this has nothing to do with you (part one)

my father disappeared the day I turned sixteen.

he was thirty-three;
same age as christ.

i was sixteen.
my sister fourteen.
she was there,
at the table,
when daddy said
-- after the party,
my party,
my sweet sixteen --
that he knew of a better place.
the other kids were gone.
daddy had missed the party,
he got there late.
his job...

dar was cleaning up the table,
dragging a big green plastic bag around,
throwing in plates and napkins and plastic forks and dixie cups,
some with punch still in them,
throwing them roughly into the big plastic bag.

dar.
i called her momma before that.

daddy wanted us all to go to this better place,
with him,
but momma said no.
then daddy was gone and she became dar.

everything changed when daddy left.
except him;
he'll always be daddy.
he'll always be the same,
look the same,
sound the same,
as he was when I was sixteen.

***

there was a boy,
johnny something.
johnny polacek.
I think that was his name.
i can't remember his name.
(it'll have to be changed in the final draft anyway.)
his daddy died in some kind of freak accident.
something work-related.
i don't know what it was because i didn't talk to johnny until my daddy disappeared.
and they didn't tell sixteen-year-olds that kind of stuff anyway.
but then we had something in common,
a reason to talk.

johnny was athletic,
he played baseball and basketball.
and he had squinty eyes and dirty blond hair,
and he was shy,
and he had puffy lips.
i remember his puffy lips.
he talked to me once,
in the library,
at school.
i can't remember now what it was he said.
it wasn't important and it wasn't a threat,
just some sort of passing thing.
something in passing.
like that,
like "pass me that pencil,"
or something like that.

he said "please."
i remember him as being polite.
not stuck up at all,
just very shy.
i realized that on that day.
he was popular with the girls but i don't think he had a steady girlfriend.
johnny was kind of a loner.

like me.
except that i wasn't popular.
i had friends here and there but no close friends.
my friends seemed to change every year according to what classes i was in and with whom.

i didn't like having to explain april to people.
so i usually went home after school.
she got home an hour after me and i played with her until dar got home.

during that hour before april got home while i was in the house alone i would sit on the bathroom counter and look at myself in the mirror.
i would stare deep into my eyes,
would judge my face,
my pimples.
would pick at my pores,
squeeze them.
pimples that were at the nucleus stage would be forced to the battered red surface.

it was entertainment.
i was a loner.

i talked to myself in the mirror,
interviewed myself,
sang to myself,
mouthed words,
no sound except my smacking lips and sticky tongue.

some time after johnny polacek talked to me
-- i don't know if it was immediate or some time after --
i saw something in the three-way fold-out mirror i'd never seen before.
i squinted my eyes and saw my squinty eyes through my squinty eyes,
and my hair was a little more "dirty" and a little less blond,
and my lips were puffy.

i could feel my puffy lips.
i gasped
-- ah! --
light and subtle;
i gasped and opened my eyes to see if my thin pink lips had actually become redder and puffy,
and they had.
more so when i turned the bathroom light out and saw myself in the three-forty-five light coming through the bathroom window.

but more than what i saw was what i felt.
what i felt was much more than what i saw.
i felt my lips,
my eyes,
my hair;
i felt the loss of my father to a freak accident;
i felt the glove on one hand,
the bat in both of them,
the striped uniform,
the cup pinching my testicles.
i knew what it felt like to crack a ball out of the park.
i knew what it felt like to be johnny polacek.

***

it wasn't an isolated event.
or i would be more correct in saying it wasn't that one isolated event;
it was multiple isolated events since the age of sixteen,
since my daddy disappeared,
since i felt like johnny polacek.

it still happens.
there's no rhyme or reason to it,
no explanation that i know of,
though i haven't ever looked for one.
until now,
i guess.
if that's really what i'm doing.
i will see someone i've never met before,
across the street,
or across the subway,
and when they are no longer there,
sometimes I can feel their face pressing against the inside of my face,
pressing to the surface,
trying to get out.

skin color doesn't matter,
nor gender;
even deformities.
(once i saw a man with no ears and i knew what it felt like to be him.)
it even happens with people i've known a long time.
dar,
april...
except not daddy.
never daddy.