Monday, December 3, 2012

The Little Yellow Finch, A Ghost Story (ii of ii)


Here's part 2.  Excited for the end of this one.  Please follow the Storyblog!
                                                                                                                        
 
Peck.


Peck.


Peck.


peck.
peck.
peck.
peck.
peck.
peck .


The salty tears poured into my pillow.  What had I just seen? 
                                                                                                                         

About twenty minutes later, I heard my mother coming to my sister to calm her down. Then, my brother.  She came to me last, and set gently on the end of my bed.

I held in my sobs for a second...hoping she would think I was asleep and go away.

“What did we say about you waking us up when you have nightmares?”

I was silent.  I've never been good at holding back how I feel.  My sobbing was silent, but still visible through my back.  My mother bent over and gently kissed me on the cheek.

“Sweetie, your Dad is going through a lot right now…I know you get scared…but I need you to be brave for him right now,” she whispered into my ear, her voice as tender and loving as silk. 

I nodded.  Then asked her for a lullaby.

She stroke my hair and sang “Tura Lura Lura” to me, like she did every night until I was ten years old.  I fell asleep.
                                                                                                                         

We went back to routine, but these events only got worse.  Dad continued to moan into the night.  I continued to have trouble sleeping, though I muscled through it.  And all the time, the little finch was there.

The finch started to become more and more prevalent by the day.  Always, always, always pecking

It started to become very obvious that it was following my father.  He would get up from the dinner table, move to the kitchen sink, and it would follow to the adjacent window.  It would follow him to the window outside his bathroom, the window of his bedroom, the window of the basement, even.  Always pecking. Pecking. Pecking. Pecking.

Nonetheless, even after that night - we still treated the little bird as if she were routine around the house.  I mean, the trauma of a nightmare passes quickly when you're that young...we just kept on living our life, and treated the bird as a strange nuisance.

At least the rest of the family did.  That peck filled me with an odd dread. There was such a desperate, intense energy to the rhythm of the pecking that always caught my attention.  Dad's too.
                                                                                                                         

Dinner, towards the end of the summer.  We were all tired, slowly munching through our meatloaf. 

She appeared.   

Pecking as we ate.  Repetitively and intensely.  Over. 

And over. 
And over. 
And over. 
And over.   
In rhythm. 

Until, suddenly, my father dropped his fork to the ground.

“It’s…it’s grandma”.

Instantly, the pecking stopped.

I looked up, the finch had disappeared. And from that moment on, I never saw it again.
                                                                                                                        

As it turns out, my father had been having a recurring dream of a conversation with his grandmother.   She had died about seven or eight years prior.  In the dreams, they would continue their conversation from the previous dreams – it was if as with each individual dream, he and my great grandmother continued discussing what had been discussed before. They would always get into a sort of disagreement.  And in the dreams…

…she was always wearing a yellow dress.

Right before the finch had started its assault on our windows, my father has been offered a job with an Australian mining company that would have paid him almost twice as much.  He believes that Grandma came by to help him figure out what to do, and how to help him feel confident in his decision to stay and maintain the family dynamic we had.
                                                                                                                        

There are times, when I am back home, that I believe Grandma still haunts us.  Doors slam strangely, odd footsteps happen nearly all the time…however, she is not malicious…she just cares.  A piece of me also thinks that the finch maybe followed and took a liking to me, because I look so much like my father did at my age.  Maybe she mistook me for him.

I sleep better when I'm at home now.  The watching feelings have since subsided considerably.  However, there’s still an energy in that house…I pray that it’s the grandma that I never got to meet.
                                                                                                                        

I'd like to dedicate this story, written about the spirit of my great grandmother McCaffrey, to the memory of my grandmother Esther Weis, who passed in the early morning hours of November 24th, 2012. 

I pray that someday she'll come back as a bird just as beautiful to watch over me and my grandchildren. 

Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Little Yellow Finch, a Ghost Story (Part i of ii)


Story lovers!  Welcome to the rebirth of the blog!  I will be giving more time back to this sucker...hopefully you'll continue to enjoy the stories as much as you did before.

On the story.
                                                                                                                         
A story of ghosts, family, and learning to be brave.

Fabrication factor:5
Exaggeration factor: 4
                                                                                                                         

Once upon a time,

There was a boy who may or may not have been me….
 
