FAMILY
Our parents were the hipsters of our small town. Being their children was like being the less cooler friend of the popular kids at school. Sometimes it was painfully clear to us that if they weren’t our parents, if we were all actually the same age, they wouldn’t have been our friends, at least not in public.
Both Sergio and I were enthusiastic learners and by the time we reached middle school we were on our way to receiving more of an education than our parents had, which, when looking back, was a significant shifting point. The differences between "us and them" was the bond my brother and I shared, for a little while. At school the cool kids would ask me to say hey to “Dan” for them. “Sure, I’ll tell my dad you said hi,” I’d say. I played the game in order to get by. Sergio refused.
My father, Dan, used to help out on the set of a community-access television “Creature-Feature” type show that aired once a week at midnight. He became friends with the host who was also a horror movie buff and together they’d determine what films to play each week. It was a pretty popular local show, whether or not its relatively high ratings had to do with the rumor that our town had the largest satanic population in California was undetermined.
He also managed a shop, Necronomicon Comics and Video that sold comic books and when videotape rental places started opening up, the owner decided to delegate a section of the shop to every low budget, potentially cult classic, slasher, demon, zombie, or monster flick that was released. Spooky was their thing and my dad took me to see every horror film that was released in the theater. All the Nightmare on Elmstreet films, Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth... Those events were named as “father-daughter” dates.
“Dan is the man!” is what folks would shout at us when we were together and it seemed he was the coolest guy in town.
My brother and I didn’t really like all the gore. We liked it when things were funny and preferred old cartoons, Claymation, mid-1970s variety shows and sometimes superheroes if we could imagine they worked as brother and sister teams. When he was still young he pretended to be Shazam and I was Isis. We decided they were super-siblings because they were featured together on the television series, The Shazam!/Isis Hour.
As Serge got older, he began to really fall in love with Rock-Opera records like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita and sometimes he’d let me into his room and I’d put on his headphones to listen to songs. He’d spend hours explaining how each one fit into a larger, epic story. He used the term, Rock Opera a lot and showed me how influenced by this genre the band Queen was, describing the themes of their different records. I learned how to read by following song lyrics written on record sleeves as I listened. I loved it but our father wasn’t excited about his interest in the dramatic arts. To him it seemed a lot “gayer” than anything in the horror genre, but in my view the fixation each had in their own respective pop-culture concentrations was similarly over the top.
My mother, who left Chile for a new life in America only a year before meeting/marrying my dad, was a housewife but worked at Daisy’s Thrift Shop to pass some time and because she loved used clothes. The sign Had the name Daisy*s written large, with a small daisy Daisy used as the apostrophe. The words, "thrift shop" was written below and in a much smaller and plainer font. Daisy was also a person and she was old. My mom’s closest friends were always older than she was, something she claimed was due to missing her own mother whom she left behind in South America and soon after that, passed away- but Daisy was by far the oldest. Daisy came to the shop for a while every day to drink instant coffee with my mom, who basically took care of the place. Together, they sat on a bench outside the shop and chatted, if the sun was out. Like the comic book store, there weren't many customers to tend to. Mom and Daisy seemed to love each other’s company as much as they loved finding hidden treasures within piles of junk.
On weekends, early in the morning, my mother and I would walk. But before that, with a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other, she’d sit at the kitchen table and circle all the garage sales in town that were listed in the local newspaper. She’d draw out kind of map marking all that we’d hit and when I was big enough, we’d both carry one of those metal grocery carts you find at luggage shops, in order to haul the resalable items back to Daisys. Mom didn't drive.
My mother said she refused to get a drivers license as a protest to the town not providing her with public transportation not unlike New York’s subway system (not that she’d ever been to New York), so we walked everywhere. At garage sales I’d get to play with other people’s pets or I’d have to uncomfortably stand around strange children simply because of the fact that we were both kids and our parents had become chatty. I’d always get a toy or some kind of hair accessory, like a headband or a barrette with a bow on it.
My favorite thing though, was when someone would drop off bags of clothes for the shop. My mom and I would always allow ourselves first-pick and Daisy didn’t mind because we’d be sure to set aside anything suitable for her taste or for the shop. Some of my best memories with my mom are of us together after the shop closed, trying on entire wardrobes that once belonged to other people, in front of Daisy’s freestanding mirror that was as tall as a person. Each bag offered us an opportunity to adopt a new identity and each one held a different scent. Half the time I think people sprayed perfume right into the bag. It was a lot of fun.
