Pigeons Beneath the Broadway Bridge
Twenty-seven years of
life and I, a native of the great Pacific Northwest, have already married a
British national, waged war on Federal and State government for my rights, and
am in the midst of a fight against a tumor that lies dormant within my brain. My
question can only be, what comes next? Only, sometimes, I have to stop and
reflect. How the hell did I get here?
On a casual sort of
day, my wife, Jenny and I will come and go along the refurbished ghetto that
was and still is dusty Naito Parkway; walking with hands interlocked firmly.
Passing beneath the rusty crimson steel bridge, we'll almost always stop for a
moment to watch with amusement as the pigeons, in the vacant fenced off lot,
scurry about aimlessly—some pecking, others dirt bathing or simply lounging.
The real kick is watching the horny male pigeons ruffle their neck feathers and
languidly chase down the nearest female for some action. We chuckle, mock and
voice little monologues for the whole scene with "c'mere's!" and
"Imma git chu's!" Next we'll try to spot our two favorite pigeons of
the pack; one pure white and the other an orange cream—a ginger pigeon if you
will. It's a fun little distraction from our walk ahead, but soon we're on
about our business.
The pigeons are hardly
ever disturbed by the busy bridge above, unless it's a serious piece of
machinery or the shrew-like screeching of a train's horn from the adjacent
train yard. They're fairly tolerant birds, but in the rare case they are startled; they'll pick up as a
solitary unit, wind about the lot, and settle within a few feet of where they
stood previous. Very complacent and unambitious creatures, two traits that I
want absolutely no association with.
Ironically, those were
the very two words that most would have used to describe me in my adolescence.
Nobody had an inkling of an idea about the complex inner-workings of my young
mind, but outwardly, I haven't always been the ambitious wayfaring man that my
wife married. I was the awkward soft spoken young man who wouldn’t know the
meaning of a clique if it kicked him in the teeth. My parents, who were more
best friends than a married couple, divorced at a very crucial point in my
life. I had yet to develop any sort of identity for myself. We had all the
luxuries of a middle-class family but with a low class income, and that brought
their frustrations to a twenty-year head.
They eventually split
and like most family destructions, my three siblings and I were assigned a home
beneath our alcoholic mother's turbulent roof. She was hardly able to
hold a job, so we all found our escapes. The house richest in dark, atrocious
memories for me was a two story duplex. Soon upon moving in, the strangling
musk of Seagram's Seven whiskey dominated the household. I came home from
school on a regular basis to find my mother passed out on the couch (having
called into work) with her favorite movie, The
Perfect Storm playing; surround sound shaking the walls we shared with our
neighbor. More often than not she set the movie to repeat so that, when she
awoke from her drunken stupor, she could pick up where she left off. I would
bumble downstairs into my room; my holy sanctuary, always very elaborately
arranged and decorated. No evils permitted. I dreaded what came when she awoke.
I have no room to complain, for I wasn't like most kids. I could have easily
found activities outside of the house like any sane child would do, but I felt,
even as a child, it was my duty to look these evils in the eye on behalf of my three
younger siblings.
My mother is the source
of much inner-turmoil. It is no easy task for me to set my essential nature
aside and assess the entire situation for what it is. I am a peace-maker, and
to stew on the malicious mental bruises she inflicted throughout the years
weighs heavy on my heart. She wasn't always like this; at some point between
buying a house in Gaston, Oregon when the family was still a family and maxing
out our tight finances with a luxury suburban, there grew a void that she
filled with gnarly sour whiskey. She had a very bourgeois mindset along with a
ridiculous sense of self-entitlement—she felt as if the world owed her a grand
scale living, and nothing was ever enough. When she and my father had reached
the limit of where their finances could take them, she got extremely bored. She
used to be such a lovely, fun person to be around; family vhs tapes, hidden
who-knows-where, are the only proof that person ever existed. Her wings had
been clipped, and she was perfectly content in choking down that burning
whiskey in the stead of living a life. And so, it is with grief and a heavy
heart that I must hold fast and protect myself against her. Within the husk of
that woman who bore me is now the mind and temperament of a child; poor,
desperate, alone and angry at the world.
