The Autobiography of Someone Else - 20

Harry’s family moved to Boston or one of those towns near Boston because his mom got some hifalutin job as a nutritionist at a university and at the same time she got sick with cancer. I went up to visit a couple times. At first everything was normal and people went to school and work and gathered ‘round the kitchen table for dinner to talk about their day. But then Susan stayed in her bedroom more and more, a pale green oxygen tank visible between the doorway and her bed. God knows what was going on in there, something out of reach or even impermissible to us, the living. I knew she was in there—or was it her?—calling out in a soft, hoarse whisper, a voice not her own, for a man that’s not her husband in a house that’s not her house. Death.

My dad picked me up and we drove home and Mom and Dad had the biggest fight ever. At first I figured it was my fault. Like Mom was blaming me for needing Dad, for taking him away all day. But then I heard her say did you fuck her? My God no, honey. She’s dying. That wouldn’t stop you before. What are you talking about, before? That never stopped you before. Stopped me what? When? Stopped you fucking a dying woman. A woman who would soon be dead. You’re not talking about that again are you? You damn right I’m talking about that again. Please don’t talk about that. So did you fuck her? Answer me. Answer me! Of course I didn’t fuck her. Well you should have fucked her. Don’t say that. Please. You should’ve fucked her while you had the chance. You should’ve fucked a dying woman. Go ahead. You can fuck her when she’s dead for all I care.

Someone slammed a door. My dad I guess. Sis was in her room. I knew I was supposed to comfort her.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 19

One fall day in homeroom Jim said he discovered something in the woods, and you could tell from the shine in his eye it wasn’t the usual find, not an arrowhead or a stash of waterlogged porn.

“A joint!” he said.

“A joint? Pot?”

“A joint. I found it in a baggie by the river.”

We resolved to smoke it, Harry, Jim and me, that weekend. Harry’s dad was going to take us to a Sherlock Holmes play on the college campus. We’d have some time before then at Harry’s to duck out and light up.

On Saturday we walked single-file through the woods by Harry’s house. I gazed at Jim’s back in wonder, knowing he carried something awesome, like a loaded gun. When we were good and out of sight we found a boulder to sit on.

Jim withdrew what looked like a fountain pen case from his jeans pocket.

“I thought it was in a baggie,” I said.

“I transferred it from the baggie,” Jim said solemnly. As though the thing were an archaeological object to be dusted and protected, perhaps someday mounted on a pedestal.

When he opened the lid there it was in the little slot where the pen’s supposed to be. Slender, delicate, twisted at the tip. Part of the paper had been discolored a swampy hue.

“Why’s it green?” asked Harry.

“It got wet when I found it,” Jim admitted.

“It got wet?”

“I was nervous, I dropped it in the river,” Jim said a little defensively. “I picked it up as fast as I could. Now it’s green.”

We pondered it, lying in its ill-fitting coffin of purple velvet. It might not be perfect. It might have been fucked up from when Jim dropped it in the water. But it was beautiful.

Jim picked it up tremblingly in the requisite pinch and placed the tapered end into his mouth. He struck a match and lit the other end, drawing as hard as he could. Immediately he erupted in spasmodic coughs, holding the joint away as ashes and sparks flew off the burning tip. 

It was Harry’s turn. He drew on it, more tentatively, but finally exhaled a plume of sweet smoke and handed it to me.

The paper was dry, almost brittle, like the pages of an ancient tome. I felt privileged. Anointed. I placed it to my lips and sucked in. Nothing happened.

“Is it lit?” I asked, pulling it away and examining the other end. A taunting wisp of smoke emerged.

“Yeah it’s lit!” said Harry.

Jim helpfully fired up a match. He cupped it with his other hand against the breeze, like the Boy Scout he was. I approached gingerly, the thing in my mouth. The flame licked the charred paper as I drew again, hard this time. Still nothing. Or was there something? The tip glowed a moment, then not. An ash or two flew off. I held my breath as long as I could and let out a faint gray mist. That was it! Or was it? Could it have been my breath, vaporized in the cool October air?

“I’m not getting anything!” I cried.

Jim said try again and I did. Still it appeared to be lit. The stubborn little curl of smoke. Same thing again. A vague sensation of warmth in my lungs. A dubious exhalation. Jim took his turn again and smoked copiously. He blew a big, white cloud and passed it to Harry, who did the same. It was down to a roach now. Jim stubbed it out on the rock and put it back in the pen case.

