David Bowie and fatherhood…

As I drove back from a work trip to pick up the teenager from a college prep class, I found the beginning of David Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ flowing through my head. This flow was quickly transferred from there to the car stereo via my iphone, and soon I was lost in a collection of his greatest (as dictated by me) material.

I grew up with David Bowie. His poster stared out from under my Dad’s desk in the corner of our living room, with it’s Jetsons-cool white pedastal TV and funky yellow, brown and cream beanbags (no sofa, no chair, no convention). My Dad would get his special stylus out, take ‘Ziggy Stardust…’ from it’s plastic-protected sleeve and soon the flat would be filled with those songs. Or sometimes ‘Low.’ Or sometimes ‘Heroes.’ Yes, Bowie was a presence in my childhood, make no mistake.

I would get out the ‘Aladdin Sane’ album when I was 7 or 8 and stare at the image on the front. That face. That hair. That zig-zag. Those colors. And I would look around our living room, with it’s ‘future feel’ (well, it’s ‘not-3-piece-suite-and-big-boring-box-telly’ feel) and my Dad’s desk, his typewriter sitting still, waiting for him to come home, piles of pages massed beside it, and think how wonderful our life was. I would think of my Mum and her constant engagement, her smiles and the lilt of her voice, always with a pep of positivity, and I would think of going to the football with my Dad. I would look around and think of the family friends who dropped in, Pat Doust, a wild and warm and crazy and exciting and engaging dervish of a hippy woman, someone who lived outside the box, and Nuala and Gene from Ireland, open, friendly and unconventional. We had no normal living room furniture, no phone in the house and no big ugly boob tube. We went to the National Film Theatre and the South Bank. We made strong coffee in a little copper colored turkish coffee pot. And we listened to music by the likes of David Bowie, in all his beautiful androgyny, with all his fantastic musical layers, with all his futuristic clairvoyance.

The summer of ‘77 saw a summer heat-wave in London, and I remember staring at the cover of ‘Low’ which had come out that January. An explosion of orange and a robotic profile shot of Bowie. It lured me over and over for the following 32 years. ‘A New Career In A New Town’ for some reason sticks out. And as for ‘Warszawa’, well, when I told Neville Wright in top top secret that my Dad had not done his Persian military service and that if they ever found out he told me they’d take him away (and when Neville Wright then said he’d tell everyone he could find -Neville’s father had left him at birth- in the hope that would happen) I sat and listened to it over and over, tears streaming down my face, convinced my Dad would be taken away.  Thinking about it, David Bowie’s Berlin-era music was the first time I ever really experienced the power of the minor key, and the emotions and tears that well crafted minor-key driven music can evoke.

I went to Berlin in 1989 about 6 months before the Wall came down, and the first thing I did was put a tape of  ’Low’ and ‘Heroes’ on my walkman and stroll around Tiergarten and Bahnhoff Zoo, I successfully looked for the Neukolln neighborhood and Hansa Studios. I took a hundred black and white photos of anything and everything I saw. I wanted to feel how this music had happened, and in my mind I was doing precisely that.

Later that year I was presented with the chance to interview David Bowie. It was for his Tin Machine project, and I was told I could not ask about any of his solo career material or experiences. I listened to the Tin Machine album over and over again to find pathways which would bring me to legitimate questions about the Berlin-era. I saw parallels in the work. And as I sat in the absurdly long stretch limo, trundling to the interview, I felt I was representing my family, my childhood, my Mum but as much as anything, my Dad. I had not long turned 22 years old. I was proud. It felt like a proper barometer of success.

The interview went exceedingly well. Bowie warmed to my somewhat complicated questions, took them on and gave me what he knew I was after. We discussed Berlin in relation to the present. I felt like an invitee into some world which no other journalist would get access to. He waved the PR off twice telling her we needed more time. And as I packed my things to leave, he said, “You really did your homework, those were great questions.”

I froze for a moment, for the first time that day actually, and replied, “I grew up with your music, I grew up with you in our house, if I hadn’t done my homework it would’ve been wrong.” I forgot to say thank you. And he smiled back, reiterated that he’d enjoyed our conversation, and moved on to his next appointment. I, meanwhile, sat in the back of said-same absurdly long limo and started shaking ever so lightly. There was a phone back there, but my parents didn’t have a phone so I couldn’t call and talk to them about it.

Music defines families. What you heard growing up never leaves you, and if you shared that with your parents, then it resonates even more strongly. I spent a lot of time playing music for the teenager, and now he’ll play me music of his that I end up liking. And I spend a lot of time driving and listening to music with the pre-schooler. We run the table, from Rob Zombie to Underworld, from The Beatles to Madonna. And my favorite moment is always when she asks to hear something and I ask her, in return, to be patient and let me introduce her to something I know she’ll like. Like Leftfield perhaps. Or Massive Attack. Or David Bowie. And when she does like it, when she punches the air to ‘Suffragette City’ or when we bumps and grind in our seats to ‘Rebel Rebel’ a small but very very bright bright light inside me suddenly switches on. And when I catch her face, grinning, making the faces, shaking her head in time to the ‘hot tramp, I love you so’ line, the world is pretty fucking fine.

Sometimes we dance to ‘Blue Danube Waltz’ and sometimes we dance or draw to ‘Dragula’ or ‘Rebel Rebel’ (no stylus necessary, just plug and play today). And I think of the power in it all, the unity of these songs, and the fact that David Bowie has spanned generations of my family. And then I wonder if my Dad listens to him anymore. My Dad, in his apartment by himself, speaking with no-one and buried in stacks of philosophy books. My Dad and all the friends in his head that no-one else will ever meet. My Dad who isn’t remotely like the man who had the yellow, brown and creme beanbags or  white pedastal TV anymore…even the typewriter went years ago…but he does still have a special stylus for that stereo. And some vinyl in a corner somewhere.

Maybe I should call him and ask…

A LOAD OF RANDOM HAIRY OLD BOLLOCKS AND PLAYING THE GENERATION GAME

(WARNING: THIS COLUMN MAKES LITTLE SENSE AND HAS THE RHYME AND REASON OF A VANILLA ICE COMEBACK TUNE)

“HEY DAD, IT’S JUST A LOAD OF HAIRY OL’ BOLLOCKS!” said the pre-schooler with a grin as wide as our front door when she jumped into the car with her teenage brother behind her. Even I were a clueless type, his poorly-stiffled giggling would’ve pointed me right at the true protagonist.

“Why oh why do you insist on doing it?” I asked in proper parental fashion even though I knew EXACTLY why he’d done so (because it sounds very funny coming from such a sweet-voiced girl as his sister – not that I could ever admit that. So pretend I didn’t. And also pretend I didn’t stifle a snigger of my own the second she jauntily barked it out).

“I didn’t!”

“I am not a total wanker, so please!”

