Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (24 page)

(2003)
My father answers the door with a huge gash above his eye—swollen, bruised. Here we go. I mention the gash, unsure I want to know the details.
This?
he barks, pointing to his eye.
I got nailed. But you should see those two cocksuckers, tried to rob me, I’m stepping on their motherfuckin’ heads. Off to Charles Street jail, they’re in for twenty years
. I nod, look at the last of the day’s sunlight coming through the ivy that fills his three windows with green. Cartoons on tv, coffee gone cold. How does he keep those plants so healthy?
You don’t want any vodka?
he asks, hoisting the jug.
Fine, it’s evil shit
. A room without corners, without a place to sit. After a few minutes of listening to this latest installment in his endless unraveling his room begins to feel especially suffocating, cramped. A seventy-three-year-old man in trouble with the law for the umpteenth time. I suggest a stroll, offer to buy him a sandwich. He mentions my book, the poems in it that deal with him, says he’s impressed. I wonder if he’s thinking of the one where I say I want to “
bend / each finger back, until the bottle / falls, until the bone snaps, save him / by destroying his hands
.”

On the sidewalk I notice how gnomelike he’s become—cross-eyed, stiff gait, smaller and smaller, as is the way with all parents, perhaps, though my father is smaller yet cocky still, cocky and paranoid at once. Not a formidable presence, except in that madman way that drunks wield, that
does-it-look-like-I-give-a-fuck-about-anything?
look. First we walk to the 7-Eleven to replenish his stash of orange juice, where he introduces me to the guy behind the counter as his son. The cashier smiles, a bit reservedly, says only, Your son? Along with the o.j. he buys two bunches of cut flowers, one for his room, one for Jasmine, the seven-year-old girl who lives next door to him. A note from Jasmine is taped to his door—“Dear man that lives in 21, I love you.” Once he knocked on their door while I was there, insisted I meet Jasmine and her mother. The mother gave me a look much like the one this cashier is giving me, of weary exasperation. Jasmine hid behind her mother’s leg, waved
hola
. As we leave the cashier tells me my father is a good customer.
Damn right I am
, my father says, as he ambles back out. Next door is a junk store, a
CLOSED
sign hanging in the window. My father bangs on the sign with his fist. A man opens the door and is introduced as Sharkey. Nice to meet you, I say, and take his offered hand.
This is my son
, my father says. Sharkey squints into my face, confused.
He teaches at Columbia University
, my father says,
do you believe that?
Sharkey leans in to me, squints. That’s a fuckin’ miracle, he says. This block of Boston is mostly students, and they all seem to have somewhere to go.
The kid’s got a book out
, my father tells Sharkey, then turns to me—
I don’t understand how you did that. What promoted you?
When my mother was seventeen my father sent her a flurry of letters, just days before he would get her pregnant—
My future depends on my talent to write—I have periods of doubt and fear. I do not want to fail
. Sharkey tells me to keep an eye on him, that he gets in trouble sometimes, as my father staggers away from us down the sidewalk. I catch up, stop briefly to glance at an outdoor table covered with used CDs, but he orders me to keep walking.
Suck city
, he explains,
full of fuckers
, the two bouquets of flowers tucked under his arm. We pass the bank, where he cashes his government check, one of the banks he claims to have robbed many years before. He takes out his bank card,
See that?
I know, I tell him, you showed me. We’re in front of a pizza joint now. I’m hungry, I say, you hungry?

He orders the steak bomb, I get a slice. He seems to know the woman at the register, or at least he acts like he does, giving her a demented stare. I drift away. She asks him if he needs anything else, if he’s all right, and my father replies, loudly,
My name is Flynn, of course I’m doing all right, here in Boston. I’m Irish
, he sneers,
not African, or Spanish, or Chinese, who I love
. The woman smiles wanly, That’s good you love them, passing the bag of food into his hands.

