Games, Dancing, Ocean, Internet, Essence

I remember when video games first came out and were all the rage. Game rooms (and sordid stories about the backrooms of game rooms) sprung up in malls all over, including ours. Although I was grown and perhaps one of the oldest people in the game rooms, there was a certain joy to pumping quarters into Tempest (r) or Pac-Man (r). Kids began to gather outside of our game room to practice the latest break-dancing moves. I wasn't ever any good at break-dancing but I could moonwalk and also held my own on various dance floors. When I went to visit Philly Dave, part of the treat was going to the game room in his local mall. That game room is still there. Ours dwindled and died. Sigh. Philly Dave and I never went to dances together but we did go to his local pool and visited pools in various hotels across Pennsylvania.

I got the first computer after Philly Dave came into my life, and after that my first laptop. I discovered software that would allow for a game of chess or Q-bert (r) or Scrabble (r). I found Bookworm (r) on-line along with a ton of brain games after my t.b.i. happened. I became aware of multi-player online games but never got into W.O.W. (r) or any of those things. Then I found blogging and moved onto Second Life (r) which is described as a "game" but which I suspect more and more of being a social network of sorts.

As a kid, I played the usual collection of board games-- Candyland, Chutes n Ladders, Sorry, Operation, Monopoly (r, r, r, r, r). There must have been puzzles too although here I must confess that I don't remember them. And there was cards. My step-uncle taught me magic tricks using playing cards, my gram's Gypsy Fortune-Telling Book -- r-- (along with my gram and my aunt) taught me how to give primitive readings using playing cards, my dad and I played War and then Rummy 500 as I got older (I remember playing by the poolside on Cleveland Street in the summers), another step-uncle taught me how to be cutthroat at Gin Rummy, folks in a group home that I worked at taught me the finer points of Pinocle (r?).

I remember Skeeball (r) in a game room on the mall at Seaside Heights. One time after doing up some T.H.C. (or whatever substance it was that was pretending to be T.H.C.) with my hippy friend B.B. (hey dude, I still think about you even though I got clean since the last time I seen ya) in that game room I hallucinated a large wall of glass panes and a door along the open side of that game room facing the ocean. That particular game room existed long before "internet" became a household word. There were pinball machines but they were not digitized. And yeah, there were those tickets one could collect and exchange for cheap "prizes."

The boardwalk (Seaside Heights, and Asbury Park before it) was attractive because of the noise, the rides, the cold custard cones, and the smell of the ocean. The ocean was my other mother. I swam like a fish, danced with the sunlight on the waves, can still float for hours on end. The game rooms of my adulthood recall a certain ambiance, a certain je ne sais quoi that existed then-- the bathing of my senses, the stimulation, the feeling of utter aliveness. Drugs were a cheap way to another reality but the game rooms and the internet and the ocean and dancing did not hurt me when seeking my pleasure. The drugs stole my soul and almost my life. I still like turning the sound down on the television and blasting some good rock music on the stereo. I love dancing even though I have lost much of the fluidity that I used to have. All of these things-- game rooms, ocean, dancing, internet-- capture an essence for me. It is not quite as precious as being in the woods alone with my dog away from the hustle and bustle of daily living. But it is almost equally necessary.

sapphoq on life

Three Cousins, an Aunt, and Two Uncles

Dad's been up a coupla times in the past few weeks. Dad's youngest brother died in Nam. My uncle lost his life by throwing himself over a fellow ranger. My uncle was a Green Beret and a Master Sargent.

Uncle Freddy lived in South Carolina. One summer vacation, we went to visit him and his family. My aunt was a tall willowy southern pregnant woman. She gave me a rosary out of deference to my own religious upbringing but allowed me to attend a service at the Southern Baptist church that the family belonged to. My two cousins had been trained to respond to their mom with choruses of "Yes Ma'am" and "No Ma'am."

My cousins were loads of fun. I remember sitting in their bunk beds talking and laughing when we should have been sleeping. My youngest cousin who was then around five years old taught me a very risque ditty involving little black kids (the N-word was used) and a bed. With apologies to all to find this offensive:

Three little [black kids] sitting in a bed.
One fell out and the other two said,
"Boom-boom. I see your hiny.
Boom-boom. All black and shiny.
And if you don't hide it,
Then we shall bite it."

I had grown up in an openly prejudiced home but this little rhyme was far beyond anything I'd been exposed to. We were also taken to the Army-Navy pool across the border in North Carolina where I learned how to swim. We kids sang along to "They're coming to take you away ha ha..." on the transistor radio.

The base was large and there were houses and trees. The pool seemed to be in the middle of a hub. It was huge. There was also a kiddie pool but it was the gargantuan adult pool that attracted me. It was in that pool where I learned how to swim. I took to swimming like a fish to water. I loved the feeling of gliding through the water and I also did cannonballs off the diving board.

I can still see the layout of my aunt and uncle's house alongside a hill. There were also trees there and a yard. My dad and my uncle snuck out at midnight one night and rode down the hill in my cousins' two red wagons. Over breakfast the next morning, both were banged up but laughing about their escapade.

The time passed too quickly. One day we got into the car and drove back home. Several months later my third cousin had been born while my uncle was back in Nam. Then Uncle Freddie died.

The summer after my Uncle Freddie died, my dad and wife #2 took me and my then six year old girl cousin to Host Farms in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was there that we also swam in a pool, laughed and carried on like the two little girls that we were, and went on rides at an amusement park. We met another girl named Brook (no, not Brooke Shields). I ate six halves of grapefruit one morning for breakfast. Dad came out of a farmer's field with some stolen ears of corn. (Upon cooking them up at home, he discovered they were cow corn and not intended for human consumption. That was one of two times I saw my dad take something that wasn't his).

Sometime after that, my aunt married my oldest uncle. She and the three kids made the trek up north to another house-- a bulky colonial-- on a tree-lined street. My now middle girl cousin was sharing a bedroom unhappily with her younger sister by then. We went to visit one Christmas (dad was on wife #3 by that time) and my aunt had said something very rude to #3-- my aunt called her "a Jewess." We retreated hastily.

One summer day we went to visit. My middle cousin was a teen by that time and she had run away to Florida. She was back, having been picked up by a cousin from a different family and persuaded to return home. Middle cousin and I went for a walk in the neighborhood. She was smoking cigarettes by that time. My aunt was having fits over that. While middle cousin and I were out walking, my dad was back at the house listening to my aunt's distress.

All three cousins have grown up now. First and middle cousin have grown apart but still living up north. Aunt and oldest Uncle are divorced after having moved back down south. They are living in Florida. I got to see my oldest uncle recently at my half-sister's wedding. My middle cousin and her sister were also there. We got to sit together at a table during the reception. Middle cousin has two kids and is divorced. Little cousin has grown up with kids of her own by a preacher husband. They are living in Georgia. Middle cousin and I send each other e-mails once in awhile and Christmas cards every year. Kids grow up and parents fall apart and die. Memories are the thin thread that hold us together.

sapphoq on life

While Living with Dad

While living with Dad, I acquired a couple of short-lived babysitting jobs in our apartment building. One parent expected me to discern which food her baby wanted to eat. Another parent startled me one night by entering her apartment via the ground floor level window. I can still see in my head a picture of her leg entering through the window while I was in the living room.

sapphoq on life