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There’s no crying in the Garage

March 20, 2017 · by Oliver Gray

The screwdriver slips from its slotted perch. My knuckles rasp against the mangled folds of an old radiator.

As drops of fresh, red blood well up on my skin, so do the tears in my eyes.

He towers up, and looks down at me as I cradle the wrist of my injured hand, stifling sniffles as well as an eight-year-old can.

“There’s no crying in the garage,” he says.

For my entire life, I regarded my dad’s behavior as a form of classical machismo. He wasn’t being overly harsh, or reinforcing contemporary gender stereotypes about “strong men,” but instead passing on to me the toughness he’d accrued from years of amateur rugby and slinging wrenches on engines in the cold of England evenings. Hardening through experience, to face the challenges of life.

Weakness held no sway around him. I’d flex my fledgling biceps in a show of pre-pubescent power and he’d laugh, quipping, “when I was your age, I had more muscles in my spit.”

I never got angry, or bitter, or resentful, because he practiced what he preached. Rarely did I see my dad wince at physical pain. He never hinted at psychological stress or fatigue. I never saw him cry.

I swallow the pain and wrap my knuckles in an old, oil stained cloth. He comforts me in an utilitarian way, and tells me to wash my hand and go find a band-aid. There’s expectation in his voice, an implication that I will return to work and not let so little a thing beat me. I nod, and wipe away the few salty drops that managed to migrate down my cheeks.

Even when his mother died, I didn’t see him cry. Maybe he did, behind closed doors, but in front of us, he remained forest pond placid. I envied him, then, wishing to be so in control of my emotions that the worst of the world’s worries simply rolled off like water on glass.

My daughter cries. Hard. Her tiny little lungs muster more than enough air to send her vocals chords into a fury of complaint. She has no other way to communicate, and I can’t blame her, but the sound tears through me. It startles me awake mid-REM. It eats at my heart. Her every outburst feels like a failure as a parent.

The layout of our house, as functional and open-concept as it is, means her cries echo and rebound, filling every corner with anguished bellowing. If she’s upstairs, the cries cascade down. If she’s in the living room, the sound reverberates off counter and coffer. It’s impossible to escape the sound of my irrational questioning of my ability to parent.

Except in the garage.

When the heavy door swings shut, I can’t hear her crying. When I pop into the garage to take out the trash, or grab a beer, or snag a screwdriver, I get a tiny respite from my nagging doubt. If I can’t hear the cries, she’s OK, and I’m doing things right. In that moment, as I cross the threshold, I go from father to son again, existing as two spirits in one space.

I remember him, there, and think of her, here.

But there’s no crying in the garage.

IMG_20170305_200326

 

Dreams of a Dad

March 6, 2017 · by Oliver Gray

I startle awake to the sound of a grunt and a meek cry. I drape my arm over the side of the bed to look at the time on my phone, hoping to block as much light as possible from the display. My head aches.

2:13 AM

Lately, I dream of my dad. He’s particularly annoyed with the car parts I’ve bought. Not a single night passes where he isn’t scolding or explaining; imparting, in his own way, how he would have done it, which is invariably not the way I did, in fact, do it.

While the dreams play out in a vividness as potent as waking reality, he almost never speaks. All our communication is nonverbal; grimaces, smiles, shrugs, winks. He’ll often walk some distance in front of me, leading, but rarely looking back.

But last night, he spoke. As he passed an hunk of metal under a spinning wire brush, cutting through 50 years of road grime, he said, “I bet you don’t even know what this is.”

He held it down to my face, so I could inspect it. I realized I was a kid again, standing behind the master as his ever-learning apprentice. The old dirt had given way to brilliant silvery surface below. Pretty, but pocked with years of neglect.

“It’s a brake caliper,” I said.

He smiled. An acknowledgement. I handed it back, so he could return it to its original luster. In that moment, I was as tall as him.

I wake again, this time to a more perturbed sigh and snort. I play the bed-phone-light game again, but this time accidentally flood the room with blue light. The bassinet next to me shifts and fidgets with the hungry wiggles of a newborn.

3:36 AM

Her mom is busy studying her role as Sisyphus, rock replaced by breast and pump. I go downstairs to grab a bottle. The cats barely stir as the fridge turns kitchen night into kitchen day.

In the dreams, we also rarely touch. He wasn’t one for hugs or physical affection in life, either, so perhaps it makes sense. If we do connect, it’s through some medium; my hand on a ratchet as I place it into his waiting, open palm.

But last night, he touched my shoulder. Standing behind me, in a flip of usual place, he reassured me as I torqued down the bolts on a cylinder head. A summer breeze swept through the garage. For the first time in a long time, the tone was not one of lecture, but one of acceptance.

She sucks greedily from the fake nipple. Her little blue eyes flash at me in the dim light, so bright, so wonderful, so overflowing with curiosity. I take the bottle away for a burp, and she screams, but then settles.

Normally, she doesn’t speak, but this morning, she coos and goos a chorus of baby questions.

Normally, she doesn’t touch me, but this morning, her tiny little hands wrap my fingers with a vice grip.

She may never meet her grandpa here, but part of me knows she’s already met him there.

She snuggles into my shoulder a little, drunk on milk and midnight dark.

A Father’s Day Bone Marrow Donation Guide

June 12, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

Six scars dot the spot on my hips just above my butt, three on either side. Six natural tattoos that align like a constellation made flesh, remnants of fallen stars turned permanent scars.

