This is What I Know About Francisco

Here’s how it is w fathers: Even after you have treated them like absolute shit & they, in turn, have been pretty hard on you & generally been someone you don’t like too much, they show up @ the ICU & wait in the waiting room looking worried as hell. They might even cry if you or anyone else was around to see it. Maybe they do anyway.

Here’s how it is w the police: They are pretty weary & pretty cynical & a good amount of them seem sadistic & out to get you. They have very little love for junkies. I know that. They have to show up after you talk to the social worker & they have to handcuff you to the gurney you’re laid out on.

Here’s the thing w social workers: They are crafty & maybe even Machiavellian & they are in cahoots w the police. They too, although they act differently, have very little love for junkies. I guess they’re pretty sick of them & who can blame them? I”m one & I can’t stand junkies - there’s  nothing to like & they are terrific fucking liars. Anyway, social workers come in & sit down next to you w these big, kind eyes & get you to admit all the crazy shit in your brain & how you wanna die & first chance you get, you’re gonna try to kill yourself again & you’re pretty sick of trying to make a go of it here on Planet Earth. They act like they understand & that they’ve been there & get you to empty it all out while they write it all down & nod yes yes & keep looking @ you with those very kind, very deceitful fucking eyes. Then…they pat you on the hand, the one with the IV jammed into it & walk off. Then the police come in & handcuff you to the gurney.

Here’s how it is w overdoses: They only work if you’re really serious about them. You can’t call your sister right before you take a lethal dose then leave the door to Room 209 of The London Motel, the one facing the freeway, slightly ajar so she can find you & get you to the hospital before your stupid heart explodes. & get this: What’s even more sinister about junkies, like I was telling you, is they will call the same sister they just robbed the night before to come find them in an overdose. Junkies man… I’m telling you, don’t trust them. & the thing about doctors? They are even more weary than the police & have even less, if you can believe it, love for junkies & overdoses - especially if the overdosed junkie is handcuffed to a gurney & taking up space in their ICU while they are trying to resuscitate a skydiver who recently plummeted to the earth from 13,000 feet. Parachutes: don’t trust them either. So the doctors, they get pretty fed up & they wheel you out of the room & put you in the hallway handcuffed to a gurney.

Here’s how it is w Fathers: Even though they are borderline militant, or just absolutely militant & unable, usually, to summon any kind of empathy & have been pretty much your enemy your entire miserable little life, they are there in the hallway & even though no one can tell, you can tell they have been crying & they sit next to you in that hallway all night till the next day w/out saying one mean thing which is maybe a first; in fact, they don’t even complain. They just keep smiling, which might be another first, & they keep telling you it’s gonna be ok when you both know it ain’t.

Here’s what I know about sons: They’re generally assholes & pretty wrong most of the time. Especially ones who are handsome (or @ least convinced they’re handsome because every broken-down forty-year old tramp has told them so) & have a winning personality & are very smart & funny w/out even trying. Those sons are the worst. They don’t really listen to anything their father tells them because they are convinced he’s wrong because he is going about it all wrong & fuck him. & what is their father, one who grew up working really hard & was dutiful & never talked back to his father, supposed to do w him? By the way, if you think this man is unkind, you’re wrong. He is Saint Vincent de fucking Paul compared to that other guy, his father!, who, after wreaking havoc on his entire family for decades, blew his brains out all over, symbolically speaking, his grandson’s goddamn 13th birthday cake. So what is this father to do? The father of the son who won’t listen. The son who has worked hard @ absolutely nothing & never really tried to do anything worthwhile & is an all-around disappointment as a son because he could have done something if he would have had an iota of humility or listened once in a while or been teachable or interested in trying & failing. Turns out his father, who although was mostly a dick, was right about a lot of stuff & no one would listen to him because he didn’t display or show any kind of Love & didn’t want his kids laughing @ the goddamn dinner table &, when he had had enough of them laughing & horsing around, would get out this yardstick & place it next to his chair. It was supposed to be a deterrent & keep his son from joking around too much. & of course he would always have to use it. Here’s the thing about conundrums: Wives get pretty sick of husbands joking around too much. They get sick of their Lover making a mockery of every fucking thing & they get really tired of putting up w his inability to be serious when the time comes to be serious. Some wives might even say that underneath the cloak of comedy & wisecracks is a kid who didn’t listen to his father too much & thought he was the cutest, smartest guy in the room & maybe when his father smacked him w a yardstick, maybe just maybe, now bear w me here, maybe his father was right in some bizarre & extremely unkind way? That’s the thing about Fathers & Sons & Wives & Love & Conundrums. It’s fucked up. It really is. You can’t get to the bottom of it.

