Mickey And Delia (5) About an hour later Delia called and shortly came over to pick Mickey up. “You’re seeing a lot of each other,” his mother commented dryly. They saw the movie "Alfie" in Orinda. It put kind of a chill on their relationship, being a strong adult movie about abortion and men exploiting women for sex. “There’s a lot of dissatisfied people out there, you don’t want to be like that, do you?” asked Delia. “Nope,” answered Mickey. They were so in shock from the movie that they hardly talked and barely kissed when they parted. Saturday 11-05-1966 “Why are your sheets so crusty?” asked his mother. “Your brothers are crusty too but not as crusty as yours. Maybe you should wash them. When is the last time you washed those green jeans you always wear?” Mickey knew his sheets were crusty from masturbation and was embarrassed that his mother would mention it. He examined his self-image and put some clean pants on. His hair was getting unfashionably long. His parents would insist that he cut it soon and he planned how to get out of a haircut. That Saturday evening Mickey was sitting on the bed in his room, staring at the window. The family was watching some stupid television program that he had no interest in. He wanted to leave the house but he would have to walk past everyone to go outside. He looked at the window, which had a screen in it. He got up and opened the window all the way and studied the screen, only two small clips held it in. He pulled on the clips and the screen came right out. Mickey looked at it for a few seconds and then put the screen in the closet. He climbed out the window and stepped down onto the lawn, carefully stepping over the narrow flowerbed so that he would not leave footprints or step on a plant and slid the window shut behind him but not so far that it would lock. He walked out onto the street unseen. All the neighbors were either gone or in their houses. Without seeing another person he walked down the steep hill on the sidewalk. He hated the hill, it got very tiring to walk up and down and it made him feel isolated as if he were alone on an island. When he was a child in El Sobrante he and his friends had called this hill both Bread Loaf Mountain and Banana Mountain. It was easily seen from the road he had been raised on and had been used as a landmark since it blocked the view of San Pablo Bay and Mare Island. It had appeared too steep to be developed. Mickey had really resented it when one year tractors had crawled to the top of the mountain and cut its top off and then houses had been built on it. He thought it was a sacrilege of nature. It just looked like developers would pave and sell any bit of nature they could get a legal right to make a profit on. At about that same time his childhood friend Jay had moved away forever. It had marked the end of his childhood before puberty and Mickey never thought when he was thirteen years old that he would be living on top of the old childhood landmark. One day he had come home from school and the old house in El Sobrante was empty of furniture and no one was home. His parents had moved the household and he did not know where they were, he had never been told where the new house was. The feeling of abandonment had made him cry. Outside in the dark Mickey crossed the old four lane San Pablo Highway that ran through Pinole. He walked down the dirt road past the auto wrecking yard smelling of grease and oil and crossed the single line of railroad track. He walked out into the field behind the miniature golf course. He walked up the slope along the dirt paths running to San Pablo Bay that he had driven over with his father’s motorcycle during the summer. When he reached the top of the slope a half moon rose over the horizon. Mickey felt energized, he felt a sudden burst of adrenaline. The music from the outdoor speakers of the miniature golf course was blaring annoyingly. He felt like he was walking around in front of a giant radio playing Wooly Bully. He had not been allowed to listen to the radio too much by his parents even though his mother always listened to talk radio, so it was nice to hear the music even though he preferred the English groups like the Kinks, the Zombies or the Beatles. The half moon began to be eclipsed as Mickey watched in wonder. He could see the lights of houses to the east, west and south of him. The dark bay was to his north. He was the only person in the field away from the city lights. Was he the only person watching the eclipse? It almost seemed so. The others were inside their houses watching television, too absorbed in the electronic media to notice the natural world around them. When the eclipse was over Mickey began to walk back home. The radio station from the miniature golf course was playing 96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians. It sounded so clear to Mickey that he could hardly believe it. It was like walking in music, it surrounded him like the atmosphere, the volume unchanging as he walked along. The moon, the eclipse, the darkness of the field, the lights in the distance, he was alone yet he was surrounded by music, reality could be surrealistic. Sunday 11-06-1966 Mickey called Delia on the phone early in the afternoon. She seemed pleased that he had called her and he invited himself over to her house to ‘talk’ because she seemed down and subdued on the phone. He walked over to her house. She was wearing black pants and a heavy white blouse and greeted him formally at the front door on the porch. She warned him that she was being watched and she had to be careful about what she said. They sat in the living room and talked stiffly about religion and some of the gurus of the east. Delia mentioned that there was an East Indian theory that there were twenty-six other worlds on top of this one. They talked of the philosophy of Alan Watts while her mother sat in the kitchen the whole time drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Delia explained that great religious men would take steps in their minds to get closer to nirvana. “Spiritual insight is gained in levels climbed one step at a time,” she stated. “When you attain one level of consciousness you begin to see the next step.” Delia at a loss for anything to do asked her mother if she could show Mickey her and Ginn’s bedroom and her mother agreed. Ginn had some records that Mickey admired, Donovan, The Animals, The Rolling Stones and some blues artists. Delia said that Ginn was studying blues artists and wrote term papers on them. Delia showed him Ginn’s little marijuana plant on the windowsill. Their mother had no idea what it was but was glad her daughter was taking an interest in gardening. Mickey began thinking that Delia was a pent up intellectual and Ginn was a free spirit. He wondered what he resembled to Delia. “Come out of the bedroom you’ve been in there to long,” Delia’s mother called and Delia