Chapter 2: The Unspoken Words of Photographs

Chapter 2 from God Wears Camo

 

Chapter 2: The Unspoken Words of Photographs

 

            They used to call me Chuck, but I go by Chas now.

            Back in the suburbs of Lake George, New York for the summer, I’m parched at the end of my drive. An unguarded glare heats my pores and reminds me to hydrate before ducking down the tree-line. I’m setting faster than the sun, which creates a pristine opportunity for taking a nostalgic pit stop at my favorite, sprightly corner-mart--the one I grew up loitering around. I started shopping there for penny-candy, then sodas and milkshakes, then scratch-tickets and cigs, but now fresh Adirondack water and the worst/best cigar I can find behind the counter to offer my father, later on. When the temperature of the night is ideal for porch-lit nightcaps, I know he’ll insist upon one more whiskey, and adore my snuck-in treat (mother doesn’t allow him to smoke).

The mom-and-pop shop still sparkles with old friends; I watch Peter Wentworth for a moment before he sees me. My fingers are cold with the excitement of surprising him (my best friend from Exeter Academy) but my cowardice sees the shadow of an anticipated hello and shies me away. I go to leave.

            “Chuck, no way!” Peter catches my escape.

            “Pete, heck it’s been like forever, since prep school graduation. I go by Chas now by the way.”

            Esteemed Yale graduate Peter, now sweaty and unkempt, breathes heavy, damp, with fluster-soaked breaths. The pores on his forehead are sprinklers watering his hairline--I assume because of the rampant little boy (with Hulk-like power) running around and knocking shelves over. “Yeah, I go by dad now.”

            “Hey congratulations, that’s amazing!”

            “Eh, I have a lot to say about it, but I’m trying to be a decent human. What are you buying?” He points to my sad cigar. “Chuck, Chas, Charlie I don’t care who you are, you gotta swing by my place and let me give you a proper cigar for Christ’s sake.”

            “Oh no, it’s not a big deal, I was just gonna share one with my dad. I think he’s cut down so the shittier the better--don’t want to instill a relapse.”

            “Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad-“ The little boy runs over, arms brimful with tampons picked out of the box by varying colors that are about to confetti the floors.

            “Uh, hey ah buddy, remember what we talked about? You can say dad once and I’ll respond. Go put those back.” Peter talked to his kid in a way that I fear--the way you have to talk to kids--patiently, and always full of lessons, but who even knows if you’re lessons are any good.

            “No!” the toddler snarls.

            Peter grins at me with a this-is-awkward-my-kid-sucks look. Speckles of gray fuzz fringe the areas over his ears--significantly altered from the time when he got Most Likely to Age Well in our yearbook. “Remember when simple things like going to the corner-shop was… fun? I guess it still is for you, well maybe not with that s**t for a cigar. My son is going to be gay I know it, tampons, like what Freud-phase is that?”

I don’t respond.

Peter was never absent-minded in the time that I knew him, but this little version of him had sucked up all the pigment from his hair, and he looked… dirty, salt-and-peppered. 

            “Hey, about that cigar though, I’ll give one to you, and your dad, a decent one, Cuban, just pop over after dinner, it’ll be great--the Georgie boys looking out over the lake like old times.”

            “Okay, sounds good.”

I’m finally home. The old homestead smells the same, acetous with Lucy’s (the former cleaning lady) Lysol products--even since she died, lemon-zest odors still shellac the furniture. Other wafts augment Lucy’s essence: the brume of my mother’s spoiled perfume and my father’s pine-oiled musk. Oh boy, that musk. I grew up fearing it, and swore it to be a rubbed-on Christmas tree air-freshener meant for a car, but not if you ask father; he and his coveted musk have become one. Worn when hunting, he conflates the scents of man and tree, and fortifies an elusive strategy, befitting himself a safe-haven bucks can freely pee on ‘til getting shot cold. He wore it for other occasions too. Like every day. He bathed in that s**t so much that the deer now run from every tree near our home--all they smell is him. So he’s moved on to hunting quail.

