Treading water in the town where dreams go to die

I’ve mentioned before, my nephew Andy is in the Marines. He ships out to Afghanistan in the next couple weeks, so we had what I called a Deployment Party for him in his hometown of Tucson, Arizona last weekend.

I took The Boy, but all three of us going would have been even more prohibitively expensive than just the two of us going. Plus I’ve been promising The Missus some Alone Time for herself for a while now.

Naturally, The Boy went over gangbusters with everyone back home. He was very outgoing and fun and funny and he didn’t have single “accident” the whole trip. Or as I call them at this point, Accidents-My-Ass.



Funny aside: I walked into the living room this morning to find The Boy on The Missus’ lap and her scowling at me. “He seems to think ‘crap’ is a perfectly acceptable word to say. He said it to me three times just now.”

 What could I say? I told her, “Saying ‘crap’ scratches the Naughty itch for him without doing any real harm.” And he doesn’t connote it with feces or use it as a verb. It’s simply a funny word that gets adults’ attention. If I can help channel his baser Fang-inherited instincts down benign paths, I’m gonna do it, even if society frowns. What has society ever done for me!



Anyhow, back in Tucson, my friend and homeopath The Best Man drove down from Phoenix, charmed the family then gave me acupuncture, a (rough, manly) massage and a typically brutal, unrelenting intake.



Oh, and I slept great both nights because I’ve gotten used to sleeping in reclining chairs since the last time I was there (my back is all fucked-up as I’ve detailed in other posts), and my Mom’s new La-Z-Boy is a beaut. And The Boy slept the night through, too. Last time at my Mom’s he really resisted sleeping alone in the huge king-sized bed in the spare bedroom. This time I spent about fifteen minutes the first night removing my Mom’s bric-a-brac (piece by piece, at his direction) before he declared the room no longer scary, then all was cool.



The Deployment Bash was held at the rented apartment complex clubhouse of my nephew’s young bride, weight room and pool access included.



A nine-year-old skinny blonde girl clutching a bathing suit came with her hard luck-looking Dad and latched onto The Boy immediately. I heard her ask when she arrived, “Are there any other kids here?” I thought, “Yeah, but you’re going to be disappointed.” I mean, The Boy is only four, and he was it as far as other kids in attendance.



But they hit it off great in spite of the age difference, and before long, The Boy was begging me to let him go swimming in the clubhouse pool with his new friend. Except he can’t actually swim and I didn’t bring anything to wear into the pool. But of course I relented and took off my socks and shoes and rolled up my jeans to my knees and sat with my feet in the water on the steps. The Boy stripped down to his skivvies, he’s completely comfortable...

On the plane ride in, he had to empty his bladder so we went to the loo in the front of the aircraft. When he was done, with his pants and underpants still down around his ankles, he opened the door of the cramped compartment and stepped into the galley of the 737, facing the aisle while I struggled with the toilet flusher. I scooped him up and pulled him back into the bathroom and got his drawers up, but we were celebrities after that.



Back to the pool... They went into the water, The Boy tentatively, she confidently, and before I knew it, she had him hanging on for dear life in the 4-foot end, over his head in every sense. She repeatedly assured me that “if he drowns, I’ll save him.”



And he showed more guts with her in the pool than he ever did with me all last summer. Whatever crazy thing she wanted to do, he was up for. Even after she deposited him short of the steps early on and he sank like a rock until I leapt into the pool and pulled him up, spitting out pool water and gasping for breath. A minute later, he was letting himself be pulled back into the deep end, trying more new stuff.

Afterwards, he explained to me, “Boys can’t teach me to swim. Only girls can.” He was quite adamant on the point and returned to the subject frequently for a while. The community pool here on Christmas Island opens again in less than a month. I think this may be the year he learns to actually swim. If, of course, we can find the right girls to instruct him.

I’m so glad I brought The Boy. It might easily have become a mordant affair without him. Andy’s shipping out to do a job with one of the highest casualty rates in the Marines because of IEDs.



His Mom is distraught and all the bleeding-hearts in the family blame ourselves for not giving the kid any better options. He didn’t join up out of some long-standing patriotic drive or in the wake of 9/11. He signed up to get the hell out of Tucson, the way kids all over the country sign up to get the fuck out of the dead-end lives they’re staring at in their own failing home towns.

They’re going overseas to fight to preserve the style of life practiced in the home towns they were willing to risk their own lives to escape. And the hell of it is, the best-case scenario finds him residing with his wife back in Tucson when his term of enlistment is scheduled to be up.

When we said goodbye Sunday, what I wanted to say was, “Come back in one piece, I still remember changing your diapers motherfucker.” Instead, I gave him the only word of advice I could think of to offer: Don’t do anything John Wayne wouldn’t do.

But really, if you could, please come back in one piece.