If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.

Today I am doing something a little different.

It’s long and I completely understand if you want to move on.

I started writing this blog several years ago, I started blogging because it was a distraction from writing the book I knew I was going to write. Blogging provided immediate feedback (not right away but eventually), writing a book provides no feedback until you start sending out to people for rejection.

I did write the book and I did send it out for rejection, lots of rejection.  Always with great advice and encouragement but rejection nonetheless. So I shelved it for the last year.

It’s time to dust it off and start working on it again.

However, I have noticed that my writing has evolved over the last year and I am considering rewriting this book which really might just be another excuse not to finish it.

If you have been reading Redhead Ranting for longer than a year you know I have several other blogs, blogs I don’t update often but when taken together, complete who I am.

What follows is the first chapter of my book, the working title has been Dancing Skeletons inspired by a quote from George Bernard Shaw:

“If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.”

I don’t want to explain much here, my writing, and my story, is what it is and I have to be able to embrace that. This is not fiction, it is all true, and a lot of it is ugly. Names have been changed.

Okay, I am going to explain just a little bit. The first chapter is the introduction, it is a bit of a downer taken as a whole, but there are funny bits in it. It is okay to laugh. The chapters that follow are not as dark as this one but it was necessary to get the background out there. My plan is to post another chapter if people are interested. They are long and this isn’t the best forum for the stories but doing this forces me to start working on this again. And I have to finish it, every time I visit my mother she wants to know when I am going to publish it. I have to give her an answer soon.

Dancing Skeletons

Chapter One

“Jenny, would you get me another drink please?”

Ignorance is bliss. It really is. Had I known that I was about to get the rug pulled out from underneath me I might have ignored my mother’s request for another Manhattan. One might argue that I couldn’t have been too ignorant if I was able to mix a Manhattan by the age of twelve.  Actually I had been making them, as well as gin and tonics, since I was about nine but in all other things I was rather innocent. I still harbored the hope that there might be a Santa Claus even though I had always been suspicious of the Easter Bunny. We had two dogs and a cat. There was no way a furry little rodent was going to get into our house and out again unscathed, even if he did come bearing gifts.

I was ignorant. I knew nothing of the ways of the world. The Vietnam War had ended a few years earlier, the sexual revolution was in full swing but I was too young to know what it was all about and the cold war hadn’t yet ended. I took all of these events along with the energy crisis and the resignation of Nixon for granted.   I had spent the summer of 1978 playing Barbies and watching the movie Grease over and over and over.  The only thing I was concerned about was the new school year, what I was going to wear on the first day of school and if this would be the year Billy Phelps finally noticed me.

“Jenny, would you please get me another drink!”

When she asked again I didn’t think anything was up. I dutifully went down stairs, grabbed her glass and made her another drink.

“Why don’t you sit with me for a while and tell me something?” she said when I returned with her drink.

My mother was bored and wanted some company. I hated sitting with my mother. Since she got sick nine years earlier she had no short term memory. My mom had suffered a cardiac arrest followed by oxygen deprivation while having a tracheotomy to help her breathe when pneumonia got the best of her.   She suffered considerable brain damage most notably short term memory loss. She also had partial paralysis. She could walk but it had taken her months in physical therapy to learn how to do it again and even then she needed someone around to spot her in case she fell. She sounded like she was drunk when she talked. I could easily understand her but most of my friends could not. Ironically the alcohol she drank didn’t seem to impair her ability to talk. In fact it seemed to help her speak more clearly.  Not think more clearly but enunciate better.

I didn’t have anything to tell my mother. I had long ago run out of things to tell her. My life was the same day in and day out. I wasn’t old enough to have any experiences yet and I had already told her all about the movie Grease. She wasn’t interested in John Travolta or Olivia Newton John and when I played the soundtrack for her she got irritated because she couldn’t hear the TV.

The TV was always on in our house. Mom spent her days in front of the TV while everyone else revolved around her. She would summon me at night, when dad was out, to keep her company. Maybe if she had been willing to turn down the TV or even turn the damn thing off I might have been more enthused to sit with her and chat. It was bad enough I had to repeat myself over and over again but even worse that I had to do it above the blaring of the TV.

I threw myself into the chair across from her and folded my arms over my chest and stared at the TV. I had to sit with her, it was my job. My father and my brother were both out for the evening, again, and it was my responsibility to hang out with my mother. I’d do it, but I wasn’t going to enjoy myself and neither was she.