We sit on his stoop in the fading sun, his sandwich difficult for him to negotiate, bits of fatty steak dropping to the concrete. I ask him about his father again, about the life raft. He tells the same story, nearly word for word—how he watched his father test it, dropping it over and over from a crane into Scituate Harbor until he got it right. I am now the age my father was when he entered his first bank, which is the same age my mother was when she killed herself. The sun is setting on us now. My father tells me that he has the original blueprints for the life raft. I know, I say, I gave them to you.
You did? I was wondering where I got them. You’re Thaddeus, right, named after my grandfather?
No, I say, I’m Nicholas, named after the Czar.

After half an hour I tell him I have to shove off, I’m parked illegally, no sense pushing my luck.

He walks me to my car, points to the tree beside it—
That tree too
—he’s leaning into my window now, if I were to pull away I would drag him with me—
even though it’s not in front of my door. I was feeling generous
.

“
Look! here comes a walking fire!
”—
King Lear
. “A map the size of the world”—Jorge Luis Borges.
“Trigger-hippie”
—Morcheeba. Lines in italics—
King Lear
(approximately—original is “that wants the means to
lead
it”). “
pruno
”—usually made by fermenting ketchup in a plastic bag (the kick is formidable, but the taste, they say, is wretched). “
Who is it that can tell me
…
”—
King Lear
. “
It wasn’t any woman
…
”—William Faulkner,
Light in August
. “
I have plenty of places to go
…
”—Mike Leigh,
Naked
(approximately). “…
a box imagined into a house
”—an idea lifted from Gaston Bachelard,
The Poetics of Space
. “
We arouse pity
…
”—Jean Genet,
The Thief’s Journal
. “
same again
”—a collage of many voices, including friends, Homer Simpson & the band Acrophobe. The form is adapted from a Kato Indian Genesis myth (found in
Technicians of the Sacred
, Jerome Rothenberg, editor).
Many lines lifted from
King Lear
. “
Accursed fornicator
!…
,” & “
Grain upon grain…
”—Samuel Beckett,
Endgame
.
Flawless (how to rob a bank)
—title of a documentary video written & directed by NF, produced by the Kitchen, edited by David Anzarch (1997). “
What is word made of but breath
…
”—
Hamlet
. Excerpts from Jonathan Flynn,
The Button Man
(unpublished). “
the boy stood on the burning deck
”—Elizabeth Bishop,
Casabianca
. —“
bend
/
each finger back
…”—NF,
Father Outside
.

impossible without
tom draper, bill clegg, jill bialosky, frances richard, lee brackstone, oscar van gelderen, jessica craig, mark adams, dorothy antczak, sarah messer, thich nhat hahn, jacqueline woodson, johnny cash, maggie nelson, mark conway, dana goodyear, doug montgomery, hubert sauper, eli gottlieb, danella carter, dave cole, martin moran, debra gitterman, arlo crawford, suzanne bach, robbie cunningham, sarah moriarty, rodney phillips, deirdre o’dwyer, padgett-marbens, marisa pagano, anna oler, josh neufeld, the macdowell colony, michael carroll, the schoolhouse center, sylvia sichel, the corporation of yaddo, peggy gould, pat oleszko, daniele bollea, nicola bollea, jen liese, alex blumberg, shane dubow, billy loos, everyone I worked beside & with at the pine street palace, all my friends who have become fathers, tad flynn, talaya delaney
impossible without

Nick Flynn is the author of
Blind Huber
,
A Note Slipped Under the Door
, and
Some Ether
, a finalist for the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize and winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. In another life he worked as an electrician, as a ship’s captain, and as an educator in New York City public schools. Some venues where, over the years, his words have appeared include
The New Yorker
,
The Nation
,
Fence
, the
New York Times Book Review
,
The Paris Review
,
Provincetown Arts
, and National Public Radio’s
This American Life
. His awards include fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. One semester a year he teaches at the University of Houston, and then he spends the rest of the year elsewhere.