First let me get this out of the way, I don’t claim to be a writer.
This project began as an outline for self portaits (photographs) that I wanted to make about sex, sadness and being a superhero. As I started making notes, they slowly turned into short stories. The first seven stories were turned into hand-bound booklets called CAKE WALK. That can be purchased HERE.
I’d also like to give a big thank you to Jon Kinnally for all of his support, as well as his incredible editing and profreading skills.
This project began as an outline for self portaits (photographs) that I wanted to make about sex, sadness and being a superhero. As I started making notes, they slowly turned into short stories. The first seven stories were turned into hand-bound booklets called CAKE WALK. That can be purchased HERE.
I’d also like to give a big thank you to Jon Kinnally for all of his support, as well as his incredible editing and profreading skills.
Good To Go
The Oatmeal Boy
Colonel Mustard
Señor Wolff
New Wave
Learning To Fly
The Accidental Fister
First Time
The Oatmeal Boy
Colonel Mustard
Señor Wolff
New Wave
Learning To Fly
The Accidental Fister
First Time
The Oatmeal Boy
(for Jon)
The bright winter morning sun splashes a streak of light against my pink kitchen wall; though it’s really more coral than pink, if you want a more accurate picture. A tiny sliver of light blinds my left eye as it slowly moves across the room. This forces a tear to drip down my cheek, to my chin, and finally, into my bowl of oatmeal.
I’ve always loved oatmeal. As a kid I would start with the variety pack and would eat my way through it in this order: cinnamon and spice, original, apples and cinnamon and then finish with maple and brown sugar. This last one was the sweetest, and I was well onto ruining my diet and health by consuming as much sugar as possible.
As I got older, I eventually started making it from scratch; rolled oats and adding fresh blueberries, banana slices and maple syrup (the fancy kind). And a lot of butter. When I was little I used to eat butter right off the stick like it was a candy bar. And onions, I ate them like they were apples. I love to smell my hands after cutting onions; it’s sexy, and nostalgic. That’s a fetish to explain at another time. Today, I’m all about steel cut oats. They take longer but they seem heartier, and less trailer trash.
It was 1976, our country’s bicentennial, and we were living in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The neighborhood looked very Brady Bunch, but for the most part it was all single mothers; all of the Mr. Bradys had gone off to find their new Carols, themselves, or their Gregs.
I was the last of six kids, and honestly I’m not really sure my mom wanted to have kids at all. She started when she was seventeen and at that time the only option was to have them, especially coming from Catholic parents. The first two are from a different father than mine, the third was given up for adoption and there are two others that share my father, though I never thought of him as “Dad”. My parents divorced right after I was born and I only met him once when we were moving from Colorado to Maine. On this trip all I remember is that he bought us ice cream, took us fishing and gave us a big coffee can full of change. I kept calling him “Ray” and my two other siblings who shared his DNA got mad at me and said to call him “Dad”. He wasn’t a dad to me, he was a stranger who gave us ice cream, took us fishing and gave us a can of change.
I was seven years old, and as noted before, the last in the line of my siblings. I always felt a bit of a disconnect with everyone; there was a five year gap between me and my brother and six years with my sister. We didn’t have a lot in common. I was also the only one with blond hair and blue eyes. I used to fantasize that maybe that the milkman was involved in my making but as I got older the resemblance between Ray and myself was scarily spot on.
My mother was never home, always working. I was the textbook definition of the latchkey kid. When I was in the first grade, my sister started to teach me how to do laundry and some simple cooking so that I could take care of myself when I was home alone.
One Sunday morning, during that bicentennial year, I woke up and decided to make breakfast for the family. I’d never done this before, but I was determined. I wanted to be part of something. This task felt like an offering to the gods, with the hope of starting to feel a sense of belonging. Oatmeal seemed like an easy choice; we always had an abundance in our house. One thing my mom did do was to make cookies for us kids at least once a month, and oatmeal cookies were always a big hit.
My mother worked in restaurants so we had a lot of industrial kitchen supplies; giant bowls, spoons, ladles, etc., and she had a giant stainless silver pot, so big I could crawl into it. At least that’s how I remember it.
