trailer raze her father wants to unload his trailer. it's this junky old red thing he keeps docked at a campground two hours from home. she buys it for next to nothing. he buys a new trailer and sets it down a few spots over from the trailer that's hers now, that's ours. this will be our vacation spot. we'll come here every year. ... i love watching my stepfather build a fire. the way he arranges the wood. the way he uses wadded-up newspaper as tinder. the way the tinder ignites the kindling. how that ignites the fuel wood and sets the whole thing ablaze. how a leaf loses its shape and becomes something i don't recognize when i throw it in the fire. i wonder where things go when they've finished burning. i wonder if a leaf has a soul. it has to. we roast marshmallows on wire hangers. i learn how to set my marshmallow on fire and blow it out right before it starts to turn black so it'll cook just the way i want it to and melt in my mouth. when it's too early for fire, i feed the chipmunks. i throw them unshelled peanuts. they keep getting closer until they decide they trust me enough to jump on my lap, taking food straight from my fingers. i want to carry them around with me everywhere i go. sometimes we walk down to the beach. i dig into the sand with my blue plastic shovel, far enough from the waves that they can't find me, but close enough to see where the water starts if i dig deep enough. i ride my bike for hours, following the path that winds through the campground, losing myself in the music i hear in my head, singing along to songs no one will ever hear, songs that belong to my childhood, songs i'm losing even as i'm living inside of them. here's one. ... i wake up alone in the trailer. i'm seven. i run from the darkness i know into a deeper darkness i don't know. i hear "africa" by toto playing on a boombox somewhere far away. i follow the music. i find my mother and stepfather sitting around someone else's bonfire. by the time i get to them i'm crying. they laugh at me. for the rest of my life, that song will carry something with it that isn't really there. ... my stepfather has one of the early camcorders. it's this enormous black thing that uses vhs tapes. he films me and my sister playing with floppy foam rubber swords. i give her a light tap on the top of her head. my mother and stepfather spend twenty minutes berating me, telling me i could have killed her. my sister stands there holding her yellow sword, wondering how she could die from something she couldn't even feel. all of this is on tape. ... i lie in my bunk bed at night, feeling the pattern of the mattress mark itself on the memory of my skin, listening to linda rondstadt and jennifer warnes sing their spotlit moments on "somewhere out there" and "up where we belong". i conflate their voices and what i can imagine of their faces, making them the same person in my mind. someone i can fall in love with through the radio waves. someone who can hurt me and heal me and fill me up with sadness and wonder. i want to sleep in their arms forever and die a hundred times. ... the bathrooms and showers are in a building that stands in the middle of the path. i always think of that path as a street made of stones. there's no hot water and almost no water pressure. i come out of the shower shivering no matter how hot it is outside. i could wear my sandals, but i don't. i want to feel the stones stab the soles of my feet. i want to carry that pain with me so i can remember where i've been. ... my stepfather comes back from filling the van with gas. he's got a pile of comic books. "tales from the crypt" and "haunt of fear" reprints. sixty-four pages of vintage comic horror. i don't know if he read these growing up or if he just knows i like the spooky stuff and felt like doing something nice for me. i read these comics so much it's a wonder they don't turn to dust. i love them, but they don't scare me. what scares me is a "punisher" comic he buys from the same gas station. there's a scene where a terrorist cuts off a beautiful woman's long blonde hair. the look on her face shakes me up more than any of the death and gore in those horror comics. it makes me want to scream. ... there's an ice cream stand just before you get to the beach. i always get black cherry in a cone. it tastes like everything i want to keep with me. some of the other trailers have bug zappers. i watch the tiny storms they make at night. sparse lightning without thunder. there are things the adults drink that i'm not allowed to taste. i get close enough to smell them sometimes. they smell like mouthwash. cough medicine. things i wouldn't want to drink anyway. i like the drinks that are different colours. they make me think of things the sky hasn't figured out how to do yet. in the morning i scoop sugar onto my rice krispies and let them sing to me. ... "those kids look about your age," my mother