Sitting in the theater as Sherlock Holmes rolled up his sleeve to grandly inject morphine into his arm, Watson watching bemusedly, I didn’t know if I was high. But I wanted to be high. I believed that I was high. I was high.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 18

Harry and I began to hang out with Jim. Just another loser with a mother who knew our mothers. Is that not how lifelong bonds are formed? I sensed that Jim was interested in more than television and Atari and Star Wars and sports. He did like guns and swords and tanks. That was normal but he liked them more than me, more than most. In the library I’d look for race car books. There was one with black and white pictures of North American sports car races in the ‘60s, a book that was already old and nobody cared. Races that had faded deep into history, their results recorded but never re-examined, the names of the drivers forgotten by all but their descendants. Triumphs and Corvettes with roll bars winding up and down and through the fields. Men in white, short-sleeved, button-down shirts and their wives or girlfriends in long floral-print skirts sitting on the hilly lawns to watch. This is all I wanted. Jim came over to my house one day to build model airplanes. We began with a strangely ceremonial lunch, as though my parents had to check him out to be my girlfriend. For some reason Mom had severely undercooked the burgers. I gamely swallowed clumps of cool, mealy meat, its blood soaking the bun, dressed in pickle relish and Heinz Tomato Ketchup, as Jim excitedly explained why he’d prefer a knife to a machine gun in hand-to-hand combat. “A machine gun might jam,” he said. “With a knife, you can stick it in the other guy’s body.” I gulped my iced tea and the lemon wedge knocked my nose. My parents examined Jim with some concern. “Unless you have a bayonet on the gun. A bayonet is the best,” Jim exclaimed. “It’s like a knife!”

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 17

Dad loved to buy records. There was a store in town on the second level of a dreary little strip mall, near a laundromat, near a drugstore, near a printers. He’d go there two, three times a week, bargain hunting in the cutout bins. For Promotional Use Only – Not for Resale. The Nice Price.

I’d go with him and sometimes he’d let me buy something but never something good. All the real music cost money. Presence. Animals. Let It Bleed. Beautiful covers with beautiful words in tight, unscarred plastic. Tantalizing me with that beautiful, impossible sticker: $7.98. I could get something for a couple of bucks, maybe four if it was a double album and Dad felt generous. Bands I’d never heard of. Compilations in garish hues.

My dad would buy anything as long as it was cheap. Kenny Rogers, Carpenters, Lovin’ Spoonful, Rascals, Average White Band. Didn’t really seem to matter. He liked to exit the premises with at least four or five in that square, yellow bag, not spend more than twenty dollars.

Sometimes I wondered whether he liked music at all.

One Tuesday night after dinner he got the itch to go. A school night. A work night. Everyone was about to settle in for Happy Days.

“C’mon,” he said. “You wanna go?”

I wore my Aquaman pajamas and my Spider-Man robe. But I wanted to go.

“Honey,” Mom said to him, exasperated.

“He can go!”

“In his pajamas? Paul.”

“Who cares? It’s warm out.”

There was a moment when nothing happened. Then something remarkable did. My mother gave a faint little shrug and returned to her newspaper, looking back down through her reading glasses—a series of gestures that meant: OK, fuck it, I don’t care.

So there I was wandering the aisles of Record City in my nightclothes. Did anyone stare? The other customers were all heads down, thumbing through stacks like you’re supposed to do. But had they looked away the moment before I saw them? Jerry, the paunchy, gregarious owner, had greeted us in his usual jolly way. Not appearing to give a fuck, either. Was it a conspiracy? Would they all howl with laughter as soon as we were gone?

For a while I laid low in the nether regions of the place. Along the far wall was a swivelling rack of aluminum-framed display cases with posters front and back—images waiting to be worshiped on adolescent walls. I paged through them glumly. Kiss Destroyer. The four men in their body suits and makeup; giant, snake-fanged shoes stomping on a silhouetted pile of rubble. Jimmy Page sweating profusely in his dragon-covered suit, his disheveled hair magenta from the spotlight. Queen sitting on the stone steps of some monument somewhere, looking bored. Jimi Hendrix in a military coat and purple velour pants. Some kid at school said his bandana was always soaked with LSD. Two men in business suits shaking hands in a desolate industrial complex, one of them ablaze. 

I found a copy of Tommy at a surprising discount. Dad okayed the purchase and handed me a fiver. Stunned by my good fortune, I walked to the front and handed it to the young woman behind the counter. She examined it with a frown, and turned to me with a look of concern. But not for my clothes.