“Well it’s just fun – “

“OK, I get it, no need to spell it out,” I said stiffly, all the while wearing a grump the size of Texas. “Don’t do it again though please…”

The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, and anything I hear like this is doubtless a product of my own behaviour somewhere down the line, so it does well not to get angry first time around and instead just talk the situation to an appropriate place.

Somewhere in the last few weeks, the pre-schooler has turned 13 and the teenager remains mired between the total independence of an impending college existence and the wipe-my-butt reliance of a child. It’s doubtless confusing for them, but I can assure you it’s bloody confusing for me. The pre-schooler knows everything, can do everything and rolls three or four syllable words off the tongue like the proverbial water off a duck’s back. The teenager still needs taxi and chauffeur service, guidance on simple matters such as nutrition and waking up in the morning and continues to have huge brain-farts when it comes to the concept of time. It is a cruel age the last year of high school, as so many things need to click into place yet the human condition of that moment is all about the complete suspension of common sense and logic. It’s actually more about fighting bad skin and the relentless pursuit of the opposite sex via image and behavior…come to think of it, he doesn’t have bad skin and he hasn’t delved head-first into any fashion trend as a consequence of his female peerage, so perhaps he’s ahead of the curve.

Which sometimes is hard to see. If you haven’t stopped off at ‘This Isn’t What I Was Like At His Age’ street, then you’ll surely have reached the junction of Generation Avenue and Curmudgeon Way. Which in itself is confusing. I mean, I am only forty-fucking-two, certainly not old enough to enjoy being a grump as much as I sometimes do. Seriously! I sometimes find myself ENJOYING making comments like ‘they have no drive’ or ‘we only had three channels of telly’ or ‘that music is so stupid…’I can assure you the last one doesn’t get much thrift, especially when I shamelessly beat the steering wheel to Slayer, or try for the high notes in Bowie’s ‘Suffragette City’ (I make them). My wife now speaks with increasing frequency about my need for a cane, not in terms of mobility but in terms of sheer old man-ness. Even the pre-schooler gets fooled sometimes, as evidenced just now at lunch when I waved my index finger at her, she assumed I was imploring her to eat more but the truth is that I was firmly doing that gloriously juvenile ‘pull my finger’ gag.

But there is no doubt I am ‘evolving’…these days, when blasting the new Slayer album and finding myself pulling up to a stoplight infront of a bus-stop downtown, I turn the sound down. There was a time when I would’ve lurched for the volume knob and attempted to break the car stereo whilst opening all other available windows. How polite I am becoming. How thoughtful. My Slayer a bit loud? I thought so, sorry, I do apologize.

Yet there again, I found myself sitting with the teenager at Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II’ remake, sneaking food in and making sure our peanut gallery comments were available to all who might’ve wanted to hear them (three other people about 12 rows behind us), before arguing over who the biggest wankers in the premiership are before getting stuck into a philosophical discussion as to why the theory of probability will always be felled by the unpredictability of human nature. Yes. Quite a span.

I am father.

Yes. And I am now also a bit more vain, a lot more healthy, a bit more judgemental yet a touch quieter, a tad grumpier but much much cheerier, a little older, a lot wiser, a little older but a lot younger than I have been for years. Juxtaposes. Connundrums…

The pre-schooler and I drew zombie princesses for the week leading up to Halloween whilst listening to Misfits, Rob Zombie and White Zombie. She then said she didn’t want me to be a zombie because she’d be scared (I muttered that I was often a zombie from the hours of 6.30 am to 9, but this was lost in a mumble and I didn’t want to repeat it)…speaking of which, what bright spark came up with the idea of shoving as much sugar as possible down the necks of small children whilst dressed as bloody monsters, ghouls and murderers before then telling them to go to sleep and not worry about nightmares? This genius (who doubtless ran a sweet factory) obviously did not have children. And who came up with the phrase ‘trick or treat?’ Because as I sat on my front step, Lucho Libre mask on, holding the candy bucket for kids to shovel their hands into, I asked most for a trick and they looked at me like I’d just had a tourette’s attack. What’s THAT all about? Kudos to the young man who said ‘no but I have a funny joke’ (which was actually not funny at all but was made funny by his own enthusiasm and effort to try and give something in exchange for some bloody candy!)…seriously, I remarked to a fellow parent as we strolled along slowly having taken the show on the road, that next year I might well hand out some mini-gherkins and pickled eggs instead of candy to anyone who doesn’t bloody well entertain me! Now wheres my cane!!!!!!!

‘PIMP ASS DAD…’

“Why can’t you put that bloody thing away?” I said to the teenager regarding the iphone in his hands as we sat outside our favorite Mediterranean place waiting for kabobs and schwerma wraps.

“I’m tweeting!” he replied indignantly.

“What on earth is of consequence enough to tweet now?” I retorted incredulously.

“That I’m having dinner with my Dad!” he responded defiantly.

I stared at him. How utterly silly. I mean, who gives a monkey’s chuff about such piffle!

He showed me the ‘tweet.’

EATIN WIT MY PIMP ASS DAD

It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry, but given the parameters of modern colloquialisms, I took the high road and nodded at this most holy of teenage compliments, wondering at the same time who on earth in his twitter circle would be reading about what a ‘pimp ass’ guy I was.

“Can I see your twitter followers?”

“Sure.”

I got four people down before being met by an icon which had a pair of breasts stuffed into a low cut bra and a nether region barely covered by a pair of knickers.

“Friend of yours?” I said, one eyebrow raised.

“Nope. I don’t know her,” he said, stonewalling the question. “She’s a friend of a friend, that’s why she’s following me I guess.”

We briefly discussed college and how he wants to go to digs if at all possible, to have the full college experience, to share a small cupboard with another ‘bro’ and do all the things that college students do aside from studying. I have little doubt that this will involve entertaining the likes of ‘nether regions’ and many others in his twitter-line, and I have even less doubt that this will be a circle which will view me cautiously as a square; no amount of reminding the teenager that I introduced him to Dizzee Rascal will save me from this inevitability. And frankly, there’d be something wrong if it wasn’t like that. Either he’d be hanging with the wrong people or I’d be trying to slash my age by two-thirds and looking like a mid-life crisis prat in the process. Oh, and before people get up in arms thinking that I’m tossing in the age towel, no, I’m not, but there’s little dignity in pretending you’re 18 when you’re not. Gravity (incidentally) has as much to do with this as anything. But it must be said, we get on well. Very well. We enjoy each other’s company. To you, this might be an obvious by-product of a father-son relationship, but I know that this isn’t necessarily the way it always pans out, especially at this moment in our lives, so I am grateful that we still have things in common and like to hang out together.

