being the give and take, back and forth, that dominated the relationship between the boy and his mother.

What we can not forget here, is that as the years would progress, there would be stirrings within the boy, increasingly becoming more frequent; rustlings of pushed down memories; buried archives that would become a source of familial tension; psychic unconscious flotsam and jetsam that in the long run, wound up driving a wedge of mutual resentment and distrust between a mother and her two young children.

What’s more; through out the turbulence of both his and his sister’s middle and late adolescence on into their early adulthood, from their new family of three, would come to assert its’ self, as a wordless covenantal ark born of mixed and frequently conflicting commands; themselves, appearing as apparently backwards and nonsensical edicts arising from the remainders of a divorced and fragmented family who happened to be black; living on the salary of a single parent provider; in a community of minor to significant opulence; a general standard that, to the newly fashioned uneasy trio of mother, daughter and son; often became a daunting hurdle; particularly in light of the ‘what to do now?’ question that all ways comes with rituals of high school graduation and the like; all of which was further complicated by underlying secrets that, to this day, still have yet to work themselves out; perhaps for his sister, but most assuredly, for our young friend; the young boy; subject of this narrative experiment.

So it was with these stirrings of inner, hidden things and unseen seems of emotional fabric, that our young boy and his family took, what would also be the last trip as a whole family, they would have together; in the form to which each member: father, mother, son and daughter, had come to know; the oldest brother having long since left; moving to strike out on his own, years before.

By the time night fall came, the little boy and his family had completed nearly two thirds of their journey; stopping to rest a few miles east of Springfield in a town called Lebanon.

In spite of the somber circumstances of his grandfather’s funeral; the reason for the trip in the first place; so far, the whole experience was almost like a vacation; that is until the boy’s father, while making food and lodging arrangements, happened upon a couple of white men; parked on the opposite side of the lot where they were; in a pick-up truck; almost singing epithets of ‘nigger this’ and ‘nigger that’; slurs flowing like a river of sewage polluting an otherwise tranquil family outing; causing a slight unease to lightly turn in the boy’s stomach; maybe a small reminder, from this writer’s retro-perspective; but to the little boy back then; a warning, no matter how uninformed or not, of the not so distant past of this place; called the South.

The dreaded South.

The boy distinctly recalls his father angrily flipping them the middle finger; a hard to miss: “Fuck you, you Honky Bastards!” erupting in response, as he adjusted the belt around his, at the time, spreading waist; opening the driver’s side door; perhaps checking for the gun he wished he always carried; a habit from either his prior law enforcement days or his then connections with the Inspector General’s Office back in Michigan; not finding it where he’d hoped it was; getting in and slamming the door; the young boy’s mother’s soft but edge-tinged voice cautioning: “Let’s just and get our rooms”; soothing him enough for the key to turn, the engine to engage and the young boy; his sister, mother and his smolderingly calm father, to get some much needed rest for the night.

Our young friend awoke to an early sunny summer morning; he and his sister’s parents, particularly their father, in a palpable hurry to get going; to gather their belongings and get on the the road; a short order plan made obvious by all the: ‘Hurry ups’ and the ‘C mons’ ushered by both mother and father; gentle, but firm prodding for two young children, just waking up from a long sleep; to get dressed and get in the car; with added assurances of getting breakfast, once on the road and far from this place; the little boy remembers, as Lebanon, Missouri.

The family then passed through, what this writer has since determined to have been, the outskirts of the Ozark Mountain Area; sheer expanses of red clay cliffs; the occasional rustic home tucked in against the rise; a smoky panorama reaching up from the highway; sprawling and sun-shadowed; mountainous hilled faces; crowned by tufts of green forest and other viridescent wood; none of which appeared to impress any else in the car; at least, not as far as the little boy could tell.

Both his sister and his mother seemed distracted; as if their minds were a million miles away; and his father’s eyes; although outwardly fixed on the road in front of them; unbeknownst to the little boy at the time or any one else, for that matter; save the boy’s wife, his mother; who ironically enough, as fate would have it, probably was thinking the same thing as her husband; one word flashing in both parent’s mind’s eye; like a lighthouse beacon; shining from the rocky shores of a hopelessly broken marriage; over and over; almost as if it were a prayer or Gregorian Chant, both repeated, under their breath in resigned unison; escape, escape, escape.

Meanwhile, our young friend’s sister could have been thinking about her two best friends back home; Noreen and Elaine; the former, a long limbed, dark haired; sensibly-postured girl who loved her glasses; the latter, an auburn-cropped-curly cut; Shirley Temple dimpled and freckled roundish girl; whose killer Little-Debbie-smile and surprisingly sharp streak of witty mischievousness, often sparkled from her frequent winks and nods; thus proving to be her noblest virtue.

