The Writings of Mary Lewys

So much for prom. I don’t know why these things happen to me. I didn’t ask for a limo flambéed, yet here I sit in the back seat. The driver dances as he tries to put his skin out. Human fat sizzling smells worse than the fake, vinyl upholstery burning. Still, I should do something to save my date from frying to death, I suppose.

“Dad?”

Yes, son?

“I need a little help.”

* * *

I used to have such a normal life. No Norman Rockwell, white picket fences, riding the Radio Flyer down the street type of normal; more like watching Saturday Morning cartoons on a fourth-hand couch while eating my sixth bowl of Fruit Loops with extra sugar because Mom had to work a double shift type of normal. My friends and I had worn-out skateboards from the local pawn shops because our parents couldn’t afford the bike prices. Well, when I say “parents,” I mean my Mom. She was going to school and working at a diner when I was growing up. Then, she put on a white dress shirt, navy slacks and went to work as a paralegal so we could afford a better, less-shitty place to live.

But what did I know? All my friends in the barely above the projects apartment complex had the same life. We all went to the same school. We all wore the same crappy clothes from Goodwill or second-hand shops. During the summer, one of the parents would act as day care, usually someone’s Dad who was laid-off from the factory, and we would run the streets looking for stuff to do. When it got too hot, we’d hit Josh’s place. He had an old PS we found in the trash. He hid it from his folks in case they’d try to hock it when one of them fell off the wagon.

It was good, right? We didn’t get hurt beyond the scraped knees or occasional bruises. We were never bullied, probably because the type of guy that would was too afraid to come into our neighborhood. The crackheads never bothered us, nor the homeless. We didn’t bother them. There are worse ways to grow-up.

Hell, I didn’t even think about my dad. Plenty of my friends never saw their dead-beat fathers. I figured mine was the same. Mom must have been waiting on pins and needles for me to ask, but I didn’t. I learned at an early age that parents aren’t gods. They’re just human.

What did I know?

* * *

“Dad, the car’s on fire.”

Verily, childe, how did this come to pass?

“Dad! I’m in a rented tux and my date’s corsage is about to go up in flames. Would you please do something?”

* * *

On my thirteenth birthday, my mom took me to the local ice cream shop. A single scoop of Superman ice cream didn’t make up for all the years without cake or presents, but it was good enough for that day. Mom laughed as I raced to keep the ice cream from running onto my hand. The sun was out. The summer was hot. I remember hearing someone mention “Friday the 13th” by the screened, ordering window.

“Nathaniel? You know, I love you, right?” Mom said. She smiled. It wasn’t something that Mom did often. I think that’s why I remember it. She smiled. “No matter what, I love you.”

“Okay, Mom, geez.”

Later, I hung out in the vacant lot waiting for Joey to get out of summer school. We planned to build a fort, but we were still in the planning stages. It wasn’t like I could gather supplies or something while I was waiting. I kicked around a few rocks before I heard his voice.

My childe. Oh, my childe, the day has come. I bid you a hail and hearty day of your birth.

I ran all the way home. Don’t ask me why, but I wanted home and Mom and to hide under my bed. I covered my ears. It didn’t help.

I am your father. Fear not! I shall not harm ye.

Mom tried to coax me out. She promised cookies and TV dinners and whatever I wanted to watch, but the voice wouldn’t stop. It was deep. It rattled my skull like a gong. I started crying and didn’t stop until the voice noticed.

‘Tis far too much for ye wee mind, childe. Rest. Your mother will explain. Interrogate the woman that bore ye.

* * *

“I don’t know, Dad. I have no idea who set the car on fire.”

Were you not in the motorized vehicle?

“Yes, I was, but I was talking to Maggie.”

The wench was the distraction. We should smite the conspirator!

“She was nearly burned to death. I don’t think so.”

The automobile’s operator?

“According to the EMT, fried right up.”

Many a soul wishes to keep me in Hell. You have many enemies, my son.

“What else is new?”

* * *

Six weeks. Six weeks of my Dad yapping on like he does, about our destiny and how we would do great things together. We would conquer the world and set it right, blah, blah, blah. My mom thought I had hit my emo phase because I did nothing but blare her Smiths’ albums as loud as I could. Don’t ask me why The Smiths drowned him out, but Metallica, Manilow, and Mozart didn’t work. Weird, but whatever.

After six weeks, I asked Mom about my Dad. She made this face that I will never forget. It was like she smelled dog shit on top of baby puke wrapped in moldy newspaper. I don’t know if it was the memory of him or something else. Whether she knew about me or not was impossible to tell. She turned off the TV. She sat next to me on the couch and told me about my father.

He picked her up when she was in Reno, dealing black jack. She was eighteen, but lied about her age across the board to get work. She said he looked normal: nice eyes, regular hair, not too skinny, and not too stout. She remembered he was funny. While he kept losing, he made the funniest comments. She said she just laughed and laughed – until the pit boss told her to go on break.

He asked her out for a drink. The next night was dinner. She said, “One thing led to another, and he spent the night. I don’t know why he didn’t try anything before that night, because he was so nice that I would’ve done him after drinks.”