“You know what this is, right?”

“It’s Tommy.”

“It’s the Tommy Soundtrack. It’s not really Tommy.”

She handed it back to me so I could see. I turned it over and I felt a shock of shame. Elton John, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner. A parade of names that weren’t the Who. Ann-Margret.

“It’s like, some of it has other musicians on it,” she added helpfully. “Other people singing.”

I now became aware of my little penis and balls naked, hairless, against the polyester of my pajamas. I was a fraud. Not a man—not even a real boy—before this woman, this judge. But I felt called upon to respond. To defend myself. To survive.

“Is it… good?” I stammered.

She shrugged. “It’s not bad. It’s OK. Some of it’s good,” she said. “But it’s not Tommy.”

“How much does Tommy cost?”

“Fourteen ninety-eight.”

I was about to return this disgraceful, odious object to the stacks, as a demonstration of some kind of principle, or maybe just pride, when my father approached, oblivious to my predicament of course.

“What are you doing, Pete? Buy it. Just buy it already,” he declared.

So I handed her the five dollar bill, wadded and wet from my sweating hand. She rang up $3.99 plus tax and gave me back a little handful of change with a littler smile. I took my faux Tommy under my arm and we left.

Or was it just a dream?

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 16

Dinner was silent, though not solemn. Forks and plates clinked. We passed the blue-flowered Pyrex casseroles, butter, salt and dinner rolls with practiced efficiency and muttered courtesies. It was all about eating. Nobody cared about anything else.

When it was over sis and I dutifully cleared the table and scraped our scraps into the sink. I was old enough to switch on the garbage disposal and it still gave me a thrill. The momentary choke. Then the sucking pulverization of our refuse as it vanished into the unseen underworld, perhaps to feed some ever-hungry beast.

We scooped Sealtest Heavenly Hash ice cream into bowls and drizzled fanciful patterns of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup on top. Mom and Dad hovered patiently, waiting to mix another round of drinks.

As dusk gave way to night we went down to the rec room to settle into our habitual spots, our unspoken assignments from time immemorial: sis and me on the beanbag chair, Mom and Dad on the couch. Left-right, left-right. Dad turned on the TV. After a few commercials the title came up on the screen, in orange letters and quotation marks over an aerial shot of a five-lane asphalt highway cooking in the California sun:

"CHiPs"

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 15

Here's what was for dinner: meatloaf with barbecue sauce, instant mashed potatoes, Bird's Eye French green beans with toasted almonds, Pillsbury crescent rolls, Duncan Hines yellow cake with buttercream fudge frosting, tuna rice royal, hamburger and macaroni stew, zucchini bread, artichoke hearts and peas, chicken Kiev, pineapple upside-down cake, enchilada casserole, corn and hamburger pie, quiche lorraine, peas with mushrooms and pearl onions, green beans au gratin, chicken a la king, glazed ham, Dinty Moore beef stew, buttered peas, raisin slaw, ambrosia salad, succotash, salmon crepes, Rice-A-Roni, Noodle Roni, zucchini tortilla casserole, Pillsbury dinner rolls with Land-O-Lakes salted butter, spaghetti primavera, broccoli with Velveeta sauce, rice imperatrice, Pepperidge Farm garlic bread, tuna surprise, applesauce cake; tossed salad with iceberg lettuce, garlic croutons, Bac-O-Bits and Good Seasons Italian dressing; green bean and mushroom casserole, chicken aloha, fiesta rice, tuna linguine casserole, sloppy joes on Wonder rolls, baked ziti, Salisbury steak, herbed potato salad, cherry cobbler, bibb lettuce with Wish-Bone ranch dressing, fettuccine alfredo, Jell-O salad, Swedish meatballs, pork chops and apple sauce, beef strogonoff, Pillsbury chocolate macaroon bundt cake, Jolly Green Giant canned corn, Hamburger Helper and impossible pie.

Mom and Dad would forgo alcohol for the time it took to eat. Mom drank Tab. Dad and Sis and I drank Coca-Cola.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 14

Mom and Dad started drinking when we got home. Gin and tonics. Dad always made the drinks at the kitchen counter. The awful, hissing crunch of ice cubes wrenched loose in the lever-action tray. The happy rattle of the ice in empty glasses. A squeeze of lime. A little bit of gin, that deceptively sinister spirit: clear but imbued with the essence of mysterious vegetation, possibly toxic, possibly medicinal. Daddy held the open bottle under my nose and laughed at my contorting face. Beefeater Gin, with the man in the gilt red uniform and the top hat and the staff. The incongruity of the name and of the picture somehow underscored the adult quality of this product. I couldn't imagine ever understanding what it all meant. Beef. Eater. Gin.