We watched Bobcat Goldthwaite’s supremely funny film ‘The World’s Greatest Dad’ together, and aside from having some refreshingly offensive humor (as well as a profound storyline) it is a wonderful reminder of how utterly hosed I could be with a teenage boy. Thankfully mine does not like to try and hang himself in the process of self-pleasure, does not respond to every single syllable I utter with negativity and the word ‘fag’ and he is also not an afficianado of ‘German scheisse porn.’ I must, on reflection, have done something right. That isn’t to say there isn’t the ‘teenage hormone drip’ which is to say the one that tells him he knows everything but wants me to DO it. However credit where credit’s due, he keeps these inevitable growing pain instincts at the curb for the most part and will always help when asked (sometimes even helping when not asked). But I am still not beyond the odd joke. Like when some tahini sauce drips from my chicken kabob wrap.

“We should get you one of those ‘HELLO – MY NAME IS’ stickers so as people know you’re special!” he guffawed as I mopped the dripping sauce off my coat. If he gets into the college he wants to go to next year, I’ll miss those moments, as absolutely impossible as it is for me to imagine right now.

Earlier in the day, I had taken the pre-schooler to her first official occupational therapy appointment since her ‘evaluation’ report. It specifically referred to her ‘vestibular’ system, which is not a sophisticated network of under-shirts but is the core component of our balance and spatial orientation, and how this (in turn) is affecting her ‘auditory processing system’ which sounds like a government agency but which is a vital, vital life regulator. Without your inner ear balance system working, all sorts of little things crop up, which lead to some behavioral issues. Of course, if you get the toolbox out now, at pre-school age, then you can usually fix the situation. And anyway, in her case the issues are light not heavy. But it’s still strange. It’s still strange to know it’s happening. And even though it’s all good (and it really IS all good) you can’t help but be emotionally charged by it all. Watching her in the gym room, enjoying the tactile exercises, the climbing, the swings, knowing that each exercise is more than just play, it’s designed to try and correct an issue…an issue…

An issue. Frankly, sometimes I get sick of hearing about every little issue. She’s got lots of friends, ha a great time, has a smile most of the time and is imbued with energizer energy. And so having heard about another little dispute with another child, one of the many many that all kids of this age have but which we sometimes just correct on the spot without reporting on, I found my back stiffen, my belt tighten and my ire rise (your ‘ire’ sits somewhere between your groin and neck, spreading out through your shoulders and along your arms). I’m more aware than anyone of the need to correct situations, to teach right from wrong behavior, indeed, I spend much time doing precisely that (no medals required, real parents know it’s part of the job description). But I wanted to be sure others were also being reported on. I wanted to be sure others were also being ‘caught.’ And on this occasion, I also simply wanted to defend her. Why? Because sometimes, just sometimes, the feral nature of parenthood decrees that you should.

It’s natural. And when it springs up like that, it’s right.

TODAY, I DISCOVERED A NEW PERSONAL JESUS…

Driving too early in the morning and she was nearly uncontrollable. Shouting, yelling, seemingly unable to disconnect from her inner-Moroccan bazaar, a chaotic kerfuffle of audio-physical explosiveness.

7.15am and I could feel my blood-pressure steadily rising…steady…steady…breathe deep…fire up a BBC podcast for the teenager and I…Five Live football daily…boring update, boring interviews, all punctuated by the back-seat cacophony.

And then I did it. I selected a playlist. And like honey-suckle elixer for the ears, like a homeopathic salve for the soul, she suddenly, and I mean SUDDENLY, dropped down 6 gears, ceased cacophonizing and got sucked into the sounds. She started singing quietly along. And so did I. And so did the teenager. Even though two of the car’s speakers have blown to silence, NOTHING was gonna derail this! And I realized, in an epiphany, that I had discovered a new personal Jesus and that his name was Rob Birch.

Jesus and his diciples offer the word...

Yes, behold the new Jesus, for He is a spikey-haired, craggy-faced Mancunian who wears baggy coats, loped around the Hacienda back in the day and says things like ‘kewl’ instead of ‘cool’ because he has a ‘kewl’ Mancunian accent which automatically makes him ‘kewler’ than you or I. He usually wears really ‘kewl’ shades, which just add to it all; the pre-schooler likes his picture.

His voice, smooth yet raw with that Manc-man bluster, lends itself to a singalong for sure, but the beats, the styles, the fusion, the whole blend is like an instant security blanket for the pre-schooler. This, by virtue, makes it heavenly for me. On returning home from the school drop-offs, I immediately went about finding their latest music, and read some unflattering reviews from the usual collection of  young witless critical bastards who’s sole job it seems is to cock a snook at anything outside the parameters of modern ‘cool’ (which lies somewhere between navel gazing with Thom Yorke or criticizing the world like Kanye West). Well listen up arseholes, the Stereo MCs can do no wrong in this house because Rob Birch is a personal Jesus* with willing and able disciples who spread a musical word of energetic joy and calm, an escape from whatever’s bothering and irritating the soul, a full-body massage. So whether you think they’re ‘dated’ or not, Mr.Oh-t00-uber-cool Emo Warrior Fundament, you are wrong! OK? And you’ll listen to me because I am probably old enough to be your Dad OK? ! Yes! That’s right! OLD ENOUGH…

Old enough…I wonder…it’s been swirling for a little while now, as it does when you’re approaching the midway point of the match, the metaphoric half-time (although I’m hoping for some Sir Alex Ferguson-approved added-time after the full 90) I wandered into the new Diesel flagship store this weekend, looked around, scratched my head and started frowning at the sight of a guy in ‘ironic’ dress shoes/chequered shorts, shirt, suspenders, waistcoat and trilby hat get-up. ‘What on earth happened to this trog?’ I mused from inside my recently purchased g-star dark (danger danger) denim jeans, black t-shirt and big black boots, before said-20 year old shouted that ‘I’m sorry Sir that size isn’t available!’ My God. It was an employee. And I was a grumpy middle-aged man disguised (just about) as a mid-30s brooding European in my tight jeans made by a company which is (frankly) just about out of my reach and my  big trendy boots. I looked at a pair of jeans. I liked them. But they were $200 dollar and I quickly realized they had some leather applique on the them. Good grief. And you know what? As much as I could try to pretend, I don’t think they’d really like me. Why? Because save the occasional 40-something guy, jeans with leather applique don’t work unless you’re a rock star or actor, and even then it’s debatable. Truth is, on me, they would not be in the territory of ‘rocker’ more than the territory of ‘wanker’, and that’s just how modern male ‘fashion’ seems to pan out.

Indeed, wandering the mall, I realized that increasingly, there isn’t much for me. American Eagle? No. Abercrombie? That’ll also be a ‘no’. Banana Republic? Yes. Gap? Yes. Macys? Only if it’s not in the basement. But I still look. I’ll look with the teenager and we’ll peruse items together. And sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of someone, oh alright, a YOUNG person (!!!!) and I’ll briefly realize that although I’m fighting again, although I’m regaining some of what I lost over a few years of aquiesance to sugar, I am not 30, let alone 20 or 25. I am 42. And yes, age is a state of mind but it’s also a state of realism. Like the realism which gripped me once I got home and started reading the issue of COMPLEX magazine I’d bought; yeah, fun to look at but not to live by.