…and he had just experienced the single most terrifying moment of his life.  Lying awake in bed,  I stared out the window to the left of my bed, the bright, white, full moon shining through the trees, casting shadows that looked like sinster, shapeshifting faces.  My room felt so large – as if another presence was inside of it, full of staring, intrusive eyes that bore into me.  I looked out into the hallway (I always slept with my door open as a kid) waiting for whatever presence was there to come in and harm me.

You see, I had just watched Disney’s The Black Cauldron with my cousins.  And it had scared the pants off of me.

That’s right y’all – I was turned into a neurotic mess by a Mouse House cartoon.
                                                                                                                         

I was always a scaredy-cat kid.  Mere pictures of Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, and the like would give me nightmares.  I was never allowed to watch R-rated movies – a rule that stuck all the way through high school.  Mostly because I conceded to it - I never wanted to watch any of them.  They scared the pants off of me. 

Looking back, I always wonder why I was always so easily scared as a id and why I had difficulty sleeping.  I truly believed for my entire childhood that my house was haunted – and I still do.  Some of the older houses in my neighborhood were hundreds of years old, and there are lots of stories of hauntings in them.  My house, on the other hand, is younger than I am – but at the same time, there is a definite presence there...an energy.  I don’t know what it is.  Maybe we were built over some kind of burial ground…maybe the energy from the surrounding houses has bled over into ours…maybe I just have an active imagination….

…but sometimes, weird things happen that you can’t explain.
                                                                                                                        

My father was having difficulty sleeping.  He had been complaining about it at dinner every night.  Family dinner was a big thing in my family.  Every single night, whether it was 5 pm or 10 pm, whether we were eating take out or homemade food, whether all five of us were there or not, we gathered around the dinner table and ate together.  Mom and Dad would drink wine, and my brother, sister, and I would chug 16 ounce glasses of skim milk while we all talked about our day and partook.

After dinner, I would play video games for about an hour, Dad and Mom would watch sports, Sis would play with her dolls or do basketball drills, and my brother would run around wreaking havoc…or we would all watch a movie…Dad would fall asleep on the couch, and eventually we would all turn in. 

And I would feel it.  The presence.  That thing that was in the room with me.  I remember staring at my closet, just waiting for whatever…thing…that was in there to jump out and pull me into its darkness forever.

However, in the daytime, the house never felt that scary (except on a couple rare occasions of a weird slamming door…or strange footsteps…those probably were generated by my imagination.)  Our house got a lot of light, and this summer, I was spending it watching Gullah Gullah Island (nothing scary about that shit) and chillin’ with my siblings and neighborhood friends.  We would run around all day, playing crazy games that you can only do as a kid, like pulling each other down hills in a wagon and calling it “roller coaster”.  Our neighborhood was very suburban, sterile, and safe.  Picture three-story, upper middle class, new-construction, red and grey-bricked homes…the 90’s products of investors in Reaganomics.

In short, there was very little reason for me to be so scared all of the time at night.
                                                                                                                         

One day, I was sitting in the family room, watching TV with my sister and Nana, when all of a sudden, we heard a small, but very distinct tapping at the window to our right.  We looked, and saw a little bird, a finch, pecking away at the window.

It was a big deal to see this little fella at the window – we always had a bluejay that lived in our back yard, a pair of cardinals, and several other birds – including a mother robin that built her nest under the pillars of our back porch. However, we had never seen a bird of this color – a bright, pure, vibrant yellow.  My nana explained to us that birds, when looking for mates, often bump into windows, because they are seeing their reflection and think they are interacting with another bird. We watched the bird peck away for a little bit – maybe about three minutes – and then it flew away.  We resumed our TV watching without a second thought.
                                                                                                                         

Dad kept complaining about his lack of sleep.  He was concerned that his heart was acting up…I was about twelve years old at this time, he was about forty-two.  He kept waking up multiple times in the middle of the night, and he would have the strange feeling of something pressing down on his chest.  He would start to panic, and force himself to sit up, and feel the pressure rise off of him. 

He shrugged it off as nothing and told us not to worry.  I looked down at my milk, and did exactly the opposite.
                                                                                                                          

The next day, I was sword fighting with a friend of mine in the backyard.  Having the hyperactive imagination I do, I get very caught up in such games, and get a little vigorous – sometimes to the point where the other guy can get seriously hurt.  This was one of those occasions.