says. "you should go over there and talk to them." she's standing at the front door, looking at a group of boys and girls standing in the middle of the path in front of our trailer. "what would i even say to them?" i ask her. "i don't know. just be yourself. just be_normal." those two things cancel each other out. she knows that. i put on my shoes and jacket and head out. i decide not to be_normal. i decide to be myself. i give them my elvis presley impression, my bill clinton, my bob_dylan. i let them hear voices that don't belong to anyone but me. they laugh. they think i'm a riot. there are five of them. two guys and three girls. eric is short and skinny. he has a mushroom cut. aaron is chubby, full of confidence, covered in sandy brown hair. vanessa has straight brown hair that almost looks purple. ashley has curly blonde hair. they both wear clothes that show off what their bodies are starting to learn about themselves. lindsey is different. she has dark hair and dark eyes. she wears loose-fitting clothes that don't show anyone anything. her eyes and lips have seen and said things i can only dream about. none of their parents are ever around. the six of us hang out inside this sort of gazebo near the playground. it's just a grey cement floor in the middle of a bunch of grass with a gable roof and no walls. someone brings a radio, and i watch the guys and girls dance and make out with one another, practicing things they can bring to their boyfriends and girlfriends back home, hoping they won't think to ask where they picked up the new moves. no one dances with me. no one touches me. "so," i think. "these are my new friends." ... eric's mother has a friend who's an old drunk with an accent i can't place. he looks at eric and slurs, "you want to know how to get a girl? grab her by the legs." ... ashley's parents' trailer is like a house. it's huge. everyone's excited because we're going to watch something we're not supposed to see. someone got their hands on a pamela anderson softcore flick. it's called "naked souls". ashley rubs eric's dick through his pants. he looks like he's falling asleep. vanessa and aaron kiss. i watch pamela anderson writhe on top of some guy in slow motion and wonder if this is what real sex is like. i hope like hell it doesn't come with this cheesy soundtrack built in. i'm not supposed to tell anyone what i saw. i'm supposed to say it was some dumb action movie. but when my mother and stepfather ask me what movie we watched, i know they'll know if i'm lying. and that'll be worse than telling the truth. so i just tell them. ... lindsey's sitting on a couch. eric and aaron are taking turns kissing her. deep, long, slow kisses. i don't know anything about any of this, but it looks like she knows what she's doing. "do you want to kiss me?" she asks me. "as tempting as that is," i say, "i think i'd rather wait until i'm with someone where it means something to both of us." her face does something i've never seen it do before. "i really respect that," she says. ... we're at the playground. aaron is talking shit about lindsey. she doesn't know what he's saying, but she knows i'm close enough to hear. "what did he just say?" she asks me. i tell her. she punches him in the shoulder. hard. she thanks me and holds out her hand. i give her a real handshake instead of a dead fish. "ow," she says. ... he just shows up at our trailer one night. he's about ten years older than me. no one knows where he came from or who his parents are. he says his name is neil. i think he has some mild form of autism. he's friendly and smart, but he's tuned in to a frequency the rest of us don't hear. he talks about how much he loves to go salmon fishing. his arms and legs are covered with what used to be mosquito bites. he's scratched them so much they're all open wounds oozing blood. "let me put some bug spray on you," my mother says. "oh no, that's okay," neil says. "i like scratching the bites and watching them take flight." she looks at him like he's just said something in a language she doesn't understand. it's the same way she looks at me whenever i say anything. ... i bring my acoustic guitar with me up to the trailer. it's the first guitar i've ever owned. it's a cheap piece of shit, but it's my cheap piece of shit. "can i try your guitar?" neil asks. "i'm an excellent guitarist." "sure you can," i say. i hand it over. he breaks a string before he can play a note. ... my sister has figured out how to do neil's voice. she's so good it's a little bit scary. no eight-year-old should be able to do what she's doing right now. she's nailed his cadence, his inflections ... everything. first she talks about salmon fishing. then "doesn't really matter" by janet jackson comes on the radio and she starts singing along as neil. she knows all the words. i laugh until i cry. ... this great-looking guy with blonde hair shouts