Truth be told they’re fading, the angry aubergine blotches of 3 years ago now lavender and calm. But I still know they’re there, popping out against the pale of my sun-starved skin every time I look in the mirror, constantly reminding me of when I did battle with cancer on behalf of someone else.

The process hurt; it was a literal pain in my ass. The lead up to the marrow donation wasn’t exactly a lazy garden party either; friendly but stabby phlebotomists would harvest fresh red cells from my arms weekly, testing them for diseases and genetic markers that sounded more like Sanskrit than science. For several months, in the artificial brightness of the Johns Hopkins Weinberg Cancer Center, I’d sit and wait for my name to be called, staving off the sadness of being surrounded by people worn down to their last tatters and threads of hope.

Some wore masks; immune systems too weakened or compromised to chance a random infection. Some sported wheels or oxygen, as their bodies played host to an evil tug-o-war between cancer and chemo. All were there for one reason though, one solitary call to arms from family, friend, and fears:

To fight.

I donated bone marrow to my father not because of some righteous motivation, or some personal grab at attention, but because I saw how hard he was fighting, and wanted to fight alongside him. It only seemed right, to throw myself into the fray when the man who’d fought his whole life for me, needed reinforcement.

Unfortunately, the battle proved much for already weary bones, and my father is now feasting in the halls of Valhalla. But that’s not always the case. A family friend is celebrating her husband’s eighth (8th!) year in recovery, after undergoing a harrowing bone marrow transplant to combat his Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Even more impressive, the man who donated was a complete stranger, from the other side of the country, who physically gave part of himself to another out of purely altruistic love. I can’t help but smile when I see the pictures of Jean and Rob happy and healthy, and am proud that I tried to give my dad the same gift.

Father’s day often feels like a masquerade holiday, where we put collective masks over our patriarchs, pretend they’re stock jokes and knee socks, play a silly game of beer and barbecues and calendars of babes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; most dads love a little attention and at least a day to romp in their most baser joys.

But this father’s day, I urge you to think bigger than a new set of grill tools or ratcheting sockets. Consider giving a gift that transcends the material, that could mean the difference between hopelessness and an optimistic future.

How to Donate Bone Marrow

Blood cancer is one of the few types we can directly treat, and treat with a relatively high success rate. The process is a miracle of modern science: through balanced chemo they reduce the recipient’s immune system to nearly nothing, then introduce the healthy donor marrow. Over the next few months, the healthy marrow replicates and creates a new immune system inside the patient’s body, which eradicates cancer causing cells naturally. Even more incredibly, the recipient will have the same DNA as the donor!

Donating is simple.

  1. Educate yourself – BetheMatch.org overflows with information about donating. It covers the hows, whens, whats, and ifs related to the procedure. The major difficulty for most patients in need of a marrow transplant is finding a healthy match, so the more people that sign up to donate, the higher their chances will be. Have questions about meeting the recipient, who pays for what, and other ethical quagmires? Look no further.
  2. Know the risks – There are two ways to donate; one involves a simple blood/plasma draw, and has no real side effects. The other is a surgical procedure, like the one I described above. It is surgery, in a hospital, with gowns and beds and surgeons. You have to go under anesthesia, and you will have pain for up to a few weeks afterwards. But weigh that against giving someone a decade or more of life. Seems like a no-brainer.
  3. Know the rewards – If you happen to be a match, you’re already a statistical anomaly, so you should feel pretty special. It’s difficult to describe the psychological power of knowing you sacrificed a bit of yourself to save another, but don’t underestimate how good it can make you feel. Want to feel like you’ve made a difference in this world, validate your existence, and discover that you really matter? Save a life.
  4. Sign up for the registry – If you think you want to give someone this gift, you can sign up for the registry here. Remember that signing up doesn’t mean you will get picked, but it does enter your hematological information into the pool, which means you could  be a match for someone, someday. Signing up is pledging that if you are a match, you will donate. Matches are somewhat rare, so make sure you’re committed before you sign up.

This Father’s day, even if you do decide to give your dad some fun gifts, remember that there are thousands of other fathers out there who want nothing more than to stick around on this planet a bit longer. If you’re healthy and care about giving gifts that really matter, I can’t think of any better gift to give.

I’m also happy to answer any donation related questions in the comments below.

Do it, because, and I quote,

Forgotten Friday: The Ghost in the Machine

November 21, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

Clutch in, shift up. Clutch out, accelerator down. Knuckles white on black leather, beats keeping pace with revs. A tiger growls under metal cover, and gravity asserts its dominance.

Despite our advances in robotics and AI, I’ll always argue that a car is the closet we have come to creating life.  Loyal, dependable, but reliant on our attention and love, a car is a mechanized pet, an ever present comforting companion. I know not all people are “car people” but everyone who has ever really driven, felt their synapses fire along with every zing of the spark plugs, knows the power and freedom that comes from piloting what is in essence, a controlled explosion bolted to four pieces of rubber.

My Friday nights in high school weren’t typical; when others were roaring rallies at football games or bases-deep mid-movie make-out, I drove. Down narrow back roads lining the Potomac, too fast, too hard, eking every inch out of every corner, leaving my mark in streaks of black and rubbery squeals through quiet Maryland nights. Never did I feel as alive, as invincible, as physically vulnerable and on the edge of everything, than when I dropped into second and swung hard around a hairpin somewhere off of River Road.