One day every winter, before Christmas, Daisy would open up the back of the shop, in order to allow the community to gather clothes and toys for free. She’d make mulled wine for the grown-ups and hot apple cider for the kids. She served cookies with white powder on them and those butter kind that come in a big blue tin, and gingerbread men that came in a bag. These were my dad’s favorite. One time I watched him walk all the way from the dime-store across from Necronomicon Comics and Video to where I was, at the counter of the shop, doing my homework after school. He was looking only into the crinkled paper bag while simultaneously eating one after another. I watched him walk directly into a tree in the middle of the parking lot, and he never even looked up, he just re-adjusted his path.
Both he and my mother always went on about how much they disliked the idea of food, preferring a very 1950's TV fantasy future-"utopia" of human nourishment by way of nutrient-packed pills, so it was unsettling for me to see him pulled by the siren call of a snack food and it was then that I first realized my father was capable of owning a weakness. By the time he passed through the threshold of the shop that sounded an electronic “ding-dong” I could see that his forehead was scratched and bleeding. “These are the best cookies I’ve ever had" he said. They were on clearance after the holidays and they were just tiny gingerbread men, which he surely knew about and had before. It must have been that brand that made it different, or special to him. "Here try one!" he said as he held the open end of the bag toward me.
Dad would help set up the folding tables at Daisy*s annual clothing and toy giveaway and my mom would cover them with oil-cloth runners that had plaids, poinsettias, Santas, reindeer and snowmen printed on them. My contribution to the event was to tape silver tinsel to the hook-part of candy canes and give them to children who would most often use them as magic wands. It was my invention.
All of Daisy’s regulars would come to the holiday event, along with those who only showed up on this day, every year. Despite the fact that he gave away plenty of his own possessions to his friends and regulars of the shop, my dad would complain that a lot of the people who took advantage of the yearly free-for-all could afford to buy Christmas clothes and presents. I didn’t care about that though. Everyone who came was happy, and I felt like I was partly in charge of something generous and special.
Every year as I grew older, more and more of my prized possessions would mix into the pile. It not only became a right of passage but a lesson to remember to let go of things after we’re done with them, even if we think we still need them. I always liked to see who took what was once mine, to imagine what that object’s life would be like away from me.
It was harder for my brother. He had only a few things and didn’t want to give them away.
The whole thing with the cool parents made it strange for the both of us, but somehow it seemed like he got the raw end of the deal.
It should go without saying that the four of us were dressed exclusively in clothes that belonged to other people in the community. It happened more than once that a pair of pants or a jacket we were wearing was recognized as having been owned by one of our classmates. Sometimes girls teased me but Serge got beat up. Our folks were so far away from what school was like for us because they had both dropped out very young, and they were friendly with the kids around town who were the bullies at school. When my mother found out that we were being teased and in my brother's case, beat up at school, she decided to teach us how to fight back, specifically, how to punch. I paid close attention, and eventually found the skill to come in handy.
“If someone is bothering you, you punch them, like this, here.” She pushed her fist into her stomach. “If you punch hard here, then they lose their air, they can’t breathe for a minute, and then you get away. Then they won’t bother you no more," she said in her thick Chilean accent. My brother, however, didn’t like her advice. It made him angry and he told her that he didn’t need her to teach him how to fight. He never fought back. I don't remember my father having any part in this situation. Sergio mostly stayed alone in his room listening to records. I wanted friends and so I chose to adapt and fought back when I had to.
Soon, films featuring teen-age protagonists who dressed only in vintage-wear infiltrated the pre-teen world I grew into. Thank God for the Eighties. I became instantly associated with them. Kids stopped using my name at school and instead called me by the pseudonym for whatever movie character I was most like at the time, but at least the teasing turned into a form of acceptance, and I liked being around people, even at school, so it was worth it. My brother refused to be considered as anything other than who he thought he truly was. He chose the path of dissidence, or maybe it chose him.
