wednesday

1. downtown fort worth, waiting for the number 7 bus that will take me up to my job. waiting with me is a guy i've ridden with many times. he's about my age, overweight in an almost spherical way. i always assumed he had high-functioning autistism. he's both gregarious and oblivious at the same time: he's very polite, calls people by name, but what really runs through his mind is his schedule for the day. he talks about it whether people are actually listening or not. "first i'm going to eat lunch at the museum. then then i'm going to walk to the park and pick up cans with my new bag [a trash bag]." i never knew his last name, but that day on the bus he happened to mention it. i suddenly remembered a guy in high school (back in the 80's) with that last name. his name was brian. don't remember how we met, but we became friends when i got a bass guitar for christmas. he was a guitar player; he'd show me a riff and tell me to play it over and over while he soloed over it. his father was a professor of literature at the university and they lived in a big house on campus. i went to his house several times. he had a brother that i thought was just eccentric. i asked about it one day and he got angry and said "he's autistic, ok?!" so i let it drop. later that wednesday i did a search to see if this guy from the bus was the same guy from 30 years ago. i found several articles about him. he had had a job few years back as a score keeper (manually changing the numbers on the board) at a local ballpark. a positive story about this guy with autism who lives independently, works these small jobs, and is happy. the articles tie him to the professor father and then brian. his older brother didn't fair as well: further searches turned up a mugshot of him after being arrested for "assault of a family/household member." so now i don't know if, next time i see him, whether i should say something like "hey, i knew your brother." 2. i told this story to the woman i happened to be working with that day. her name is holly. we were in high school together, but she was a couple of grades lower. she was pretty wild back then. i asked her if she remembered brian. she did, but not well. i told her the story about the guy on the bus. this starts her on a lot of stories about high school classmates. i didn't recognize anybody she mentioned until markham p. back in the 80's i had met him through my cousin. they both went to private school together. he sort of attached himself to me as a link to the sordid world of public school. soon, he got himself kicked out of private school and became a classmate of mine. we hung around together long enough for me to meet his father and find out how he got so fucked up. this is also where i saw my first 10" dildo. antigone might have some memory of paschal high school's legion of doom back in '85. markham was the guy who woke up one morning to find a dead cat draped over the steering wheel of his car. long story short, markham had died of cancer. another friend, juan, had died of leukemia back in the early 90's. but, at 48, this felt like first in long line of peers i will be watching die off. though who's to say i won't be next. 3. our shop got downsized. that's to say, our landlord coby decided that he could make more money by renting out the smaller half of our shop (we were once two units) and rent it out to a "promotional company." so now i do my work in the back near the dressing rooms (we're a woman's boutique), separated from them only by curtains. while i was there, only one pair of women came in to try on clothes. "oh my god, i can't wear this! i feel like my bo- bos are going to spill out! i mean, a lot of guys have seen my bo-bos...i hope the like them and all. but really, i don't them escaping on their own." "actually i see a lot of girls at church wearing that." "well maybe. but i feel like my bo-bos are to just fly off and start hitting people, you know?" after they left, i have to admit i was tempted to roll out to the store just to see these flight risk bo-bos and the dress or top that just couldn't contain them. but then they would've known i had been back there. i'm either going to have to wear headphones or start talking notes. this was the first time i had ever heard breasts referred to as bo-bos. (bobos?) 4. after i got home, i rolled out the back door to pick up my mail. leaning against the door was a small package. it was a tweed patch cap (flat cap, driving cap, old man's cap) from killarney, ireland. my dad had just been there. visiting the "old sod." which surprised me. i have never known an irish-american who was less sentimental, if not disdainful, of his irish heritage. all but one of his grandparents were irish-born. he once told me: "i grew up with them telling all these stories about ireland but, stupid me, i never listened." he told my sister and me he had kissed the blarney stone. later on, my sister asked his second wife (the went together on the "quiet man" tour) that. his wife said that not only didn't he kiss the blarney stone, he wouldn't even climb the steps to get close enough to see someone else do it. i took a picture of myself in the cap and messaged it to my sister. my mother always called the gifts she'd bring back to us after a trip a "sussy." thanks to auto-correct, i sent a picture of myself in my irish cap along with the words: my sissy from ireland.