I grew up with tales of street races, of my dad tearing through Knutsford and Sale in his Triumph Dolomite Sprint, of him jumping a bridge near his house and throwing a con-rod through the side of the engine he tuned and babied for months and months. The stories, sweet and sour, seemed like memories of loves lost; partly excitement at pushing the car and himself to their literal limits, partly melancholy remembrance of those who came and went before their time. It was hard to say where the line cut through my dad’s adoration. To him they were maintained machines; tools, steel, and oil. But they were also lubricated lust; romantic, beautiful, mobile art. A car was not conveyance. It was confidence and conviviality, courage and companionship.

He taught me everything I know about vehicles, showed me that nuts and bolts were bones and joints, pistons were heart valves, that exhaust was a voice and headlights eyes. He taught me the mechanical specifics – the how and why of car repair – but indirectly instilled in me a sense of awe in understanding (and as a result control over) a force much bigger and stronger than myself. I love cars because my dad loved them. I drive because my dad drove. Our genes are a gearbox.

I drove my previous car for ten years and one hundred and twenty three thousand miles. My dad helped me put the down payment on the ’04 Mini Cooper S, smiling proudly while also giving me the obligatory parental, “your payments better be on time” look. He’d been pleased that I’d taken to Minis; he’d rebuilt and driven two in 1970s England, a Mini Clubman, and a Mini van. It was officially my car, but my dad spoke to it too, and whenever he took that driver’s seat from me, I could feel it bowing to his authority, like a wild horse to a worthy rider.

I eventually had to sell it, though. Cars, much like people, don’t always age gracefully, and by the time my friend was pushing eleven, arthritis had claimed him suspension, and his skin, despite years of anti-aging treatments, betrayed the cracks and wrinkles of old age. I didn’t cry, but my chest definitely tightened as I signed his body away to the Carmax funeral home. I knew I couldn’t afford to keep him forever, but as I stood in that little office, reviewing my title, I had a momentary notion to run, slide into the seat, drive until neither of us had anything left. I wrapped my arms around the black and glass as best I could before the staff drove him back behind the building, frozen, for a second, by the idea that I had just given up this piece of my life that had been a constant for a decade.

It wasn’t the car itself. Sure, I loved the black and chrome, and the comfort of knowing every inch of the car perfectly, intimately. But that’s not what swirled the acid in my stomach, not what forced that tell-tale surge of regret.

It was the memories.

Taking my future wife to lunch the first day we met. My dad riding shotgun as we cruised to the beach. Nights of DC rush hour, weekends on open endless roads. Pushing 90 MPH in tears, the day I got the call. The hours and hours and miles and miles that separated 18 year old me from 28 year old me. The life in the clutch, in the shifter, in the leather seats, and rear view mirrors. The ghost of my passing life living in that machine.

I worried that I’d lose all that, the what that made my who.

But the ghost lives on, moved from one machine to the next. In the decadence of the new car smell I can feel the old car’s spirit; in the few hundred miles feel a hundred thousand memories. When I connect to the new car, I can feel my dad’s arm through mine on the wheel, see my wife in the seat next to me, revel in everything he taught me manifesting anew, for a whole new set of adventures fueled by those I left behind.

Clutch in, shift up. Clutch out, accelerator down. Knuckles white on black leather, beats keeping pace with revs. A ghost haunts the steel frame, and memory asserts its dominance.

newold

A Year Without

August 12, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

At this point in my life, given my hobbies and my heritage, I shouldn’t be surprised that a few barstools, beer taps, and feet of lacquered wood can stir my emotions to boil. But as I sipped on a pint of Boddingtons on the same stool that my dad might have sat on decades earlier, all the sediment on the bottom of my soul roiled into a turbid mess of love and sadness. That pint was like any of the other hundred pints I’ve had – twenty ounces of cask-pumped bitter – but it was somehow different, too, like a golden, cascading, liquid echo of every pint my dad had ever had; all the laughter he’d sent into the rafters; all the life he’d lived in Cheshire, in England; all of him that is now in me.

Today marks one year that I’ve been without my dad.

Fifteen odd miles south of Manchester, after a brief jaunt on the M56 and a serene wind through the arbor tunnels of Castle Mill and Mobberly roads, I found myself outside a cottage, all white and black, a pub-turned-piano playing its history across the countryside. The inn, like many others in small English towns, juts perilously into the edge of a sharp turn, like a hitchhiker sticking his thumb out a little too far to attract the attention of passing cars. A faux-gazebo has been tacked onto the front of the building and the main sign has been updated with more contemporary font and filigree, but it looks almost exactly as it did thirty years ago, when my dad used to come here for a pint of bitter, a game of darts, a bit of nightly spoil to counter the daily toil.

We’d arrived midday on a Tuesday, as the pub was changing staff due to a pending sale. The kitchen was closed and it seemed all the locals knew no lunch was to be had at the Chapel House that day, leaving the entire building to us and a flustered barkeep who didn’t know where the previous owners had stored the pint glasses. What would have normally been a bustling bar stood empty, a graven memorial instead of a monument to conviviality.

We have a societal obsession with anniversaries, as if the tangible measurement of one full orbit gives us power, validation, reassurance that we’re alive. A birthday isn’t just a time to remember your origins, but a time to celebrate your victory over another cycle. Many people said to me, and I even said to myself at times, “it hasn’t even been a year” like a roll-over of the calendar would somehow temper my feelings, reset the pain, wipe everything clean by cosmic, solar virtue.

