Lemons Into Lemonade

[I'm My Mother's Nephew]

It doesn't matter how old you are these days. If an eighty-five year old man buys alcohol, he's going to be asked by the clerk who is acting on behalf of the merchant who employs them, to prove that the dots on his face are liver spots and not acne. There is no room for common sense in this age of hysteria and this has become bothersome to me.

The failure of using ones' brain isn't the thing in and of itself that upsets me. It's that every time I'm forced to show proof that I'm old enough to buy alcohol, I am required to engage in the same conversation. It goes like this:

Clerk: See some I.D. Hon?

Me: Here you go.

Clerk: OH!…you're a Christmas baby!

Me: Christmas adult now. Not a baby. I could have you arrested for selling a 40 ouncer to a baby. Don't forget the paper bag. I'm gonna drink that on my porch.

Clerk: I feel sorry for you hon. Havin' your birthday on Christmas morning. Didn't ya feel cheated growing up?


Me: Not really. My parents were always pretty good about it.

From there, the clerk usually tells me of a relative or friend that has a birthday within a sixty day span of mine.

"My cousin's fiancé's nephew's birthday is December 27th," she'll tell me.

"OH, REALLY?…WOW!" I'll gleefully exclaim.

The truth is, I did occasionally feel cheated on Christmas morning. But the feeling of slight I experienced through being upstaged by the savior of the universe was rather insignificant to the feeling of slight I felt on one particular Christmas/Birthday morning when my parents seemed to be implying something very significant to me.

Like most families, we were steeped in tradition when it came to Christmas. On Christmas Eve, my mother and father would stay up and wrap gifts for my brothers and me until about 3:00 a.m. My brothers and I would wake up at around 5:00 and go downstairs to see the amount of booty that Santa Claus had left under the tree.

We of course had to wait until my parents were out of bed before any gifts were opened, but they had made a very practical and strategic decision very early on. They had decided that it was permissible for us to empty the contents of our stockings without them being there to witness it, in order that we had something with which to occupy us.

It never took long for us to tire of the little gadgets and trinkets that we had found in the stocking. When this happened we would start separating the gifts under the tree by name so that the wrapped boxes that once chaotically covered the living room floor, now took shape in the form of three very distinct piles; one for me, one for my older brother Bret and one for my little brother Marc.

This process took about ten minutes after which would begin the negotiations where my brothers and I would try to determine which one of us was going to be the brave soldier to ascend the stairs and try to wake my parents in order to convince them that we get on with things already.

My father took the act of being in bed very seriously, whether it was he that was to do the sleeping or us. I can remember the fear I would feel from having to ask for a glass of water after being sent to bed for the night.

We lived in a split level house and the bedroom that my little brother and I shared was at the end of the hallway in the upper level of the home. The stairs from our bedroom led down into the living room and then wrapped around the wall to the right and descended to the lower level where the bright orange shag carpet and the television were displayed. This is the room that would find my father each and every night after we had been sent to bed for the night.

There were very few excuses that my father would accept for us to leave our beds once we had been tucked in. This was his wind down time and to disturb that without having a life or death explanation was practically suicide. If you did have a good excuse, say you had to report that your little brother had a Lincoln Log lodged in his throat and was turning blue, Protocol must be observed.

The first step in the process was to tip-toe from my bed to the bedroom door. After reaching the door, I would listen to hear if the sound of my footsteps on the ceiling directly above my father had aroused a curiosity in him that would cause him to come upstairs and to tenderly and lovingly ask me what it was that I needed. This never happened.

Proceed to Phase II; the "Chant" or "Mantra" phase. I would then lightly call out for my father from the threshold of my bedroom. In a very light and falsetto voice I would beckon him three times.

"Daaaad?" I would ask.

"Daaa-aaad," This time in sort of a sing-song tone.

"Dad!" The third time was much more authoritative in its tone but no less falsetto than the first two attempts and was exclaimed with no more volume. It was a way to convince myself that I was getting serious about getting my father's attention without actually getting more serious about it. Like the victim of a playground bully will very often be left with a puddle of urine at his feet and will go on to exclaim to his friends "I shoulda kicked his ass" only after the bully has already left with all of the boy's milk money and is well out of earshot.

When the first three attempts of beckoning the spirit of my father didn't work, I would simply take one step closer to the stairs and repeat the mantra three times; always with the same volume, always with the same tone. Each failed chant brought me one step closer to my father and one step closer to either my death or to the dragon I was chasing that came in the form of a glass of water.

Eight stairs separated the upper level of our home and the main floor; three petitions per step and about twenty minutes between petitions. The entire process to obtain thirst relief took roughly eleven hours.

