Generation X (20 page)

Pulling in the driveway, I see Tyler dashing out into his car, pro-

"Oh, all right, I'll buy your stupid

tecting his artfully coifed head from the rain with his red gym bag. "Hi,
cola. Now leave me alone."

Andy!" he shouts before slamming the door after entering his own warm and dry world. Through a crack in the window he cranes his neck and
OPTION PARALYSIS:

The tendency, when given

adds, "Welcome to the house that time forgot!"

unlimited choices, to make none.

Christmas Eve. HI am buying massive quantities of candles today, but I'm not saying why. Votive candles, birthday candles, emergency can dles, dinner candles, Jewish candles, Christmas candles, and candles from the Hindu bookstore bearing peoploid cartoons of saints. They all count—all flames are equal. At the Durst Thriftee Mart on 21st

Street, Tyler is too embarrassed for words by this shopping com-pulsion; he's placed a frozen Butterball turkey in my cart to make it look more festive and

less deviant. "What ex-actly
is a
votive candle,

anyway?" asks Tyler, be-traying both dizziness

and a secular upbringing

as he inhales deeply of

the overpowering and

cloying synthetic blue-berry pong of a din-ner candle. "You light them when you say a

prayer. All the churches
$

in Europe have them."

"Oh. Here's one you missed." He hands me a bulbous red table candle, covered in fishnet stocking material, the sort that you find in a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant. "People sure are looking funny at your cart, Andy. I wish you'd tell me what these candles were all for." "lt's a yuletide surprise, Tyler. Just hang in there." We head toward the sea-sonally busy checkout counter, looking surprisingly normal in our sem-iscruff outfits, taken from my old bedroom closet and dating from my punk days—Tyler's in an old leather jacket I picked up in Munich; I'm in beat-up layered shirts and jeans.

Outside it's raining, of course.

In Tyler's car heading back up Burnside Avenue on the way home,

I attempt to tell Tyler the story Dag told about the end of the world in Vons supermarket. "I have a friend down in Palm Springs. He says that when the air raid sirens go off, the first thing people run for are the candles."

"So?"

"I think that's why people were looking at us strangely back at the Durst Thriftee Mart. They were wondering why they couldn't hear the sirens."

"Hmmm. Canned goods, too," he replies, absorbed in a copy of
Vanity Fair
(I'm driving). "You think I should bleach my hair white?"

"You're not using aluminum pots and pans still, are you, Andy?" asks my father, standing in the living room, winding up the grandfather clock.

"Get rid of them,
pronto.
Dietary aluminum is your gateway to Alz-heimer's disease."

Dad had a stroke two years ago. Nothing major, but he lost the use

o f h i s r i g h t h a n d f o r a w e e k , a n d n o w h e h a s t o t a k e t h i s m e d i c a t i o n that makes him unable to secrete tears; to cry. I must say, the experience certainly scared him, and he changed quite a few things in his life.

Particularly his eating habits. Prior to the stroke he'd eat like a farmhand, scarfing down chunks of red meat laced with hormones and antibiotics and God knows what else, chased with mounds of mashed potato and

fountains of scotch. Now, much to my mother's relief, he eats chicken and vegetables, is a regular habitue of organic food stores, and has installed a vitamin rack in the kitchen that reeks of a hippie vitamin B

stench and makes the room resemble a pharmacy.

Like Mr. Mac Arthur, Dad discovered his body late in life. It took

him a brush with death to deprogram himself of dietary fictions invented by railroaders, cattlemen, and petrochemical and pharmaceutical firms o v e r t h e c e n t u r i e s . B u t a g a i n , b e t t e r l a t e t h a n n e v e r .

"No, Dad. No aluminum."

" G o o d g o o d g o o d . " H e t u r n s a n d l o o k s a t t h e T V s e t a c r o s s t h e room and then makes disparaging noises at an angry mob of protesting young men rioting somewhere in the world. "Just
look
at those guys.

PERSONALITY TITHE: A

price paid for becoming a couple;

Don't any of them have jobs? Give them all something to do. Satellite previously amusing human

them Tyler's rock videos—
anything—but
keep them busy. Jesus." Dad, beings become boring:
"Thanks

like Dag's ex-coworker Margaret, does not believe human beings are

for inviting us, but Noreen and I

are going to look at flatware

built to deal constructively with free time.

catalogs tonight. Afterward

Later on, Tyler escapes from dinner, leaving only me, Mom and

we're going to watch the

D a d , t h e f o u r f o o d g r o u p s , a n d a p r e d i c t a b l e t e n s i o n p r e s e n t .

shopping channel."

"Mom, I don't
want
any presents for Christmas. I don't want any
JACK-AND-JILL PARTY:

t h i n g s
in my life."