I'd tasted tonic before, in a rocks glass with ice and lime so I could pretend to be a grownup. Cold, green, prickly bitterness shot through my brain. As the tonic suffused my mouth and throat it seemed to leave them drier than before; it was anti-liquid. I poured the rest into the sink with a heartful of regret, for even though I could not drink it I wanted it very, very much.

Dad brought Mom her drink and they sat serenely in the living room, reading the paper and listening to country music on the radio.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 13

On this occasion Mom and Dad wanted to take a walk with us. To parade triumphantly around the neighborhood, perhaps; to indicate to others that we were not just a happy family suddenly, but we were happier than them – we were taking a walk. Only the very happiest of happy people take walks.

Mom and Dad walked ahead of us, arms around each other's waists. Julie and I straggled behind. We were always a little bit embarrassed when our parents got along. If we were ill at ease when they were fighting, we were mortified when they embraced. It would have suited us best had they interacted like business partners, cordial and sexless.

I picked up a stick for a walking stick and I whapped it against the bases of mailbox and paper-box posts along the way until Mom fired me a scathing glare.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 12

Suddenly the agony would end and there would be cookies. There would be ice cream. Mom and Dad would reappear, sometimes hand in hand, half-dead grievances buried in a shallow grave. The married couple reintroduced to the world. I was fool enough to fall for it.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 11

I lay on my bed and stared up at the galaxy. My dark blue ceiling was covered with the constellations: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Orion, Gemini, Leo, Cancer and Cassiopeia. They glowed a pale green at night but somehow seemed more real when daylight filled the room and each star was revealed as muted and imprecise. My dad had painted them, painstakingly, with a National Geographic map for reference. My dad painted the stars.

This is what I did when my parents fought. I stared at the fake stars. I thought of the planets surrounding them, populated by howling beasts or, more often, some enlightened race: a world where death does not exist, with its glittering city of levitating streets and telepathic streams; everyone allied in the promotion of truth. I traced a route there in my imaginary spaceship.

My mother was a fury. Sometimes, suddenly, she would become extravagantly angry. Scream bursts of bitter, cutting invective between stifled sobs, pointing, trembling. The extreme amplitude of her rage, out of proportion to the here and now, made the true source of it seem far away in space and time. If she was yelling at my dad she was not his wife; she was every wife, punishing every husband who had ever lived for his selfishness, his profligacy, his laziness. If she was yelling at us she was not our mother; she was every mother, raging at every child ever born for its whining, its stubbornness, its ungratefulness, and not least the ravages it had committed upon her body. For its very existence, really. When you were on the receiving end of my mother's anger you got the feeling you were paying the price for some ancient and irredeemable sin. The sin of being, perhaps. The universe's fall at the moment of creation. It was a pure, abstract wrath; this had the curious effect of making it both more commanding and less personal.

I now heard her muffled shouts punctuated by the smashing of dishes on the kitchen floor. In spite of her enormous temper, it was unusual for her to break things. I somehow knew I had to exit my room and bear witness to this. My dad was pacing in the dining room, haltingly trying to reason with her, hands up in a gesture of pleading. My sister sat on the couch in the living room, body stiff, arms folded. Instinctively I sat with her.

"I'm scared," I said.

"Don't worry," she said. "Everything's going to be OK."

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 10

I rode home from Harry's and left my bike out on the lawn. I walked in and Mom and Dad were at it again. They'd been fighting for weeks now, every day or every other day. Today my dad was sitting on the ottoman beside my mother, who lay prone on the couch with her arm draped on her forehead, wilted, like someone suddenly stricken; like a fainted, dainty lady in a play.

My father spoke softly, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped as though in prayer. My mother stared blankly back, blinking, her eyes raw from crying. You could imagine he was tending to her, like a doctor or a parent; you could imagine he was quietly destroying her, a devious courtier delivering some unfathomable insult to his detested queen. You could imagine he would kill her. Though they were at odds, there was an air of conspiracy between them: two adults in complex, intimate congress over a bewildering and irresolvable question. The rest of the world had fallen away and there remained only them and their precious problem. Was this not love?