I’m not a real man, not until I wear pine musk and have a Lucy of my own--a petite Spanish woman sauntering in my log-built, cavernous corridors, whistling compositions by Arriaga--but I did it… finished my first year of law school, the hardest year of my life, well that’s what they tell me (other lawyers) but yeah, the hardest year, especially when I have no sexual outlets. None, so yeah, hard. No-your-honor-that’s-not a-gavel-in-my-pants hard. Not funny.

Lust seethes in my blood, an acidic and mutinous balance throw-off, but natural for a boy my age--natural like a gray day, natural like two bees trying to get close, with stingers in the way. Stress wrings out my brain and dispenses more seamen downstream to loinsville. My shameful, sick-o porn is my only, committed relationship, the only one I allow, just a bit, out of mere survival so my misfortune of being asexual doesn’t cause me walk around armed and loaded with a weapon I have no idea how to holster. I’ll have no access to porn this summer--still blocked--my parents shield us from ungodliness, even as adults. We are a pious, Christian, godly bunch, so I’m used to constricting restraints; I’m used to honoring the law.

It’s afternoon, or no, it’s evening now, and I settle-in each one of my suitcases with a gentle let-down that hallows the whole room’s resting state, as if a baby were sleeping, dreaming pleasant toe-twitching dreams for me. My toes make life in my soles, inflating my shoes with the frenzied rush of my heart--a rush from how my luggage fits together perfectly, cozily, in a cleared out corner. I pack a certain way to assure this secure fit--and now, suddenly, I’m blind to the apparent world, set-focus on a mere moment of order. Inside my bags is a perfect, completed Tetris board of items.

Mother told me to wash up for dinner, so I’m tickled giddy--the time to unpack arises--I can undo my puzzle. With a gentle palm I lift and hover crisply folded stacks of garments across the room and venture to put them away, but of course, a refined dusty sheen, filmed on my drawers halts my waltz.

I grab Pine Sol and paper towels from under the bathroom sink and lather the cedar chests until a sparkling, glistening finish calms me--the greasy smell is… ahhh Lucy. I sniff her in. That saint would have tackled this before I saw any muck, before I closed my last final. In Vermont, the deer would hear the sheets of paper shut and know to play telephone, chain-messaging to her that Little Chas (what she always called me) deserves an untainted room to shut his eyes in. Now the deer are gone, and so is she. When she died a few years ago (my mother worked her into the ground) her son Armando started helping around the manor, not diligently I notice when tossing out soggy brown paper towels, dripping with a sullied dew. Gross.

I cannot poo-poo Armando, my second brother living in the guesthouse with Lucy since we were kids, he was just one of us kids too, except went to school on the other, other side of town. As the oldest, he would babysit us and was always so cool about breaking the rules--a huge no-no in the Matthews’ family. Appalled and neurotic, my child-self didn’t enjoy breaking set-boundaries. I was anxious and feared my father (the ethical ventriloquist), twitching when things were out of order, but faked a smile--we all smiled silly when it was “just us kids.”

When Lucy died, my kind mother let Armando stay, well not my kind mother (she’s not the charitable type) but my lonely mother: “us kids” are now grown, moved on from Lake George, and the outsized, empty house that engulfs any lost stragglers left within it.

My father, a relentless workaholic, disappears for hours, and sometimes days, austere and lonesome, he likes his time to himself--in the woods or in the office--he escapes. Wouldn’t that be nice? Making enough money to shove food into everyone’s mouth-holes and just walking in and out whenever the mood strikes your fancy. He’s been gone longer this time--his musky odor is faint compared to Lucy’s.

I get lonely too, not preferably, but am allayed by the three photos kept in my wallet. The first is of “just us kids”: Me, Henry, Marnie, and Armando, which is funny (hmm funny rather than haha) to think about because we were that way only yesterday--“just us kids”--the knuckles of time punched me unconscious, so seemingly none went by. The familiarity of our gathering affects me while home, in a lost-to-me term meaning both happy and sad, bittersweet I guess, but I don’t think bittersweet quite fits my mawkishness.