So here’s a year – fully, finally – and nothing feels any different.

I’d never been inside until now, but I felt I knew this place from stories and family legends. Rarely named directly, the Chapel House Inn was the cradle of my dad’s rambunctious zeal, the place he came to life with his companions, became the overflowing fount of energy and fearlessness that I’d known him for my entire life. My dad’s essence had merged with the building, with the bar, with local lore. Stepping through that door, into the tiny front room of the pub, into a past that was mine in name only, felt like ghost-wrapped nostalgia, a physical body possessing a lingering spirit, not the usual other way around.

We rendezvoused with Rhona, the widow of my dad’s best friend and fellow Chapel House haunter. She still lived in Knutsford and knew the history well; seemed to know more about my dad and his adventures as a thirty-something than even me or my sister or my mom. She’d lost her husband, Ken, three years prior, and I wondered why my dad never mentioned the loss of so dear a friend, even one separated by years and careers and continents. She even brought a pile of 3×6 pictures of the six of us – toddler versions of me and my sister with four grinning young adults – little reminders that when Rhona knew my dad, he was almost exactly the same age I am now.

A year, when mourning, is an arbitrary designation that’s supposed to make people feel better after a loss, a token that proves you made it, didn’t collapse, didn’t give in to all the suffering and stress. One year, in theory, marks the last “hard” milestone, claims that nothing from here out is new and if you made it this far, you can make it indefinitely.

I longed for some meaning that I hadn’t found in the rest of his memory, hoped that being there, where I’d never been but my dad had, would stir in me some epiphany, some extra understanding of who he was, and why, beyond the obvious, his loss took so much from me. I wanted his favorite pub to bring equal parts resurrection and closure. I wanted to walk in and see him there, smirking and joking, here, not gone, alive, not dead, my father, not a ghost.

And in some ways, I did. Time, when forced into years, seems linear, unbreakable, unrelentingly progressive. The way we approach life makes it seem like what has been taken away can never be given back, if only because so many years separate then from now. But if you take a moment to let your memories swirl and blend with the memories long-stored in a special place, let all the prosaic blandness of an empty bar whir to life with all you know, and remember, and love about a person, you can, if only briefly, meld the present with the past, be here and there simultaneously, see the one you love raise a glass from across the bar, and wink.

It’s been a year without, but only in a physical sense. This year has been filled with more of my dad than any year in recent history. His memory permeates my every day; his influence guides my every decision. We say “without” after a loss because that’s what makes rational sense. Emotionally, the first year after you lose someone, when you’re forced to face and digest the echo of their life, would be more aptly named a year “within.”

We didn’t stay long, just a few minutes to breathe in the family history and relatively unchanged charm. The soul-sore part of me wanted to relish that pint for hours, sit and try to commune with my father using the built-in Ouija board of musty chair cushions and sagging wood, but it didn’t feel right. My dad was a creature of habit, but never one to dwell. A pint of bitter, a pinch of time, and a punch of emotion was all he would have wanted. And all I could have needed.

Today marks one year that I’ve been without my dad, if I really believe he ever left me.

chapelhouse

To live in hearts we leave behind, is not to die

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Chapel House

Lucky 2.0

March 17, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

 A year ago today, I posted the original version of this story. I, and it, have since gone through many things together: publication at Outside In, thesis revision, several glasses of Jameson, several bottles of amber ale, achievement, loss, grief, recuperation. It’s been a hell of a three sixty five. 

I’m re-sharing this in part to show how important close editing is to the health of a story and a writer, but also just because I like it and it’s thematically appropriate.

Lucky

When he finally mustered enough courage, he looked up. He stood near the doorway of the old building, taking a moment to remember it. The dirty, butt-stained sidewalk that hosted dozens of drunk denizens who smoked in the Boston air, the flower boxes that sheltered and nurtured his mother’s favorite purple butterworts, the green and red knot work sign that proudly cast the name “Flaherty’s” over the tiny side street, all now burnt and hollowed out, everything ruined by smoke and flame and the power of unattended random chance.

If he hadn’t been late that morning, if he hadn’t been so slow to rise with head fogged by one too many late night whiskeys, if he hadn’t needed drink after drink to quiet his guilty conscience, James thought, maybe, just maybe when the piles of overdue bills in the unkempt kitchen caught those fledgling flames from that gas oven that should have long been replaced, he might have stopped it; not had to watch his father’s dream, an Irish life reborn and infused with Americanism, billow and ascend, smoke colored black by all that carbon and shame.

He imagined his father standing next to him, ginger hair turning grey at the temples. He’d looked almost like a fox in those last few years, still wily in spite of, and now svelte because of the cancer. Not that James had actually seen him outside of the pictures he’d found on the internet; he wasn’t even in the same zip code when that grizzled pater familias left the party early, lymphoma on his arm. He’d gotten the news from his second-cousin, late one night in a craythur haze, that the family name was now his alone. Still, Sean Flaherty hovered there unable to speak, but in his head, James could hear the vitriol his father would be slinging if he’d seen the fate of the bar he’d tended for near forty years.