Because sometimes, when the teenager is grinding and the pre-schooler is whining, when my feet are screamingly sore from planter faciitis after indoor soccer, when I’m moving just a tad slower, I remember that I am, in fact, 42. Not old by any stretch but also no longer young. It is middle age. And it is OK. It doesn’t mean I will give in to being a grumpy old bastard all the time, it doesn’t mean I will cease to be physical and it doesn’t mean I will cease to ‘live’ an active life, no no no! But what it does mean is that I must slowly recognize that certain situations, and certain shops, should be approached with both caution and realism. again, I am still fairly cool for my age, but I’m not uber-cool (thank christ -sorry, thank Rob Birch).

“You are the silliest Dada in the whole wide world!” the pre-schooler will say, whilst the teenager routinely chuckles at my turn of sarcastic phrase, saying I am ‘genuinely funny.’

And as I sit in the car, g-star jeans wrapped around peddle-pushing legs, Spy-optics sunglasses on, moving and swaying to music from Jesus and his disciples, I realie it’s OK, I’m not ready for my bus-pass just yet and that in an hour I’ll go into the gym and show those 20-something students that this ’sort-of-young-man’ is still ready to rumble with both the world AND his own kids…

(can I now take a nap please?)

*other personal Jesuses have included Ricky Villa, Glenn Hoddle, David Bowie, Tony Benn, my Mum, Leonard Rossiter, David Ginola, Jermain Defoe, Eddie Izzard and Peter Cook…

HOWEVER OLD THEY GET, THEY’RE STILL YOUR KIDS…

I have watched the teenager slowly make his way back from knee surgery over the last 10 months. As easy as it hasn’t been for him, it’s also not been easy for me. Watching the quiet diligence, watching the battle to maintain some semblance of fitness, watching the quiet, determined and stoic plod through physical therapy and months spent unable to play his favorite sport, the sport where he injured the knee in the first place. Just watching. Doing nothing but offering support and help and whatever else can be done to help him.

That has always been highlighted whenever the High School soccer team has featured, and particularly his ‘relationship’ with the head coach. As a caveat to all I’m about to say, I coached him for 6 years so I know how he can be, and equally, I’ve backed subsequent coaches and taught him to stay quiet on the occasions he disagrees, put his own head down and work harder to prove them wrong.

A bit of history. His High School coach (or ‘The Coach’ as I will from now) spent the first two years of the teenager’s High School seasons cajoling him with a combination of positive and negative reinforcements. He’d jaw at him. He’d shout at him. He’d give him instructions as to what he needed to be doing (for what it’s worth, the man does not know the game beyond some very basic fundamentals) and when they played practice matches, he’d go into the teenager like a steam train. incidentally, when asked why by the teenager’s mother, the answer was that it was to ‘teach him how to use his body.’ I remember wondering how crudely putting in potential ankle-breaking challenges was teaching anyone anything constructive -  remember, this is a game I play and coached for 7 years.

One coach I remember sent the teenager home from a club practice a few years ago, telling him that if he was only going to half-run the athletic drills, then not to bother coming. He told him that he needed to spend the next few practices just doing various running drills, and if he didn’t want to do it then not to bother showing up. I told him that if he wanted to grow, wanted to mature, wanted to prove himself, that he needed to do everything which was being asked of him. In silence and with respect. I told him to learn that this coach was doing him a favor. And I told him to take onboard from every coach a positive, because every coach has at least one.

One thing The Coach was trying to do, was encourage the teenager to be a leader. He made him a captain. He gave him responsibilities. He gave him a lot of playing time. He’d make some absurd tactical decisions, ones that had many scratching their heads, but his heart was in the right place.

As last season started, the teenager was in the best shape of his life having shed 35  lbs the hard way, and was looking forward to the school season. In the first few games he played 11 different positions, often switching positions four times in a match. He was captain. And then, suddenly, it stopped. Game-time became shorter and shorter, he was no longer captain. And most critically, there was absolutely no communication as to why beyond one muttered explanation that in a 10 minute spell as forward, he didn’t score and thus didn’t do enough to justify his place. The Coach would throw him on for 10 minute as a sub and then sub him off again. When the teenager asked him for some feedback, he was told that either he ‘hadn’t done enough to warrant his place’ or not to question his Coach.

I became concerned that between the teenagers clubs side and training and school training, he was over-training. I asked him to ask his coach if he could miss a school practice every week, as I knew that three or 4 matches a week plus daily training would wreck him. And then he tore his ACL and chipped bone off the very very tip of his femur whilst playing for his club side.

Two weeks ago, he played his first competitive match since the injury. He started upfront and asked if he could drop to centre-midfield. Agreement was quick, and subsequently the team won 4-0. Despite the bullshit of last season, the lack of communication, the lack of proper tactical nous and the lack of any basic empathy, it was looking OK. And then yesterday, the same bullshit. The same ’switch all over the pitch.’ The same lack of communication. The same ‘here’s 20 minutes on the pitch and then you’re subbed.’ The same ‘tough-love’ garbage. And the glaring fact that The Coach has forgotten that the teenager is 17 years old. Not 10, not 11. The teenager had asked The Coach if he would be going back into the game. The Coach had said yes. 40 minutes later, the teenager had asked The Coach when he’d be going back into the game. The Coach said ‘you won’t now’ that he had been ‘working’ on a way to get him back into the match (not rocket science per se) but that because he’d asked, now he wouldn’t go back in. Full stop. He told the teenager never to ask that question again.And when the teenager asked if there was any feedback on his performance, The Coach said no, not really and that he thought he’d played well. I ask you, what sort of moronic pre-school autocracy is it when a player cannot ask a coach if he’s going back into the game or when he’s going back in? I never minded being asked by players I worked with, it showed me they were enthusiastic, and for the lads that were a bit more persistent, well, I talked with them a little bit more, gave them a little more feedback and guidance.

I am not a fool. I do not expect my son to be given special treatment, and I know what a prick he can be (show me a teenager who is never a prick and I’ll show you someone who’s lying about their age!) but what I DO expect from any coach, even The Coach, is communication and decent people manager. That this idiot has not got the first clue about the game I love, and have loved, for nearly 40 years is beside the point. That he engages in this weirdly perverse, almost passive-aggressive behavior with the teenager is wholly annoying. If he was anybody else I’d already have said my piece, but I can’t do that right now, because this

isn’t

my

fight.

But the frustration of recognizing that is so immensely stressful that last night I literally found myself shutting down in a combination of repressed anger, frustration and undeniable fatigue. I was furious with what I saw last night. I remain furious with the double-standards employed by The Coach (there’s more but we don’t have the time do we!). And it reminded me unequivocally that for all the objectivity I show, for all the times I’ve told the teenager to stop blaming others and take care of the portion of a situation HE can control first, here was a situation where the adult was behaving like a petulant child  and the teenager, my teenager, was being wronged once again.