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 9

Harry and I went out back to burn some things. We each had a fistful of soldiers, the kind you stand up on their flat, plastic perches before you knock 'em down. I had the matches. Harry had model cement and a roll of caps. He knelt down and placed it upright on a top stone of the garden wall.

"Let's get a hammer," I said.

"No."

Harry dislodged a jagged rock, just small enough to hold, from the middle of the wall. He smashed it onto the caps with all his might. Bang! went the caps. Harry lifted the rock and we peered at the smoking remains with consternation. The top of the wall was darkened at the point of impact and crimson flakes of paper had peeled off the coil, but most of the caps were evidently intact.

"That sucked," I said.

"That was gay," said Harry.

"I wanna burn it."

I got down on one knee and took out a match. Surely fire itself would cause the thin bubbles of gunpowder to burst, gloriously, like fireworks; each explosion would intensify the next and build a beautiful inferno, flames creeping toward the eaves.

Harry grabbed at my arm. "You're not supposeta burn 'em! You're supposeta pop 'em!"

"Fuck off." I shoved Harry with my elbow and tremblingly struck my match. I held it under the half-charred roll, trying not to twitch my hand away in trepidation. It seemed to be taking a long time to light.

"It's not even gonna catch fire," said Harry. "There's not enough oxygen."

"Fuck you!"

"You're stupid!"

Just then the outermost band of caps sputtered aflame, the ink burning a pale green. I rocked back up on my feet and moved a step or two away.

Fizzzzzussh, went the first cap. Fizzzzzussh, went the second. Fizzzzzussh, fizzzzzussh, fizzzzzussh. The cap roll sat serenely on the wall, quietly aflame, watched over by a patch of marjoram.

"You're a wimp," asserted Harry.

Fizzzzzussh.

"God fucking dammit," I hissed through my humiliation.

"Told you so! Retard!"

Harry walked up and absently drizzled the pitiable conflagration with cement. Fire flashed all over the stone and down the wall, and climbed back up the strands of glue nearly to his knuckles. Then he stepped on the caps with the heel of his shoe, putting out the fire just as whimsically as he had fed it. There remained a smoldering husk of charred paper with a coiled core of pristine, unfired caps.

"I have to go home," I said.

"We have to burn some soldiers," Harry said emphatically, as though it were incontestable that his statement would trump mine.

We set our soldiers down on adjacent stones and arranged them in slapdash formation, instinctively in opposition. We showered them with model airplane glue and set the scene ablaze. We stood and watched as the soldiers melted, perhaps imagining their screams. Unnerved by my earlier failure, I picked up one of mine. Its head and shoulders were on fire but its base was untouched and cool. Suddenly he buckled at the waist, dipping his rifle to his feet. His head melted onto the knuckle of my thumb. I threw down the soldier and yelped in pain, clutching my stricken hand against my abdomen. There was now a patch of military green plastic seared into my flesh.

"Are you OK?" asked Harry wearily.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"Boys! Time for lunch!" Harry's mom yelled from the kitchen door.

We walked back in and sat at the kitchen table. My finger throbbed, half-numb, half-burning. Harry's mom poured us skim milk and I pressed the back of my thumb to the cold and dewy surface of the glass. She made us peanut butter and honey sandwiches with that bland and clumpy peanut butter from the health food store, with the separated oil. On frozen Pepperidge Farm whole wheat bread. They kept their bread in the freezer so that it would last for months. They never bothered to defrost it. Take it out of the freezer, make a damn sandwich and be done. I lifted it to my mouth and felt the slices cold and rubbery in my hands. I peered down at the top slice as it approached. A spongy, gray-brown expanse riddled with sparkling crystals of frost. I bit into it and felt a styrofoamy crunch; the bread bent unwillingly between my teeth. At least there was honey.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 8

The tanks emit a somber purr that rises to a growl when they maneuver. A dry pop when they fire. Then ascending, beeping tones as the missile, a point faint and fleeting as a shooting star, caroms in the maze. This is the sound of Japan.

When your tank gets hit it explodes with a staticky roar, a shaming noise, full of anger and reproach. Hchrrrrrrrrrr! Your tank is prone, humping the mouth of an L-shaped obstacle like a dog; you try to turn it around but the joystick won't respond. You know death is coming. Hchrrrrrrrrrr!

When your tank gets hit it vanishes and reappears, spinning, a little farther back, looking like an animated swastika.