These are things a son should never know about his mother. Anyway, after that night, she never saw him again. About a month later, she started to worry. Sure enough, pregnant with no way to reach him. So, she had me and moved back with her Mom and Dad for a while. That didn’t last long. Grandpa the alcoholic never let her live it down – his slut of a daughter. She figured it would be better on the streets with me than in that environment. It didn’t happen. She worked whatever she could get to keep a roof over our heads.

I asked her if Dad was weird, if he showed signs of hearing voices or anything. She said, “No. He was funny and nice, not the sort of thing she ran across every day.”

“So, there was nothing wrong with him. Did he ask you anything weird or wear anything weird?”

“No,” she scowled until a thought crossed her mind. Her face lit up. “Yeah. On the second round of betting, he asked what denomination I was – what my faith was.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I’m an atheist.”

All Short Stories by Mary Lewys is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

From my Theatre and Communications Bachelor of Arts degree from my alma mater (where you can find embarrassing pictures of me hanging on the walls of its theatre still), I learned a few things that stuck with me over the years:

1. I am not actress. When pressed into a part because some director is desperate, I am adequate at best. If it’s a good part, I enjoy the work, but I find greater joy backstage. In fact, I loved designing and hanging lights.
2. I never wanted to even attempt at doing theater for a living. It’s a hard, hard life. A former roommate is an actor in NYC and I think him a god (and the best actor I ever met).
3. Group art is hard; very, very, very hard. The director has to convey his vision not only to his actors (and telling them outright does not guarantee the desired performance), but to the set designer, costume designer, props master, etc., etc., while still allowing them to be creative artists in their own right. Imagine herding cats and then imagine herding cats each into their own little tunnel and having the cat come out the other side. Everyone wants their input. Balancing to create something wonderful is a whole lot harder than anyone can imagine (that hasn’t tried to do it).
4. I learned the importance of catharsis, which is one of the main reasons Theatre and all its bastard children have survived as an art form for so long.

From the ancient Greek (that I am not going to look up and try to go in depth in explanation), catharsis means “purification” or “cleansing” (or something close to that). In relationship to Theatre, it refers to that emotional climax that causes overwhelming feelings, whether it’s joy, sorrow, pity, laughter, etc., in the audience after witnessing a performance. These overwhelming feelings baptize the audience in sensations of renewal and revitalization. I believe these renewed and restored emotions come with the presence of mind in the audience member that they did not actually have to live through to experience. They share it with the characters on the stage. You know, that “boy, I’m glad it didn’t really happen to me” feeling of relief that comes after having just missed that train wreck while driving your car. Certainly, you sympathize with those who were caught in the train wreck and hope he/she survives (provided you have a soul and are not a sociopath), but you are glad it didn’t happen to you.

Theater provides that without anyone actually getting hurt by a train.

While I do not believe the Greeks were the first to commercially market theatre, I do believe they were one of the first to document it. I like the idea that they not only had coliseums built to hold large audiences for performances, but smaller ones sprinkled throughout the city (as seen in Rome). Rich and poor alike could see performances, experience catharsis together and then break off into their own socio-economic groups to talk about it. Of course, I love the idea that the town crier’s messages had corporate sponsorship (e.g., commercials), as seen in Rome.

However, theater has become more and more invasive into our lives. We have televisions in our home, on our cell phones, and on our music players. We have hundreds of channels running thousands of stories (real and make-believe) twenty-four hours a day. Youtube.com and Hulu.com offer access to thousands of television shows and movies any time we want. Somewhere in that rush of technology and our love of theater (and don’t get me started on this side rant I have saved up in my head about what people really worship), the audience has lost the Catharsis. Whereas in earlier times, Mr. Audience Member would attend a performance of a two hour play and then spend the rest of his week dealing with his real life (e.g., the goats need tending or Aunt Martha is coughing up blood or Little Mary has gone missing or the Cooper’s barn burned down and we need to help them build another or Uncle Frank absconded with the family fortune and the downstairs maid), today’s Mr. Audience Member spends eight hours (maybe more, maybe less) at the job and then spends three to four hours in front of the television, phone, computer, etc. in stories. And if we want to be honest, Mr. Audience Member probably watches movies or television at work on the computer.

Some people with more time on their hands spend more times in stories than living real life. There is no break from the constant emotional climax with the stressful, grounding real life drama of “what’s this lump that sprung up over night?” Some people live their lives through stories which open a whole realm of problems. Stories end in neat packages that tend to follow story-telling rules and always reach an ending. As far as I can tell so far with my life, Life is rarely as such. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of Life’s problems could be resolved in the thirty minutes time limit allotted for sit-coms (and as funny? Even the worst sit-com would whip the shit out of real life problems)?

All that I just wrote sprang forth from my mouth after I finished watching the five episodes of this season’s Torchwood. I rambled on and on and on to my poor, poor, Hubby while we put fresh sheets on the bed, put laundry away, and readied ourselves for nightly slumber (and yes, I can hear what you’re thinking: he’s a saint. I agree). If you haven’t seen the episodes, please stop reading now. I mean it. I will talk about details of the show that will spoil it for you – and I highly recommend watching it without being spoiled. It is worth it.

Read more…

But at the end of the day, debate the story all I may want, I am grateful for the catharsis. I am cleansed. I was able to walk down some roads that I hope to never walk down (oh, and I already know that most elected officials are total douche bags).

Now go. Spread the message of catharsis. Enlighten your fellow man.