And there I was, watching, fuming, helpless. Just like when he hurt his knee and the antagonist who had helped cause the injury looked at him on the floor, laughed, said ‘get up’ and told the referee he should book him. Helpless.

This is how it will be. This is how life is. You watch your kids get bumped and bruised throughout their lives, even when they’re you’re height and sporting more facial hair than you. And you have to learn to be quiet and take it. To discuss it with them but not to address it publicly.

It might be the hardest work we ever do as parents…

BUMFINGER AND THE MARCH TO TOTAL AUTONOMY…

The teenager has just started his final year of High School, and having spent the summer with an expanding wombat splodged on his head plus a smattering of fuzz across his face, he arrived upstairs from his lair the night before his first day back with a blonde crop, a clean shave and decent clothes.

“It LIVES!” I yelled with genuine, unbridled joy, “it LIVES AND BREATHES LIKE A PROPER HUMAN BEING!” He looked good. Sharp. Handsome. My low-key sarcasm over his summer-sartorials had finally paid-off, at least that’s what I told myself.

“I was always going to do this before school started back,” he snorted, “I was just waiting until right before I went back to do it.”

Teenagers and appearances are a bizarre enough combination. Let’s face it, we all committed major fashion faux-pas as youths, and I certainly remember indignantly staring at my Mother when she viewed my long, puffy black mop, thick aviator-style glasses and Weird Al-like moustache as though it looked horrific. “What’s wrong with you? I look cool!” I  remembering yelling as I walked away in my red canvas super high-tops and my white- padded -cotton- jacket -with-belt. Thinking about it, I could get angry that she didn’t have me wrestled to the ground and kept under house arrest. Somewhere in there, this knowledge had kept me from going on too much about the teenager’s summer wombat. Aside from which, with teenagers you have to choose your battles, and marsupial mulletry was not worth the combat.

I am already lamenting the return to my day-job as taxi driver (I got half a summer off) and the fact I still have to be his alarm call (like a hotel receptionist) still grates me (in fact, combine the two and I realize why I can be such an asshole before 8 am unless infused with coffee almost immediately upon waking up). But in all fairness, it is a filthy evolutionary trick that sees your first years as a young adult awash with those pesky hormones that render you stupid (and immune to common sense/ working/ giving a shit) coincide with high school, early starts, intensely important periods of grading and  your entire future potentially being decided. Rare is the teenager who is functional, let alone coherent, before 11 am, thus I was always amazed that no-one proposed 11 am starts and 7 pm finishes. It would seem to suit everyone, but alas, it’s probably too frightning for the cookie cutter society we live in, so instead, let’s just beat our teenagers into conformist cubes as best we can, suck the life out of them, stuff any dormant enthusiasm they might have into a far-off mental recess and then tell them they screwed up if (as many do) they, err, screw up. You don’t need me to explain my personal theory on this stuff, needless to say, I don’t eat cookies and conformist cubes piss me off.

BUT in order to live comfortably outside a system, you must first learn how said-system works, thus I keep the teenager firmly on the straight-and-narrow, repeating ad nauseum how putting in maximum effort for this small period of his life will enable him to remain in TOTAL CONTROL of it for the forseeable future, as opposed to having some frustrated middle management wanker chipping away at him and telling him what’s what.”THAT,” I roar one morning,  under-caffeinated and grumpy, at no-one in particular, “would make me very unhappy!”

I return from dropping my daily fare off (around $44 per outbound journey, thus the total owed to me since middle school began and based on 292 school days a year would be approximately $73, 584) to encounter the pre-schooler running around the house giggling and waving her finger in the air.

“SNIFF MY FINGER, SNIFF IT SNIFF IT!” she screams with unbridled joy, and just as I am about to bend forward and proffer my nose to the raised digit, she squeals through her unbridled glee that, “I PUT MY FINGER IN MY BUM, HEE HEE HEE!”

I have long-known that children have a deep fascination with bottoms, Lord knows many adults do too, but for a child it is most certainly a bizarre and wonderful piece of apparatus that is yours to keep for free! Think about it from a 4 year old’s perspective. Your bottom makes these extraordinary sounds, unleashes ferocious short-hit odors which cause entire rooms to groan and then, as a bonus, it delivers  this mysterious yet intriguing brown squidgy stuff which adults refer to as ‘poo’, which smells like a concentrated version of those noisy odors and which causes absolute pandemonium should it be shed anywhere but into that big ‘pit’ seat called a ‘toilet’. Indeed, the panic if some of this ‘poo’ ends up in, say, your underwear is really something! Seriously, try and put yourself in this child’s mind place for a few minutes, and all that I’ve just said will make perfect, perfect sense.

So it was that I found myself with a high degree of resigned tolerance for the act just described. I believe the teenager did it (at that age!) although not with the same degree of intense joy. This is one of the joys of parenthood that you won’t find in those What To Expect…books, though a chapter which outlines interests of this nature might help some parents who will otherwise think their children are weirdos.

I explained to my daughter that putting your finger in your bum is not a good thing, either from a social perspective or for cleanliness. “You’re not a monkey!” I said, feeling that such a phrase would close the deal, when instead, she tried digging for brown gold again whilst making monkey noises. “GO AND WASH YOUR HANDS IMMEDIATELY!” I yelled…”WARM WATER!” I furthered.

She obviously didn’t use warm-enough water. Two days later, she complained of eye irritation, and a close inspection revealed that had a stye in her left eye.

“How on earth did she get it?” I mused to my wife as we applied yet another hot compress to clear it up. She replied by raising her right hand and wiggling her index finger. “In the bum,” she mouthed so as not to attract attention.”

“And this stye,” I later told the victim, “came about because you didn’t wash your hands properly after the bum escapade.”

“What’s ‘escapade’?”

“‘An ‘escapade’ is a small adventure, or escape, from conventional behavior to something which is not mainstream, and in this case, putting your finger in your bum was an escapade. Don’t do it again. Aside from anything, it’ll give you crappy eyesight ” I giggled from behind a straight-expression. At least I didn’t go all the way and say what I really  wanted to about having ’shitty vision’…I’m slowly maturing it would appear…slowly.

THE O.T…A SHOW OF REALITIES…

My daughter went to occupational therapy today for the first time.

Why, you ask?

‘I laugh at the antics described here,’ you mutter, ‘what on earth made you do that,?’ you think,’ tut tut tut, another jam-jar label unnecessarily stuck on her head,’ you might be mumbling, although perhaps that last one is the faint echo of ‘past’ in my head. The one which said ‘all these bloody categories, a load of cobblers, designed to box kids into cookie cutter shapes and sizes!’

