Filing it Away

There is a dusty oak filing cabinet in an attic somewhere, its dust covered wood peeling and weathered. It's categorized in chaotic order; tabs mark names of people, some of whom I've never met. There are also tabs of places I've been, some physical like The Bucket of Blood in Virginia City, NV in 1989 on a business trip with my father, and some mental like the feeling of the isolation of a veterans psychiatric in-patient facility where apathetic black nurses in white scrubs woke me up to put me back to sleep. Each file opens with sights and smells some vivid others dull and sullied. There are hidden files that only the owner knows where to find, even though he has tried his best to keep them hidden from himself. Those files are usually the easiest to find on rainy days.

One day maybe we could go through it together and find out who I am. You can see my Mark McGwire rookie card and feel the icy winds of Candlestick Park on a Sunday night Giants game. I will show you my tear stained letters to my old lovers and the essay I wrote about how Johnny Cash saved my life when I was fourteen year old . We can talk about the Art Bell show on Coast to Coast AM which I listened to fascinated learning of aliens and conspiracy. I'll show you the hidden TV I had that only picked PBS and sometimes weird UHF stations that I would set up after my parents went to sleep and watch Tales from the Crypt and Mr. Bean. We could play Baseball Stars on my Nintendo that only worked if you blew into the cartridge hard enough and slapped the top of it. Here is the page where Matt Pelechowicz and I beat the shit out of the fearsome bully Johnny Bell and were the champions of 6th grade. There is home-run derby with Josh Mayo and learning to skateboard with Matt Pelechowicz and Garrett Elms.

We can stroll through the rice paddies behind the house I grew up in where I built forts and hunted for anything that moved. Playing teacher with my sisters while bouncing on the twin mattresses in their rooms. Go-Carts at the Aust's, and above ground swimming pools in the backyard where the retarded kids across the streets I scared by accident, whose parents cooked meth. Cockfights at the Martinez' across the block and our blackberry bushes from which my mom made the best blackberry cobbler. I will show you the first blackbird I shot out of a tree that made my mom cry, and if you care, the Syrian man I shot in the desert that still makes me unable to sleep at night.

I can take you for a ride in the shaggin wagon, a 1990 minivan covered in band stickers like Propaghandi, Chinkees, Bruce Lee Band, OpIvy, Fifteen, Tuesday, and The Broadways to name few, so many that you couldn't see out the back window. If you're lucky I will tell you about noonies, rooting, jew-ry and "Scary Gary". I can tell of a nervous boy and terrified boy on his prom date who felt like the luckiest kid in the room. Finding and losing love then subsequently losing myself in the aftermath.


We can track the progress of an innocent boy hardened by life and his self destructive nature. We can watch my life constructed by amazing people then destroyed by feelings of inadequacy. I will show you the yellowing, weathered timeline of my fight with religion and shuffle through papers proving and disproving the belief in God. There are sections that I dare not look for because they have been buried long ago and the memories are faded and belong to people I used to be. They are still there though patiently waiting for their chance to be addressed and signed off on.


I will show you the "drug file" with many names and places I want to forget. To borrow from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, "They were the best of times and the worst of times." Mostly the worst. This file is the largest and hardest to peruse and it is still under construction. In a vile in the back, I still have the tears I cried when I got into a fistfight with my father who was only trying to raise a good son, who was far gone by that point. We could open the Army file that made me angry and filled with hate and self loathing that I don't dare open sober. Bring a bottle of something and through laughs and tears we can tear it apart.

I am opening this box on my own and only certain people will care enough to join me. I want to find the ones that do. Anyone who wants to truly know me must take these files and memories and accept them or pass me by and find a nicer, cherry wood cabinet that is beautiful and polished with no missing files, everything clean and legible. I don't want to hide this breakfront, because it is who I am and that means accepting me for who I have become If you have gotten this far maybe there is a chance I will open it for you.