Every Sunday,
Visit to Pap’s.
Mandatory.
No excuses.
Even as a boy,
I know where we would find you
Every Sunday,
Squatting on his your legged footstool watching the Pirates
Lose another game
OR
At the head of the kitchen table.
Either location,
An ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon
And an ashtray, overflowing with butts
Always within arm’s reach.
Every Sunday
After we leave your house, Pap,
My mother tells me how
(When she is a girl),
You come home, more often than not.
Drunk.
Then your mother
(Who lived next door)
Would chase you with a broom, screaming.
Every Sunday,
2
You proclaim.
“You should be a football player.”
And that’s wrong.
Even as a child, I am built like a linebacker
Broad-shouldered and barrel-chested
(Just like you).
“You should be a football player.”
I do not want to.
I am not like other boys.
I don’t like to get dirty.
Or sweaty.
Or knocked down.
No rough-housing for me.
One day (before his NFL dream for me dies)
Pap says, “Let’s go see a man about a horse.”
Can I believe my ears? Pap is buying me a pony!
But we do not end up seeing a horse.
Or at a farm.
Or a stable.
No, it’s his favorite watering hole where
(As my mother would say, “He drank our lives away.”)
There, you hoist me up onto a bar stool
(A stool so high, my feet do not touch any of the foot reasts)
And orders me a soda and a bag of chips.
Then he goes to the corner to chat with his cronies, while I—
A child sitting on a bar stool, sips the coldest soda I have ever tasted,
(And addicts me to a lifetime of drinking in bars with men.)
Every Sunday.
3
“You should be a football player.”
Finally, when I find the courage to say
NO.
I prefer to write, to draw, to read.
Then you nickname me…
“The Professor.”
Never as a compliment.
Always as a sneer
“The Professor.”
An accusation..
Something to bring shame.
Somehow, then, you know my secret.
You know my shame
Long before I know it has a name.
Every Sunday.
“The Professor.”
Eager for your praise.
Your acceptance,
I bring you my newspaper clippings.
Proud of my accomplishments.
An art show.
An essay contest.
You have clipping, too, retrieved from his wallet.
Folded, yellowed, brittle with age.
Arrests.
Drunk and disorderly.
Public intoxication.
And the strange thing is…
You are as proud of these “accomplishments” as I am of mine.
Now that I am even older than you were when the cirrhosis and cigarettes
Took you,
I see we are more alike than I care to admit.
Tonight.
As I slowly sink into the amber cesspool of this bottle,
I realize we ease our pain with alcohol.
You with Pabst; Me with bourbon.
We both chain smoke.
But you pinch the butt of your unfiltered Pall Mall between your thumb and index finger—
Both stained orange with nicotine.
I hold my Gauloise between my index and middle fingers
The way I’d seen Better Davis did in all her films,
Except maybe Jezebel.
I hate that I am like you.
I hate that you made me feel worthless
Not good enough.
Not man enough.
And this is what you taught me.
This is what I learned.
Every Sunday.
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