I was the White Power Ranger, hurtling myself at my enemy, the insidious Lord Zedd – I imagined myself strong and fast, and unstoppable.  Although, I really wasn’t.  I was a weak little kid.  And this friend liked to play rough too.

My friend nicked me on the elbow with his wooden sword – drawing blood.  Normally, in this situation, I would sit down and cry.  And assured, the tears came, but with them the sting set something off in me, a real fight as opposed to flight response…and I went after him like a Musketeer on crack.

We bounced around the yard, thrusting, parrying, jump slashing, all around the perimeter of the house.  As we moved up the side of the house, I managed to get the best of my friend.  He fell to his back and I advanced over top of him,  blinded with rage…he opened his eyes wide in fear as I brandished my wooden sword above my head, as if I was going to run him through.  He made me bleed, and now he was going to seriously pay.

As I raised the sword above my head,  I heard a familiar sound – a small, but distinct tweet.  I looked to my right, only to see the little yellow finch, resting on the bush next to the family room window.  It was looking right at me, and chirping away – as if it was trying to tell me something.

Well, that didn’t work out for me – my friend, from his fallen position kicked me in the shin.  Hard.  I crumpled down, yelping out in pain.  He picked up his wooden sword, and reared back, ready to give me one hell of a welt on the shoulder, just as mad as I had been before.

Suddenly, the yellow finch darted from its perch, right past my opponent’s face.  Startled, he swatted at the air, and fell back, landing back on his rear.  We sat there for a few seconds, regained our breath and composure, and started to laugh – the fight or flight response had passed, and we were pals again.  I fell back and stared at the blue sky and cloud in the sky.  I gazed for a moment in my reverie, smiling.

Then, the chirp.  Again.  As if it were right in my ear.

I sat up, rather abruptly, and looked around.  The finch was nowhere to be seen.
                                                                                                                         

That night, Dad was cranky again. 

“I just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Well, dear, what can we do about that?” 

“Nothing…”

“Is it me keeping you up?” (My mother was a tough lover.  Compassion and passive
aggression were deftly blended often)

“No…I’ve just been having weird dreams.”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“It’s nothing…don’t worry about it.”

“…” (Milk.)
                                                                                                                         
 
The next couple of weeks continued to progress as usual.  Playing with friends, long TV sessions, just a kid enjoying his summer.   The only unusual thing was that little yellow bird.  It continued to show up at the window and peck. Constantly.   

And by "the window", I mean all of them. At my bedroom window, when I watched TV, even when I was using the bathroom.  Somehow, the little bugger would find me in a room at least once a day and peck-peck-peck at the window.  I would always try to ignore it, but the tapping had a strange urgency...I would always give in to its call, and stare at it for a few minutes before either leaving the room, or swatting at the window to chase it off.  I’d never see it on branches outside, flying around – the only time I saw the thing was when it was pecking at the window.

My nana noticed that the little yellow finch had an affinity for me.  “She must like your blond hair”, nana would say. 

But no – my mother and sister were blond, and it didn’t seem to follow them around…just me.  And my father.   He started to notice it as well. 

“That little bird is funny…what’s it tapping for?”

I continued to brush it off as nothing.  As much as it could be annoying, I really was delighted that we had a third primarily colored bird in our backyard.
                                                                                                                         

I woke up with a start one night, from a nightmare.   It was about two in the morning.   

I was cold with sweat, and pumped with fear-driven adrenaline...and in that moment, everything in your room can look terrifying.  The trees outside look like monsters, the light from the windows on the walls like ghosts, and the darkness in your room like a phantom looming over you.  I darted in to the hallway towards my parent’s room, scared out of my mind.

However, I brought myself to a halt in the landing of the foyer, right before the entrance to their door.  I was stopped by an overwhelming sense of shame…being twelve years old and running to your mom with a nightmare is kind of silly. 

My parents had talked to me about waking them at night with my silly nightmares.  I was a big boy – I knew the difference between real and make-believe, and that there was nothing in that darkness that could hurt me.  I had to learn to grow up and be brave.


I sat in the hallway, going back and forth about opening their door.  I was shaking all over.  The darkness of the house continued to make me uneasy….I felt eyes everywhere, felt too scared to go back to my room…the sound of the wind beating against the windows didn't help. Every shadow filled me with dread.

I decided to put my ear against the door and listen to see if, maybe, for some reason, my parents were awake.