Take sleepovers: Maybe sleepovers are a really good way to get to know someone? Maybe two guys who have fought quite a bit their entire life might find some common ground during a sleepover? I think it helps going into a sleepover if someone is dead & gone. Say for instance, somebody’s wife. It helps if that wife is somebody’s mother. You see… they have something in common. They are missing the one person in life who really gave a shit about either one of them. Because let’s face it: They are both bastards. Really. But Loss & Time? Those two things have a way, if you yourself don’t die, of putting things right. If you are interested in changing a little bit or give just a tiny shit about anything. Say for instance, you tried really hard to fuck yourself up. Let’s say that. Lets say you tried really hard to fuck yourself up because you couldn’t see how things were ever gonna be ok. & when that woman(you don’t remember her name, you don’t even remember what she looks like, but there is a general look & feel to all of these woman so you just call them all Joanie because for some reason you love that name & isn’t it beautiful & heartbreaking all @ the same time!?) you just gave forty dollars to & just passed & then took back a smoldering glass pipe from, when that woman in Room 17 of The Fresno Motel, the one on the end by the condemned lot, after exhaling a shroud of smoke turns to you w blurry, yellow eyes, (now you remember the eyes don’t you?) & says, “I wanna show you my children” & she opens up the busted & slat deficient folding closet door of the room & shows you three tiny & filthy children on top of & wrapped around each other like a litter of abandoned puppies sleeping in a well. & you look @ them & say, “they’re beautiful” & then both of you close the door & after a minute or so & another passing of the smoldering glass, because it does take a fucking minute doesn’t it? you both forget they are there don’t you? Maybe not forget, but block it out, like you block every other thing out because nothing is more important than what is in the glass or on the spoon or what is about to happen between the two of you, who are the same & intent on fucking yourselves up. Because as far as you both can see, there is no way out of this thing until you are dead. 

So say that. Let’s say you try to fuck yourself up & you fail & you just end up talking to people who aren’t there. & you wear the same Army Coat every day the one ripped down the side & the guys @ the meeting, the ones who are residents of the recovery home, they make fun of you because you look & act so strangely & they themselves are grown men living in a recovery home & they have to be told when to eat & wash & sleep & they are taught to make their beds & they are making fun of you. It’s a funny world. You have to admit that. So all of that happens & you don’t die & you spend all of your time coming & going to these ridiculous meetings w coffee & smoking …Lord the smoking! Mavericks was it? 100s was it? Because it just didn’t work out. This trying to exit early. This fucking yourself up. So you call your Father. 

This is what I know about Fathers: You can call them after a lifetime of animosity & meanness & villainy & outright selfishness. You can call them & even if they live five or six hours away they will come. They will come & go running in the canyon w you (because, by the way, they love to run. I mean they can really run! & they even had a little article written about them in Runner’s World or something like that) & buy you groceries & let you cook for them (because, by the way, you love to cook! & he is always telling you to open up your own restaurant). They will come & go running in the canyon & buy you groceries & tell you to quit smoking & tell you you curse too much & you should stop & they listen to your bullshit & have a sleepover. They will. They will lie there in the bed w you in the dark & talk. You can ask them anything it turns out & they will answer you. It turns out you both miss your Mother something horrible. It turns out you were both pretty shitty to her. It turns out neither of you deserved her I guess. Look, she was no Saint who is, but you both miss her horribly. It turns out that your taciturn father likes talking about himself & he has a terrific memory. He likes talking about basketball & track. He likes talking about that coach that cut him from the team & then came begging, hat in hand, for him to return to the team because they didn’t have enough players & he told him, “no way”. Because fuck him. He didn’t say that. He would never say that, but thats what he meant, so you are filling in that blank for him. 

