Uh yeeeeeeeah.

I was told the other night that my failing at work as a manager is that basically, I do not imititate the verbal theatrics of my co-managers (priesthood of all believers and all that) to get things done. Instead I pay attention to the person and how was it put....

"you give your reason for why they need to do this thing. Elsa on the other hand, she shuts everyone out for just two minutes and then...then decides. Does not listen to anything else."

Yeah sure I'll do that. While I'm in this state, the phones are ringing for another two minutes, and the drivers have already left or simply given up on having to do anything in the first place...and I have to start all over with "hey this needs to be done."

Last night sucked.

13 Years Later

I was in front of a tv in the mid 90s. So....let's declare it, 10 years old? Yeah 10.

It was, if not that show that had Nancy Glass, probably Inside Edition with Bill O'Rielly. Oh yeah, hardcore.

Maybe...yeah I was at my apartment. But there's a bunch of shit going on. My mom's talking and hanging out with everyone, everyone being her boyfriendy guy's brothers. There's beer for the Mexicans in the Raiders clothes (I didn't know they were a football team until I was in 7th grade I think), probably beer for the mom, and pot at her "oh so necessary andpulledoutofthedumpster writing desk" piled high with future archives of pre-destroyed lives.

Boyfriendy guy's brothers...maybe only one. Gang....homies? Dealers? Type of people. I don't know.

There was a fat brother of boyfriendy who once told her (assuming she didn't make this up) that he cut some chick up and then fucked (raped?) her. And every time she'd tell me about this she'd make a gutting a fish and then arm waving fucking motion. Like I had any idea what she was doing until I saw rap videos in high school. I got pissed me off at that guy not because he may have did that but because it gave depth to her already self-shallowed repetoire of being a disgusting bitch. Maybe he only cut her a little bit! Whatever, the motherly duty was done and I was warned to not only, go downstairs to their apartment and make a drunken gringa ass out of myself but also tell everyone who'll listen and tell everyone else that yes, Fat Guy definitely did kill someone. I'da been without a clue, otherwise. I bet he told her that (again, if he really did) in hopes that it would just shut her the fuck up. Ha haaaaaaa......aaaaaaah he was probably an asshole anyway.

and this particular night I'm focusing on the tv. Maybe that's why I can't do two things like that at once, watch tv while on the phone or IM or anything while on the phone, I'm self-trained to just...anyway.

Inside Edition being the trashy garbage I couldn't have avoided watching even had I known it as such at the time, there was a "segment" on cleavage. Oh oh ooooooh cleavage is all the rage in Hollywood *5 seconds of some movie star lady walking around, then some model on some runway*

I looked up at....fuck I don't remember Boyfriendy's name. It was a stupid name, for a stupid person. It might not have been a real name. I remember it was cutesy. Johnny, Roachy, something. Ah, Roachy it is.

I looked up at Roachy who was on a seat about...2 feet or so next to me (not on a couch with me, but in a different chair facing the tv) and asked him point-blank what cleavage was. Never heard the word before, no context I could get from the commercials.

"What's cleavage?"

Roachy wasn't very smart, at least that was the only reason at first that I thought he didn't answer me. He also wasn't wearing a shirt. Was it hot outside at 730pm? Idunno. Maybe it was, it was the second floor. He also worked out or so, I guess to the point where, hey at 730 or so pm in Anaheim, why not go shirtless?

So...setting his beer down (etiquette, you see) and with a concerned concentration on his face, Roachy puts his Mecksycan hands on the sides of his pectorals and uh...shoves his lumps. Together. aaaaand count to 3 quickly. Click. Un-shoves, doesn't even look at me, gets his beer back.

Let there be cleavage on the medium-dark hairless Mexican guy. Fiat cleavagus somethingus somethingus. Done and done.

My response, which I have carved into my brain forever lest I should ever forget such a life lesson.

"Oh. Okay." Head turns back to the

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO MY DAUGHTER?!?!?!"

"Uh...she asked what cleavage was."

Like, the most random of ten fucking seconds she saw what was going on with me, the mom I guess sees Roachy shovin his lumps and starts yelling about how he's molesting me right in front of her.

I....don't have an ending or conclusion. She just embarassed the hell out of both of us (it's not like he grabbed me), and because he was buzzed and I was too entrenched in the idea that causing a commotion was the gravest sin I could commit, neither of us said anything and of course after that I was uncomfortable around him. Oh shit, is he gonna define another word??! The horror.

