Internet addict. Facebook junkie. Social media fool. Gmail coon.
Over dinner last night, at the steakhouse where she works, my friend whispered (kind of loudly), “See that guy over there?” Nodding toward a waiter, she added, “He called me a cunt.” She smirked knowingly, raised her eyebrows, and took another gulp of her martini.
I made the aghast face, but kept eating.
We ate all kinds of shit that I didn’t pay for. Dungeness crab, oysters, big, mighty prawns, Belvedere martini after martini, champagne, what a great Monday. Thank goodness for good friends. Sitting here fooling around online, thinking about last night, and something I heard on NPR about Internet addicts like myself. I don’t even feel like writing about it, but that’s part of the problem, for me, as a writer. I tend to think so much has been said, there’s no need to repeat it. I cram story after story, photo after photo, link after link, articles, blogs, reviews and stats into my brain. I feel like I know so much, but also too little, so I keep looking. Keep digging. I want the latest news. The most relevant. The farthest-reaching. I like Wikipedia, dictionaries, and black celebrity gossip. Tumblr blogs, international news, TED vids, feel-good stories, movie trailers, slave narratives, you name it! I like FB (there! I said it!) And I love Gmail. I justify time wasted by occasionally writing a blog entry, but there (here) I hold back, because I also have concerns about privacy. Over-sharing online. The endless paradox.
I am an autobiographer, only interested in telling tales of my life. Like how I sat in the car crying last night, on the phone after dinner, in the middle of the night, on a cold, empty street, in an icy, dirty car with sneakers and dress pants on. So many prepositions. Eye shadow. Lip gloss. Leftovers in the bag. Champagne-heady, cold, cold air… I told my old friend about my dad’s death and as soon as I started talking, I started crying.
This random crying shit is truly remarkable. Fascinating. Not sure who I think I am, but I am so inside myself that regular human shit (like grieving) that has never happened to me before startles and confuses me. How can I be fine, and then not? I am fine all the time…I think. I’m not dying. My heart is not failing. I’m not trapped under rubble—concrete or metaphorical. I have my limbs, and my wits, so why is it so hard for me to answer the question, “How you doing, Tiff?”
I’m fine.
I think.
I’m the one who’s still breathing. (…right?) My friend, on the phone last night, told me her grandmother died at dinner, in a restaurant. Sat there and ate and then had a heart attack. And died. My father died in the bathroom.
What was he thinking?
(I find myself wanting to swap death stories with strangers: “My father died while I was on the AIRplane—on my way to SEE him!” Another story on NPR, about the Upper Big Branch mine disaster got me to thinking about going to this guy Gene’s house and talking with him about the death of his twin, Dean.)
What was my dad trying to say?
What were those last words?
Was he trying to send me a message???
Am I doing him a disservice by spending so much time online?
Would he care?
What difference does it make?
Life is so ridiculously made UP, improvised, last minute, split second—wait, I’m digressing. Like my life. (Like the Internet) One long digression from…the womb(?). But what is the main point? What is my main point? Maybe I really am walking toward it and the Internet is The Only Digression.
I want to read to you out loud. But I can’t. So read this part out loud with me:
Yesterday, my stepbrother washed up. He is the last to find out that our father died almost two months ago. He had moved south to be closer to my dad, presumably.
(My dad, incidentally, had moved south to be further from him and closer to his birth/final resting place.)
Since moving south, he has continued a life of vagrancy and I was unable to locate him to bear the bad news. Turns out, he’d been arrested and re-incarcerated after staying out of trouble for 5 years, he was quick to tell me. He is also mentally ill. A bit touched, as the old folks say…
When I finally told him the news, he immediately refuted it. Tried to tell me, over and over, that it HAD to have been November when “Daddy” (something we never called him) died because, “the bondsman talked to him in November!”
I murmured, “Naww…it was October, Tim.”
He argued.
I murmured.
He insisted.
Eventually, I shouted, “Now you can beLIEVE what you WANT to believe, but I went DOWN there and BURIED him! He DIED in ocTOBER, TIM!”
(I read about grieving online, so I know that Tim was in that first stage: denial.) (So was I when I found out.) (Sometimes I daydream about slapping people back to reality, like in the movies. Just a quick slap in the face to stop the hysterics. I liken this little speech to that slap.)
And later, just as I began to read a letter he’d written me, my OTHER brother called from the prison HE’s been in for the last 14 years and 10 months. I told him about Tim.
When we hung up, I read his letter. In it, he said the last time he talked to our father, the last time he saw his face, they were sitting together on a visit. My dad was telling him ways to think, to be, to reform himself (Black Man!) in preparation for re-entry into society. My brother had grown weary of such speeches (which he basically likened to Uncle Tomming) over the years and finally exclaimed, “Dad, I’m militant!”
He wrote:
When I said it, he looked at me disapprovingly, went mute, got up and left. I never seen him again. Then he died.
End of paragraph. End of life. End of those visits to the prison. Three months later, he was gone. This letter, too, made me cry.
You can stop reading out loud now.
Sometimes it’s hard to do because you’re holding your breath and don’t always know it.
I attended a yoga class the other day and the instructor kept telling us, “Don’t forget to keep breathing.” Such a funny thing to need to remember.
My beloved professor, Janet, comes to mind. She once told me, “You have to secure your own breathing apparatus before trying to save anyone else.”
And don’t they say it so plain, right before EVERY flight? Before you even think about trying to save anyone else—even a baby!—get your own shit straight FIRST. I have to remember that.
Breathe.
I never could carry my daddy/as much as I tried/emotionally/anyway.
Boyfriend tells me I say random/partial shit that is extremely hard (for him) to follow because so much of my conversation occurs in my head first. But doesn’t everyone’s?
Internet junkie. That’s all I can muster right now. I’m leaving to go have my dad. I mean day. (Freudian, no doubt.)
Nonfiction Woman 