He became a problem. He’d eventually cancel out anything fun or good for himself and the rest of us, because he was troubled. He suffered. He was without and un-helped. Something was wrong, and it grew slowly and so naturally into the fabric of our lives that it just "was" and nothing could make it right. No one was trying to make it right. Our father decided to ignore him, completely, and we all just adjusted to that terrible and terribly awkward existence where and unexplained hate thickly fumed our space, day and night.
According to my mother, I was simply supposed to feel bad because I didn’t share his problem. In my young mind, I believed we were born with the same set of tools and simply made different choices. And anyway, what exactly was the problem, and if someone one knew, why didn't our parents talk about it or fix it?
After Sergio graduated high school, he stopped leaving the house, for the most part. He became obsessed with maps and watching weather reports on TV. Once in a while though, he’d leave, and he’d be gone for a weekend or an entire week. He’d never tell anyone where he was going but beforehand he’d secretly map out a route from city bus schedules and make his way from bus to bus in order to see snow on a nearby mountain, or purchase import records from a San Francisco record store. I knew this because I’d find his maps afterward. We never found out where he slept or any of the details revolving around his secret adventures but he'd return smelling like earth, like dirt.
At home he collected coupons for hamburgers at local fast food restaurants that he found on the back of grocery receipts, and he’d make trips to pick them up and bring them home. This was the only other time he’d leave the house. He’d get about ten at a time and kept the burgers in the vegetable crisper of the refrigerator. He’d re-heat them on a buttered frying pan and ate them on his bed with a dipping bowl full of mayonnaise. He ate every re-cooked burger off of the same plate, and he refused to wash it until he had eaten every one. Sometimes our mother would steal it away and wash it and when she did he’d get very upset, telling her to respect the fact that that it was his plate, and his choice not to wash it.
My father told me that he wanted to kick Sergio out of the house so that he’d be forced to learn how to be a man, and my mother refused to let this happen. When I was a teenager I knew enough to suggest to my mom that he see a psychologist but my she looked at me as though I were a stranger, or an enemy, and said she would never forgive me for suggesting that my brother was crazy.
Sergio hid in his room until my dad went to work. Daisy eventually closed the shop and moved to Florida to retire. My father ignored everyone but me, and my mom started to spend a lot of time alone in bed.
Our parents were the hipsters of our small town. Being their children was like being the less cooler friend of the popular kids at school. Sometimes it was painfully clear to us that if they weren’t our parents, if we were all actually the same age, they wouldn’t have been our friends, at least not in public.
Both Sergio and I were enthusiastic learners and by the time we reached middle school we were on our way to receiving more of an education than our parents had, which, when looking back, was a significant shifting point. The differences between "us and them" was the bond my brother and I shared, for a little while. At school the cool kids would ask me to say hey to “Dan” for them. “Sure, I’ll tell my dad you said hi,” I’d say. I played the game in order to get by. Sergio refused.
My father, Dan, used to help out on the set of a community-access television “Creature-Feature” type show that aired once a week at midnight. He became friends with the host who was also a horror movie buff and together they’d determine what films to play each week. It was a pretty popular local show, whether or not its relatively high ratings had to do with the rumor that our town had the largest satanic population in California was undetermined.
He also managed a shop, Necronomicon Comics and Video that sold comic books and when videotape rental places started opening up, the owner decided to delegate a section of the shop to every low budget, potentially cult classic, slasher, demon, zombie, or monster flick that was released. Spooky was their thing and my dad took me to see every horror film that was released in the theater. All the Nightmare on Elmstreet films, Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth... Those events were named as “father-daughter” dates.
“Dan is the man!” is what folks would shout at us when we were together and it seemed he was the coolest guy in town.
My brother and I didn’t really like all the gore. We liked it when things were funny and preferred old cartoons, Claymation, mid-1970s variety shows and sometimes superheroes if we could imagine they worked as brother and sister teams. When he was still young he pretended to be Shazam and I was Isis. We decided they were super-siblings because they were featured together on the television series, The Shazam!/Isis Hour.
As Serge got older, he began to really fall in love with Rock-Opera records like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita and sometimes he’d let me into his room and I’d put on his headphones to listen to songs. He’d spend hours explaining how each one fit into a larger, epic story. He used the term, Rock Opera a lot and showed me how influenced by this genre the band Queen was, describing the themes of their different records. I learned how to read by following song lyrics written on record sleeves as I listened. I loved it but our father wasn’t excited about his interest in the dramatic arts. To him it seemed a lot “gayer” than anything in the horror genre, but in my view the fixation each had in their own respective pop-culture concentrations was similarly over the top.