something at me when i'm heading to the bathroom. "pardon me?" i say. "happy may two-four, brother!" he says. i don't know what that means, but i say, "happy may two-four to you too." we shake hands. he gives it all he's got. later, we sit around the fire. me and the guys and the girls on one side, this new guy and his girlfriend on the other. he's telling us stories about the stuff he does to get her off when they're in bed. aaron and eric are giggling. i just listen and nod. "you know what i'm talking about," the guy says. "you're my age, right?" "i'm fourteen," i say. "fourteen? are you fucking kidding me?" "nope." "i'm twenty-four! i shouldn't be telling you this shit!" he stops talking to me. i'm not his may two-four buddy anymore. aaron and eric tell me they can't believe i'm the same age they are. they thought i was older too. ... they're calling this kid fuck_off. he's got a name, but they've taken it away from him. he's high on e. every time he says something, it's, "go home, fuck_off," or, "shut up, fuck_off." aaron says, "you should climb that tree, fuck_off. you should climb up real fuckin' high and jump. i bet you can fly. go ahead. show me how good you can fly. do it." fuck_off starts to cry. "why are you guys so mean to me?" aaron says, "fuck off, fuck_off." but he can't. he doesn't have anywhere else to go. ... there are two steves. the first steve is aaron's dad. he's tall. he has a moustache and a shaved head. he stands on the porch of his trailer and sings along to "i still haven't found what i'm looking for". "i have come back from fishing i have caught the biggest trout only to be with you only to be with you" the other steve is nobody's father. he has dark hair and a full beard and a body like an oak barrel. he thinks he knows everything. he likes to sit around his fire pit and talk all night. he only ever listens to three albums. "led zeppelin iv", "fly like an eagle", and a compilation by the guess who that follows a bluesy acoustic demo of "american woman" with the better-known version. he talks about what a tragedy it would have been if that song had been lost. he thinks "american woman" is the pinnacle of recorded music. he tells a funny story about a whip-poor-will. he passes around a plate of wings he made. they're so spicy they burn the inside of my mouth. they're delicious. another night he passes around some fish he cooked up in beer and salt. i've never tasted fish like this. when my stepfather catches perch or pickerel, he doesn't even bread it. we just squirt vinegar on it and call it a meal. steve tells his stories and talks about the food he's made while his wife sits beside him and smiles. she's the most beautiful woman in the world. i want her to fix that smile on me and listen to my stories that aren't about how i think i know everything, that are about things that matter. i want to learn how to cook so i can feed her meals that make her close her eyes and moan. my stepfather says, "how many albums can you fit in that case of yours?" "thirty," i tell him. he looks at steve, smiling, letting him know this is going to be good, and he says, "you know how much this kid likes bruce springsteen? it's ridiculous. he can bring thirty albums with him up here, right? and half the case is full of springsteen albums. he's got ... ten bruce springsteen tapes." this is a guy who swears he was such a math genius in high school his teacher used his tests to mark the rest of the class. and he can't even divide thirty by two. "cds," i tell him. "they're cds. not tapes." "so you know about music, huh?" steve says. "oh yeah," my stepfather says. "he'd forget his head if it wasn't attached, but this kid is like a sponge when it comes to music." "okay," steve says, trying to burn two holes in the middle of my head with his eyes. "if you're so smart, when did the beatles form? huh? tell me that, big shot." "they were called the quarrymen first," i say. "but in 1960 they started calling themselves the beatles. so technically that's when it all got started." he grins at me. "ennnnnhhhhh! wrong! the first beatles album came out in 1962!" "no. the first full-length beatles album came out in 1963. and they were already the beatles before that, when pete best and stuart sutcliffe were in the band and they were playing shows in hamburg. you asked me when they formed. not when they first put an album out." "bullshit! that doesn't count! the beatles aren't the beatles without ringo starr!" he convinces himself he's right when he knows he's wrong. ... it's tough to get more than a few radio stations up here. most of the time it's casey kasem counting down the hits or some other top forty station. all the songs sound like they were recorded in the same studio. it doesn't matter if it's edwin mccain or eagle-eye cherry. all that compression sucks the air out of everything. but then there's this song i don't know. it's