Hchrrrrrrrrrr!

Harry's parents were obsessed with health food and books and exercise and living right. The Atari in the living room was their only concession to the frivolous desires of children, a sacrifice to the gods of junk so that they may continue to compost their garbage and watch Masterpiece Theater.

Every night at dinner Harry's dad placed a ramekin of vitamin and herbal supplements beside everybody's place. Grape seed with its naturally occurring bioflavonoids, garlic to ward against infection and cholesterol, cod liver oil for essential fatty acids, elderberry for the immune system and a big, grainy multivitamin with minerals. The family took them ritually before eating, in place of grace. Harry went through the motions of placing the pills in his mouth and taking sips of water, but he tucked each one in turn inside his cheek until he could safely spit them out into his napkin.

"Why don't you swallow your pills?" I asked him.

"I don't know," he said.

A minute passed. Then Harry cast his joystick aside, mid-game.

"Check something out!" he said.

I followed him to his bedroom, where he pulled a shoebox out from under his bed and opened the lid. Inside were hundreds of pills: white ones, red ones, green ones, amber gels and two-tone capsules, some gummy and discolored.

"Why do you keep them?" I asked.

"I don't know."

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 7

Mom would always barge in during the last or second-to-last show of the morning, "Fat Albert," "Space Academy," always at the most frustrating moment, after we were full but before we were sated. We dreaded her intrusions so much that we were unable to enjoy the last hour or so of television, instead pretending to pay attention as we seesawed from guilt to fear.

"C'mon kids. Out of the house."

"Mom!"

"But Mom!"

"Up, up, up, up, up! Get some fresh air."

No one cared where their kids went or where they were back then. Everybody's door was always open, mothers high on coffee buzzing through the neighborhood like bees, children tromping through kitchens with their muddy feet, mothers stronger than dirt, filling up another bucket. Is it wet, Mr. Clean? You're soaking in it.

I rode my banana-seat bicycle down Harvard to Dartmouth and up to Harry's house. He was out front on his bike, jumping a little bump in the packed dirt where the yard met the street. He caught a little air and landed wobblingly, pedaling up to me and stopping with a squeal and a skid.

"Wanna play Atari?" I asked.

"Yup," he said.

We dumped our bikes in the driveway and went inside. Harry was my best friend. I hated him.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 6

For the next four hours we inhabited an amplified and manic world, full of rocket ships and cannonballs, chases and escapes; the personification of things and creatures into caricatures of longing and of fear. A ceaseless refrain of noise and pain sung by nemeses trapped in hopeless, eternal conflict. Cartoons taught us to identify with protagonists, sure, but they indoctrinated us into tragedy and futility too. Who among us has not rooted for the Coyote?

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 5

The remote control was in my sister's hands. She held it to her chest, preciously, and without hesitation I grabbed for it, trying to gain purchase on a corner of the black rectangle edged in chromed plastic, prying at her damp and dirty fingers, surprisingly tenacious, the golden retriever Alex peering at us, tongue extended; I was about to give up when it broke free and fell softly in the burgundy shag. We scrambled for it, exclaiming angry nonsense, cries of ill will and dismay: Give it! Give it! Give it! No! No! No!

It was never over until someone got hurt. Pain was the solemn and incontestable signal to progress to the next step in a program of events, the chime in the filmstrip of our lives. If no one got hurt, nothing new would ever happen. Often there were tears. Sometimes there was blood. So it was that my sister konked me on the side of the skull with the flat of the remote. It was OK. It was over now. It was time to watch TV.

She pointed the remote with an overhand dipping motion, like a magic wand. A tiny dot appeared in the middle of the emptiness, a singularity. In an instant, light and color and form and motion expanded to the edges of the screen, and words and music burst forth, too. It was 7:59 am, the penultimate. The last commercial before the show.

A boy and a girl riding skateboards; the girl complains she's "getting hot and thirsty."

They cry out into the void: "Hey Kool-Aid!"

Their savior appears at once, bursting through a wooden fence and past astonished workmen, lumbering down a hill, an enormous jug with legs and cartoony feet. He bears a real jug of purple drink in his rubbery paw. Glasses filled with ice have materialized in the children's hands. Kool-Aid Man fills them up and the kids quench themselves greedily.

"Tastes great! Our friend's cool," says the girl.

"Our friend's Kool-Aid," says the boy.

"Kool-Aid brand soft drink mix!" says the girl.