“So, what’s new?” She asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“There is nothing new going on in your life?” She pressed.

“No,” I said

“Why are you so grumpy, is something wrong?” My mother was always trying to get me to open up to her. When I was younger I was happy to share with her every thought in my head. The year before I asked for a bra, I was in a huge hurry to grow up and a bra seemed like the way to kick start the process. I really thought that a training bra would train my breasts to grow. Stupid, I know. My mother took one look at my nonexistent breasts and laughed. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough she told this story to my father and brother during dinner one night. And then repeated it when a few of her friends came over to visit her “Can you believe it, she thinks she needs a bra!” I learned that it was better to keep anything that might be the least bit embarrassing to myself and since most ideas floating around inside my head were embarrassing, I simply chose not to talk to my mother about anything.

“No, I was reading my book and really want to get back to it.”

This was a mistake. I knew better than to tell my mother I was reading a book. Now she would want to know what I was reading, what it was about, would she like it and could she read it. Mom was always looking for new books to read. She was always reading but because she had no short term memory she would read two or three pages and have to start all over again. I think she would find herself in a book and have no recollection of what had happened in all the pages before. She would become frustrated and announce that the author was an idiot, and the story made no sense. She would close the book and search for one that wasn’t written by a complete boob.  Consequently she was always looking for recommendations. It wouldn’t matter if the book I was reading was the best book in the world she would still be unable to recall the story and the whole process would repeat itself.

“Oh really, would I like it?” she asked.

“No, you wouldn’t like it,” I said.

“How do you know I wouldn’t like it?” she demanded “what’s it about?”

“Mom, you wouldn’t like it. You never like any of the books I read. You never like any of the books you read.”

And we were off. The argument had officially begun. It didn’t matter what started it, it could have been anything. Mom and I needed to argue with each other. It wasn’t that we didn’t see eye to eye either. We did on most things but our roles had been reversed a long time ago and we were both fucking mad about the whole situation. Inevitably the argument would end with my mother crying because I was so insensitive to her handicap. And she would be right. I was insensitive. I didn’t understand her handicap at all. All I knew was that because of it I had to make her Manhattans, constantly fetch her things, bathe and dress her and help her in the bathroom. I didn’t know any other kid who had to do these things and it pissed me off. I was already angry that I had to babysit her so, yeah, I was insensitive. This argument was the same every night so I wasn’t expecting anything different. Besides in a half an hour she would forget the whole thing.

And then she pulled the rug out from under me.

“Your father is Bi you know.”

“What?”

“Your father is Bi.”

I had no idea what Bi was but it didn’t sound good the way she spit it out of her mouth. I also knew not to trust my mother’s memory. In addition to her short term memory loss she also filled in the holes of her long term memory with inaccuracies. According to my mother she had not only dated Abbie Hoffman but she knew where Jimmy Hoffa was. She had been sworn to secrecy and wasn’t sharing his location with anyone but trust her she knew. Now there is some logic to this story. Mom went to high school with Jerry Rubin who was part of the Chicago Seven, which included Abbie Hoffman. There is nothing to indicate that she dated Rubin who graduated two years before she did. I’m not sure what Jimmy Hoffa has to do with any of it but there it is. That is the logic I was dealing with.

“No he isn’t,” I demanded

“Do you know what it means?” she asked.

She had set her trap and she knew I was going to fall right into it. I didn’t know what it meant and I certainly wasn’t going to admit it but if I waited she would tell me.  I just sat there silently.

“It means your father likes other men,”

Well duh, of course he liked men. Dad liked everyone, he was an interesting guy.

“It means your father is gay. He sleeps with other men.”

“I know what ‘gay’ means, mom.”

Actually I didn’t, really. I had heard the word, along with “faggot” and “queer”, and thrown it around like all the other kids on the block but I really didn’t know what it meant. I knew it was bad and that I didn’t want to be called that name but I didn’t understand the whole concept of a man being attracted to another man.

“He is not,” was all I could manage to respond.

“Your father is gay and right now he is with his boyfriend,” she screamed at me as she started to cry.

Mom used tears like the military used the atom bomb. It was a last resort but damn it was effective. No one wanted to see or hear mom cry.  When my mother cried, which was frequent, she would snort and sniffle and make disgusting mucus-y noises in addition to reaching a pitch that only dogs could hear.