The claims adjuster was late. James kicked at some fallen wood near the door, careful not to venture too far inside the shell of the building, worried that it was still in the middle of its death throes, still capable of collapsing any minute. The morning air gusted, picked up the scent of charred memories, kegs and coat racks and day-old beer. Inside the doorway he could feel the warmth still radiating off of the remains of the tall tables and long bar, all the stored energy seeping out of the wood like it was bleeding.

James lost focus at the sound of a car clumsily hopping up the curb while trying to park. A fat man, maybe twenty-nine, thirty, struggled to lift himself out of the driver’s seat. His pants were an inch or two too short, his tie a hideous spotted yellow, and his receding hair line barely visible in the stubble of his buzzed blonde hair. James could smell his Old Spice, old school, from five yards away. “James? James Flaggerty?”

“Flair-tee.” The mispronunciation of his name, his father’s name, at this moment, in this place, felt like dirty fingers in a fresh wound.

They stood outside the husk, peering into the darkness just beyond where the door had been. “Oh, sorry.” The adjuster turned to his papers, shuffled them to find a specific line on a legal-sized form, and then looked up. “Oh man. You’re lucky this fire didn’t jump to these neighboring buildings. That would have been an insurance nightmare.”

James kicked a beam of wood that had come loose from the siding and fallen onto the pavement, uncovering a half-burned coaster. A tiny shamrock, the only Irish cliché besides Guinness that his father perpetuated, was still clearly green and alive on the bottom corner of the cardboard. James did not smile. “Heh. Lucky.”

That night it felt wrong to sit in another bar, drink, even kind of enjoy himself. But the whiskey burned nice and the ice melted slow, and red ale chaser was just as his father would have liked: malty, crisp, sneaking hints of hops that lingered on his tongue. It was from his father he learned to drink, so it was to his father he drank the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

Each drink washed away another sin. In the first glass of single-malt he apologized for storming out so rashly, back in those eighteen-year-old days when he thought he knew everything and his father knew nothing. In the second, he cursed his father for leaving the pub to him, making him come back to this place fifteen years later against his better sense of pride. In the third, he found the courage to keep back the tears that had been welling since the police had informed him of the incident, the damage, the loss. In the fourth, he laughed, and ordered a fifth.

James didn’t stumble home, his careening so practiced that it was just one long graceful fall from bar stool to pillow. The whiskey normally stifled his dreams, but tonight they flared and seared, father and fire and failure all whirling together in an inferno of nightmarish scenes. He woke up, head pounding, throat dry, vomit lurching in his stomach, to remember both his father and the bar were, in the waking tangible sunlight of reality, gone.

His phone buzzed. He looked at the clock: 10:49. For a moment, he thought about letting his head sink back down into the pillow. The number was familiar, but not one that he’d stored in his phone. He waited for the third buzz, sighed, and answered.

“Mr. Flaggerty?”

The already horrible headache intensified. “Flair-tee. What can I do for you?”

The adjuster sounded even more nasal over the phone. “I just got the report from the fire marshal. I’ve got the final coverage numbers, but the inspector found something I think you should see.”

The pub looked less dejected now that the fire had completely gone out of her. Most of the debris that had fallen loose had been cleared from the entrance and the street. She looked scarred and damaged but somehow respectable, like she refused to give up so easily.

“Mr. Flag…Flair-tee. Thanks for showing up at such short notice. Most of the worst of the mess has been cleaned up, so if you’ll just step inside for a moment, I’ll show you what I was referencing earlier.”  The adjuster did his best to move gracefully through the rubble, trying to avoid getting his ill-fitting khakis stained by any soot. They passed the slumping, massive piece of oak that had been the bar; two patina-pocked tap stems, standing proud, the only things that seemed relatively undamaged by the fire.

Near a large hole between some broken floorboards at the back of the pub stood a walrus of a man, a man whose stature and uniform said authority but whose huge white mustache and kind eyes said grandpa. He looked at James then back down at the hole. “Did you know this room was here?”

Confused, knowing the back of the bar as only a place of refuge from the commotion of the patrons and the trajectory of drunkenly tossed darts, James didn’t know what the man was talking about. He inched closer, pushing past the combined girth of both inspectors, peering down between the broken floor boards. Boxes, clunky filing cabinets, three rows of large wooden shelves, and what looked like several beer casks lolling about in the dusty shadows.

“I’m going to try to climb down there.” The fire marshal huffed and recommended otherwise. Ignoring the man, who probably wouldn’t fit through the hole, James threw his legs over the edge, found his footing on the old wooden framing, and slowly lowered himself into the room below.

James used the screen of his phone as an impromptu flash light, shining it over the oak barrels with iron bands that rested on their ends, unmoving, like a dozen enormously fat men wearing belts too small. The blue light bounced through the surprisingly cavernous space, and the stone walls, all mildew and damp, radiated with eerie fluorescence. Three thin metal pipes came from the walls; forgotten hand-pull tap lines that at some point, years ago, had been connected to the casks that lined the rows of wooden racks.

Against the far wall, dozens of clear glass necks poked out of wooden crates in rows of six, columns of four. He grabbed a bottle and brushed away the dust and the ashes that had fallen from above. Eyes wide, trying to make out the text in the dark, he read the labels on the bottles. Tullamore, Bushmills, Midleton; ninety, ninety-three, a hundred and one years old, some even more ancient. All intact. Perfect, pristine. An army of golden soldiers in glass armor. He held an unspoiled fortune in his hands, felt the weight of years of Irish tradition, salivating over the idea of how much he could charge for even a shot of a vintage this rare.

