Poetry & Blindfolds

When I first heard that Mad Jack, my father with whom I had not spoken in several years, died, I admit to having chuckled and saying, “It’s about time.”  Gradually, however, the spectre of that man’s timely demise has been following me like Peter Pan’s shadow.  And I’m not sure what to make of it.

The oddest thing is that I am suddenly keenly aware of all of the attributes, actions and defense mechanisms I have painstakingly put in place over the last thousand years.  It’s like I’ve been jerked out of sync with myself, and can clearly see that when I make a joke, it is rooted in insecurity as much as it is in  humor.  I can sense it in my walk, which is at times stooped slightly forward as if I am opposing some unfelt wind.  I can sense it in my cartooons, which I intend as merely funny but which carry a pall of horror just beneath the surface.  I can sense it in my time alone, when I am usually writing or plucking away at my new banjo, silenly hoping that the time alone will pass as quickly as possible.  I can sense it in my intolerance, which has edged up a notch in the last few weeks, so much so that I killed another myspace persona of mine - Olaf - and morphed him into a profile for a cartoon character of mine called Racist AIDS Monkey, who randomly goes out and insults people (this is not a plug; I wouldn’t recommend befriending him).

An ironic thing is that, at times, I break free of all of that baggage and I feel very warm and loving.  The problem with that is that is like coming out of therapy with a new look on the world, but the world itself hasn’t gone through the therapy and is hardly receptive.  So I wind up jolted back into the eerie out-of-sync-itude mentioned above.

I am very uncomfortable finding myself the beneficiary of more than just property and bonds: I have gained, somehow, a full-length mirror belonging to sone long, lost older twin.  And it scares the living crap out of me.

To either tackle these issues head-on, or avoid them altogether (I haven’t decided which), I am going to take the play I’ve been working on - all about losing a parent, by some freaky coincidence - and do a public readthrough/analysis/workshop of it next Monday.  If you’re in Chicago and want to see some author/actor go through some real-life therapy for free, email me and I’ll tell you the where and when.  I think I’m on the right track, as my myspace friend, Cranky Ricky, who inspired one of the roles and who is going to come along Monday to read it, told me it was “delightfully painful.”

Now that’s comedy.

 

 

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All the lonely people / where do they all come from / all the lonely people / where do they all belong?

 

On January 3, 2007, I wrote a small, silly piece entitled “Jokes for Children”; two days later, I released seven more cartoons of mine.  Somewhere in between the two, I think my father died.

 

Nobody knows for sure when he died, in truth.  By analyzing his checkbook, however, I noticed his handwriting between the December 23, 2006 and January 3, 2007 entries indicated something traumatic had happened; in place of the block printing of the former, was a scribble that looked liked someone was shaking his chair as the old man attempted to write.  My sister and I believe he suffered a second stroke – or something – and went to lie down after struggling through his checkbook entries.  We think further that he never got up again.

 

Some neighbor noticed his dog had not been let out in a few days and called the police.  On January 11, they broke into the bathroom window and found my father and the dog, one of which was still alive.  My sister found out shortly after that; my mother shortly after that; me shortly after that.  My sister and her husband drove up from Texas; my mother flew in shortly after to be there for her kids.  Me, I still had to perform with Suspicious Clowns for the closing night of Sketchfest 2007.  Honestly, I didn’t mind.  Many people have said, “I’m sorry for your loss,” but my reply has been, “That’s OK – we weren’t that close.”

 

Dad – or Mad Jack, as most of the family referred to him – and I parted ways back in the 1980s.  He had grown increasingly irritated with my mother, as she had divorced him in the 1970s and gotten remarried and established herself as a business woman in her own rite.  Mad Jack just stagnated and obsessed about the past.  Eventually, he made a few actual violent threats towards my mother, and that was it for me.  I snipped him from my life.  It was the first such snip of my life.

 

After performing raucous and riotous comedy on Sunday for Sketchfest, for which I wore military garb for about as long as my father actually did in real life, the Girlfriend and I drove to Joliet to join my sister and mother. 

 

Our first stop was Mad Jack’s house.  It was horrible.  All of the furniture appeared gray, but in fact was covered with dust, with cobwebs forming nets between it and the wall.  The carpet was littered with dog hair and mouse shit.  The perfume was unique, as well.  The Girlfriend said she just smelled something like Stale Dog, but I swore it was a combination of Stale Dog and Dead Guy. 

 

My father never did anything half-assed; when he grew stagnant, he really grew stagnant.  I took a few record albums and some jackets, the latter of which are so silly that they belong nowhere but with a sketch comedy group.  Like mine.

 

My sister, the one of us who tried to stay in contact with Mad Jack, handled the funeral arrangements and getting the legal stuff underway.  The funeral brought out two people: his older brother, Pete, and a cop who had known Mad Jack for ten years.  He seemed genuinely surprised to meet my sister and me.  I wonder if Mad Jack mentioned us.  I did not go in to see Mad Jack during the private family viewing – the wake was to be ‘closed casket’, as one might imagine it would be, given the probable gap of time between death and discovery of the body – but my sister and mother did.  My sister had to hold herself together and did so admirably; my mother just wanted to make sure it was him, so he wouldn’t be back.

 

The Girlfriend, now away on business for a few days, called me today and asked if I had cried yet.  I haven’t.  I don’t expect I shall.  Even on my own, the closest I can get to feeling sad is when I think of that dismal old man, growing more ill and more alone and more angry.  After he retired in 2001, illness, loneliness and anger were his only companions.  I can only hope that his religion offered him a bit of solace.

 

The only other bit of sad I sense is just that good old mortality issue: the bombs of death, so distant when I was young, are growing louder and nearer.  Grandmother, Johann the Cat, now my dad.  You can’t do anything about that permanent bogeyman, so when I met my sister and mother, I told them I loved them.

 

Meanwhile, a mere 41 years ago, this card was delivered as part of a Christmas card to a bunch of friends of our family:

  

 

 

 

Be well, fly far and find some happiness and peace, Mad Jack.  You could use some, you old jerk.

 

 

 

 

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