My Mother's Taste in Colours
by D. R. A. Y. M. A. R.
Bardo's family life made the grackles look positively Clint Eastwood. They lived in a walk-up above a shoe repair in East Fort Gary on a street that shall remain nameless. His mother's taste in colours! Gad! Black and blue, the front. The hue not of delphiniums which would have reminded of puff and oxygen but Port Colburn helcinite. Why not just spray paint a huge "weird" on the front window?
He, himself, had never committed adultery but Gertie had. And with an uncle! A minister! How could she have done that her mother said to her in his presence because she thought him too young to understand. And when Gertie had apologized enough over a two-week period by crying, wringing her hands and performing various other displays of obedience, his mother had in fact gone from abject disapproval to intent interest in the details of the tryst. Whether Ronald knew. How many times. In the garage even! The use, skilful or clumsy, of objects and toys. The application of and manipulations with oils, flower petals, ice cubes, oblong objects of specific shape and texture and also the size of these. Nothing beneath her dignity or beyond the borders of her hunger.
Bardo liked reading. The history of the Hubble telescope. Tourism. Montisuma's revenge. The Mexican economy. Aberrant Pomeranian mating conventions. The nature and frequency of muggings in Hyde Park. Moses's probable meandering's in the reed basket before Miriam's mother took him to nurse. The nefariousness of fashion industry recruiters. Blues in America. Little Brother Montgomery. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Maimie Reefer. Jump Jimmy Adams. Sun Records.
Bardo disliked all references to sex between humans. In the animal kingdom, fine. But not concerning consenting adults, politicians, passion, experimentation, privacy, successful parenting, lesbian couples, cruising, gay men, movies about gay men, telephone-personals women, virginal Britney Speers, aging vital grandparents, or older persons, and housewives. As far as he was concerned, the topics of sex might all happily be erased from the pages of magazines and books and never be referred to in conversations either.
Del's life ended in the war. His mother and father frequently still burned candles for him. Bardo hardly remembered him. Del's room had become Bardo's room, and though its sloped ceilings and small windows cramped life in it, adjustment had come quickly. It came gradually but felt quick. Before, he'd slept on a cot in a corner of the basement behind the furnace where, from as far back as he could remember, the sound of the sudden fan soothed him when he couldn't sleep. He'd wait for it. Tell himself it would be soon. And the service box above his head with Federal Stab-on Centres written in white letters on a blood-red label he read often lying down. Wires inside metal tentacles crisscrossed through the fir planks above. Where two joists were used together for strength, as around the opening for the stairs, a crack between them rained light dust when someone stamped on the hardwood in the kitchen.
Sockeye, his next door neighbour, lived in fear. He himself said it was not fear but kindness. If kindness consisted of reprimanding Bardo when he told an off-colour joke, or not laughing unless the joke poked fun at no race or suggested no raciness, and if it meant interrupting anyone except people whom Sockeye admired and whose favours he curried, then he was not afraid. Sockeye's mother lived for the Valium with which his father supplied her. She would say things to her daughter-in-law such as, "If I had known how beautiful that vase was, I wouldn't have given it to you. I would have kept it myself!" Sickness kept her indoors and inactive. The only activity she found tolerable was shopping. Sockeye disliked any references to his parents. Neither to his mother's health nor to his father's tendancy to give extravagant gifts. Like his father, Sockeye spent lavishly on presents for his acquaintances.
Bardo had met Sandrilaka in Prague and then communicated with her for two years, mainly by letter. Her hair, brown as doeskin, and her eyes, blue as the colour their house was not painted, took him. He initially found breathing difficult in her presence. And when that affect left him he discovered that, with her or not, he could not stop holding his breath until a deep one surprised him. After a few months, in the letter writing stage, he said the most absurd things, things he regretted later after he had fallen out of love again. "I think of you all the time." "I miss you so much I hardly know what to say." "How can I ever in words begin to express my inner emotions." Many more. All of it foolish and trite, though he had felt those sentiments with a sincerity that he now could not understand. He tried re-feeling them, the words, but failed. She was he knew not where now. He did not feel blue about it.
For now, living in his basement suite on Henry St., looking at the back of the Finklemann Fruit and Vegetable wholesaler, it's brick blackened on the ally side, he was glad he was not in love. Now he knew himself better than he had there for a few years.