rolled her eyes to the ceiling. They went back into the kitchen and, with the encouragement of Delia’s mother, had a wine spritzer something that Mickey had never drunk before. Delia seemed to Mickey to be quiet and repressed, withdrawn and even sad. She asked her mother if they could go talk in the backyard. Her mother glared resolutely from her old looking eyes and balked but Delia started to make a scene. “I am not asking for much, you can watch from the window,” Delia was angry enough to stamp her foot and her mother relented, surprised at this behavior. In the yard Delia seemed at a loss over what to do with Mickey. She showed him her and Ginn’s old girl bikes with balloon tires, as if they were lost relics from a different age, children’s toys from a happier time with no further use. Mickey guessed that she had gotten into trouble for taking him out too much. She said it was kind of difficult living with ‘them’ because they expected too much from her sometimes. They walked to the farthest corner of the yard. There was a small clear area surrounded by a terrace, it made a sort of amphitheater. She stole a quick kiss, he could feel the repressed passion quivering in her lips like energy. “I don’t want to stop kissing you but ‘they’ might be watching,” she said disgustedly. “What’s going on?” he asked a little cynically like he could not believe this childish game between her and her parents. “I don’t know, I make one little mistake and they feel like they have to watch me like a hawk like I’m simple minded or something and don’t know what I’m doing. Meanwhile Ginn gets away with everything and they don’t even notice.” “Like what?” Mickey was beginning to become curious about Ginn’s private life. “Maybe I will tell you sometime. Do you want to try something that I learned in psychology class at the junior college?” she asked him, changing the subject. “You’re going to college? I thought you were a senior in high school.” “I’m taking some special psychology classes at San Pablo Junior College and the teacher is my tutor. I told you the teachers love me. They are teaching me to be a self-activating person, one who takes steps toward their own betterment. You learn a lot in psychology. We learned that what we dislike in others are those things that we dislike in ourselves." Mickey pondered that. "Do you want to try this exercise?” she asked it as if she was talking to a patient. “Ok,” Mickey answered hesitantly, thinking he could handle any situation. He could always stop if he did not want to do something. “This is called psychological confrontation. I’ll ask you a question and you try and answer it truthfully,” she said flatly as if talking to a condemned man. “I’ll try it, I guess…” “You’re at an age where it might do you some good. You’re young enough to change. Ok, we will start now,” she paused. “Do you have any problems?” “No, not really, just the usual school and stuff, you know.” “Well, what’s your problem then?” “Do you think I have a problem?” Mickey could not really think of his problems in the abstract at the moment. “What’s your problem?” “Someone keeps asking me if I have a problem,” Mickey answered trying to be amusing. She looked frustrated, confused and stymied by his response. “Oh, all right,” Mickey sighed. “My problem is that I don’t know what to do.” She looked relieved and continued with resolution, “What is blocking you from going to the next step? What’s your problem?” “I don’t know what I want, I don’t like school, I have no reason to go there.” “What’s your problem?” Mickey said emotionally, “I can’t find any interest in anything. I’m taking different classes for college prep but the only thing that really interests me is drama.” “Well then, what’s your problem?” “I don’t feel like I’m learning anything. I don’t have a major. The world is passing me by and there are things happening and I want to be out there doing them.” Mickey was pensive. “What’s your problem?” “How long does this go on?” he asked angrily. “Tell me what your problem is.” “I can’t go out into the world, my parents won’t let me. I’m too young to get a job, I don’t know what to do. I can’t do what I want to do and I don’t want to do what I am supposed to do.” Mickey was beginning to feel desperate. “What’s your problem?” “It goes back to my family, my parents, how they raised us kids without any direction to grow into. I can’t think of anywhere I would want to work. I have nothing to focus on.” Mickey’s voice was quavering from this realization. “Maybe we should stop.” “No, it’s just getting good, go on,” he urged her. “What is your problem,” she asked nervously. “It’s my father,” Mickey blurted out. “We don’t get along, he doesn’t like me or want me and I don’t know what to do.” He cried a little at this revelation. She started to hold him but suddenly it was as if all the energy left his body. He slumped down to the ground and lay looking up at the sky. It felt as if he had fallen into a deep black pit. He could almost see the high black walls around his mind. It was as if he had tunnel vision and was looking down a long dark pipe. He got up and felt strange. “I feel like I am in a hole that’s twenty feet deep,” he said shakily to her but she did not understand. Delia was concerned and frightened, “Maybe I pushed you to far,” she said timidly as if sounding afraid that she had broken her new toy. He went home confused. The feeling of being in a dark pit persisted through out the night and next few days at school. He could almost see the round wall of a well around him. He thought of it as the long dark night of his soul. Wednesday 11-09-1966 Out on the lawn Mickey saw Linda walk hand in hand with Don. He felt devastated, ‘Why did it have to be Don?’ he seethed to himself she looked so beautiful with her hair cut short. ‘Would she take me back if she is going out with that loser?’ Suddenly Ginn pointed her finger at Mickey, "Catch a dummy," she yelled at him sounding very amused with herself. Friday 11-11-1966 That evening Mickey and Delia went to see the movies Zorba the Greek and Never on Sunday. The stoning of the village woman for a sexual transgression in Zorba depressed them. Melina Merocuri as the happy prostitute in Never on Sunday, where everyone went to the beach if anything went wrong, impressed Delia with her resilience to sadness. On the way back home Delia told Mickey that her mother had been watching them in the backyard and did not understand why he had fallen down but for the moment her parents were giving up on watching her because she was approaching eighteen and they were starting to crack down on Ginn for going out too often and she had to get rid of her plant on the windowsill because their mother had become suspicious. “And I owe it all to you,” she said gleefully. “They thought I would never have a boy friend again.” When they parted she kissed him gratefully
Copyright © 2007 Michael Potter |