The digital light made the place seem unnaturally cold, like a ghost had sapped the heat from the air. He imagine a specter of his Grandfather, hiding from the prohibition-crazed police, storing all his precious homeland still-runnings down here, beneath sealed floors, until they weren’t at risk of being poured out on the street as a warning to other bootleggers.  He shivered to think even his father didn’t know of this treasure trove, and that he may be the first living Flaherty to stand in this room in nearly half a century.

James moved to the filing cabinet. Years of rust and dust had seized the runners, but with a little force and a lot of curiosity, he slid the middle drawer open. He thumbed through the yellowing paper, tilting the phone to get a better look at the faded writing on each page. The first folder housed records, names and bills and income for years well before James was alive. The second folder was empty, except for an antique wooden-handled bottle opener. The third, packed nearly to the point of bursting, fell from his hands as he lifted it from the cabinet and spilled all over the floor.

At the sound of this, the fire marshal called to him, shining his flashlight down to see if James was injured. This beam of light caught the papers on the floor just long enough for James to read the titles: Flaherty’s Oatmeal Stout, Flaherty’s Pale Ale, Flaherty’s Irish Red Ale. Next to each recipe was a hand drawn green shamrock, perfect mimicry of the one his father so insistently included on anything associated with the bar.

The claims adjuster’s head appeared, upside down, from the hole above. “Are you okay? Looks pretty messy down here. You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.”

James smiled, picking through the rest of papers that had spilled from the ancient brewer’s book, and thought for a second, he felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder. “Yea. Lucky.”

“My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.”  - James Joyce

“My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.” – James Joyce

Hey, Chief – An Essay for, about, and to my Father

December 16, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I wrote this essay as a way to try to stay afloat in the bitter maelstrom of emotions I’ve been drowning in since losing my father. I’m honored that Tin House would consider it high enough quality for their site.

Without further pomp:

Hey, Chief | Tin House 

BG-Essay-by-Oliver-Gray

Forgotten Friday: Surname

December 13, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Our names hover around us, a jumbled aura made of letters, arbitrary labels that give buckets of context about who we are before anyone even sees our face. Those few syllables can betray our sex, our nationality, our spirituality, even somtimes our rough socioeconomic standing. They’re the vanguards of identity, the first thing you ever give to a new friend, the last thing that marks your time on this planet.

Those omnastically inclined few may have done their research, know the countries of origin or the historical minutiae that led to their naming, but I’d be willing to bet a large majority don’t know much about their own last names. A few have it easy: the Coopers and Smiths and Millers can thank the strong and capable hands of their ancestors for their vocationally inspired names. The Johnsons and Jacksons and Thompsons can thank contemporary mankind’s obsession with paternal lineage. Those nouns turned names have it arguably the easiest, so pipe down there, Pope, King, and Woods.

I should note, too, that those examples only skate across the surface of Anglicized monikers. A mere handful that don’t touch the beauty and mystery enveloping the hundreds of thousands of names that paint a nominative rainbow of multiculturalism across the canvas of our planet. There are so many names, so many variations, so many interpretations, that it’s amazing we don’t all have to wear name tags at all times to get anything done when working together.

Some names aren’t as easy to source. Black, Brown, and White may seem obviously self descriptive, but what about Green, or Moody, or that one so close to me, Gray? Basic history says my name traces back to Gaelic (making it Scottish or Irish, and in turn explaining my red facial hair) but beyond that it’s only moderately educated guesses. The trail meanders back to the pronouncial mouthful – Ó Riabhaigh – meaning son or grandson of “the gray,” which may echo the foggy moors of our ancestral lands. One scholar even suggests it had to do with a “countenance of character,” in that my ancestors were sullen, quiet folk.

Doesn’t sound much like the Grays I know.

But it might, if I knew more Grays. I like to pretend I’m the last male in my line now that my dad is gone, the last one able to carry the proverbial torch and pass the four familiar letters onto my son. But I’m not. My dad had a brother. My uncle had four sons. Out there, somewhere, in the land of severed blood ties and family feuds, I have four cousins. Four more Grays, who, for all I know, could be just like me.

I knew their names once. I think as a kid, I even met them. But my dad and my uncle had it out after my grandmother passed; money was hoarded, childhood resentment flared from ember to inferno, and just like that, the idea and memory of my cousins disappeared across the salty waves of estrangement and Atlantic.

I’ve started looking for my uncle, but apprehension always stays my mouse hand before I delve too deep. From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t a very good person. He’d caused a lot of turmoil in their childhood home, ever taking, rarely giving, monopolizing the love and resources of my grandparents while my father was left to solve the Rubix cube of the world on his own.

I don’t know if he’s still alive, and part of me, out of loyalty to the memory of my dad, wants to see an end date after the hyphen in his records. Somehow, it would make me mad to know my uncle survived where my father didn’t. It sounds terrible, and I feel terrible, but honesty never pretended to be kind. I only have the feelings my father left me, and no matter how hard I try, that resentment never heels to hereditary curiosity.

I instead like to look forward. Think of my name as it is now, and as it will be. I could spend hours digging at the graves of memories long interred in family lore, only to find nothing but more riddles in the bones and dust of the past. Or I could spend my time turning this name into something my father would be proud of, shouting it out into the world on the back of my words so that everyone knows that this Gray has no issues with countenance of character.