Yes. I said that when occupational therapy was first mentioned. I bristled at the word ‘therapy’ and my daughter. It rubbed the wrong way, even though I believe the word to be a vital part of our language and culture. But slowly, very slowly, I came to realize that perhaps she needed a few extra tools in her toolbox, I came to realize that this beautiful young wild horse needed to learn to canter and not always gallop, to nuzzle and not necessarily needle…her strength, her sheer physical strength, her love of ‘g’ force-type pressure, her desire to be hugged and squeezed yet equally her desire to burst free, her astonishment at sudden loud noises followed by hands over her ears (a loud toilet flush is enough), her in ability to slip into ‘cruise’ mode…they were signs of a light feather dusting her with some special glitter, yet still I struggled with my own role.

I wasn’t doing a good enough job. I yelled too much. I didn’t yell enough. I didn’t run her enough or spend enough time with her (in the meantime, my work matters screamed a similar mantra, their deadlines groaning as I shoved stuff over the line just in time), I didn’t  DO enough with her, I didn’t give her the concession of being 4 and I just didn’t let her away with the odd, small burst and blip of rudeness thus I was too harsh, I should lighten up a little, I should be more cheerful, I should be better. Yeah. That’s it. I-should-be-BETTER, because this was all about what I wasn’t doing, right?

I had explained to her that we would be going to a special gym-like place where she could climb and bounce around and where they would help give her ‘tools’ for when she got frustrated, fidgety or over-tactile. She was excited. I had been very very clear that I did not want the place to resemble a hospital or doctor’s office, and whilst it didn’t really, there was enough generic signage and strip-lighting to suggest a medical facility.

“Is this a doctor’s appointment Daddy?” she asked me, and I sighed and just said no, not really, but it’s a place where you will, via the gym stuff, be given tools to help you when you feel constricted. A half-truth. Not a total lie. Thank God. I don’t lie to my children. Ever. Good thing really as I couldn’t lie to this one even if I wanted to. She’s too smart. She’d figure it out. And I saw her wheels turn at what I was saying before they reached a satisfactory stop. She was fine with the answer. Inside I wanted to cry. I looked at her, fearless and lively, happy and energetic yet aware that there was, well, ’something’ different here, just something, not a big something but a something nonetheless. And I realized that yes, there IS something a little different about her. Not a big something but a little something…but that little something becomes an enormous something when you try to think it’s nothing. When you try to think it’s age or phases or your own plodding inadequacy. And inside you’re still not entirely convinced it isn’t any of those, because this is only the first appointment and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, so maybe, just maybe, you’ve given in, acquiesced to the labeling, to the categorizing, to the boxes they love to put gifted people into. I have spent my life living outside those boxes; am I, through my own incompetence, my own laziness, placing one of my children directly into one?

As I sat in the large room, adorned with gym stuff, a climbing wall, swings and toys, I filled out a questionnaire that reminded me of one I once filled as a youth in Amsterdam. That time I was high on quality weed and buzzed on Grolsch lager, and the focus of my answers was a Scientology pamphlet (weed will do that, push you to answer 501 stupid questions and then abruptly leave for a toastie) but for this moment the nature of the questions was nearly as bizarre. Smells, tactile feelings, emotional reactions…I mean, she’s 4. How much of her covering her ears for loud noises and anxiety at the thought of being locked in a bathroom is down to her simply being 4?

As I watched her working one on one with the occupational therapist, I could see how engaged she was. There were massages (I give her foot rubs so I knew she’d like the tactile sensation). There was the rock climbing (I’d seen her do this at a party before, I new she’d like it). There was stretching and pulling and hanging from a trapeze and rolling and swinging a big, giant boat swing (she loved them all) there were some motor skills things (she even liked those). It was just us three in this big big space, and whilst it felt odd to me, she was lost in the moment of it. And it was frankly very important that I, too, became lost in the moment of it. Because right there, right then, she was having a good time. And it was easy to see that after a few more sessions of this, her toolbox would hopefully gain some extra equipment.

“What are you looking to get from this?” the occupational therapist asked as we walked out to make next week’s appointment.

“I just want her to have those tools for those frustrating times, and I just want her to develop that extra gear in her gearbox which will allow her to slow down and cruise for a moment as opposed to always go at full speed…”I mused the last point, scrabbling for a bit more accuracy. “I just want her to have the tools and tutelage to use them early so as this doesn’t become a bigger issue when she’s older. Does that sound about right.”

“Oh yes,” she said, “We can certainly, certainly do that.”

My daughter went to occupational therapy today for the first time. She’ll go again next week, the week after too. And whilst I will make absolutely sure this remains confidential when it comes to school time (it’s nobody’s fucking business, not the labelers, not the conformists, not the cookie-cutters, not the neat package peoples) I feel a little less guilty, a little more open, a little more honest and a little more accepting of what occupational therapy really is. I will also learn from this process myself; learn that life is always bigger than any individual, and that I really am doing the very best I can…I think…

ENERGY…TWEET…BLOG…BRAIN FART…TIME? AND CLEANING THE WINDOW WITH LOTION…

Despite what I consider to be a herculean effort in the diet and exercise stakes, the pre-schooler can still leave my head in knots and my body twisted like a pretzel. I have absolutely no idea what on earth runs through her veins, but I am increasingly dubious of the fact that it’s pure blood, as her energy levels are consistently at 587% of normal capacity; if she’d sit still long enough I’d rope her up to a treadmill which would power a generator which would give our block electricity. Think of the money we’d make as power barons. It’s a serious consideration, that and the invention of a TV show called WHY WHY WHY where she can challenge the world’s greatest minds with a rapid-fire barrage of  ’whys’ that would require answers so minutely perfect that any attempt at sarcasm and insubordination would merely unleash a whole new verbal torrent of questions which would then render-said expert to being a sweaty, gibbering wreck who weeble-wobbles on the precipice of internal combustion as the whys and wherefores fly around his increasingly dizzy head.

She hates sleeping.

I don’t. I bloody well like it. So does my wife. And so (of course) does the teenager. But she hates it. She goes to bed happy enough, and I think to myself ‘ooo wah wah wee wah, she’s going to get a full night’s kip here!’ before I slowly realize that under her pillow is a giant aluminium bat plus supersonic NASA-grade steel metal shield which she will gleefully deploy to beat away the stodgy old ’sleep-lord’ with all the ease Of Muhummad Ali whupping Sonny Liston as Cassius Clay. She likely adopts the stance Ali had at the end of that fight too. How, I wonder, does she sleep so little? How can a child who has a late night of 10pm (rare) be bouncing around like Tigger on uppers at 6.30 am, already in a Princess dress and with more neck jewelry than Mr T? Even if the poor girl tries to creep around quietly to avoid waking us up, between the cacophonous clacking of her cheap, plastic princess shoes and the rattle of her chains, it’s like hearing a real, live chain gang going up and down the living room.

