Nonfiction originally published in Umbrella Factory Magazine: Issue 13, March 2013
“Cock-sucking, goddamn piece of shit.”
I tried not to listen to David. We were standing in the grass patch at the front of our trailer park, watching the game, waiting for our turns at bat. David was a few years older than me, saying these filthy things.
He took another swig from his inhaler and continued.
“Cunt. Asshole.”
I didn’t want to be called a pussy—whatever that was I couldn’t be sure, but it was obviously not good—so I didn’t plug up my ears with my fingers.
And I didn’t tell him to shut up. (Actually, I wouldn’t have ever said shut up, still too vulgar for me at age 7.)
It would have been a stern “be quiet!”
I had a very limited understanding of meditation then: touching each middle finger with the ends of each thumb, closing my eyes and chanting. I couldn’t do this either though. I didn’t want to be called a fag.
Again, what did this word even mean?
I tried to move my mind elsewhere but couldn’t. David was four years older but his arms were skinny enough that I knew I could have fought him. Maybe not win but I could have hurt him.
Didn’t do this either though. I prided myself on being a good kid.
I imagine him saying, “Thinks his shit doesn’t stink.”
My pent up anger and resentment towards David was enormous. I’d always say no to offers to play outside when it was only David asking.
“Cock. Twat.”
I don’t remember him ever trying to explain the inhaler or about the scars on his chest. Then again, David never told me he loved baseball either, but nothing could be more obvious. Always then and even in my mind now, he’s got a glove under his arm and an aluminum bat in hand.
Once, my mother said David had been born with a hole in his heart.
Countless surgeries. More surgeries than he had birthdays. The only reason David would stay indoors on a warm day would be forced recovery from the scalpels. There must have been a mountain of debt for his parents, understandably desperate to save their little boy.
“Shit. Piss.”
And then one day, there were no more profanities. Because there was no more David.
I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t feel some relief. Even if he was a sick kid and I didn’t ever actually wish for him to die, I considered there to be a certain ugliness in what David had brought to the world. He was someone who went out of his way to say nasty things during his short time on Earth.
The men and boys of the trailer park got together soon after David’s death to play a baseball game. In honor of David. Despite being a scrawny thing, I played a solid first baseman.
A few innings in, a thirty-something-year-old neighbor playing shortstop scooped up a ground ball and launched it my way. The runner had easily beaten the throw but bumped into me with the ball still in flight.
The important thing is that I couldn’t get my mitt up in time and the ball said hello to my nose rather abruptly.
I ran crying for my mother. I did a lot of blubbering that day while the others tried to calmly walk me back home. They were so calm that it was obvious I wasn’t communicating how damaged my broken nose was. If I had, they would have been enraged and upset too.
I remember being truly frustrated because I couldn’t fully express my pain to these idiots speaking in soothing voices.
I could feel David looking from a distance—probably calling me a little bitch.
If I felt that same pain now, I would be able to communicate the pain just fine. Without thinking, I would say, “For Christ’s sake, this shit hurts like a bitch.”
But I was above all those bad words then. Too pure for the verbal depravity.
David wasn’t just someone with a dirty mouth though. He was a terrified kid living with a death sentence and I had only experienced a small fraction of the pain and frustration he felt every day of his entire life.
The difference between us? David had figured out one minor way to temporarily relieve some of that inner rage.
“Shit. Piss. Cunt. Cock. Asshole. Twat.”
David always used these words, but none of them ever did a good enough job. They couldn’t do justice to how he was really feeling:
Cosmically fucked.