My mother would have had an easier time explaining the theory of relativity to me. Provided she could remember what she was talking about and assuming I could hear her through all the snorting and ear shattering whimpering.  No, this was not making any sense to me and all the racket she was making wasn’t helping me. How on earth could my father be gay? He was married to my mother and he had two children. He couldn’t be gay. Gay people didn’t get married and they most certainly didn’t have kids.

“I’m not listening to this. You’re just mad at me because I don’t want to sit down here and talk with you. You always pull this kind of crap. As soon as you don’t get your way you start to cry just to get my attention. And it isn’t fair. I don’t believe you,” I said as I stormed upstairs to my room.

The problem was I did sort of believe her.  I didn’t understand fully what being gay was all about and I wasn’t convinced at all that my dad was gay but I knew something was going on and this might explain it.

A couple of years earlier my brother found a note that my mother had written to my father. My brother was a snoop. I knew this because he read my diary on a regular basis and he wasn’t ashamed of it and he didn’t even tried to hide it. He would often write little comments to me in my diary, flaunting the fact that he could get away with this breach in etiquette because he knew I couldn’t tell on him because our parents didn’t want to hear us fight.  Privacy was a big deal in our house and the first time I told on my brother he was surely reprimanded however if I knew he was digging through my diary it was my responsibility to put it somewhere he wouldn’t find it or put a lock on it, telling on him after the first few times was just as likely to get me in trouble so I didn’t bother.

My brother had been digging through my father’s desk when he ran across a letter my mother had typed to him. Dad’s desk was always a mess. He never filed anything so when my brother was in the den using the extension so he could talk to his girlfriend in private it’s no surprise he ran across something he shouldn’t have looked at.

My mother had relearned how to write after she got sick but it took forever for her to even write her name. It was also nearly illegible so Grandpa bought mom a typewriter. Using it still took a long time since she had to hunt and peck and could only use her index fingers which were bent from the atrophy so it wasn’t a task she attempted often. Mom wrote letters to my brother and me for our birthdays and long letters to dad when they had a fight. Other than that she didn’t bother. And there was no need really for her to type anything out but long winded letters. She didn’t make the grocery list, we had a house keeper for that. She didn’t handle the bills, dad took care of those at the office. She rarely wrote letters since she could make a phone call much easier. Mom only used the typewriter when she had something big to say. We all knew that when mom asked for the typewriter someone was going to get it. And that someone was usually dad.

According to my brother, who read the letter, dad had had an affair. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. According to my brother, mom made dad promise to stop and that was the end of it. It wasn’t really the end of it since they argued all the time now.  I wasn’t surprised dad might have had an affair since my mother was a demanding woman. She wore people out and pushed them away. She had a nasty temper and didn’t think about the consequences of her hurtful words.  She was also damaged goods. It’s a horrible thing to think but that’s how I felt. My mother was handicapped. She was not pretty like she was in all the old pictures. She had gained weight because she sat on the sofa all day and she never wore make up anymore.  Worst of all she was hard. Because of the atrophy mom was in a constant state of tension. Her muscles were always flexed so when she hugged me it wasn’t soft and warm like a hug should be, it hurt.  I’m not proud of this but that was what I thought. She wasn’t the person dads had married and if he found someone who was soft and warm, I could almost understand because I wanted someone who was soft and warm.

In addition to being blissfully ignorant up to that moment I was also horribly insensitive. Unfortunately that trait wasn’t snatched away from me that evening.  I should have stayed downstairs and comforted my mother. Granted she should have never told me what she told me and certainly not under the circumstances with which she told me these facts but she had brain damage and I should have cut her some slack. What my mother needed was a friend and I couldn’t be one at that moment. I spent the rest of the evening sulking in my room ignoring her and trying to make some sense out of what she had just told me.

As I sat up in my room trying desperately to drown out my mother’s crying with Shaun Cassidy I pondered the thing my mother had just told me. Dad was gay. Dad was GAY! How could that be? How did it happen? When did it happen? And more importantly how could he do something like this to me? Hey I was twelve, everything was about me.

I sat up in my room and thought. If this had been some sitcom there would have been flashbacks and a soundtrack. Instead I just thought about moments in the past that hadn’t made much sense but now were beginning to.

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