And I heard my father.   Or, what I thought was him…he was moaning, speaking words that didn’t make sense…a lot of “nos” and “I’m sorrys” mixed with grunts... “the dress” and “coffee” and “Dick made me do it”.

I was now gripped with an intense fear…what was he doing?  I listened closer and closer, trying to build up the nerve to open the damned door.  His moans sounded more and more distressed, growing louder with each noise…my heart pounded…my legs trembling…my hand shaking….until finally, I pulled the door handle and swung the door open.

I saw my father, lying in bed, next to my sleeping mother, waving his hands in the air, as if he was swatting at something, hearing him moan and say “no” and “go away”…then, I heard it.  The tapping.  I looked to the window to my father’s left…and there she was. The finch.  Tapping.  Tapping.  Tapping.

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

I was overwhelmed.  I screamed a long, high-pitched, throaty scream that sent the finch darting away.  At the same time, my father yelled out and shot up, waving his arms everywhere while screaming just as throaty of a scream, but one of a grown man terrified out of his mind.  My mother shot up as well (thank God they had a king size bed, otherwise she’d have a terrible black eye) and started frantically yelling – “What’s wrong?”

She grabbed onto my father’s arms, all the while yelling at him to calm down and asking over and over what was wrong.  I cried.  Stood right there and wept like a six year old who had seen a ghost.

My mother, understandably, was just as overwhelmed.  She grabbed onto my father and stroked him until he relaxed.  She then looked at me and screamed, angrily, for me to go back to bed.  I turned around and ran, charging into my room, in tears.  I heard my sister, awakened from the chaos, crying out in her room, and my toddler brother doing the same.  I leapt into bed and pulled the covers over me...I was shaking…cowering.  What had just happened?  The wind outside was howling, the trees still casting their dark shadows into my room.  Why was he yelling?  What was he grabbing at?

And why…was the finch there?

I continued to cry, soaking my one pillow with salty tears, while I pulled my other pillow over my head…It wouldn’t do away…I kept hearing it.  I couldn’t make it die down.

The tapping sound of that pecking.  Rhythmic.  Intentional.  Persistent. 

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.
                                                                                                                         

Scared yet?  Just wait for part two, story lovers!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Chihuahua Symphony (as Conducted by Dracula) - i of iii

Hey readers!  Check out the new poll.  Very important that you vote.  Please follow the storyblog!
                                                                                                                         


The Chihuahua Symphony (as Conducted by Dracula) - i of iii


A tale of a crazy teacher, four yippy dogs, and my artistic beginnings

Fabrication quotient: 1 of 10
Exaggeration quotient: 2 of 10
                                                                                                                         


Once upon a time,

There was a boy who may or may not have been me.

When you were in elementary school - music class was the WORST.  Everyone hated going to music.  You would march to the classroom in a single file, sit in these chairs that were super uncomfortable, and Mrs. J - who was probably the meanest woman you had ever met at that age - would make you read books filled with pictures of quarter notes, half notes, and other colorless pictures designating the rhythms to such childhood hits as "Old MacDonald".  Mrs. Judkins would also make you sit in silence for indeterminate amounts of time, and would pull a "bad card" from her little mini file cabinet of students if you tipped back in your chair.  I remember this because if you had a bad card pulled, she would AUTOMATICALLY send you to the principal's office.  I always thought she punished kids that didn't deserve it. 

I, however, loved to sing, and for this,  Mrs. J adored me, thanks to my golden vocals and blonde-haired brown noser tendencies.  "I just LOVE 'The Music Man' and 'Annie', Mrs. J.  Can we watch them again?"

She loved me so much, I tipped in my chair all the time and never got sent to the office.
                                                                                                                         



Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Molested in a Hostel by a Little Old Man (or My First Spring Break) - Part 2

Part two begins now.  CAN YOU HANDLE IT?


Oh, and before you continue...please follow the Storyblog!!!!  It's the easiest way to be the first to hear about updates.  Also, please vote in the polls!  They're just for fun now, but soon I'll be asking very important questions about the future of the blog.


On to the story!
                                                                                                                         


Oh, Lank.


I came back onto the main floor of the bar from it's basement level bathroom to find my long-limbed festie with his left leg up on the stage of the dance floor of this cramped little place.  His right leg was resting on the floor.  Resting right in between these was the booty of a little twinky-looking boy (God only knows where his legs were).  Lank was (still is?) in a relationship at that time, so my "Mom" instincts kicked in and I proceeded to surgically remove him from the twink while the bartender announced free shots to the entire bar.  Spring break, doncha know.