These sleepovers they are really something. It was there in the dark he told you about learning how to use a teletype in the army in Germany. How he met your mother there in Germany in a bowling alley of all places. Because he was competitive as hell & loved to bowl, & she was from New Jersey, your mother, can you believe it? Just like your wife is from New Jersey. & your mother, his wife, she started coming around & she knew she was gonna marry him, your father, before he knew it. It’s funny because it is very similar to the way your wife would come around on Sundays wearing those green boots talking to you in that sexy way she had while you were piling up cases of beer, because, ironically, you were working in the liquor section of the grocery store. It is a funny world. He told you about working in the fields on his father’s farm every day. Every Blessed Day just like Phil Levine says, who incidentally, you admire & even got to see his office once when he wasn’t home. So, now you know why, after you just got done complaining about some shitty job you had & how tired you were form working all day, he would say, “Work!? That’s not work. You’re not working unless you have a shovel in your hand!” He was trying to tell you you don’t know What Work Is the same thing Phil Levine was trying to tell you. & then he told you about about getting married & moving back to Fresno & having his brand new, jet-black, 1960 Volvo shipped from Germany to The States…which seems so strange, so wild, so hip. Your father never bought anything brand new. It sounds cool: getting married in Germany & buying a new car & bringing it all back home to start some kind of a new chapter in life. It has promise don’t you think? 

Here’s the thing about Fathers: They were somebody else once. Some guy who grew up on a farm & loved sports & loved competition & did what he was told because he thought it was important. &, I think, he thought that everybody played by the rules. But, it turns out nobody does, not even him & that had to be disappointing like everything is pretty disappointing if you let it be. I mean it is, but some stuff isn’t. Anyway, he tried to have his own farm & that didn’t work out. He worked for the railroad, he worked in the county jail & eventually became a Fresno County Sheriff. I’m not kidding! He really believed in the rules. He really wanted to. Here’s the thing about shitty sons: When fathers are out of town, sons will steal their fathers unmarked police vehicle & go cop dope in it & almost get stabbed because somebody thought he was a narc. You can’t smoke dope & get blown while the police radio is playing. I mean you can, like I said, the thing about police is some of them are sadistic & pretty mean. So fathers that were once jut some guy? They get married. They have three kids. They become a sheriff & they run a lot & their wife blows up to the size of a tool shed & they cheat on her. Their kids know something is wrong & they can’t put their little fingers on it …  they can’t. So what?

Here is what I know about Fathers: They will lie there in the dark with you on a sleepover in your disgusting apt. & tell you their life story. They will. & they will tell you, only briefly, that there is a lot of stuff they wish they didn’t do or had done differently & that’s all they will say about it, & only briefly, because it is not their style, but they will say it & they will say it in a way that only you know they are crying a little bit because fathers don’t cry. Neither do sons by the way. Absolutely not. & then they will say something & it will floor you. & it will be something you really need to hear. Even though you’d already read Frank Bidart’s Golden State  (Bidart is from Bakersfield…did you know that? fucks sake) & you knew you’re father was just some guy. Even though you knew that & you’re father sat in that hallway w you & he came when you needed him like he always did, even though you didn’t deserve it. Even though he showed up & went running in the canyon w you & bought you groceries & let you cook him dinner & he agreed to a sleepover because he obviously was pretty worried about you… even though you knew all that, you didn’t know this yet. 

Lying there in the dark beside you he will say this:

“I never talked to my Dad like this…no way.”