Oh yeah, Kool-Aid's here bringin' you fun
Kool-Aid's got thirst on the run
Get a big, wide, happy, ear-to-ear Kool-Aid smile!

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 4

I'd go down to the paneled rec room and take my place beside my sister on the purple beanbag chair, perched on my belly like a sniper on a rock. The television not five feet away, the twenty-six inch screen of miraculously curved gray glass in an ostentatious dark-veneer cabinet of neoclassical design, the Zenith: a magnificent totem, in apotheosis, toward which every object in its vicinity was turned. It seemed more powerful when it was off and sat brooding, mysterious. When the television was off, it was watching us.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 3

To recognize that another might impede one's progress – is that not respect? To deflect them, to wrestle them aside – that's how we acknowledge each other's existence and thus our shared humanity.

And so it was that if I met my older sister in the hallway, we'd shove each other to the wall. Automatically, almost listlessly. It was a gesture of greeting more than anything else.

I'd go downstairs and to the kitchen pantry to examine the glorious row of fortified sugary cereals occupying nearly an entire shelf: Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, Peanut Butter Crunch, Franken Berry, Trix, Cap'n Crunch, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Pebbles, Boo Berry, Honeycomb, Crunch Berries, Count Chocula and Fruity Pebbles in magnificent, cartoon fluorescence: screaming orange, purple, lime-green, lipstick pink and thousand-flushes blue. It was all so beautiful I was often at a loss for what to do. I'd try combining cereals, but the result was always somehow less than the sum of its parts. It left behind a murky pool of milk not rainbow-hued but gray-brown-blue, the color of space-age toxic waste. I'd lift the bowl to my lips and drink it dutifully, like a sacred elixir, and feel the unholy solution of vitamins and minerals and artificial flavors and colors, the red 40, the niacinamide, the pyridoxine hydrochloride, the blues 1 and 2, the sulfiting agents, the annato color, the BHT, the trisodium phosphate, the tricalcium phosphate, the yellows 5 and 6 all the rest of it penetrate each and every molecule of my being.

And yet I was not happy. It began to dawn on me that every waking hour of the day deepened my indoctrination into American dissatisfaction: to have it all and then some but to still crave more.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 2

My family was trained to indulge and we were utterly unashamed of our abilities. Every day was a manic and relentless parade through deep-junk Americana; harrowing, psychedelic, wonderful. I had a Batman bedspread and Aquaman pajamas; I opened my dream-distracted eyes to a poster of a mounted cowboy in a rubbly valley, mesas in the distance. He wore spurs and chaps and a red shirt with a black vest and a white hat and he brandished a pistol as he rode.

I wanted that gun more than anything.

My room was strewn with toys: G.I. Joe, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys and a Rubik's Cube. An Etch-A-Sketch, a skateboard. A real football and a fake one made of foam. A lime-green water pistol, Beretta-style. A Millenium Falcon, tilted like a pot lid, gradually shedding brittle fragments into the deep hairs of my purple shag. Belts of orange Hot Wheels track drooping from the windowsill, winding under chair and desk, some connected by dark green plastic tabs and others solitary, double dead ends in the wasteland.

On Saturday mornings I'd awake of my own volition, stumble through the debris, walk down the hall to the bathroom and brush my teeth with Aim. Because I was supposed to take aim against cavities.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 1

My father owned a sealant company. Industrial, commercial. I spent many numbing hours wandering the warehouse while he worked, memorizing the names and properties of products: Dynazip 25 one-part polyurethane sealant, moisture curing, effective on highways, reservoirs and sewage treatment facilities; the gun-grade, multi-component polys of the Merix series; Portex 400 ultra-low modulus silicon bridge sealant; the Spexxo line of custom sealants, including highly adhesive blended elastomer compounds, non-hardening synthetic rubbers such as Zoxit 90, paintable acrylic latex suitable for acoustic treatments, Lithik 1000 solvent-releasing high-solids seal for construction joints, and Evagica synthetic-rubber-and-resin compound gutter seal; Trumlo 67 (and Trumlo 67 Plus) low-mod, one-part, traffic-grade silicone sealants for highways and parking structures; CoZeel neutral-cure silicone for curtain window wall systems; FTW 500, FTW 550 and FTW 600 one-part, acetoxy silicone for sealing bathrooms, locker rooms and spas; and X-Alta no-mess poly foam to seal against the wind-driven rain: pre-compressed, self-expanding, self-imposing and self-aware.