from the 1980s. the drums give it away. there's no snare. it's all kick and tom, and the tom sounds fake, but it's probably real. it was probably just recorded in a way that makes it sound like a synthesizer. someone snorted too much coke and put the microphones in all the wrong places, and this is what came out. something in the melody grabs me. the dj doesn't tell me who this is, so i try to commit the words to memory. "too long ago too long apart she couldn't wait another day for the captain of her heart" i think maybe it's abc. i buy a greatest hits album. it isn't abc. i try to tell myself it's a bryan ferry or david sylvian deep cut, but i know better. the voice is all wrong. it takes me twenty years to find the song. it doesn't help that i'm remembering the words wrong. somehow i get it in my head that it's "king" instead of "captain". ... we get a new trailer. a bigger, fancier one. i get a new bed that doubles as a couch. every time i take my shirt off at night i smack my head on the ceiling. we have a bathroom in the trailer, but i'm not allowed to use it unless it's to wash my face or brush my teeth. an uncle who isn't really my uncle puts in satellite tv. any decent storm will knock out the signal, but most of the time it works okay. one time it's just the two of us and he finds one of the off-the-grid hardcore porn channels. he sits on it for a while. "oh," he says. "how about that?" yeah. how about that. ... i'm living with my dad now. i start bringing my own pillow from home, stuffing it in my suitcase on top of my clothes. i start playing my own music on the drive there and back, drowning out the sound of the radio with my headphones. i start sleeping outside in a tent some nights. one night i forget to close the fly sheet when i get up to take a leak. by the time i come back, there are almost twenty mosquitos inside the tent. i have to kill them all before i can sleep. they get me before i get them. every last one of them. ... burgers and hot dogs. burgers and hot dogs. so many burgers and hot dogs. ... my mother is talking to my sister. she says, "no one up here even likes you, you know. everyone thinks you're a brat." she hurts her more with words than she ever could with her fists, leaving a mark time won't take away. ... we're standing inside the gazebo, keeping watch while lindsey gives eric a blowjob in the bushes. i can't see or hear anything. just grass and darkness and a few crickets. he finishes. they come back. we walk. "that was good," eric says. "i love it when she keeps going after." lindsey doesn't say anything. she doesn't look at him. "it's john's turn next," eric says. "i'm all right," i say. i don't want this. i don't want it to be like this. i don't want to be here. ... they start smoking pot. i don't smoke with them. i've never been high before. if i had to go back to that trailer all fucked up, i would lose it. we drive around at night listening to eminem. i sing "blue moon" in a chipmunk voice. eric laughs so hard he almost falls over. we find a large wooded area not far from the campground. no one told us this was here. we spend a while exploring. then we sit down in the grass. everyone wants me to do elvis and bill and bob. i feel like a wind-up toy. they get tired of hanging out with me. they leave. they won't let me follow them. "just turn right and keep going straight," aaron says. "it's easy." they disappear. turning right and going straight doesn't take me anywhere. there are no landmarks. i see trees and grass and dirt. that's it. i'm fifteen minutes from the campground. it takes me two hours to find my way back. ... there are two girls up here for the weekend. they're from the states. they both have short hair. "the brunette is so hot," eric tells me. "she looks like natalie imbruglia, doesn't she? but she says she has a boyfriend. she won't do anything. that blonde one isn't as cute, but at least she's up for fooling around." the blonde one goes into a tent with aaron. no one sees them for the rest of the night. i talk a little with the one who looks like natalie imbruglia. she's nice. the next day i'm talking to my dad on the payphone outside of the front office when she walks by and gives me the best smile i've ever seen. "hi john," she says. i wave and say hi back. i can't believe she knows my name. ... my mother has the alcohol tolerance of a goldfish. one drink and she's bombed. it doesn't even have to be anything strong. a wine cooler will do the job just fine. she has a drink and starts slow dancing with the dog on the front deck, singing a chubby checker song in a gravelly voice. "let's twist again like we did last summer let's twist again like we did last year" the dog looks at her like it wants to say, "who the fuck are you?" ... i buy a wood carving of a siamese cat from grand bend. i don't trust the way it smiles at me. that's why i like it. ... my grandmother