A
Squire
tradition; baby showers

"Christmas without presents? You're mad. Are you staring at the to which both men and women

s u n d o w n t h e r e ? "

friends are invited as opposed to

only women. Doubled

Afterward, in the absence of the bulk of his children, my maudlin

purchasing power of bisexual

father flounders through the empty rooms of the house like a tanker that attendance brings gift values up

has punctured its hull with its own anchor, searching for a port, a place to Eisenhower-era standards.

to weld shut the wound. Finally he decides to stuff the stockings by the fireplace. Into Tyler's he places treats he takes a great pleasure in buying every year: baby Listerine bottles, Japanese oranges, peanut brittle, screwdrivers, and lottery tickets. When it comes to my stocking, he asks me to leave the room even though I know he'd like my company. /

become the one who roams the house, a house far too large for too few people. Even the Christmas tree, decorated this year by rote rather than w i t h p a s s i o n , c a n ' t c h e e r t h i n g s u p .

The phone is no friend; Portland is Deadsville at the moment. My friends are all either married, boring, and depressed; single, bored, and

depressed; or moved out of town to avoid boredom and depression. And some of them have bought houses, which has to be kiss of death, per-sonality-wise. When someone tells you they've just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can im-mediately assume so many things: that they're locked into jobs they hate; that they're broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they're fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas.

It's profoundly depressing. And the
worst
part of it is that people in their houses don't even
like
where they're living. What few happy moments they possess are those gleaned from dreams of
upgrading.
God, where did my grouchy mood come from? T h e w o r l d h a s b e c o m e o n e g r e a t b i g quiet house like Deirdre's house in Texas. Life doesn't
h a v e
to be this w a y .

Earlier on I made the mistake of complaining about the house's

lack of amusement and my Dad joked, "Don't make us mad, or we'll move into a condo with no guest room and no linen the way all of your
DOWN-NESTING: The

friends' parents did." He thought he was making a real yuck.

tendency of parents to move to

R i g h t .

smaller, guest-room -free houses

after the children have moved

As if they would move. I know they never will. They will battle

away so as to avoid children

the forces of change; they will manufacture talismans against it, talismans aged 20 to 30 who have

like the paper fire logs Mom makes from rolled-up newspapers. They

boomeranged home.

will putter away inside the house until the future, like a horrible diseased drifter, breaks its way inside and commits an atrocity in the form of
HOMEOWNER ENVY:

Feelings of jealousy generated in

d e a t h o r d i s e a s e o r f i r e o r ( t h i s i s w h a t t h e y
r e a l l y
fear),
bankruptcy.

the young and the

The drifter's visit will jolt them out of complacency; it will validate their disenfranchised when facing

anxiety. They know his dreadful arrival is invevitable, and they can see gruesome housing statistics.

this drifter's purulent green lesions the color of hospital walls, his ward-robe chosen at random from bins at the back of the Bo ys and Girls Club of America depot in Santa Monica, where he also sleeps at night. And they know that he owns no land and that he won't discuss TV and that h e ' l l t r a p t h e s p a r r o w s i n s i d e t h e b i r d h o u s e w i t h d u c t t a p e .

But they won't talk about him.

By eleven, Mom and Dad are both asleep and Tyler is out partying.

A brief phone call from Dag reassures me that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Hot news for the day was the Aston Martin fire making page seven of the
Desert Sun
(more than a hundred thousand dollars damage, raising the crime to a felony level), and the Skipper showing up for drinks at Larry's, ordering up a storm, then walking out when Dag asked him to pay the bill. Dag stupidly let him get away with it. I think we're in for trouble.

"Oh yes. My brother the jingle writer sent me an old parachute to
LESS IS A

wrap the Saab up in at night. Some gift, eh?"

POSSIBILITY

Later on, I inhale a box of chocolate Lu cookies while watching

cable TV. Even later, going in to putz about the kitchen, I realize that I am so bored I think I'm going to faint. This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen any more—the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over. I'm left with two nice people, mind you, more than most people get, but it's time to move on.

I think we'd all appreciate that.

TRANS

FORM

Christmas Day. Since early this morning I have been in the living

room with my candles—hundreds, possibly thousands of them—as well

as rolls and rolls of angry, rattling tinfoil and stacks of disposable pie plates. I've been placing candles on every flat surface available, the foils not only protecting surfaces from dribbling wax but serving as well to double the candle flames via reflection. HCandles are everywhere: on the piano, on the bookshelves, on the coffee table, on the mantel-piece, in the fireplace, on the windowsill guarding

a g a i n s t t h e p a r-f o r-t h e -course dismal dark wet

gloss of weather. On top

of the oak stereo console

a l o n e , t h e r e m u s t b e a t

least fifty candles, an Es -peranto family portrait of

all heights and levels.

Syndicated cartoon char-acters rest amid silver

swirls, spokes of lemon

and lime color. There are

colonnades of raspberry and glades of white—a motley gridlock dem-onstrator mix for someone who's never before seen a candle. HI hear the sound of taps running upstairs and my Dad calls down, "Andy, is t h a t y o u d o w n t h e r e ? " " M e r r y Christmas, Dad. Everyone up yet?"

11"Almost. Your mother's slugging Tyler in the stomach as we speak.

What are you doing down there?" 'lt's a surprise. Promise me some-thing. Promise that you won't come down for fifteen minutes. That's all I n e e d —fifteen minutes."