My mother, who left Chile for a new life in America only a year before meeting/marrying my dad, was a housewife but worked at Daisy’s Thrift Shop to pass some time and because she loved used clothes. The sign Had the name Daisy*s written large, with a small daisy Daisy used as the apostrophe. The words, "thrift shop" was written below and in a much smaller and plainer font. Daisy was also a person and she was old. My mom’s closest friends were always older than she was, something she claimed was due to missing her own mother whom she left behind in South America and soon after that, passed away- but Daisy was by far the oldest. Daisy came to the shop for a while every day to drink instant coffee with my mom, who basically took care of the place. Together, they sat on a bench outside the shop and chatted, if the sun was out. Like the comic book store, there weren't many customers to tend to. Mom and Daisy seemed to love each other’s company as much as they loved finding hidden treasures within piles of junk.
On weekends, early in the morning, my mother and I would walk. But before that, with a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other, she’d sit at the kitchen table and circle all the garage sales in town that were listed in the local newspaper. She’d draw out kind of map marking all that we’d hit and when I was big enough, we’d both carry one of those metal grocery carts you find at luggage shops, in order to haul the resalable items back to Daisys. Mom didn't drive.
My mother said she refused to get a drivers license as a protest to the town not providing her with public transportation not unlike New York’s subway system (not that she’d ever been to New York), so we walked everywhere. At garage sales I’d get to play with other people’s pets or I’d have to uncomfortably stand around strange children simply because of the fact that we were both kids and our parents had become chatty. I’d always get a toy or some kind of hair accessory, like a headband or a barrette with a bow on it.
My favorite thing though, was when someone would drop off bags of clothes for the shop. My mom and I would always allow ourselves first-pick and Daisy didn’t mind because we’d be sure to set aside anything suitable for her taste or for the shop. Some of my best memories with my mom are of us together after the shop closed, trying on entire wardrobes that once belonged to other people, in front of Daisy’s freestanding mirror that was as tall as a person. Each bag offered us an opportunity to adopt a new identity and each one held a different scent. Half the time I think people sprayed perfume right into the bag. It was a lot of fun.
One day every winter, before Christmas, Daisy would open up the back of the shop, in order to allow the community to gather clothes and toys for free. She’d make mulled wine for the grown-ups and hot apple cider for the kids. She served cookies with white powder on them and those butter kind that come in a big blue tin, and gingerbread men that came in a bag. These were my dad’s favorite. One time I watched him walk all the way from the dime-store across from Necronomicon Comics and Video to where I was, at the counter of the shop, doing my homework after school. He was looking only into the crinkled paper bag while simultaneously eating one after another. I watched him walk directly into a tree in the middle of the parking lot, and he never even looked up, he just re-adjusted his path.
Both he and my mother always went on about how much they disliked the idea of food, preferring a very 1950's TV fantasy future-"utopia" of human nourishment by way of nutrient-packed pills, so it was unsettling for me to see him pulled by the siren call of a snack food and it was then that I first realized my father was capable of owning a weakness. By the time he passed through the threshold of the shop that sounded an electronic “ding-dong” I could see that his forehead was scratched and bleeding. “These are the best cookies I’ve ever had" he said. They were on clearance after the holidays and they were just tiny gingerbread men, which he surely knew about and had before. It must have been that brand that made it different, or special to him. "Here try one!" he said as he held the open end of the bag toward me.
Dad would help set up the folding tables at Daisy*s annual clothing and toy giveaway and my mom would cover them with oil-cloth runners that had plaids, poinsettias, Santas, reindeer and snowmen printed on them. My contribution to the event was to tape silver tinsel to the hook-part of candy canes and give them to children who would most often use them as magic wands. It was my invention.
All of Daisy’s regulars would come to the holiday event, along with those who only showed up on this day, every year. Despite the fact that he gave away plenty of his own possessions to his friends and regulars of the shop, my dad would complain that a lot of the people who took advantage of the yearly free-for-all could afford to buy Christmas clothes and presents. I didn’t care about that though. Everyone who came was happy, and I felt like I was partly in charge of something generous and special.