on my mother's side comes up with her second husband. they get the master bedroom, which is really just the one proper bed in the trailer with a thin sliding door for privacy. there's this awful snoring coming from in there. we all assume it's the husband. it isn't. it's her. my stepfather unlocks the van so i can grab some cds. i put on my headphones and listen to david_bowie singing "a small plot of land" and "the motel" and try to drown out the arrhythmic drumming coming from around the corner. she sleeps like a stone. so does her husband. he's legally deaf. the rest of us don't sleep at all. i'm sitting outside on a lawn chair the next day. my sister wants me to take her to the playground. i tell her i'm too tired. she ​hits me in the side of the head with one of the handlebars on her bike to wake me up. i press my fingers against my temple to try and stop the pain. "oh, don't be a baby," my mother says. "go play with your sister." i'm supposed to be here for two weeks. i tap out after one. my grandmother drives me home. "you really hurt your mother, leaving early like this," she says. good. ... jacklyn doesn't like my long hair. "you look stupid," she says. "and i don't know why you wear those bandanas. you look horrible." i grew up thinking she was my cousin. i always thought it was strange when my mother talked about what a great couple we would make when we got older. but she isn't my cousin. she's just the daughter of a woman my mother works with. she isn't the only one who doesn't like my hair. my mother does the math. long hair. no girlfriend. "are you queer?" she asks me. "no," i say. "i like girls. they just don't seem to like me." "you better not be queer." my stepfather says, "if you're a fairy, i'll teach you how to fly." he adds that one to the rotation. sometimes he switches it up and says, "if you're a faggot, i'll break your fucking fingers." he means it. we're supposed to go on a cruise. they start telling me if i don't cut my hair they'll take someone else with them instead of me. my mother tells me she's going to cut my hair while i'm sleeping. i have this dream. i wake up and my hair is still long, but it's got all these chunks missing. i walk through a series of rooms with mirrors in them. in each room i stare at my reflection and scream. jacklyn's dad hears the way my mother and stepfather talk to me. he pulls me aside when we're at the beach. "it's like a gun, right?" he says. "you keep giving them ammunition. just take away the bullets." he doesn't understand. it doesn't work that way. take away the bullets and they'll beat me to death with the butt of the gun. ... i bring two small dumbbells with me up to the trailer. they're beige and filled with sand. i want to get stronger. "i don't want this shit on my carpet," my mother says. she throws them onto one of the cement patio stones that lead to the fire pit. one breaks. the other one doesn't. ... there's a group of people sitting outside and drinking somewhere on the other side of the path. we can't see them, but we can hear them. some guy thinks he's an opera singer. he keeps wailing and making his friends laugh. he's not half bad, but aaron and eric have had enough of it. "fuck this," eric says. "make it a sing-off. you can take this guy, john. you can kick his ass." "yeah," aaron says. "kick his ass!" i start singing opera back at him. we take turns. then i stop messing around. i sing the longest, loudest, hardest note i've ever pulled out of my guts. i keep singing until i've got nothing left. "holy shit!" eric says. "shut the fuck up!" the other guy screams from across the path. he doesn't sing again for the rest of the night. ... there's a girl who's a little older. aaron and eric are in love with her, but she's got a boyfriend. he's drunk. he thinks i'd be fun to pick on. the fire has it in for me tonight. it doesn't matter where i move. the smoke keeps coming for my eyes. "jesus christ," i say. "there's a trick to that," the boyfriend says. "you want the smoke to leave you alone, you just gotta say one thing." "yeah? what's that?" "say, 'i wanna suck big dick.'" "that's all right. i'll live with it." "no, say it right now. say, 'i wanna suck big dick.'" his girlfriend tells him to leave me alone. he doesn't. he keeps trying to bully me into humiliating myself. he won't let it go. i get up and walk away. "hey!" eric says. "where are you going?" "i'm going home to suck big dick," i say, loud enough for everyone to hear. back at the trailer my mother and stepfather are watching "end of days". ... it's my birthday. there's a cake. "sweet sixteen and never been kissed," my mother keeps saying. a taunt. an incantation. she buys me track pants i'll never wear. ... the best days are when i'm by myself for a while. i can write songs. i can read. i can listen to satellite radio on the tv and hear neil young sing "down by the river" for the