This Is Why There Are Comparative Adjectives

"Here, talk to my mother."

Me: "фывафв щшг стугьа" (No idea what I said. I was thinking about how my mom was calling her mom-or her first husband's mom, er, her adopted mom now that I think of it...shit, someone's babymama-to ask her for money, as it had worked last time, and that even though she was technically my grandmother, I...hmm. I don't know, but money was involved, or needed to be involved, so I ...I don't know. It was just a foreshadowing of the other times I'd be traipsed out so she could pity money out of people. )


"Do you go to school?"

"Yeah. Umm. Second grade."

"That's good."

I held the phone against my ear just long enough to make damn sure I remembered both her response to the crazy idea that I was in school (as opposed to working as a bricklayer or something, Idunno) and how damn old she sounded. Daaaaaamn old. My mom was sitting in a rocking chair that was supposedly worth millions because it said "Pacific Bell" on the seat of itsweartoGod...I imagined her adopted mother who I'd been told was Cuban even though I hadn't seen a distinctly Cuban person before (this was before she had to ransack her photo albums for...probably birth certificates, and I saw pictures of the lovely Cuban lady who beat the fucking shit out of her adopted daughter and her twin brother, well perhaps not the "fucking shit out" but left them crazy enough for me to have to deal with them, anyway...also the first time I saw a picture of my dad, who allegedly did the same thing) as a little bony, decrepit woman in a black dress with white trim, rocking the same way my mother was. Or rolling a joint, whatever. I didn't imagine her holding a phone though.

Idunno if she sent money or not. For all I know, that well dried up, or she died... hmm.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Now I wonder 1) if my legal grandmother is dead or not--the same semi-curious way I wondered about my dad about that barely over a year ago, not so much curious out of a concern for them but out of a desire to know for sure that I can finally stop caring, and 2) who the fuck was that? Was that even her adopted mom? Was it her adopted mom's sister?

Fifteen or sixteen years later I'm in Northeast Nevada, trying to follow native Hebrew for what I would think would be stops for either entire words or at least ideas, or any phrase I recognize a second time as I walk up the steps of their basement after my dad called my name (or at least it sounded close someone's name, and the girl with a similar name wasn't responding, so I figured best out of 2 or something).

" *Hebrew noise, my dad extends cordless to me* Do you vahn to talk to your gran dmother?"

"Wuhl...yeah, okay....umm....lakjsdfl;asd....hi!"

"Heh-looooooow! Is this Friiiiiiitiz?!"

"Yeah."

"How are yooouuuu?!"

"I'm uh....hahahaha, I'm good, how are you?"

While my dad gets up from the stairway and walks back to the living roomforeshadowinglolz, I both, try to think of something to say to a 90-year old woman the sight of whose likeness I see in my middle sister (exact same eyes) yet otherwise I really don't have much to say to, and trip the fuck out. Because...well. Just because I guess.

"Deeed you know that you have a gran'dmother?!"
My gosh. I can hear her smile. I think she repeated the question and added "in Israel" or something.

"Uh yeah I guess...*my stepmom's name* told me about everyone in Israel, yeah."

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Ummm...hmmm."

"Uh. *Stepmom's name* told me. Umm."
Pretty sure I shouldn't say "umm shit" to my grandmother, at least not the first time I talk to her anyway, I somehow hand the phone back to my dad.

"Huh huh huh....blah blah hebrew noises Yeah, Americantza."

More Hebrew noises, still can't tell where words start and stop, hangs up the phone.

"She tought you were saying that *my Aunt's name* was the one who told you about Israel. You confused her."

"*Aunt's name*? Yeah, that would confuse I guess."

"Yeah, I told her dat you're an American and have problem communicating."

"Ah well."

I Think Tonight

while I was working off the clock to hopefully mitigate the calls I'm sure to get in the middle of the day tomorrow for being there so late that I had to work off the clock in the first place, and checking the money out of the "closing" driver (in scare quotes 'cause I got to do all the work tonight), I asked a question.

"Are you a coworker, or are you someone I have to work with?"

...

So the owners of well....well the signers of my paycheck were out most of the past few days at some conference or convention in some fancy hotel. Motivation, information bullshit, idunno. Meanwhile, 2 people at StoreA quit, the semi-important duty of preparing the weekly schedule changed hands amongst two people who basically co-fired someone else, a customer managed to con $40 out of StoreB aaaaaaaaand and lecture me about it because "if you were worth your salt as a manager..." something something and then I don't remember the rest of what she said 'cause it was hard to hear over my sighing and my neck pivoting.