I eventually found
ambition in creative writing with encouragement from my high school teachers;
at one point I actually wanted to be a filmmaker, and the people in my life
always found a caricatured role in my screenplays. It created an alternative
universe where roles could be reassigned; people were shown for how I truly
perceived them. I also took a keen interest in Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of
Sherlock Holmes. I found his masterful powers of observation and deductive
reasoning absolutely fascinating; there was nothing supernatural about it.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was my favorite. It never grew old.
As time marched on, I
barely skated through high school. I had a paralyzing fear of the real world, living paycheck to paycheck
and on my own. I wanted to keep that reality at bay, but absolutely nothing
could have prepared me for what I consider the worst offense I've suffered at
the hands of my mother. After graduation, we were again living well beyond our
means. It was summer, and I was shamelessly looking into getting on with my
life, escaping my hell and fleeing into dreaded adulthood. There was one
particular humid and uncomfortable afternoon that she hollered for me from
within her dark and musty bedroom. I remember her cocooned within her bed's
comforter—beads of sweat dotting her forehead. The Seagram bottles lined her
dresser; I cursed the seven dollars she always managed to come by as she
slurred, "I need you to start applying for jobs so we can pay rent this
month." I was speechless; I was a prisoner, doomed to provide for a family
I wasn't obligated to provide for. What was I going to say, no? You can all
starve while I hit the road? I couldn't reasonably expect her to stave off her
booze-coma long enough to land a job, and even if she got out there, who would
hire her?
For three years it was my sister and I who provided. My mother destroyed our credit by overdrawing our bank accounts while we barely
paid rent and fed the family. No bank in America will look once at an application from this Nicholas Davis. My hole grew
deeper.
Meanwhile technology
advanced at a blinding rate, and I kept up, formulating a blurring portfolio of
different talents with writings, drawings, digital photo manipulations and so
on. It was my only resource for sanity. The horrors of mediocrity in the real
world could, perhaps, be staved off after all with a little creative juice. I
truly felt a gnawing in my stomach that I could be one to unleash something
wholly epic and unique if my mind was put to the task.
With skills and
interests building upon my shoulders, it was time to focus it on something that
mattered. It wasn't long before I found a passion for music that took me down
stranger and unforeseen roads. My parents were always very much into music of
all sorts, so it was only a matter of time before I took up their love and
continued onward with it. I didn't do much digging, I listened more to time
tested classics that were played to no end on the radio, and artists I
recognized from my youth. Soon I was wrangled within a time warp, thinking I
was born in the wrong decade.
I found a niche, but it
wasn't my niche. The sixties and
seventies were long gone and I needed something fresh. I decided to take a
gamble, and this gamble would change my life as I knew it, forever. I visited a
record store and began browsing. It was such a massive and intimidating arena
that I found myself at the listening station with eight preloaded albums by new
and upcoming artists. The one that caught my eye had absolutely no cover art at
all—just simple black with the band's name Black
Rebel Motorcycle Club and the album's name "Howl." Intrigued, I
put the headphones on and hit play.
What greeted my ears
was something that sounded wholesome and important, almost revolutionary and
yet, simple. Merely a band paying homage to the roots music of America; good
boot stomping country, heartbreaking blues, moving gospel, socio-political
protest—I was bewitched. It was absolutely the greatest find of my life, or at
least the most important. From that point, on my interest in music wasn't
casual but all embracing. It consumed every sense and wrung it dry. Finally, a
healthy focus that could provide potential for work in a field that wasn't
run-of-the-mill. My nature shifted. I hunted, gathered, shared—used my hunger
to spread the word in a massive way. I was famished. It was high time to live
the life I knew I was capable of living.
At long last, there
came a point where I just stopped going home. It was a big world that I hadn't
even begun to chisel into, and I felt from that point on, each step was a new
step down an exciting avenue I hadn't explored. Any direction could change my
life at this point, as long as it wasn't the one I had been stalling in for so
long.
As I continued on with
my writing and networking, it brought me to a site many still know as
"Myspace." "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club" had a page that I
felt it necessary to comment on. This is what introduced me to my
wife—separated by forty-eight hundred miles and two vastly different
governments but united by one spectacular band over the internet.
It's astonishing how
massive and marvelous things have such small beginnings. Swapping little
comments, back-and-forth and trading songs evolved to letters and mix cds—soon
we were utterly inseparable friends united in arms and finally married;
completely content with one another. We both felt awkward in telling anyone how
we met, but it was simply the way of the world now, no fear necessary. It was
clear to everyone that she and I are one and the same. She was my Irene Adler;
"The Woman."