My keepsake photo, the last picture taken of all of us together, was captured years ago during a summer infamous for torrid rain. The photo’s gloomy and dense backdrop overhangs behind suspending pines, laden with flooding water; I remember surrounding branches smelling more authentic than my father. We smiled, white teeth punctured through muddy faces--the unique curves of our mouths were specialized for each unique face, and for each face feeling uniquely elated--an ineffable showcase of blessedness.

Henry was fourteen, Marnie was sixteen, and Armando was twenty-two (the age I am now). It was seldom for us to be gathered in one place, especially happily. Usually away at prep school, Henry and Marnie only stopped in for summers. I had two more years until succumbing to that fate.

By mid-August our brains suffered strokes from boredom, stuck inside (mother hated when we mudded the house) unrelenting downpours served as prison bars--our school-break fun, poisoned by pelts of venomous rain, was lifeless.

It was my twelfth birthday, I planned to have a party, well my mother planned to have a party for me, but a) I was an uptight nerd with no friends and b) the weather was morose.

Alighted on a built-in cushiony ledge mother likes to drink and read on, I glanced out, seeing Henry, Marnie, and Armando in the intermediate distance, crouched scampering figures in camo-blended raincoats, struggling against the muddy backyard, off doing something secret, chuckling. With my fingertip, I rattled the window’s frame to get their attention, but of course the rain’s dirge drowned me out.

“If the sun was out, your friends would be here.” My mother offered solace as I befriended droplets that clung to glass. “I’ll still make your favorite: red-velvet cake with Disaronno frosting. You can lick the batter, and maybe try a sip of the Disaronno!” She was trying to be helpful, but really was cajoling me to have a companion too, a drinking one, or a batter-licking one, or an isolated one. Anyone.

Even then I was too old to be in my given body: I wanted the richest cake (Disaronno frosting for the delectable, lavish hint of amaretto) a simple group of friends congregated around a table, possibly talking about the current events of seventh grade, or worldly ones (but I wasn’t going to push it). The sun didn’t RSVP--no one else did either. The dining room, visible from the kitchen, was maculated with perfectly placed party hats and confetti poppers--embarrassing--but mother insisted (afraid people would be bored) she added a plastic-lettered banner shouting: “Happy Birthday Chuck!”

I didn’t venture over to the secret celebrations out back, knowing their activities would contribute to my blighted stomachaches, my little not-fun-having foible was intolerable, unwanted baggage brought to their separate fun-without-me festivity, but after my window-finger-rattle I knew curiosity was puppeteering my body, and I let it string me to my next course of action.

For some reason (boredom from rain, or birthday-blues spent licking batter with drunk mother) I paced back and forth outside the guesthouse, rain-matted hair weighed down my head, and I eavesdropped on chuckling shut-ins, snooping to hear just a word, if it would be a bad word, if they were being bad, if they were doing bad things, I wondered.

“Oh Chuck, just get in here,” Henry said splitting open a window, he was always the one trying to include me.

I enter the huddle and wave, “Oh hey guys, here you are. How’s it going?”

“Happy birthday my littlest Amigo,” Armando greeted me and tossed over a beer, which I caught and smiled discreetly to myself (about the catch, not the beer).

“Oh I don’t know,”--expected apprehension--“mom and I cracked open some Disaronno in the kitchen so…” I didn’t know what I was saying. I didn’t drink with mom. They knew that.

I tossed the beer back--too short, Armando lunged to save the fall, to prevent a future explosion, but I sucked. The can dropped, plopped, and rolled--audible swishing enlarged it with air.

“Okay buddy, no worries.” Armando shoveled the can aside, away from the others to indicate an “explosive” label on it.

I surveyed their powwow. Okay, so, Armando bought them beers, we all thought it was crossing the line, okay maybe I just thought it was crossing the line--they were happy, burping and chortling out bubbles in their burps, magical burps making them drunker than they were. I could taste the burped, carbonated air, fuel so heavy with silly it plumbed the tingling in my throat and asked for more. “Hey, ah,” I pointed at the beer, the one that was once meant for me, the “explosive” one and said, “I’ll try that one. Why not? Seems like a good one.”