Pride, not regret. Future, not past. Our names define where we came from, and against our will, a good portion of who we are. But that doesn’t mean they seal us into any one fate. They are, after all, just humanity’s way of categorizing mind boggling diversity, like a massive genetic library’s Dewey decimal system.

You may not be able to control which section of the library you’re in, but you can control who checks out your book. Make sure your surname stands proud on that spine.

c. 1910

My great grandfather (apron) and other dude possibly related to me. Manchester,  England – c. 1910

Brew Fiction: Dogfish Head Sixty-One

May 22, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The cheer rose to crescendo, hovering in the rarefied air just below the mineralized fibers of the dropped-ceiling tiles, and held there, floating in the blueish glow of muted florescence for a single, glorious second before falling back down to polished wood of the twelve parallel lanes. The other eleven had fallen idle as all attention crowded on Lane 9, where Costello had just sent his purple and green swirled 15-pounder sliding towards the brave pins standing like a perfect set of post-orthodontic teeth, sixty feet away.

The ball hooked hard right then scurried left, spinning in a way that seemed to give the middle finger to the laws of physics, crashing into the gap in the front teeth, sending them scattering into the gutters and each other. The ten-pin, a stubborn molar, wobbled drunkenly, unsure whether he’d fall or stand, collapse or correct. The echo of that last tooth dropping filled every bit of free space in Waterford Lanes. Rumor had it you could even hear the sound of the plastic-on-wood clattering and reverberating in the stalls of the men’s bathroom.

And as soon as it was officially down, and the judges deemed no toe had crossed fault line, and no other bowling etiquette or technicalities stood in the way, the screens flashed like two dozen malfunctioning robots, displaying over and over and over again: 300! The same cheer that had collectively burst from Costello’s fans as he hit that eleventh strike, exploded anew, part scream, part yell, part singing celebration of something that is as statistically unlikely as a rookie golfer sinking a hole-in-one on a par 3.

He stood and stared at the robotic arm sweeping away the corpses of the pins, aware but unbelieving, having courted the high 200s for years and years, thinking perfection was impossible. He cracked his knuckles and turned around to face the little boy in an over-sized shirt that matched his. The boy looked at him like a mortal upon a god, eyes glistening with pride, ears covered by his tiny hands to muffle the deafening exuberation all around him. He threw his eight-year old arms as high around Costello’s legs as they’d go, hugging him with the same zeal as a he’d squeeze a new stuffed bear just to show how much he loves it.

Whistles shot from the back of the crowd and a slow chant started, Costello’s surname rhythmically pumping with the pulse of the alley, like his legend, his perfect game, were now part of the beams and dirt and concrete that gave the alley a form. Old Arkansas, the portly and pleasant owner, came and dropped a tall domestic in his hand. “Ya finally did it you son of a bitch!” 

Costello winced and then smiled. “Hey, hey now. Not in front of the kid.” He rustled the mop of blonde hair that was still firmly attached to his legs. He’d done a good job, he reassured himself. The boy, despite his lack of understanding about anything parental, was doing alright. Sure he was a load or four of laundry and a trip to Hair Cuttery away from being truly presentable. But overall, given the emotional toll of the unexpected and unwelcomed, he was growing up strong and smart.

It took a solid hour for the line of congratulants to clear out, each one wanting to shake the hand of the first man to toss a 300 in this place since Chuck Werner did it in ’66. The mob of after-party had dwindled into a few stragglers too drunk to drive, but the energy still buzzed in the air, as real as the Alan Jackson tunes that floated lazily from the dated speakers mounted in the walls. Costello sat with the boy, slowly drinking his beer, letting the silky bubbles roll around his tongue and slide between his teeth before finally swallowing. It was late, even for him, and the little eyes on the little face next to him kept popping open and then slowly closing, defiantly trying to stay awake and hang with the grow-ups.

Midnight chimed it’s inevitable arrival. Costello knew the days of hanging in the alley with Jessica or Cathy or Angela until 3:00 A.M. were over, so he finished his beer and tried to pay Arkansas, who promptly refused. “You kiddin’? That game of yours made me a bundle tonight. Least I can do is give you a beer or two on the house.” He picked up the empties and nodded toward the boy, now curled in the fetal position on the orange plastic chair. “Best get him home and in bed.” Costello scooped up the crumbled sleeping mess of boy, slinging him over his shoulder like an human-shaped sack, careful not to hit his head on the door frame as he carried him out to the parking lot.

As Costello settled the boy into the back seat of the black and rust colored Silverado, he whispered, sleep blanketing his tiny voice, eyes still closed, “Luke, will you teach me how to be a bowling hero?”

♦♦♦♦♦

The bowling alley was as old as the town hall, and featured just as prominently; the thirty-foot Art Deco sign could be seen from almost anywhere in the town. One advantage for advertisers and billboard enthusiasts on Maryland’s east coast: no hills. In the low, stinging sun of morning the alley’s age showed in wrinkles of peeling mint-green paint and growing gaps in the grain of the wooden siding. He stood for a moment in the shadow of the massive sign before looking down at his nephew. “OK Kyle; bowling time! Let’s find you a good, 8 pound ball.”

It took Arkansas nearly fifteen minutes to dig up a pair of kids size 3 bowling shoes, but the lack of wear and scuffs made them perfect for Kyle, like they’d been on reserve for him alone, waiting for him to discover his tokens of destiny and take up shoe and ball like Theseus took up sandals and sword.