Once I had reached the main floor, it was deflating and exhilarating all at once. Deflating in that I'm in the living room and my father still hasn't heard me, but exhilarating in the respect that "I'M S'POSE TO BE IN BED AND I'M IN THE LIVING ROOM!" The journey wasn't over however. The scariest part still lay ahead. This is the part where the real threat of bodily harm is the most imminent. This is the part where I finally come to grips with the fact that my girlish whimpers are not doing the trick and I must peek around the corner to actually catch sight of my father sitting on the couch, watching television while cracking open his shelled peanuts.

It was the move that required the greatest amount of tactical stealth. Like a member of a S.W.A.T. team, I would create some distance between myself and the corner in order to increase the area of my sightline. Slowly, I would move my head as if a crack junkie was around the corner poised to put a bullet through my skull and I would belt out one last authoritative whisper.

Likewise, when my father was the one in bed, god help us if we woke him up. Saturday morning was my father's day to sleep in and my brothers and I always got out of bed before him. This was a time before every household had cable. This was a time before Cartoon Networks. The only time to see animated buffoonery on television was on that magical day that was sandwiched between a school day the day of worship. To sleep in on a Saturday was sacrilege.

Each Saturday, our excitement and giddy nature got the best of us and we'd get louder and louder and louder and without exception we would hear my father's feet hit the ceiling above us that manifested itself in a series of deafening thumps. Once the thumping started, the storm was on its way. There was no way of diffusing it and there were no thick-walled shelters behind which we could take cover.

The storm would loudly and quickly descend both sets of stairs and present itself in the form of a hairy chested man wearing nothing but cotton brief underpants. The man would slam the palm of his hand onto the "off" knob of the television while Marc, Bret and I would brace ourselves behind 4x8 sheets of plywood.

A tirade would ensue that employed the word "selfish" no less than forty-seven times and was matched each time with phrases like "you guys only think of yourselves," Hurricane Jerry's chest would heave up and down, a lot of wind would blow and soon the storm blew itself out and went back to bed.

On Christmas morning, it was usually me that was commissioned to try to rouse my parents. "It's your birthday Matt. They won't get as mad at you," was the reasoning my brothers used. Eventually, like Jesus, I would dutifully play the part of the sacrificial lamb and serve my brethren with loyalty and a sense of obligation.

On Christmas morning, the act of waking my parents never turned out to be as big a deal as we feared. They were as excited to see us open our gifts as we were to open them. I'd knock on the door, they'd request a few minutes and before long they'd come downstairs to meet us in their robes and behind puffy and bloodshot eyes.

I was in second grade this particular Christmas. The Planet of the Apes was a cultural phenomenon and could be seen on television, at the cinema and on lunch boxes wherever you cared to see warmongering and University educated primates.

In case you're not familiar with the concept of The Planet of the Apes, it's a book about a planet where apes sit atop the intellectual hierarchy while humans, although the smartest of the animals, are still animals; unable to think, unable to reason, even unable to speak. Think of the photographic negative of our planet regarding the relationship between apes and humans and you've got the idea.

There are four main characters in the movie:

Ulysses (a.k.a. Bright Eyes) The astronaut and main character

Dr. Zaius: The pedantic and ostentatious leader whose religious sensibilities are threatened by the notion of an intelligent human being. (Much the way Pat Robertson may react to the discovery of an ape on this planet that could bake a pie and perform calculus equations.)

Cornelius: A young ape scientist charged with studying Bright Eyes. Is not one to allow his preconceptions to get in the way of empirical scientific data.

Zira: The compassionate scientist who is Cornelius' partner and fiancé. She is the instigator of reason and is a genuine friend to Bright Eyes.

Occasionally my brothers and I would have in our pile of gifts, one that was obviously the same for all three of us. In such an instance, we were told by our parents to open them at the same time so as not to ruin the surprise for anyone else. This was one of those occasions.

We dug out the particular gift from our respective piles, counted to three and started ripping. Always trying to rip the fastest so we could be the first one to see what kind of surprise awaited us and play spoiler to the other two brothers.

This time, I was slow to the draw. I have to think that my mother wrapped my gift with an excessive amount of tape, reducing the number of rip able seams.

My older brother was the first to yell out "I got Dr. Zaius!" The cat was out of the bag and my little brother and I now knew that we had gotten Planet of the Ape action figures which only increased our excitement and sped up the unwrapping process. At this point it was just a matter of uncovering our own action figure to see which character had been chosen for us. Marc finished before me. "I got Cornelius!" he screamed.

