My legs hang over the windowsill of my bedroom window as I look out unto the neo-communist utopia that is the Jefferson Park skyline. The moon is at it’s brightest at 2:00 AM, and I’m disappointed that my neck hair doesn’t stand up as I thought it would. I feel guilty, and not in a way that excites me. Rather, in a way that I know whatever I’m about to do is something that I’ll never be tell anyone, not even my closest friends. Not because it’s an adventure. Not because it’s a secret. But because it makes me feel stupid to talk about, and it would make me sound as if I were bragging, rather than confessing.
Whenever I do something that is, for lack of a better term, wrong, my Dad takes it so personally. When I lied to him at the age of six, he told me I’d grow up a disgrace. When he found my weed, he said that I wasn’t his son anymore. This is the manipulation technique that he has used to get me to hate myself for breaking his rules. So far, it has worked. Anytime that I’ve gotten in trouble for doing something, it was because I misjudged the consequences.I really didn’t know at the time the difference between truth and a falsehood. I brought weed into the house thinking that if I got caught I would be given a lecture on drug safety. Instead, I was given a screaming match followed by a silent treatment that lasted four days.
I remember in the third grade, I said that I was going “out.” My parents assumed that I meant to the front yard. I meant I was going to a friend’s house who lived a block away. My friend had a rough home life, his parents had split up when he was 8. As a side effect, his mom was always “grounding” him. Maybe it was to keep him home, or maybe to take out some frustration. But it wasn’t because he was a bad kid.
I got to his house at about 4:30. We went to his room and played Gamecube until 5:15, which is the time that I had decided would be a good curfew. It was Kirby, by the way. I couldn’t stand Kirby.
I remember, so vividly, entering my living room. The Astros and the Cardinals were playing in the NLCS on TV, and my science project, which was due that week, was sitting in the corner. I looked at the TV. Edgar Rentaria was on third base for the Cardinals, and Rodger Clemens was pitching for the Astros. In my peripherals, I see my Dad, in his recliner, watching the game with glassed over eyes. He looks up at me.
“Where the fuck have you been?” He said over a Clemens fastball. I look back at him.
I had heard my Dad swear once before, and it was on a phone call. I would have never dreamed he’d use an f-word towards me.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, in hopes that this was one of his classic, light-hearted jokes.
“The hell I am. Do you know where your Mom is right now?” He demanded.
At this point I realized I probably wasn’t supposed to have left the front yard. Through this, I realized that if my parents thought that I was lost for almost an hour, they would be frantic.
“In the backyard, looking for me?” I asked him, in hopes this time that maybe things had not escalated too far yet.
“She’s at the police station, saying that her son is gone.” He said.
The way he said “Her son”, as if he had nothing to do with it, broke my heart. It’s dumb, I know, but I still think about that.
What followed was a long, long lecture from my Mom, my Dad, and Officer Drew on the importance of safety and telling adults where I am at all times, all of which does not contribute to the story.
I was grounded for a week. That night I cried myself to sleep.
I remember, it was a Sunday when all that happened. So Monday morning, I walked to the school bus stop. I went up to my friend Rich, whose house I had been at the previous day, and told him the story.
“Here’s the thing.” I relayed to him. “I’m grounded for a week.”
Rich’s jaw dropped. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was the neighborhood angel. I’d never been grounded in my life. I was who other mothers wanted their kids to be like. I was the model citizen of our little lower-middle class community.
“No way! Wow, man. How does it feel?” Rich asked, still not totally sure if he believed me. They way he phrased it made it sound like a right of passage, which confused me. There was no doubt how to feel about this. To me, being grounded meant that I couldn’t see my friends, my parents hated me, and I was a bad kid. There were no positives to take away from this.
“Bad. I hate it.”
Rich shrugged his shoulders.
“The first one’s hard. You’ll get used to it. Congratulations.”
But I never did get used to it. I felt bad enough every time that I stepped outside alone, even with my parent’s permission. To this day, I still feel uneasy leaving the house in broad daylight. It was a while until I got into that kind of trouble again, and it was when I was a teenager. By that time, I could process punishment at a marginally higher level than a 3rd grader could.
So, as my frayed canvas Vans hit the cold dirt that paves the gap between my room and my neighbor’s house, I keep that feeling of guilt inside of me. It lines the pockets that I keep my American Spirits in.I light a cigarette as I drag myself down the alley between the Metra tracks and the copernicus center. The blue line runs 24 hours a day, so any chance of a new experience goes through that.
The car shakes and I jump with a bit of excitement. Nobody is here with me, but I feel someone’s energy. Maybe it’s residue from all of the commuters today, but I think it’s someone else. I think it’s that kid in third grade who knew all the answers in class, and always impressed Rich’s Mom. The kid that I could’ve grown up into if I wasn’t always trying to fix him.
By the time that I get to Clark and Lake, a few people have come on the car. A homeless-looking guy, and a suburbanite and his drunken hook-up. I side-step past them as I get off.
I walk to the beach by Navy Pier, on Ohio Street. This is a nice place for me to sit and think, but I don’t know why. Chicago’s spine lights up, and it’s beautiful. But I’m just staring at the homes of rich people. Rich people who probably don’t even live here but a few months out of the year.
This is it. I’ve snuck out. This is what all of the books and movies and TV shows have told me is the most exciting thing about being a teenager. Except, there’s something missing. I’m not sneaking out to go anywhere. I’m just sneaking out to prove to some kid in the third grade that he shouldn’t be afraid of his Dad. I’m just trying to show myself, all versions of myself, that I can do it. That I’m not afraid of the consequences. But I still am. Not even of my Dad, but someone. And I cry on the beach, like a fucking third grader.