Tension, whether it stemmed from insecurity or reality, broke, and a communal relaxation accompanied my changed heart; we slouched back in opened-limbed positions, inviting and cohesive, we chilled.

“Not more than one little guy,” Marnie said.

Controlled chaos, okay by me, okay with being watched and monitored, preferred actually, and okay with completing just the one beer.

Flicking back the aluminum tab, I detonated foam on my Nantucket-red Dockers. They laughed, assuming it was unforeseen, but the joke was on them--I’m a nerd--I know the scientific laws of shaken carbonation, but liked their laughs so played it cool with a look that implied what is this beer thing about?

We hid away from parents. That was the way it was. That was the way it had always been. We could be “us.”

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” Armando said, “not a word, swear on the S.G.C. floor.”

“The S.G.C. floor?” I asked, but Marnie and Henry weren’t clueless, they avowed with firmly placed palms upon stained carpets, ritualistic, like a contract of bad behavior.

“Oh okay,” I saw and repeated, grimacing while touching fibers littered with dust mites.

“Secret Guesthouse Club,” Armando explained, “you’re a part of it too now pal, you’re finally old enough.”

I cocked my head up, and imbibed my one-allowed beer along with my moment, an attributing moment, an unfamiliar including moment--a moment just for me (from Chuck to Chas) to be in the club. Banally, I felt really f*****g special, especially since I was usually the wet rag of the bunch, the yielder to submission, the I-don’t-know-if-we-should-do-this-guys stickler. That day, they let me, me--a boy who makes nervous people more nervous--in the club.

I wanted to cry, but this rag needed to stay dry, even during my first-witnessed jollity: I wanted to be doing that activity with those people right there on that day.

“To Chas!” Armando lifted his beer.

“To Chas!” everyone chimed.

“Hey, this is uh, this is pretty cool guys,” I said, smiling, a rodent promoted to stallion, I was better than I knew.

Our cheering, sung too loud, invited the wrath of Lucy, who suddenly hurricaned in through the backdoor: “What are you loco Armando Vincent Flores?”

We dropped our beers--sudsy bombs confirmed the questioned cleanliness of the carpet--and we entered the rain parade, still shrill in laughter. Deer fledged the woodsy line, frightened by our rambunctious scene, and we flicked up grass Armando worked so hard on growing, but ahead of all of us, he didn’t seem to care, and made the biggest mess with his gargantuan feet. I puddled in his preciously made, caved-out footsteps.

There was a chill in the air--it couldn’t have been more than forty degrees out--but still we ran, wet, communal in spirit. We only went so far in a pinch, I slipped in a mudslide, and as a fellow club member, Marnie skidded back to help me before Lucy could start spanking, but Marns slipped too, covered, we slapped and grabbed each other’s arms with no held-on traction--two seal-skinned klutzes stuck in an oil-spill.

Armando, the “responsible” one, dove back to help too, but out of pure insanity we purposefully pulled him in and made his humiliation our cynosure. Henry slip-and-slid on his belly to join our triumphal fail. Guffaws could be heard from space, the forest echoed them--a natural amphitheater for comedic relief. We were the only sunny spot seen from satellite view.

For the first, and only time in my life, I didn’t care about getting in trouble… I was happy, mopping my hair in heavy, dependable sloshing.

Lucy was idling there before us, jaw-dropped behind hands to insinuate awe and disgust, but we saw her cheeks scrunch outside of fingered borders--she wrestled a smile underneath her shield.

The deer moseyed back after false-alarmed scaring and hunkered under rain-shaded trees to witness our charming onslaught, I swore they laughed too, any noise I heard was laughter, even the jailing rain plops.

From the deck mother and her wooden spoon juddered in fright, she tee-peed an oven-mitt on her head--must not ruffle the swan wings of a perfectly quaffed perm. “You have got to be kidding me! What a mess! Lucy, why are you mad, what did they do?” She shouted, waving the spoon for an exaggerating prop.

