Back from the Midwest

“My mom misses me, she has missed me for the ten years since I came to New York. She doesn’t understand my life. Neither do I. So I can’t help her much.”
- Charlie Huston, Caught Stealing

I’m home.

Or, more to the point, I’m back in New York City. Got a big pile of snail mail to sort through as well as about 45 emails that need my attention. To those of you that sent your condolences regarding my grandmother I give you my sincerest thanks.

Christ on a cracker, traveling can be rough! The trip home yesterday took about 16 hours! Left Pittsburg, KS at about 9am for a five hour drive north to Omaha. Sat on the runway for over an hour ‘cause a storm was blowing through Chicago. Flew to O’Hare. Sat in O’Hare for about 4 hours before making my final flight back to NYC. Developed a big ole’ blood blister on the back of my left leg from all of the prolonged, cramped sitting.

A Penny Saved…

Went back to work at the restaurant first thing this morning. Found out the owner is on vacation and that everybody’s paychecks from last week bounced. Doesn’t particularly bode well, does it? Matter of fact, allow me to share a text message I just received from one of my co-workers:

“Just checked my bank account. Two checks were removed. I’m now negative $200. I will cut that whore’s tongue out I swear.”

Don’t worry, folks. My fellow employee managed to calm down, as can be noted in the follow up text message:

“Made that deposit last Monday do don’t expect this week’s checks to clear. I will steal everything that is not nailed down.”

And people thought I was a little over-the-top with my completely fabricated blog post about breaking the legs of a boy that, completely by coincidence and entirely without forethought on my part, might just resemble the owner’s son.

Return of the Prodigal

I don’t really think of myself as a Prodigal Son. I mean, I’ve never really asked my parents for much help. (With the extra super-duper large exception of crying for my daddy to come take care of me when I got out of the hospital last year and couldn’t take care of myself. I also hit him up for money, to my great shame, and have every intention of re-paying the debt in full. Might take a little while. See above.) But I still don’t think I’m very prodigal. I love my family very much and I know that they return this love ten fold. And by and large I’ve never really gone all that long without some form of contact. Yet, I was still referred to as “The Prodigal” by not just a couple of relatives while I was down for the funeral. Maybe it’s because my brother Jeremy really stepped up this past year while my grandparents lived with my folks. And there is a misconception that I have a special place in my parent’s hearts because I took off for New York without a pot to piss in when I was a young and stupid man. At least I’m not young anymore.

It was great seeing all of my extended family. It’s a shame that it takes something like a death to get us all together. I spoke to several of my cousins, reminiscing about the summers of our youth when all the various children and grandchildren would assemble at my grandparent’s lake house in Oklahoma, and they all expressed interest in trying to get together when a wedding or funeral was not the Main Event. That sure would be nice.

The Main Event

The funeral, by all accounts, was a very nice one.

We all met up at the funeral home on Friday night for a Rosary service. I haven’t said a Rosary in almost twenty years, but I think being Catholic is like riding a bike. You just don’t forget that stuff. My mother correctly assumed that I didn’t actually own a chaplet (Rosary beads for you pagans out there) and brought some up that a woman in her parish makes by hand. It’s made with knotted blue and gold thread and is hyper cool. Madonna aside, you’re not really supposed to wear Rosary beads as a necklace. But I’m wearing this one. It just feels like I’m supposed to right now. And my friend Yvette thinks it suits me very well. Admittedly, Yvette’s a Jew. But she is also a fashion designer and has styled a music video for me, so I trust her completely in sartorial matters. Though my wearing of this is entirely a matter of Faith and not Fashion, it’s nice that it looks cool as well.

After we prayed the Rosary, we all milled about and caught up with long unseen relatives. It was great talking to my cousins Robby and Cassie and Sissy and Josh and Uncle Mike and Uncle Glen and Aunt Verla and I’m gonna stop trying to list the relatives now because I am very likely related to everyone in the entire Midwest. We Catholics are breeders.

My cousin Josh, my Aunt Carolyn and I crashed at my Great Uncle Leo’s house that night. This is the first time I ever spent any significant time with one of my Grandfather’s siblings (he had eleven of them. Seven are still up and kicking.) Leo is one funny old man. He kept talking about the wild time we’d have in his “bachelor pad”. His wife passed a few years back. I told him we’d turn the place into Animal House. My Aunt Carolyn then commented quite casually that she would make a quick trip to Wal-Mart to pick up a baseball bat. “Not to beat you with it, just to make sure I have your attention.” Leo then said to help ourselves to anything we liked, but he was gonna bill me for any water we used. Like I said – funny guy.