I was having a real time unwrapping mine, but it was no matter. It was my birthday and my parents had surely gotten me the best one of the three. Awaiting my discovery was Bright Eyes; the role played by Charleton Heston, N.R.A spokesman and genuine hard-ass. I just needed to get the fucking paper off and unearth him. Finally, the last bit of paper was on its way to the floor. "I GOT….ZIRA?!" I screamed in horror. It was the type of scream reserved for buxomy and scantily clad actresses playing the lead in movies in which they are accosted by various monsters in rubber costumes.

I didn't know what to make of this. For some reason my parents had seen fit to supply my older and my younger brothers with action figures and for me they settled on the idea that I would most appreciate a god damned dolly.

It was my first official crisis of identity. Official to the degree that I had paperwork drawn up and had a notary public meet me after breakfast.

The remainder of the the gift opening ceremony went off without incident and was as far as I can recall, unremarkable. Comparatively speaking how could it not have been? Asking me how that particular holiday went after I had received a doll is akin to asking the the old, dated and yet very poigniant question "Other than THAT Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

I had been marked by my parents as a child that would gleefully accept such a gift. I remember looking at both of their faces for them to reveal that it was a joke. Surely they would burst into laughter, reveal that I had been the victim of a horrible hoax and drag from under the family dog an action figure that proudly displayed theoretical male genitalia.

I glanced at my mother first and was met with a pleading stare that begged from her the question "Don't you like it, Honey? What's wrong?" This was not an affirming display of body language on her part. I then shifted my glare to my father for some sort of justification for what I was feeling. My mother had always bought our Christmas gifts, so surely he would be as surprised at the unveiling of a toy with breasts as I was. "Matt," he began "just because you have a woman doll, doesn't mean you're a sissy," he reasoned. I couldn't believe it. He was in cahoots with her. He was towing the parental line at the expense of my very young and fragile sense of masculinity.

I was in a real spot. While my brothers had in their posession toys that donned very masculine names and semi-automatic weapons, I was straddled with the doll that would do their laundry and have waiting for them a lovely potroast upon their return home from a long day of battle with the primative humans.

I don't remember what I got after that. Maybe it was a "Holly Hobbie" lunchbox. Perhaps it was an Easy-Bake oven. It didn't matter. I sulked and I pouted and I took my loot upstairs to my bedroom where I contemplated my morning while brushing my hair and painting my toenails.

During my biblical lamentation, I looked over at my pile of toys, saw Zira and I was greeted with what could only be taken as a holy revelation. After all, I'd never seen a naked woman other than my mother and I had a female gorilla in my room with me. I had but one option; to disrobe her. Sure, she was no Barbie Doll, but she would have to do given the circumstances. Unable to find a tiny paper bag to put over her head, I proceeded as expected.

I'm sure on the actual Planet of the Apes, the women apes were covered from head to toe in fur. Thank god that Matel, Inc. didn't translate the probable D.N.A. with such literal meticulousness or conviction before manufacturing their toys. Upon removing Zira's burlap blouse, I beheld glory. I gazed upon her tanned and nippleless breasts and my small and hairless penis engorged itself with blood.

This was years before I would discover my father's stash of Playboy magazines that sat at the top of his closet beside his snub nosed revolver. Years before I would even consider the possibility of sex. This was pure. It was natural. It had an aura of innocence to it. I had taken the lemons that my parents had presented to me behind glossy and decorative paper and I had made lemonade.

I sat on my bedroom floor with my legs drawn up underneath me and I just stared upon Zira's shiny plastic female form. The moment seemed to last forever, but I would have gladly allowed it to prolong beyond that.


The moment was shattered when my bedroom door opened and my father entered. He had a sullen look on his face and was, I believe ready to apologize for the error in judgement that he and my mother had made, when he saw me clutching the nude body of my new toy. His face suddenly transformed from that of a repentent soul seeking redemption to a face of anger and incredulousness.


Any thought he had of seeking my forgiveness was eradicated in a fit of self rightous indignation. "Give me that," he instructed. I sheepishly handed over my new girlfriend to him and took my place back on the floor.

He continued, "Matt, if you can't handle the responsibility of having a doll alone in your room with you, then I'm going to take her from you. When I feel you're responsible enough to handle it, I'll return her to you."

I never saw Zira after that day. I remember frantically searching my parents' bedroom for the next couple of years whenever they were away and my brothers and I were under the supervision of a baby sitter, but I never did find her.


Sometimes, even to this day I wonder what she's up to. I wonder if she's seeing anyone. I wonder if she still thinks about me. She was my first love and at times of drunken pervertedness, she consumes my thoughts. But afterall, can you blame me? I'm only a primative human after all.

[Shshshana]

OK, I read the whole thing! It took hours!

Having a doll does indeed make you a sissy.

[Shshshana]

I read the first sentence.