Confession ~ Wednesday, 7 November 2018

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto
~ "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."

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"I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports ever happened." ~ René Descartes (Second Meditation)

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Okay, so you want a story? I'm no good with stories, but I was a kid once, too, so there you have it. The title is "The Ghost of the Clam" but the clam was really a mussel. It involves my brother and my lousy cousin, Arturo Tobago, a false name but real close. You all know my brother, the millionaire who can't afford a libel case, so I'll call him Horace Berber, though the quote at the start is a dead giveaway as to his real first name, but you gotta be smart, smarter than these assholes. You gotta watch your back, you best protect your neck, dumb rich fucking bastards, you can never trust them. Our real last name, of course, another pseudonym, comes from the Portuguese, A Gâmbia, twisted into da Gambia, a real fake name, but close if you know how phonemes work, how they shift to make new words, or even new names, like da Gama and...oops! Almost let the cat out of the bag, no good that, no bueno, getting caught. Just to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, who needs a court for that? Revenge is best served cold, like the fires deep in hell. Like the hearts of young men and other born sadists in my own family tree, I was just so lucky to meet in this lifetime. Fuck them, yeah, fuck them all, fucked me up and over, and when I needed help, they were right there to laugh at my own misery, forty odd years ago, motherfucking bastards, include my own mother, and my father into this picture, this circus, of Goans living here, right along the west coast, Southern California, but who needs them, their wealth, their lousy affluence, fuck 'em all, I tell you. They will deny it all. They have before, the past is no longer sacred, no longer holy ground, but lost to memories, and to so-called stories, they call them make-believe, they call me a liar, but in court, with their hands burning on that Bible, damned Roman Catholics, if they lie, they confess to their pedophile priests, maybe I hit the nail on the head to figure out why they are sadists, my whole family, that is. Learning from cocksuckers they call "holy father." What a laugh, the whole thing. Five hundred years of rape and oppression, to keep a people in bondage. For what? The sake of faith? Your goddamn religion?

But I digress, so let's begin somewhere, let's say, Huntington Beach, at the Franciscan Church where we attended Mass, and afterwards, went back to eat brunch with my aunt and uncle, who were aunt and uncle in name, as they were a line up on the old Judas tree. But I won't take a dime for this hell-bent story, it's an old one, no one cares to read anyways. Skip Saints Simon and Jude, the fucking church ain't worth my time fussing over. But in that house, upstairs, my cousin and brother took me to play their tricks, to torture me, a child, for what, a goddamn laugh, and boy, did they both laugh. Once they got me upstairs, into that little room, just above the garage, I remember because one time, they made me strip, and walk out the window on the rooftop above the garage, but my aunt, somehow saw me up there, and yelled at both of them to bring me back inside. I was crying loudly, probably and she went to the front yard to see what was going on, then. Who knows maybe I am making all this shit up, that's why it's called fiction and not another dumb autobiography, a laughable memoir, Million Little Pieces broke that bubble real good, Oprah got a real kick from James Frey for that book. But again, I digress. Not really here to roast fatted cow on the spit. It's not my place to fuck with dumb celebrities, they got enough problems. 

So upstairs, in that room, my cousin and brother would turn out the lights since, being young and all that, I was afraid of ghosts. Of course, I'd done something wrong in their eyes, they could exploit to torture me. My brother, already, was an old hand at this, bursting in when I said, "I love you, Amanda," to a girl in England, our next door neighbor, then, in her backyard clubhouse, he made fun of me, then, in front of her, instead of telling her goodbye, and for years with our friends, his friends, the ones who'd laugh, the ones I'd have to share, until I found my friends, more dumb, rotten bastards, there in Huntington Beach, it seems betrayal was in the water, Judas for thirty silver coins, spilled the beans on Jesus, who forgave the bastard, before he hung himself, and Christ was crucified. But again, I digress with stories long ago. 

So, one day, at the pier, I found a mussel shell attached to a column, and threw it as hard as a little kid could throw. It was a direct hit, smack into the column, bursting into pieces. To put the fear of God into me, my cousin made up a funny phrase, the ghost of the clam which made me cry then and there. Fucking goddamn sadists, my whole fucking family. Can't trust them, not a soul. Dirty, rotten bastards. And they hold it against me for being the goat, the bad seed, the devil, or at least, his spawn. Hilarious, the cunts. Who's gonna go to hell? Me, for being a kid, or my teenage cousin, or my older brother, or my mom and my dead dad, or the pedophile priests, or the rest of the priests who covered up for them, or just the archbishop, the one they call The Pope, who oversaw it all. Dumb-ass motherfuckers, hell is just a concept, an analogy for a life of repentance, but for those who don't care, who can't come to believe, it's like Purgatory, also known as Limbo, a place no longer there, it no longer exists, somehow this much is true. But again, I digress. Unholy Catholics. 

So this goes on for years, until I'm old enough to see my brother off to college and no more contact ever again, as my mother wishes, so her good oldest son will go live a good life, and her bad, little boy will go to Edison High School, like his brother, and their sadist cousin, and live as a shy kid, abused with violence from his alcoholic father, codependent mother, the wooden spoon, her favorite tool to beat the hands of her two sons, for the rest of his life, after years of drug use to cope with his childhood, and years of therapy, meetings and a short stint in a state hospital, a mental asylum, after Casimiro, that's my fictional name, left after my first year in college in Irvine. Putting the pieces back together is no good, the shell will be broken, the mussel is long dead, or maybe just the shell, I'll never know for sure if the creature inside was there or left its shell empty on the column for me to come and break. The ghost of the clam is a story without truth, or perhaps wholly true. Nobody knows for sure. Really, nothing matters to tell the world a lie, what my brother told me when I told him I plan to write about childhood in the form of memoirs, autobiography, he supposed all stories were lies, fictional tales. How wrong that bastard is. You'll never guess what his middle name is, never ever... Epiphanio, you know like Epiphany, strike me dead if I'm lying, cross my heart, dumb bastards. Or just take me to court, you'll all figure it out. Then, who gets the last laugh? Revenge is best served cold.

But I never told you about my cousin's car, a Porsche 914, a Volkswagen knockoff engine in a sports car, back in the seventies, this made him look real cool, as a pre-med student who could play piano and sing Elton John songs, a hit with the ladies, he was, Young Arturo. In his sixties by now, he'll just love this story, that someone thinks kindly enough to call this man a sadist and cousin, what more could you ask for, an epitaph, your grave, a memento mori? Childhood is rarely fun, hardly, if ever, kind, to approach adulthood, we must become hardened criminals, not poets, with soft underbellies, and pretty, rhyming words. No, life is visceral, fuck the children up good, confuse them to no end, bully, beat, and abuse the young for being young, dumb and naive children. In this world, the Goans perfected this method as the Feni treatment. Feni being the drink of choice for cheap Goans too poor to buy decent liquor instead they drink cashew liquor and think they are like millionaires. Maybe we all have this, this treacherous game plan, the scars from each childhood layers over the skin of the generation to follow, misshapen creatures that we become, half human, half monster. To say I've never done wrong to younger children, cousins, would be a lie. I would say how sorry I have felt for decades but dare not speak a word because to broach denial in others can do harm, like piercing a balloon. Maybe Arturo thinks along these lines also, as does my drunk brother, the real coke fiend my mom loved more than the scholar whose heart was petrified by seeing the Gorgon in the books of Greek myths. 

At least, I finally get to get this story off my chest, holding me back for years, for decades. As I approach fifty, I want to clean the slate, to forgive and forget, but first to document, for posterity's sake. Revenge is best served cold. But again, I digress.