Me and Josh set our alarms for 7am so we could get up and make a Starbucks run before we had to get ready for the funeral service. Pittsburg, KS is pretty podunk, but it’s a college town so it does possess a few of life’s necessities.

At 8:12 I get a text message from Jeremy:

“I have something I would like you to read at the service”

I told him to meet us at Starbucks and I’d read what he wrote and make a decision. I was asked to speak at my Grandmother’s funeral. Grandpa wanted all of his grandsons to serve as pallbearers and wanted his granddaughters to do the readings during the service. They were doing a full Mass. I’m much too lazy to explain the workings of a full Catholic Mass. Just know that there are biblical readings peppering the event and Grandpa wanted the girls to do them. Mom had asked me to also step up and read a version of my last blog post.

I felt I really needed to make some alterations to the actual post to make it fit for Church consumption (Mom agreed. She specifically requested that I remove the ‘f-bombs’.) I was kinda stressed out by this. I mean, of course after all these years as a performer I have no qualms about public speaking. But I do wonder about how appropriate the crap that comes out of my mouth is for a religious service. I mentally wrote and re-wrote what I was gonna say. I added a couple of jokes (I actually began with one about my grandma and a Mexican biker gang) and was terrified I would go over like the turd in the proverbial punch bowl.

So J brought me the pages he had been up all night writing. It was very touching and personal and very wrong for me to read. Especially after my fairly light hearted speech about Grandma. I told him he should read it himself. He said he’d prefer that I read it on his behalf. I told him I’d think about it.

We got cleaned up and headed to the church. I told Mom that J had written something for Grandma and he wanted me to read it. I expressed my reservations on the matter. We reached a compromise: I would speak and then invite Jeremy up to read. I would remain standing behind him and if he felt he couldn’t continue I would step in and finish for him.

The priest went to go fetch the readings for the girls and asked what I would be reading. I told him I was going to just speak. I hadn’t written anything down. The priest got a very worried look on his face.

The hearse arrived and me and my brothers, Chuck, Jeremy and John, as well as my cousins, Josh, Jim and Rob went out to carry in the coffin. I’d never done this before. But I guess the guys at the funeral home know that most people haven’t so they were really great about telling us exactly what to do and when to do it. Dad was doing all the music for the service and we carried in the coffin as he played (Ave Maria?)

The priest then began the service and my cousins did an excellent job with their readings. After Communion the priest nodded at me and I genuflected and went up to the podium. It was pretty awesome. Not in the surfer way, but in the sense that I was pretty awed. Looking out on the half-filled church (this church is pretty damn big) and knowing that I was related to every single person in there. And they were all waiting to hear what I had to say about their beloved Helen. Suddenly my Mexican biker joke seemed wildly inappropriate. But I hadn’t prepared anything else and, shit, I was always pretty good at making grandma laugh so fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke:

“I’ll be honest – I’m not really sure what I’m gonna say. It’s hard to know what to say at a time like this. I figured Mom just wanted me to get up here and trot out that old, boring story that everyone has heard a thousand times about the time me and Grandma hot-wired that sports car and went down to Tijuana and got into a fistfight with that gang of Mexican bikers. And then I thought she probably doesn’t want me to tell that story. Mainly because it isn’t true.”

Everybody laughed. Sometimes you forget that your sick and twisted sense of humor had to come from somewhere. And I was in a room full of people that shared my DNA. It was pretty easy to speak from there on out. Kinda wished I woulda wrote it down. It’d be nice to remember exactly everything I talked about.

I finished and invited Jeremy up to join me. He took the lectern and… well, he was a bit overcome with emotion. Mom came up and gave him a hug. I took his papers and read his speech on his behalf. It was extremely sweet and touching. When I finished everyone clapped. I can’t remember hearing people clap during a service before. I hope J knows that they were clapping for his beautiful words and not for the knucklehead reading them.

After the service we made the procession to the cemetery. I was honestly moved. As all of the cars followed the hearse I noticed that all of the cars in the oncoming lane of traffic pulled over to the side of the road and stopped, waiting for us all to pass. Showing respect for our grief and our dead. I was touched and reminded once again how hard New York is making me. There are still places where people honor and respect total strangers because it is the right thing to do.

“I look at New York. I don’t want to be here anymore, in this city. I’m just tired of it, I’m tired of my life here. I want to go home, and I’m not sure how to do that.”
-Charlie Huston, Caught Stealing

If I get around to it, I’ll definitely share my final night on the town in Pittsburg with all my cousins. Loquesto was out in full effect and from what the beer fog allows me to remember, a good time was had by all.

Remembering,

Kyle