sense_memory raze they would go out for lunch when he was a teenager. he would order something. his father would tell the waitress to bring him two of whatever he wanted. he would say he didn't want two of anything. they would go back_and_forth. bring him two. i don't want two. bring him two. stop it, dad. the waitress would write the order down, cross it out, write it down, cross it out, and write it down again. she would side with the father and bring the son a second meal he didn't want and couldn't eat even if he did want it. his father would eat his own meal. then he would eat his son's second meal in front of him. the two of them drove to nova scotia to see his brother. brian was in the navy. he was ten years older. he was on shore leave. it took them twenty hours to get there. they met brian in a restaurant. brian said when he was on the boat he wore his underwear for a week, turned them inside_out and wore them like that for another week, and then he threw them overboard so the sea could have them. their father laughed. it was a high-pitched cackle that cut through everything. "stop it, dad," brian said. "people are looking at us." he stopped laughing. he looked at brian. he laughed again. louder. longer. brian got up and walked out. he didn't come back. it was just the two of them again. they drove back to windsor. twenty hours. his father took him to plays and concerts and wrestling matches he didn't want to see. if there was music, he would sing loud enough for everyone to hear. if the play was a comedy, he would laugh his awful laugh. sometimes he would watch his father put on a jazz record in his apartment and smoke a cigar and stand there letting the thick smoke curl around his face. his eyes somewhere else. his mind a mystery even to him. raised by maids. swollen with music and poetry he couldn't give voice to. a child adrift in the body of a man. he hated jazz. he hated it because it made him think of his father. he couldn't separate one thing from the other. when his father was in a nursing home and he wasn't going to be around much longer, he met up with brian and they cleaned out his apartment. there was shit smeared all over the walls. there was some kind of crocheted poster that said, "dirty old men need love too." there were filthy jazz records and dirty czech magazines. there was a beat-up old suitcase full of pictures and writing. pieces of a life no one understood. he grabbed the suitcase and put the albums he thought his son might like in a cardboard box. he listened to a stan kenton cd on the drive home. he could smell the stink of his father's cigars. he could hear him laughing. he could see his face. he didn't make it through the first song. 210928 what's it to you? who go blather from