Kyle demanded to tie the shoes himself. While he fumbled with the laces and tied about a dozen knots in each, Arkansas pointed behind them both to the new, shiny addition on the wood paneled wall near the entrance. There, next to Werner’s huge sixties mustache and amber tinted glasses, hung a little picture of Costello, right arm up in the air, a candid shot of him as he released the ball for the final strike. The little gold plaque read simply, ‘Luke Costello – Perfect Game – June 1, 1998.’ Arkansas had wasted no time getting that award engraved and mounted, as proud of the achievement and the man as he was happy that it happened in his alley.

“You ready?” Kyle was already on his feet, awkwardly stomping around with the wooden heels of the shoes, showing off how well he’d adhered them to his feet. He wore his over-sized bowling shirt again, nearly refusing to take it off since the victory three nights ago, and looked equal parts absurd and adorable with the line of buttons on the front hanging just below his knees. Costello made him tuck it in; the last thing he needed was for the kid to trip and bust his lip on the slippery wood and carpet. God knows what kind of stuff was growing between the gums stains.

In his typical fashion, Kyle refused to have the bumpers raised and refused to use the chrome-plated ramp-assist, arguing with Costello that he could easily get the ball to the end of the lane, easily get a strike, if he really wanted to and tried. When Kyle became so defiant, so self-empowered and bold, he could see in the boy some of his father, the father before the accident, before the diminishing power of a motionless year in a hospital bed, before his youth and energy had all but drained into the dozens of bags of fluid and blood that collected and dripped in perpetuity.

And when he ran up to that foul-line, stopping just short to let the ball glide out of his hands with inborn grace, short arms guiding the ball skillfully even though no one taught him how, overly long blond hair twirling like the bottom of a loose summer skirt, he could see in the boy some of his mother. The ballerina, the prom queen, the girl so much better than this nothing town, the one going places, so in love with life that even her failures were enviable. The girl he’d loved just as much as his brother had, whose hand he’d held as her soul left that broken body, unable to take anymore of this world.

The ball moved well, but the slick of the polish got under it at the last minute, and Kyle’s attempt only managed to clip the seven pin. He slammed one foot down angrily. “What did I do wrong!?” Costello stepped up behind him, showing him how he’d released the ball too soon, and how that had caused the trajectory of the ball to change dramatically. He held his arm, one hand on his elbow, the other on his wrist, and swung it for him, stopping it in the air where he should release the ball. Kyle’s next throw knocked down eight pins.

Costello let him practice using his frames, not counting those towards his total, knowing Arkansas would give them as many free games as they wanted until the buzz of the perfect game and minor celebrity wore off. He sat and watched Kyle, throw after throw after throw, thinking about how he’d never expected to have this much responsibility. Thinking about how in the vast cosmic swirl of unfair circumstance, he’d become a father because of a rainstorm, had his life injected with sudden parenthood because of a poorly maintained patch of country road and a violent collision of tree and steel.

Kyle threw the last frame, finishing in a huff of disappointment, his ball hitting two pins before disappearing into the black abyss behind the lane. He looked straight forward, and cracked his knuckles, or tried to, like he’d seen Costello do at the end of a game. His confidence morphed into a huge frown as he looked up at the monitor to see his score. “I didn’t even get 100.”

“Well would you look at that” Luke playfully poked Kyle in his side, trying to elicit a laugh and a smile. “The first game I ever bowled was a 61, too.”

DFH61

An Open Letter to my Bone Marrow

January 4, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Dear weird red squiggly stuff inside my bones,

I know we don’t sit down and talk very often (or ever, come to think). I know you probably feel neglected. I know that recently, we’ve had a pretty rocky relationship: me, falling off of ladders, you, refusing to fight off infections every time I go on vacation.

But for the most part, it’s been good, right? Twenty-seven years of relatively pleasant symbiosis? I gotta ask you for something pretty huge, and I hope that our shared history is enough for you to acquiesce.

I’m gonna need you to let some doctors suck you out through my hip bones so you can go live inside my dad.

I know it sounds weird. But it’s for a really good cause! He really needs my (your) help right now, and if you do this for me (us) I promise to take better care of you. I won’t drink that last beer when I’ve already had enough. I’ll eat more oranges and kale. I’ll even go running more, if that’s what you want.

All he needs is for you to go in there and do what you’ve been doing in me. Get all up in his immune system and go all Rambo on those Leukemia cells. Give him back his energy and life. Give the whole family renewed hope.

That’s all. I ask nothing more than for you to do your job somewhere else for a little bit. Think of it as getting to travel for work. All of the airfare and accommodations are covered, you just have to show up for the meetings.

On January 18, when you’re making that trip down the hall at Hopkins, remember this letter. If you won’t do it for me, do it for him. Do it because he deserves this for being a great man and a great father. Do it because he deserves a life free from the worries and weight of cancer. Do it because I still have so much left to learn from him and I want him around to see me become a man he’s proud of.

Do it because the world needs more people like him. More people full of optimism and humor, more people willing to face a challenge with a smile and a laugh, more people who rise to a challenge and beat it back with fierce determination.

Do it because I love him.

Yours, literally,
-Oliver

Do it, because, and I quote, "“During your teenage years you were a pain in the ass.Now I get to be a pain in yours.”

Do it, because, and I quote my dad, ““During your teenage years you were a pain in the ass. Now I get to be a pain in yours.”

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