I started reading the recipe on the back of the Quaker man’s navy hat and slowly added all the ingredients. Most everything was in cup or half cup measurements so I didn’t think it would be so difficult. I used two full round cardboard cartons of oatmeal and added the appropriate amount of water. I’m not sure why I needed to make so much; I don’t think I realized that it expanded. The water was boiling and the oats were cartwheeling through the bubbling hot water. It came to adding the salt and this is where it all went sideways. The recipe called for one quarter teaspoon of salt per cup of oats. I had used about eight cups of oats and sixteen cups of water. I was still in the cup and half cup mode so when I read “one quarter” I immediately thought it meant one quarter cup, so I proceeded to add two cups of salt. Doom.
Everyone started waking up and coming into the kitchen. I had set the tables with bowls, spoons, butter, maple syrup and glasses for juice. I stood so proudly above the giant silver pot of oatmeal.
“Look what I did!”
Everyone looked at me suspiciously, and rightfully so. I scooped the oatmeal into the bowls and we all sat down in our designated chairs. My mother with her back to the window, me across from her, my brother to my left and sister to the right. I was still beaming with a sense of accomplishment and was waiting for the praise and thanks to fall my way. Instead I heard shrieks. Gagging noises. My mother screamed and asked what the hell was I thinking. My brother and sister continued to make loud wrenching sounds only to make the situation more dramatic.
I shrank, defeated, and between the screams and fake puking noises, my head began to spin.
“I only wanted to do something nice for everyone.”
I started crying.
My mother could not stop yelling at me about what a mess I made and how I wasted so much food. She told me that I had to sit at the table and could not leave until I ate all of the oatmeal. That seemed like an impossible feat, not only because of the large quantity of mush, but also because it was dreadful and completely inedible.
I sat in front of the massive silver pot full of salty goo, sobbing; my tears only added more salt to it, and by the minute it seemed that the pot was growing in size, dwarfing me and making me even more invisible in our home. It felt like forever.
Eventually my mother grew tired of my apologies through my muffled and ugly crying and had me throw out all the oatmeal, and clean the kitchen. Then she left. It was Sunday and she didn’t have to work, but it seemed she didn’t want to be in this house, especially after my disastrous attempt at trying to do good.
…
Still to this day I can’t let food go to waste. My mother’s been dead for almost forty years and I’m still afraid of getting in trouble. I will eat everything on the plate in front of me, whether or not I’m full. That morning had a lifelong effect.
And it was definitely the blinding light that caused the tear to fall from my eye.
Nothing else.
(for Jon)
The bright winter morning sun splashes a streak of light against my pink kitchen wall; though it’s really more coral than pink, if you want a more accurate picture. A tiny sliver of light blinds my left eye as it slowly moves across the room. This forces a tear to drip down my cheek, to my chin, and finally, into my bowl of oatmeal.
I’ve always loved oatmeal. As a kid I would start with the variety pack and would eat my way through it in this order: cinnamon and spice, original, apples and cinnamon and then finish with maple and brown sugar. This last one was the sweetest, and I was well onto ruining my diet and health by consuming as much sugar as possible.
As I got older, I eventually started making it from scratch; rolled oats and adding fresh blueberries, banana slices and maple syrup (the fancy kind). And a lot of butter. When I was little I used to eat butter right off the stick like it was a candy bar. And onions, I ate them like they were apples. I love to smell my hands after cutting onions; it’s sexy, and nostalgic. That’s a fetish to explain at another time. Today, I’m all about steel cut oats. They take longer but they seem heartier, and less trailer trash.
It was 1976, our country’s bicentennial, and we were living in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The neighborhood looked very Brady Bunch, but for the most part it was all single mothers; all of the Mr. Bradys had gone off to find their new Carols, themselves, or their Gregs.