We moved north to Port
Townsend, Washington, a small peninsula town surrounded by the lushest
rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. We both felt beaten down by life in similar
ways, so a fresh start was in order. Port Townsend reminded Jenny of Wales just
enough in that she wouldn’t be overcome with homesickness. I was overcome with
joy on a daily basis, living in what seemed to me a bohemian paradise. The
faces that greeted us were always happy, full of life; hardly ever without a
greeting. Life was, however, very tight, but we managed—barely.
One particular day,
about six months into our marriage, Jenny and I were walking along the
peninsula shoreline. As we attacked one another with the “sea penises”
(seaweed) that littered the shore, she confessed to me her concern about my
drinking, or more to the point, she warned "If you become an alcoholic
I'll cut your balls off and feed them to the cats!"; it sent chills down my
spine, but I realized how easily that line could be crossed. During the rest of
that walk my legs were the weight of cinder blocks. I can't say for sure how I
managed to carry myself along. I observed the seagulls gliding against the
breeze, weightless with no direction, and realized just how easily my life
could be crushed into a million pieces. Her warning has echoed throughout my
skull with every sip of alcohol I've had since, which has been in great
moderation.
Meanwhile, we sweated
bullets trying to secure Jenny proper citizenship, but our government just
doesn't work the way we citizens think it does. It's not enough to be married
anymore—the Patriot Act turned America's immigration policies into a repugnant malformation of our founding fathers' vision for this country. She was forced to return home. Saying goodbye was the hardest thing I
have ever done; the sight of an airport was and will forever remain a reminder
of that sorrow. We still have nightmares of being separated after more than a year of struggles, which had only just begun. Little did we know how relentlessly our love and friendship would be tried...
Leaving the Seattle
airport, my mission was to secure a passport. We formulated a game plan before
she left—either she would try to obtain citizenship for America or, much more
preferred, I abandon the states and flee to Wales. I applied two separate
times, but was denied on grounds that I didn't have enough proof of identity. I
included every single piece of identity the average citizen would need, but it
seemed that my mother's handiwork had clipped my wings by mere association.
With strange turns came
stranger tidings. While Jenny was away for nobody could say how long, I fell
victim to Glioblastoma-Multiforme, a brain tumor. Brain surgery is very
dangerous territory because, like the infinite expanse of the universe, the
brain is a mystery we are still tapping into. It took two weeks to receive an
official prognosis, and it was bleak; the bulk of the tumor itself was removed
but what remained were tentacles reaching into my brain's motor functions. It
was like my own personal Cthulhu, lying dormant within my skull and waiting to
unleash certain doom upon my me.
I look back now, and
the question of fear and thoughts of my own mortality was, to be absolutely
honest, the very least of my worries. Something like this would send most
straight to the grave with fear and self-pity, but leaving my wife of one year
a widow in minute twenty-four years of life simply was not an option. If not to
survive for myself, then it was for her.
While I underwent chemo-therapy
and radiation those around me commenced upon a heavy campaign to bring Jenny
back to the United States. She was refused a Visa to return based upon the
grounds that her first stay was too long. Never mind that she returned home
solely to rectify that situation. Our basic human rights were being raped and
pillaged, and The People took notice. It involved both senators of Oregon, two
television networks, an online petition (which garnered twenty-five hundred
signatures) and several fundraisers. It was all more support than I'd have ever
imagined receiving, a tough pill to swallow being that, by nature, I've always
preferred to live self-sufficiently and help is hard for me to accept.
Regardless, Jenny was the mission, and the fight which could have lasted ten
years given some case histories was resolved within six months.
My voice is unashamedly
meek. It is why I hold such an awesome reverence for writing, and to a much
larger degree, an enchantment with the potential of the mind and language,
along with all things curious and worth making remark. As long as my brain
remains adept, I think I am perfectly okay with developing my passions and
living an otherwise quiet and passive existence with my wife. We'll keep
walking past our pigeons, quietly chuckling. We recently noticed the white and
ginger pigeons have moved on. They will be missed.
I loved it!
ReplyDeleteKindra
Hunter, that was beautiful.
ReplyDelete-Liz