The upshot of all this tomfoolery is that I seem to have increasingly little time as I negotiate the final few weeks before her pre-school begins. Indeed, I got very close to delivering this column via Twitter, tweeting it to you as the terminology dictates, but I never quite got the time and regardless, the tweet stream on my application is jumbling up so as I read useless bits of information from 3 weeks like they never arrived before, thus I decided against. Anyway, I realized it would start reading like this

@bunkup yeah girl is restless boy and i off to watch footy hope we mash the bastards must go, lotion all over glass, WTF?

@z******22 dude it is time to make sure wallet and keys r wiv u at all times as this cabbie don’t do doors

pre-schooler just ate ice-cream, swam and screamed ‘poopy toilet head’ damn I nearly nodded off then and fell off stool

See? It’s hard to know what’s real, what’s bullshit (none of it) and what’s really going on? Which is why rather than ‘tweet’or ‘twoot’ or ‘blog’ this column, it’s important to carve out the time to actually sit down and write the damn thing. Just like it’s important to carve out time to use my new backyard outdoor leaf blower/vaccum cleaner. Which is how I ended up with a backdoor being washed with Cetaphil moisturizing lotion. Because as I toiled in the backyard, the sleep slayer was charged with the task of amusing herself indoors without an electronic device being switched on. And given her state of ‘wire/tired’ I should’ve guessed that this was not really going to be enough of a parameter to harness the border collie, the worker bee, the industrious and mighty mental warrior and sleep layer of our times, the Lara Croft of 4 year olds. But I didn’t. Because at that moment my brain farted. I don’t know, I just casually assumed that, being over over tired, she’d collapse on her giant bean bag with her blankets and a couple of books. Instead, after deafening hald the neighborhood and looking a freak with this machine strapped to my side, I went upstairs to see her on all fours pushing some puddles of water around our dining – sun room. After quickly making sure the Titanic wasn’t at the bottom of one of them, I then noticed that the glass door panes were covered in white.

“What,” I asked reasonably and without yelling (because I knew already this was not an act of total and utter insubordination),”is this?”

“Oh, I’m cleaning Daddy,” she said as she wore her Princess sunglasses and continued slosshing the water around the floor with an array of paper towels, “and I’m cleaning the door too.”

“Ah-ha,” I said, being careful not to actually say ARRRGGGGGHHH AHHHHHHHHHH, “you know, thank you very much but lotion is for bodies and hands and feet and not to clean glass with.” I had, you’ll understand, already made an executive decision not to suggest a raft or water wings as we gathered the swimming pools from the linoleum.

“Oh, OK, sorry.”

“That’s OK.”

And then she promptly grabbed a splodge off the door, retreated 4 steps, fell backwards and started rubbing it on her feet.

“If I can’t clean the door I’m just going to give myself a foot rub instead.”

And THAT, dear dear DEAR reader, is how to make a proper silk purse out of a sow’s ear!

Goodnight!

HOLIDAY…HOLIDAY…

6.25 pm and I suddenly panicked amidst flocks of other child-afflicted shapes, all of us milling around the various squeeees and dings and doinks and crashes of the rides which surrounded us.

“!@#$%$#@@” I SCREAMED LOUDLY, and that is not a swear word, it is my pre-schooler’s name but hey, you guessed that right? And I did follow it with a quick ‘FUCK’ when I still couldn’t see her. My head flew from side to side, although not with quite the range of motion I would’ve expected given my abject lurch into panic. As I screamed her name again, a reply.

“WHAAAAAATT?!”

I frantically looked around trying to figure out why the voice was so near for a split second, until I suddenly caught sight of a leg and foot hanging over my right shoulder, my hand clasped against it. And on my left. And then I burst out laughing, much like a lunatic on day-release who escaped his wardens, as I realied the child I had ‘lost’ was actually sitting on my shoulders. For some people it’s sunglasses, right?

Now, laugh all you want , and by God I’m sure you will, but the truth is I was two days into a 4 day marathon with the pre-schooler in San Diego (specifically Legoland) and I never knew how tired I could get from a holiday with just the two of us. But there I was, standing bewildered-yet-roaring with laughter, sweaty and smelly from 90 degrees of heat-baked traipsing around, lost child on my person, strangers staring at me.

“Ha ha, bizarre eh, I thought I’d lost her and there she was all the time, ho ho ho,” I remarked to one particularly clueless gawper. His lack of clear response prompted to me wonder if he was in some sort of eyes-wide-open coma, but then I realized he thought I was the one who had clearly entered the land of never-ending nod. ‘Humourless bastard!’ I thought as I strode manfully (read: really embarrassed) away, although later as I reflected on the whole scenario, I realized that perhaps he was just so stupifyed by fatigue himself that he had actually been amazed at how I could retain so much strength AND lack of awareness at the same time; to be fair, he did not look like a health club’s poster child…

…child. Ah yes. Back to my youngest it is. The slayer of sleep, the assassin of dreams, the demolisher of daytime naps and the buzz-bucket of energy and verbal explosiveness that makes her at once a wonderful, unique child and also at times, an enormous pain in the arse. Her brain is ‘on’ 24-7, which means she never gives herself any shut-down time, which means she’s always thinking about something, which means I am always thinking about something (especially when it’s just she and I for 4 days) because as she thinks about something she asks me about something and I am forced to think about something when I want to think about nothing. Add to this a propensity for roller coasters and anything generating ‘G’force of some physical magnitude, and you have yourself a complex little cluster-buster of energy on your hands.

Soon after re-discovering where she’d been hiding from me, we stood in line for a ride and the questions, complaints and gibberish started. ‘Why of why oh why can you not be quiet for just 5 minutes?’ I asked in a raised and painful voice, like an amplified Woody Allen. At which point I caught sight, a few people ahead in the queue, of a mother and her pre-teenage son engaged in what appeared to be a fight. An exasperated fight. one which from my worldly experience looked to be the result of a straw breaking a camel’s back somewhere in the Sahara and resulting in this-here battle. Except it was a silent battler, waged instead with furiously waving arms and fingers, sometimes 18 of them flying all over the place as if uncontrolled (although if I was to take a guess, ‘fuck’ and ‘off’ and ‘asshole’ and ‘fuck you’ were hidden amidst the digital flurry…or is that projection? Oh Lordy Lordy Christ!). And then I wondered how such taxing situations as mine were for deaf parent/child combinations? I mean, I might get a headache and the youngest might get an earache, but do the deaf get carpel-tunnel syndrome from arguing all the time? And in cases of almost constant disarray, do they end up having to wear wrist-splints?

Fun was most certainly had, but due to a lack of sleep, I needed a brain splint by the time we flew home. It has a hard enough time functioning properly in it’s early 40s as-is, but add 96 hours of incessence and you’re looking at a blobby pile of mush somehow prevented from oozing out of my ears and nose by my skull.

I love her to pieces but she

is

a

marathon.