Yet, ‘thinking about her friends’ more than likely, gravely understates what was probably going through the young boy’s sister’s mind. She couldn’t see what he saw, because her eyes were fixed on Elaine’s and Noreen’s Father and the home he had made for his two young daughters after the tragic death of their mother; first hand reports from both girls of his frequent verbal abuse; violations, the boy’s sister herself had witnessed; incidents of groping and other inappropriate suggestions or lewd associative Speech Acts, the girls had tearfully confessed to the boy’s sister; finding their way to his ears both by his sister’s admission and what little interaction the boy also had with the two young girls’ father.

As the coming months and years would show, the boy’s sister will grow more and more outraged over Noreen and Elaine’s father’s behavior; a burgeoning activism that inadvertently, yet inexorably will make itself quite plain; as a virtual Great-Wall-of-China practically builds itself up between a mother, whose outward appearance belied hidden scars and tissues; unhealed wounds of repeated incestuous intrusion in her own past; and a daughter, who may or may not have had her first homosexual experience during her stay at a Catholic Run summer camp for girls, a year or so before; a possible encounter, she mostly kept to herself then, and probably to this very day, still does.

The rift between both women; one young and inexperienced the other older and more cautious; put a simpler way; mother and daughter; will become clearly evident in a day to come; over a span of a moment across time; from where the boy’s family found themselves; going southbound through that Ozark Valley way; on that particular early sunny summer’s morning; to a point neither mother nor daughter, realizing then, riding in that car, both just staring at the passing sun dappled countryside; that in almost in a year of months to come, both will be at the back their apartment home in Bloomfield Hills; in the girl’s room; yelling at the top of their lungs to each other; as the mother attempts, to physically keep her daughter confined, to her room.

The mother will first be asking; then ordering; and finally demanding that her daughter stay out of Noreen’s and Elaine’s family business.

On the other hand the daughter; the young boy’s sister, at first not understanding why her mother will not call the proper authorities; will then verbally challenge her mother’s reasons for not notifying someone that Noreen and Elaine’s father was way out of line; in what she believed, warranted some kind of intervention from — someone, anyone; and if no one would be notified, and nothing was done, then she, the boy’s sister, was going to take it upon herself to do something; even if that something meant standing up to the father of her two friends; boldly challenging him to his face; practically daring him to go through her first, before he lay another finger on his children.

When the boy’s sister makes that clear to their mother, the two will grapple; the boy’s sister eventually, violently, will push past their mother; a chase through the house, from the back to the front, will rapidly ensue; the boy will be in the dinning room at the front of the house; listening to what he will come to believe; to be self evident pieces of his family dissolving; like an incoming wave that laps the shores of a lake; dissolving the sand there; with each retreat and advance.

He will see the blur; of his sister grabbing the door’s knob, running into the hallway; of his mother in close pursuit leaping upon her, grabbing a hold of whatever she could; both of whom will be moving faster than he had ever seen either move before or since. He will see how his sister; refusing to be denied, will essentially drag their mother into the exterior hall way; there; the boy’s mother will loose her grip on her determined daughter; whose forward motion, will cause their mother to loose her footing; tumbling to the ground and rolling onto her shoulder; against the grating of the metal rail there; a jarring, painful end end of her helpless lurch; as the boy’s sister will effect her escape; running down the stairs, leading outside; supposedly on her way to make her stand for her two friends; leaving their mother disheveled; red-faced angry; scrambling to her feet; slamming the apartment door as she stormed back to the master bedroom; slamming thew door there as well.

All these things will happen in, around and to the family of this young man; the object of this narrative experiment to infer a probable past of not only himself; but that of his family as well.

However, for the time being of the narrative, as we are generally examining it in this specific context of our perspective now; looking back then; at an African American family; going south bound through the red-clay-lustrous and sun- dappled-expressiveness, of those rolling Missourian Hills; on their way to the funeral of the little boy’s grandfather in Tulsa Oklahoma; one thing was certain.

Although no one riding in that car could or would say so at the time; some secrets, either of family; between friends or even neighbors for that matter; don’t make us better people.

They may make us human; but in the long run and over time; they don’t necessarily make us better human beings.

They just make life harder; that’s all; and there’s nothing at all special about that; at least, not as far as this writer can ever hope to truthfully tell; to show, that is, in the best and most thoughtful way he knows how; or, can get away with.

(to be continued next: the funeral and its initial aftermath)