the assassin
it seems that my life started in 1983, or at least that's when i became conscious of myself. those were the salad days- the days between age four and nine, the days when my family lived at Oak Hill Ranch, and life seemed innocent. it's odd that my retrospective memories of events and the way they seemed to me at that time seem to occur in paralel dimensions. the stories are all honey-colored in my minds eye, but become twisted and dark when i think of them with adult rationale.
it's odd that i don't remember my father being gone, or missing him while he was absent, or even where he was at. it's odd that i don't blame him for making my mother sick with his absence because i figured that she had always been sick- that's the way i've always known her to be. at the time things seemed normal, mom was always very supportive of my and my brothers individual personalities and kept us constantly busy with some sort of crafty, creative project. she kept us busy so that we wouldn't notice our father being gone. she did it all, from teaching us to bake cookies, to explaining the "birds and the bees"- with the help of i'm ok, you're ok.
so i guess that's why i never questioned the loaded .22 pistol that she kept on her nightstand while dad was gone, and i guess that's why i didn't cry after i heard the gunshot ricochet through the hills after our dogs, ben and brownie pulled the lamb to pieces the previous night.
i was sitting on the raised, rocked edge of the flagpole mound in the middle of our driveway when she came back from the field. i was sitting there, amoung the blood still on the foxtails- from the brutal murder of that night, picking the chamomile and smashing it in my hands to produce the intoxicating scent. i sat there, and i watched her walk back from the field and i knew that ben was gone.
ben was my grandpa bruce's dog. he was an old black lab that had a heart of gold. he and our new puppy brownie had become fast friends and my brother and i delighted in watching ben teach brownie how to be a ranch dog. he showed brownie to always run ahead of us, to make sure there were no snakes or bobcats waiting to get us, to run behind the truck when we went for an evening ride in case we fell out. ben wouldn't let brownie eat from our hands- or eat period- while people were present. they were gentle with us and we trusted them- they were our protectors.
and that's why it's odd that they crept, in the middle of the night to the flagpole in the middle of our driveway where our lamb was tied up for the night and ripped him in half. as brownie's teeth sunk into the supple flesh of the lamb, ben took the hind quarter in his jaw and pulled, until it's spine stretched, snapped, and then gave way, and ben and brownie, away from the eyes of man, ate.
the next morning, at twightlight, i awakened to the sound of a truck coming into the yard. through my bedroom window, through sleepy eyes and flower-patterned curtains, i saw the men fight to take brownie away. i saw his eyes, distant, raging; heard his distant relatives crying out through him, sensing captivity. they took him away, and my mother took her .22 off of her nightstand and went into the hills in search of ben.
it took her all day to get him- it was the dusty part of the late afternoon when she passed me at the flagpole. when our eyes met, i knew what she had done, and she knew that i knew what she had done, but we didn't speak. she just went to the house and put her .22 back on her nightstand, changed her blood-spattered clothes and started cooking dinner for me and my brother.

glamour
i've wanted to be an alcoholic ever since i was old enough to have an eating disorder. my love affair with self-destruction began at birth, i guess. one of my first memories is being on "time out" when i was 3yrs old and thinking my thighs were fat. it made me so sad that i attempted (at the age of 3!) to stick a key into a light socket. additionally, my favorite childhood playtime props was either a white or brown crayon that i pretended were cigarettes. and remember candy cigaretts? my mom even used to light them on fire.
all of my life, i have thought nothing as glamorous as self destructive acts. maybe it was because i grew up in the eighties when self-loathing was pop culture. could i, as a toddler, have been affected by the fast paced cocaine lifestyle that my parents lived? it was nothing to find a mirror, tiny straw, and a razor in my mothers purse, for my father to bring home some big-breasted blonde while my mother was out of town. i guess if a child grows up with that sort of influence, it's likely to have some effect.