I was telling the boss right above me (she doesn't sign my check but she's the one who will call about tonight) that the owners don't care about X problem she was nervous about them having just seen because "Problem X is all over, in every store. It's probably in Storen which I'm in the other half of my day."

And I'm sure even up to the CEO of the entire brand. This brand is so fucking huge, there is no way to develop any one branch.

Pfffffft. Yeah. Like I know what I'm talking about. I've never even seen a corporate representative of the brand. But at least I know that if I were any higher up within this company than I am already (meaning, just simply meticulous and dictatorial but in a good way--as it always is, right) I'd just get even more discouraged; or think no no man, I can make even these higher up parts better.

gaaaaaaaah what the fuck ever. If I really do that I imagine myself to wake up one day at 44 with three cats and a Bachelors I never used.

Course Not I'm Not Gonna...Of Course Not.

First name, Middle Name, Last name.

That's the way I want to address him. But why?

Why his full slave name, and not "Sir" as I addressed my the abba? Well for one his last name is hard to spell and yes, I do pride myself on never having spelled it wrong. Doso, I already knew that it really was my dad and not mistaken identity. Then also I guess that he's my two oldest brothers' dad, but not mine plus before I was born, so I have no relationship or tie to him that would normally obligate respect. Now that I think (for the first time about this, admittedly ), perhaps I should stick with Sir. Perhaps not as maybe-accusatory. Ain't broke, don't fix it and all that.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Even with controlling for my newfound-obsessiveness with the past, I think I can honestly say that I just want others like me to have the same bitter joy that I have. And that goes for my brother who would rather smoke pot and hide behind our mother's skirt of denial than face the reality of who the abba is, who he was, who he wasn't, who she was and wasn't, and who he could be.

Eddie, on the other hand, I suspect he has a similar outlook.

Before I contacted my the abba, I talked to Eddie about it. "Hey dude you know that one guy when you were maybe 5-8 years old and he beat you and your mom as a kid and left you with a little sister with a dgooo nose and not-as-white-as-your skin to remind you...is it cool if I like, talk to and associate with him. Oh and btw can you drive me to the airport once in a while when I go to the house of this guy?

Well. I'm not that slick. But

If he were bothered by it, enough to express any such that I could detect, then I wouldn't have gone through with it.

Liar. Just not openly. No unsolicited updates on the State of the Bastardy at best, and yet another huge breach of trust between me and him. And since it was by the time David had already burned his bridge, everyone else I grew up with, at worst.

But none was detected. He just said go for it. Your dad, your conscience your life, y'know. In fact, he basically gave me the same reasoning I had when faced with David's "Huh huh I googled our dad he has another family in Minnesota" escapade of a few years ago.

"If my dad wants to find me, he can. I'm right here. Since he hasn't, I just assume he doesn't, and that's his choice. Aden, I think someday I'll just run into him at random and Aden, either I'll want to punch his lights out, or just tell him how I grew up, all the shit I had to deal with."

That's almost to the letter how I felt. Whether from premonition or anxiety about unaccompanied (and generally unapproved) interstate travel to "a land unknown," I wondered about the possibility of "randomly running into" my dad in Tennessee. Of course...I imagined that he'd recognize either his features or his ex-wife's in me, be shocked, and approach me. Perhaps identify me as Joss Hislastname instead of her maiden name. How would he really know, either way? Regardless, the main thing would be that, through neither volitional nor pleading exertions of mine, the disenfranchisement of non-identity and the shame from such that, decrying as "archaic" the social construct from which it comes cannot yet fool us into shaking off, would be unilaterally repealed by one of the few true co-legislators (co-conspirators?) on earth. Perhaps it's nothing to those who have never needed to need this.

Anyway, all I know is what he said out loud was very similar to what I told myself under the same hypothesis.

But is Eddie prepared? Could he handle knowing him, to see him? To be relieved, and disappointed? If he is, how am I supposed to know that? If not, when will he be?

Will he at all? If not, what is he lacking? Why then would it appear then, that some people are good enough to know their dad, and yet others no?

Do I mean to imply that about myself, that I somehow "deserve" to know more than and compared to others; that all of my mom's progeny were born deficient and undeserving yet I the youngest, somehow suffered enough to remit her (or my?) sins, before any of the older three?

No. That's silly. How did I make my leg grow back.