And despite a new fitness routine which is seeing me gradually get a little smaller and a little tighter, I am not a marathon runner. I mean, somehow I make it to the end because, well, you just do. But it’s not a stroll.

Of course, on returning home, I found another area of  my liquified brain being challenged by the teenager, who has entered the hormonal land of independence, except this independence also requires some a la carte taxi service and general all-round ‘I’m too tired can you do it’-ness. All topped off with a nice sprinkling of ‘clipped retort’ answers to any question or comment.

i.e. “Crikey, that chicken and avocado sandwich tastes good.”

“Why are you surprised, I mean, chicken and avocado sandwiches are always good.”

Call me old-fashioned, or just old, but a simple ‘yes’ would’ve been sufficient. But it ain’t about sufficiency right now, it’s about pushing the bar a little harder against the chest, the boundaries a little further out, and my patience a lot further than it’s increasingly brittle elastic can go.

I need a holiday. Help?

IN PRAISE AND MEMORY OF DANI KELLER; SHE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER…

I was about to pop out for a movie when our digital cable box showed the letters ERS. My wife and I turned the TV on to see an Amber Alert (for non-US residents, this is a ‘flash’ message dispatched across state highways and cable systems alerting the public of child abductions). Someone in Novato had abducted a child. No more info than that. I thought about it for a few seconds, felt sorry for the child in the situation (whatever the situation was) and went to the movie.

It was late when I came in. Before going to bed I switched my computer on and checked out a local newspaper site, ostensibly to see what the critic had said about the movie I’d just seen. Before I got there, a headline caught my eye. PORN KING’S SON HELD ON MURDER CHARGE. And I read the story with a growing sense of total, and utter, disbelief…

…when the pre-schooler was a toddler, she went to a playgroup called MyGym. A fine facility with great staff, MyGym was one of her favorite places. Dani Keller worked at MyGym, and Dani was the pre-schooler’s favorite instructor. She loved Dani and Dani loved her. They clicked. Indeed, they both had the same spritzy, fizzy, bubbly-yet-smart energy in their eyes. Thus when we finally got around to the idea of using a babysitter once in a while, Dani was our girl.

She’d make her way over from the sunset district and we’d leave the two of them alone, knowing full-well the biggest problem would come when Dani had to leave and the pre-schooler would be upset. She was a bit of a punk rocker, so I foisted Motorhead t-shirts on her and often discussed music. We each gave her rides home a few times despite her insistence that public transport would be fine, and inevitably the conversation would drift to the ‘boy’ in her life and the people she’d met in that social/personal life context. She was not a shy lass  yet she was also not a salacious person. No, Dani was really just a sweet, bubbly girl who seemed to enjoy life and some it’s copious trimmings. If anything, my wife and I would chuckle at a ‘naivety’ we both sensed from her whenever guys came up, but it was always as an observation and not a fault. She was brilliant with our pre-schooler and we trusted her 1000%. Good enough by a mile, right?

I remember clearly the night she told us she had fallen deep for James Mitchell, the son of Mitchell Brothers theater co- founder Jim Mitchell.  The Mitchell Brothers are widely recognized to have helped mainstream porn take off in the public sector, and all was going swimmingly until Jim Mitchell shot his brother Artie to death. It was, to say the least, a controversial, tumultuous family and crime. So when Dani spoke of it all, when she touched on a history I already knew, I mentioned that there was perhaps a bit too much drama stewing there for little old grumpy suburban me. She cheerfully said she was comfortable with that, she reiterated how much she liked him and that was that with regards to discussing the relationship.

I remember when she told us she was pregnant. She was delighted but a little worried in the way that a first-time-to-be Mum is. She said she might speak with my wife for some advice as the pregnancy marched on, and as I write this I’m not sure whether she did speak with her a couple of times about a couple of small questions, but as happens when you’re pregnant, work became less and baby became more.

We lost contact for a while, as you would. She wasn’t working and was pregnant, we were busy, she moved, we moved…life stuff. And then, a week ago, I got a friend request via Facebook from a Danielle Keller. Funnily enough, I’d been sorting some photos on my computer and had come across a photo of her and the pre-schooler, which had pressed the ‘I wonder how Dani’s doing’ button. So I was happy to hear from her. I saw a photo of her baby, Samantha, and was happily alarmed to find she was closing in a year old. In turn, Dani remarked on how the pre-schooler had grown. It was the sort of ‘long lost electronic catch-up’ that Facebook is good for, and I was going to mention it all to my wife before out life got louder and last week became consumed with the incidentals of pre-schoolers, teenagers and work. I think it was last Thursday she’d commented on the pre-schooler’s photo. I had planned to respond in detail today, which is typically a good day for me to catch up on correspondence and the like people-free…

…as I finished the story, pieces fell together. ’Porn King’s son’…Samantha…murder…Mum…and I hoped my mental math was wrong. I checked my Facebook page again. Samantha was the name of Dani’s daughter, and there was a comment from someone saying they were glad she’d been found safe. The victim of the murder, the mother, had not been named officially, but I knew who it was.

I never knew Dani Keller as a Mum, but I knew her as a babysitter to my pre-schooler, and using that as a yardstick, I feel very confident in saying she was surely nothing short of spectacular. I’m sure she read a lot to Samantha and I’m sure she took her out a lot. I’m sure she laughed a lot with her and I’m sure she smiled a lot with her. I’m sure her eyes sparkled with her a lot and I’m sure that sparkle has been passed on.

I never knew James Mitchell. I sadly knew more about his father than I know about most of my friend’s fathers. But I knew nothing about him. And in truth, how could anybody know him? How could anybody know a father who’s own father killed his brother, and who is now himself a father who murdered his daughter’s mother? How could anyone know the person who would do that? It is unthinkable except sadly it isn’t, because it happened, and it’s happened to the wrong person, the wrong fucking person, as these things so tragically tend to. It’s so ugly, so darkly, disturbingly ugly, that judgement of his actions in the circumstances seems trite; they don’t just speak for themselves, they scream, they bleed their lungs screaming for themselves exactly what they are. One more child deserted by their father. One more poor child who’s father didn’t know how to be a father, didn’t know how to be a man, didn’t know how to be all the things you should be to both your partners and your kids, your friends and your family, your workmates and your society.

I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good friend of Dani Keller’s. That honor would’ve belonged to the pre-schooler. But we got on and we were friends in the casual sense, the sense that had Dani Keller suggested meeting up the next time she was in San Francisco with her daughter, I’d have excitedly told my wife and Bea that we would be seeing Dani and her baby in the park at such and such a time.

I am sad on many levels. Sad for the loss Dani’s mother and daughter have suffered and sad for the loss her friends are enduring. But as much as anything, I am sad that something like this can happen to someone who really was such a sparklehorse, who carried such a jingly-jangly happy-go-lucky energy and edge.

Wherever you are Dani Keller, I hope you’re doing OK?

With love from the Chirazi’s…