Tag Archives: dancing

dreams…

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…by Noah

Dark, sunless morning.

Noah’s face is filled with lemon custard cake crumbs. He is shoveling in spoonfuls with hardly a breath between. Too busy grasping the glass of warm milk to wash down the delightful mixture. All this while humming a tune, a new composition. He is adorably scrawny. When he eats a little much, his belly bulges.

Full mouth, no oxygen and in full song, he still finds a way to talk.

“Dad, you know what?”

For my part I’m the standard adult untangling himself from the twisted bedsheets of quixotic nighttime struggles…

“I had the coolest and weirdest dream.”

I dream, but the details are instantly chased from my memory by the squeal of the alarm clock.

Noah on the other hand, has total recall with encyclopedic detail.

“Yeah, I was like reaaaalllyyy reaaaaaallllllyy happy. I was like playing a guitar, yeah and dancing and singing ‘oh, yeah, oh, yeah, babbbbyyyy‘ crazy-happy dancing, you know?

Yeah I know.

I danced in the rain, I danced on an African beach, I danced horizontal with lovers and haters. I danced stoned and I danced straight. I danced naked with his mother. I danced and felt eternal. Sometimes, body and soul actually danced together.

A woman I once made love to, told me that I had a body that made her want to dance. She shimmied … away over the horizon.

“Yeah, so I was happy-dancing and guess what…?”

You danced into a wall, I think.

“What?” I say.

“You were there….yeah you were all small, like you know, small like I’m now for you, well, I was the big one and you were small.”

“And what was I doing?”

“Dancing, what else?”

What else!

He’s licking his fingers with application, staring at each digit before targeting the crumbs. I can see the dirt from yesterday’s basketball game joining the custard as he lifts it with his tongue.

“That was cool. Yeah, and then, I turn around and I’m like this…”

He drops his jaw, in a comical freeze-frame surprise. It reveals the un-swallowed mish-mash still in his mouth.

“…because like right behind me is you, again, except this time…”

He chews a little, swallows a little, breathes a little and drops his mouth open again. He looks up, dramatically, his eyes wide open.”

“…you were a giant, dad. Like soooo big. like a Spinosaurus except on two legs.”

That’s weird, I think to myself .

“That’s weird,” I say to him. Sometimes mind and mouth are in synch.

“Yeaaaaaahhh, but you know dad, it was cool too…cool-weird. Fun, hunh?”

“And was giant-me dancing?”

“Naw,  you were too big. But you were smiling at me. I liked that.”

It has begun to pour, a sheet of water, yet the sky is becoming lighter, the sun breaks out and shines through the falling rain.

“Dad, lets hurry, because you know there’s always a rainbow at the end of the street when its like that. Remember last time?”

I actually do. Catching rainbows.

Lets dance to that!

the blood…

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…of fathers

Noah rubs his head against my arm, like a feral child.

The last few days he has been all over me. Crawling over my chest when I’m sitting, pulling my hand when walking, escalating my back and climbing my head at every opportunity.

And he has not stopped talking except to sing and hasn’t stopped singing except to act the dancing fool.

I am already a conquered kingdom, invaded by the arrogant necessity of childhood.

Now, I am reduced to fodder.

“Dad, dad, I have  a question.”

Number ‘way-too-many-already-and-its-only 7h35′ question.

“What time is it?”

Time for you to shut up, stop moving, be still and let me breathe.

“What are we going to do, today?”

“Aaaaarrrggghh.”

“I’m just saying.”

*?&?%$@#?$&?%#@&*%

I say nothing for fear of saying what I’m thinking.

Last night I actually watched reruns of “memorable” golf tournaments on Blah-Tv.

4 a.m. is not prime time.

I always felt as if my Mother had given me life just to suck it out of me slowly. I was her doggie bag, to feed her anguish and appease her hunger for misery.

Now its my kid’s turn. He’s sucking me dry. But this time I’m a willing victim, though I protest.

He’s a super developed leech. He exhausts me. Sometimes I just want to scrape him off and lick the wounds.

But in the eight and a half years since he’s erupted into my life, he’s sucked out a lifetime of  toxins from my blood.

Painful.

So I fight. To preserve the comfort of my accumulated anger and sadness.

“Dad? Look, I invented a new song.”

My Mother was a child who had lacked emotional nourishment and needed to feed off her children to survive.

My boy, on the other hand is growing beautifully, gorged by my lifeblood.

He is infecting me with his rage for life, his pleasure, his ravenous desires.

Later, we will howl at the moon. For now he’s singing a new composition.

“Good song, hunh dad?”

“Great song. What’s it called?”

“The title is um, ‘What’s that Doo-thingy in your hand’ …”.

Cool. I will stop playing with my doo-thingy and join him in a wild dance.

“Once more with feeling, Noah.”

 

 

 

 

mysterious…

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…ways

Last night, I watched Noah from a few paces back. It was his “red carpet” event when day camp animators and children celebrated the end of another summer with movies and popcorn and hugs and kisses.

Last year he had teared up, brimming with the emotions of shared memories and camaraderie.

This year, in his white shirt, cool stovepipe pants and checkered bow tie, he sought out his friends and favorite animators. Each time he would touch the tie, self-conscious but pleased. All the girls and most of the guys told him he looked great. He did. Some of the girls said he looked gorgeous and bent down to hug him.

At one point I lost sight of him.

I was watching the young woman doing simultaneous translation for the hearing impaired children that are part of the camp. Behind me, a group of intellectually impaired kids were whooping up the Michael Jackson song that was splashing across the video screen. One particularly large kid had set every one of his rounds of fat into motion as he danced up a storm to the encouragement of his buddies.

Black and white and brown and yellow, with a turban or a veil or a straw hat, the whole world had gathered in the basement gym to share the delight of their children.

I searched for Noah. Remarkably I had forgotten all about him for a few minutes. Last I saw of him he was chatting up a girl named Lili, between handfuls of popcorn. She had that long and lanky body and sea foam hair that seems to turn Noah on.

I saw Lili. She had returned to her mom, a woman who looked like driftwood, like what sea foam becomes when it is forced to a concrete life.

Noah was nowhere to be seen. I resisted the worry.

Finally, I caught sight of him. He was on stage, surrounded by animators and other children. He was dancing with total abandon… eyes closed, head down, waving his arms, spinning on himself.

I watched from afar, suddenly aware of the distance that would soon become one of the themes of our life together. I watched a while longer, fascinated.

One of my orgasms had sent a single cell hurtling and crashing into another single cell belonging to a woman I loved. The cells combined and then instantly began separating and doubling.

Eight and a half years later, the resulting seventy-five trillion cells were moving to the rhythms of a rap anthem, whipping arms and legs and bow-tie.

The mysterious ways of the universe.

He looked up, saw me. His eyes were moist with emotion. He flashed me a smile and returned to his dance.

Later, we walked back home in the dark, through the park. It was filled with small groups of people fleeing the heat of their apartments, smoking, playing guitars and harmonicas, enjoying the mist from the fountain that gives the park its name.

Noah was silent, hopping along, looking like a New Wave poster. As we came up to the fountain it changed color to a beautiful midnight blue. Noah’s hand reached for mine.

“Its so romantic, here at night, dad.”

I squeezed his hand. We walked on in comfortable silence.