Every year as I grew older, more and more of my prized possessions would mix into the pile. It not only became a right of passage but a lesson to remember to let go of things after we’re done with them, even if we think we still need them. I always liked to see who took what was once mine, to imagine what that object’s life would be like away from me.
It was harder for my brother. He had only a few things and didn’t want to give them away.
The whole thing with the cool parents made it strange for the both of us, but somehow it seemed like he got the raw end of the deal.
It should go without saying that the four of us were dressed exclusively in clothes that belonged to other people in the community. It happened more than once that a pair of pants or a jacket we were wearing was recognized as having been owned by one of our classmates. Sometimes girls teased me but Serge got beat up. Our folks were so far away from what school was like for us because they had both dropped out very young, and they were friendly with the kids around town who were the bullies at school. When my mother found out that we were being teased and in my brother's case, beat up at school, she decided to teach us how to fight back, specifically, how to punch. I paid close attention, and eventually found the skill to come in handy.
“If someone is bothering you, you punch them, like this, here.” She pushed her fist into her stomach. “If you punch hard here, then they lose their air, they can’t breathe for a minute, and then you get away. Then they won’t bother you no more," she said in her thick Chilean accent. My brother, however, didn’t like her advice. It made him angry and he told her that he didn’t need her to teach him how to fight. He never fought back. I don't remember my father having any part in this situation. Sergio mostly stayed alone in his room listening to records. I wanted friends and so I chose to adapt and fought back when I had to.
Soon, films featuring teen-age protagonists who dressed only in vintage-wear infiltrated the pre-teen world I grew into. Thank God for the Eighties. I became instantly associated with them. Kids stopped using my name at school and instead called me by the pseudonym for whatever movie character I was most like at the time, but at least the teasing turned into a form of acceptance, and I liked being around people, even at school, so it was worth it. My brother refused to be considered as anything other than who he thought he truly was. He chose the path of dissidence, or maybe it chose him.
He became a problem. He’d eventually cancel out anything fun or good for himself and the rest of us, because he was troubled. He suffered. He was without and un-helped. Something was wrong, and it grew slowly and so naturally into the fabric of our lives that it just "was" and nothing could make it right. No one was trying to make it right. Our father decided to ignore him, completely, and we all just adjusted to that terrible and terribly awkward existence where and unexplained hate thickly fumed our space, day and night.
According to my mother, I was simply supposed to feel bad because I didn’t share his problem. In my young mind, I believed we were born with the same set of tools and simply made different choices. And anyway, what exactly was the problem, and if someone one knew, why didn't our parents talk about it or fix it?
After Sergio graduated high school, he stopped leaving the house, for the most part. He became obsessed with maps and watching weather reports on TV. Once in a while though, he’d leave, and he’d be gone for a weekend or an entire week. He’d never tell anyone where he was going but beforehand he’d secretly map out a route from city bus schedules and make his way from bus to bus in order to see snow on a nearby mountain, or purchase import records from a San Francisco record store. I knew this because I’d find his maps afterward. We never found out where he slept or any of the details revolving around his secret adventures but he'd return smelling like earth, like dirt.
At home he collected coupons for hamburgers at local fast food restaurants that he found on the back of grocery receipts, and he’d make trips to pick them up and bring them home. This was the only other time he’d leave the house. He’d get about ten at a time and kept the burgers in the vegetable crisper of the refrigerator. He’d re-heat them on a buttered frying pan and ate them on his bed with a dipping bowl full of mayonnaise. He ate every re-cooked burger off of the same plate, and he refused to wash it until he had eaten every one. Sometimes our mother would steal it away and wash it and when she did he’d get very upset, telling her to respect the fact that that it was his plate, and his choice not to wash it.
My father told me that he wanted to kick Sergio out of the house so that he’d be forced to learn how to be a man, and my mother refused to let this happen. When I was a teenager I knew enough to suggest to my mom that he see a psychologist but my she looked at me as though I were a stranger, or an enemy, and said she would never forgive me for suggesting that my brother was crazy.
Sergio hid in his room until my dad went to work. Daisy eventually closed the shop and moved to Florida to retire. My father ignored everyone but me, and my mom started to spend a lot of time alone in bed.