Lucy uncovered her face, gleaming but trying not to be gleaming, she said, “they were just playing tag and got dirty miss, I’m sorry.”

Then, molded within malleable earth, we shook from an interrupting force, a rattling quake that disturbed our bath--my father. Deer ran again, faster than before. He peered out over the yard like he owned it, and he did. Arms crossed behind his back, he positioned power with no barrier between us but the deck’s railing. The rain sculpted his silhouette, droplets clung to his camo-jacket, stippling a glacial, abstract beast with glittered decorations that contrasted his robust shadow--an aerial view of a bustling city at midnight, he imbibed us as we were free-falling into him without a parachute.

Marnie wheezed. She wheezes when nervous, the cute oddity warned us of danger, but gave a nature of innocence to the moment.

Silent and still, synced air-brakes halted us--we waited for him to speak.

“You guys are in big trouble,” he said.

With my feet in the air, I swilled my face in the ground, hoping for suffocation--a grimy overdose on hidden-in-soil treasures. Me in mud: you know that was bad, only death could put me there.

“Because I have a camera,” I thought I heard him say from a clogged ear-hole, but father never joked.

My chocolate-covered noggin propped up as he took our picture, a maddening mud-mask commingled with my pale skin for the picture. Abdominal muscles ruptured from our spastic laughter, spleen-splitting, life-threatening, but worth everything. He took a picture of that too, our almost-puke faces from beer and overjoy.

Henry cannonballed into the pool.

“Henry no!” Mother cried.

Marnie and Armando followed, then I did too in a fit of rule-breakage: everyone was happy.

Back then, nothing was digital, so when we perused through the developed camera roll, the curated view of my melancholy life was elucidated: Charlie on a horse; Charlie making cake; Charlie eating cake; Charlie and mom; Charlie reading; Charlie and his new sports coat. Then there was the picture of us in our mud pie. Armando unscrolled the roll with me. Hovered over my shoulder he seized our picture and had a silent humming grin of a moment with it. “Keep this one kiddo, this was a good day for you.”

I was glad he thought so too.

“Hey Armando,” I said.

“Yeah pal.”

“We should make like, T-shirts, or something for the club, ya know?”

“Then it wouldn’t be a secret Chasssie.”

“Oh yeah, that’s silly.” I felt silly, and finger-combed my bushy hair over my face--a comely wall to duck my blushing.

“I’ll think of something for us to wear though, ok pal?”

“Yeah, that’d be like, really cool.”

The second photo amongst my prized collection is of John F. Kennedy. Growing up, looking at him, rapt, I admired him, and took him out for air in public. No one questioned my intentions. I wanted to be like him, a political legend. I still do. I am deferential to him, always have been, but blood burns, it burned then too--the lust--not heating-pad pleasurable, but hurtful and caustic--an actual disaster. I longed for clemency more than I longed for him. I still do.

I read somewhere the most commonly expressed type of longing is for children; to have them, protect them, bring them back to life, to save them. I think of when I held my tired-of-being-held photo, and how I longed for him, perhaps, innocently, for both of us to be children--to be closer. And as for the clemency I search for, well, since a child it’s been gone, dead like my hero--I’ll never meet the two. Not a real man yet.

“Charles! Dinner! Come down I can’t wait to hear all about school!”

I look in my mirror, disrupting the flow of its dust, worn, my drooping eyelids screech for everyone to stay away, but bare I must be, me in the way everyone else can handle, and wearing makeup to cover up my dark circles pffft even more telling than evident exhaustion. Still, I always look like a Kennedy, which fuels me.

“Do not pray for easy lives,” he once said, “pray to be stronger men.”

With the cusp of my sleeve, I wipe a smudge covering my reflection, but the blur originates from over-tired, desiccated eyes, not dirtiness. Often admired for being stark green, they are now two forgotten-about, atrophied peas--so yeah, not a mirror stain: the stain of me. Something the third photo will change: the clemency.