I was the last of six kids, and honestly I’m not really sure my mom wanted to have kids at all. She started when she was seventeen and at that time the only option was to have them, especially coming from Catholic parents. The first two are from a different father than mine, the third was given up for adoption and there are two others that share my father, though I never thought of him as “Dad”. My parents divorced right after I was born and I only met him once when we were moving from Colorado to Maine. On this trip all I remember is that he bought us ice cream, took us fishing and gave us a big coffee can full of change. I kept calling him “Ray” and my two other siblings who shared his DNA got mad at me and said to call him “Dad”. He wasn’t a dad to me, he was a stranger who gave us ice cream, took us fishing and gave us a can of change.
I was seven years old, and as noted before, the last in the line of my siblings. I always felt a bit of a disconnect with everyone; there was a five year gap between me and my brother and six years with my sister. We didn’t have a lot in common. I was also the only one with blond hair and blue eyes. I used to fantasize that maybe that the milkman was involved in my making but as I got older the resemblance between Ray and myself was scarily spot on.
My mother was never home, always working. I was the textbook definition of the latchkey kid. When I was in the first grade, my sister started to teach me how to do laundry and some simple cooking so that I could take care of myself when I was home alone.
One Sunday morning, during that bicentennial year, I woke up and decided to make breakfast for the family. I’d never done this before, but I was determined. I wanted to be part of something. This task felt like an offering to the gods, with the hope of starting to feel a sense of belonging. Oatmeal seemed like an easy choice; we always had an abundance in our house. One thing my mom did do was to make cookies for us kids at least once a month, and oatmeal cookies were always a big hit.
My mother worked in restaurants so we had a lot of industrial kitchen supplies; giant bowls, spoons, ladles, etc., and she had a giant stainless silver pot, so big I could crawl into it. At least that’s how I remember it.
I started reading the recipe on the back of the Quaker man’s navy hat and slowly added all the ingredients. Most everything was in cup or half cup measurements so I didn’t think it would be so difficult. I used two full round cardboard cartons of oatmeal and added the appropriate amount of water. I’m not sure why I needed to make so much; I don’t think I realized that it expanded. The water was boiling and the oats were cartwheeling through the bubbling hot water. It came to adding the salt and this is where it all went sideways. The recipe called for one quarter teaspoon of salt per cup of oats. I had used about eight cups of oats and sixteen cups of water. I was still in the cup and half cup mode so when I read “one quarter” I immediately thought it meant one quarter cup, so I proceeded to add two cups of salt. Doom.
Everyone started waking up and coming into the kitchen. I had set the tables with bowls, spoons, butter, maple syrup and glasses for juice. I stood so proudly above the giant silver pot of oatmeal.
“Look what I did!”
Everyone looked at me suspiciously, and rightfully so. I scooped the oatmeal into the bowls and we all sat down in our designated chairs. My mother with her back to the window, me across from her, my brother to my left and sister to the right. I was still beaming with a sense of accomplishment and was waiting for the praise and thanks to fall my way. Instead I heard shrieks. Gagging noises. My mother screamed and asked what the hell was I thinking. My brother and sister continued to make loud wrenching sounds only to make the situation more dramatic.
I shrank, defeated, and between the screams and fake puking noises, my head began to spin.
“I only wanted to do something nice for everyone.”
I started crying.
My mother could not stop yelling at me about what a mess I made and how I wasted so much food. She told me that I had to sit at the table and could not leave until I ate all of the oatmeal. That seemed like an impossible feat, not only because of the large quantity of mush, but also because it was dreadful and completely inedible.
I sat in front of the massive silver pot full of salty goo, sobbing; my tears only added more salt to it, and by the minute it seemed that the pot was growing in size, dwarfing me and making me even more invisible in our home. It felt like forever.
Eventually my mother grew tired of my apologies through my muffled and ugly crying and had me throw out all the oatmeal, and clean the kitchen. Then she left. It was Sunday and she didn’t have to work, but it seemed she didn’t want to be in this house, especially after my disastrous attempt at trying to do good.
…
Still to this day I can’t let food go to waste. My mother’s been dead for almost forty years and I’m still afraid of getting in trouble. I will eat everything on the plate in front of me, whether or not I’m full. That morning had a lifelong effect.
And it was definitely the blinding light that caused the tear to fall from my eye.
Nothing else.