first time. i can tell myself i'm someone else. i'm somewhere else. i'm not here. ... there's a band playing in the gazebo. a group of middle-aged guys who have been doing this forever. they're good. they're really good. they play all these great songs from the 1960s and '70s. they sing perfect three-part harmonies. the drummer has one of those electronic kits with a snare that has more crack to it than i'd like to hear on "december, 1963 (oh, what a night)", but he nails frankie valli's vocal part. he has long grey hair and a body that tells me he's spent his whole life running. he doesn't have a drum throne. he stands. when the band plays "help me, rhonda", my stepfather smiles. he becomes the child he was when he first heard this song. he shouts, "get her out of my heart," at the end of every chorus, and i feel something i've never felt for him before and won't ever feel again swelling up inside of me. something like love. ... we're here during the off season. we're almost the only people on the campground. ashley and lindsey are here too. "go be a social butterfly," my mother says. "you can have the chickie-poos all to yourself." i don't leave the trailer. just to spite her. ... everyone else is awake, but i'm pretending i'm still asleep. i lie in my tent and listen to stevie nicks sing "landslide" on the radio, hoping a hurricane will come and take this tent with my body still in it and drop us into the ocean, bruised and broken and free. ... my sister is screaming. her face is stained with tears. in my headphones i hear: "hey jude don't make it bad take a sad song and make it better" the van pulls into the driveway. the tires choke on crushed gravel. we're home. 210903 ... tender square this painful narrative is rendered with such clarity and beauty it took my breath away, j; my younger self wants to go back in time so that i could’ve been there to hug you in all of those bewildering moments. 210905 ... raze (i think if you'd been there and done that my young heart would have exploded. but that's really kind of you to say. childhood is such a strange country to live in, isn't it? sometimes i'm amazed we all found our way out of it somehow.) 210905 ... unhinged . calculus class senior year in a trailer on the grass right outside the school. i always felt like i was breaking the rules when i went outside for the five seconds it took to go from the main building to the trailer. i didn't learn anything new in that class until after winter break because my math teacher the year before was a beast. i sat behind this tall nerdy but punky trombone player who had big hands with long fingers. i had a huge crush on him from the year before when he cut his hair in this crazy swiss cheese mowhawk with a bunch of gelled stiff spikes sticking up from his head at all angles. he did not give a fuck and welcomed the taunting jeers from the farmers and the jocks. i wrote an essay about his hair the year before because we were in the same language arts class that year. in the calculus trailer, my brain refused to comprehend why the graphs of equations that supposedly approached infinity looked like a halved parabola, the left side flipped down and the right side flipped up. he was the only one that asked intelligent questions in that class. eventually my adolescent brain would give up on trying to understand why and would move to daydreams of those hands all over my body. eventually the class clown would say something that pissed my teacher off enough that his irrigation would bring my imagination back to earth and i would blush at the fact that i was having vaguely sexual daydreams during calculus about the boy sitting in front of me who i had a mad crush on. i ran back to the main building after class, away from the confusing graphs and confusing desires. 'gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do' 210905 ... nr i'd never read this page before, but it struck me. it's a really visceral and provocative coming-of-age narrative and i can picture the setting clearly. in my mind, the trailer grounds look somewhat like my grandparents' old trailer area and somewhat like a campsite we went to in israel. it probably looked like neither, but the images in my brain are vivid. my bubby (mother's mother) snored like a mofo in the trailer too. also "the other steve is nobody's father" needs to be a title for something. 220421 ... nr there wasn't enough room for us all in there, so some of us slept in a large tent. my parents slept in one side of it, and two of us three kids would sleep in the other. there was a divider. we kept a space heater on because it got cold at night, and then woke up early because the sun was hot with the dawn. that, plus my dad hissing "stop it with the insane nose-blowing!" one night when my brother and i had allergies, is all i really remember about the tent. 220421 what's it to you? who go blather from