We had been drinking for quite a bit.  We had stopped at a bar, gone to the Bronx Zoo, hit up Brooklyn, had some cannoli and a bottle (or two) of wine with friends, then headed to a BBQ in the East Village that featured margaritas the size of your head.  Immediately after, we saw some ridiculous off-off Broadway Richard Foreman play called "Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland" (I seriously couldn't make this shit up) in which everyone said and did some really cliche weird shit, including a guy dressing like Dracula and growling "me and my shadow" over and over again.  Good show to see under the influence.

Any influence was fine, as we were trying to drink away our memories of Francois the creeper.  But in our current inebriated state, had he been waiting for us naked with his legs wide open, we'd be ready.  In college, alcohol gives you confidence.  It makes you feel older and ready to kick ass.  And I was perfectly ready to head on back to that Harlem hostel and kick that guy's ass - should he be there.

Lank, on the other hand, was only thinking about fucking some ass.  However, "Mom mode" always prevails, and I managed to pry him away. (much to the chagrin of the entire bar.  They were just jealous.  Who wouldn't want to steal away with such a charming giant?)

We stumbled off the subway, to the stoop of our luxurious accommodations.

"Well, here we go," I said, slurring like a sappy violin concerto.

After the drinks, Lank had gained a massive amount of courage.

"We can handle this guy...he don't got nothing on us."

Nothing yet, I thought.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Molested in a Hostel by a Little Old Man (or My First Spring Break) - Part 1

 a true story of Patti LuPone, festies, cannolli, and a creeper.

Exaggeration quotient: 2 out of 10
Fabrication quotient: 3 out of 10
                                                                                                                         

Once upon a time,

There was a boy who may or may not have been me.


What a perfect day it had been.

The first day of my very first spring break excursion had been absolute perfection.  After countless plans with other friends had fallen through, one of my festies (a term combining "fag" and "besties" I hope the popularity of this blog will coin in the regular vernacular) and I, very last minute, decided that we were simply NOT going to just sit around during our spring break this year.  We hopped the Megabus to New York (from Philly, where we went to school), booked a hostel, and prepared to have a fun four days of Broadway musicals, fine dining, gay bars, and art.

My festie, hereby referred to as Lank (due to his incredibly tall, thin, frame), and I hit our first day in the Big Apple with a crazy fervor.  We dropped our stuff off at our Harlem hostel, stood in student rush lines, securing an evening ticket to "Gypsy" starring Patti LuPone, grabbed some cheap eats, cruised the Met with a lestie of ours (I'll let you put two and two together on that), and finished the night with La LuPone belting a mental breakdown into our face, complete with full orchestra. Heaven.

After a long walk-while-eating-dollar-falafel back uptown to the hostel, chatting about the brilliance we had seen ("And I thought 'Gypsy' was about a little girl who grew up loving gypsies", said Lank), we were very tired, and sunk into our uncomfortable hostel bunks as if they were Sertas stuffed with angel feathers.  We didn't share a bunk - the room was a seven bed room, mixed sex.  Lank and I took top bunks, while below us, some adorable European young adult boys rested.  One, though not attractive by any means, was certainly a gorgeous German aryan boy.  In the third set of bunks, an adorable French man on the lower, an Asian fella on the top.  Finally, above the lockers was a final bed that sat a quiet, nerdy hipster girl who looked like she had been there for at least two weeks.

I rolled onto my belly, grasped my pillow, and slowly slumbered into dreamland.
                                                                                                                        

Sunday, March 13, 2011

AT LONG LAST! The Squeezing Vagina Story - Part 2

Sorry for the long wait, story lovers!  Read on, and enjoy!
                                                                                                                        

A vagina is extraordinarily unique.

I mean, really, it is.  Just look at it.  First of all, it's pink.  Or at least, it should be.  It also has a shape that is...well, all to it's own.  Except for maybe a canyon photographed from an airplane.  Or a top-down view of a venus flytrap.

I wasn't prepared to deal with this...shimmering (?)...construction of nature.  Really, at that time I didn't have any idea what to do with any form of sexual expression.  But nonetheless, we all have a "first time".  And I was about to experience the true wonder and mystique of that organ we affectionately call: the cooch.