My mother… she wasn’t a “looker,” not in the classic, respectable, and completely boring sense of the word. But she had weapons. Her first weapon was her tits. A beautiful, honest, and completely undeniable pair of arguments that got her in any door she wanted. Her second weapon was her charm. She could be the center of the goddamn universe if she wanted to be. Loud, funny, obnoxious, the life of a party that was always, somehow, just about her.
But her real superpower, her beautiful, ugly, and completely diabolical X-Men mutation, was her ability to believe her own goddamn lies.
I’m not talking about little white lies. I’m talking about architecture. She could tell you she saw Elvis at the goddamn grocery store, and she would believe it so hard, so completely, that she would spend the rest of her life as if her world had been touched by “The King.” She built her reality out of whatever convenient bullshit she needed at the moment. And if you ever, ever had the balls to call her on it, to point out that the whole goddamn story was a fraud, she would just… crumble. A beautiful, dramatic, and completely manipulative collapse. She didn’t use this power for good; she used it for bad. Or maybe just for survival. With her, it was hard to tell the goddamn difference.
After the divorce, when I was nine, the quiet, respectable Ozzie & Harriet performance was over, and the real, feral animal came out. Her anger, it was a goddamn force of nature. She was angry all the time. Angry because she had to work. Angry because she wasn’t getting laid. Angry because she had these three, feral, testosterone-filled boys, and she wanted to be at a bar, drinking, getting into trouble. Angry because the house smelled like shit and was crawling with cockroaches, and no man, no matter how horny, was going to stick around in that beautiful, ugly, and completely honest shithole for long.
And her punishment? Christ. It wasn’t the quiet, disappointed “Man Code” justice of my father. No. Her justice came from the bottom of a bottle, with a closed goddamn fist, and it was fueled by pure, unadulterated rage. “You might be taller than me,” she’d scream, “but I can still take you down.” And she would.
She was a creature of the goddamn disco era. Drinking, cocaine, marijuana, pills. I remember she worked at a doctor’s office, and she’d get caught stealing “crosstops,” probably some beautiful, speedy, and completely illegal prescription, and then try to sell them to make a buck. She didn’t have an education. She didn’t have a plan. All she had was that magnificent, bullshit confidence, her tits, and a set of skills that were… unique.
I remember the steak scam. A beautiful, ugly, and completely brilliant piece of criminal artistry. We’d go to the Albertson’s, and she’d grab the 15-cents-a-pound hamburger labels and just… stick them on the goddamn New York strips. Stacks of them. “We might be poor,” she’d say, proud as a goddamn peacock, “but we’re eating steak tonight.” And she was right. We ate like kings. Until the new barcode scanners came in, and the beautiful, simple, and completely fraudulent gig was up. I remember her getting caught, 30 pounds of mislabeled steak in the cart, and she didn’t apologize. She attacked. “Why were they mislabeled? That’s the price you had on them! I’ll take them for that price!” She made such a goddamn stink, such a beautiful, righteous, and completely dishonest scene, that the manager, just to shut her up, gave her the goddamn steaks. That was her skill. The ability to turn her own lie into a weapon and beat you into submission with it.
It all started for her at seventeen, a quick, ugly, and probably passionless fuck behind a Tommy’s burger joint that left her pregnant. And it just… “progressively got worse.” She was dealt a bad hand, and she played it badly.
But there was a lighter side. There had to be. You can’t live in a goddamn inferno 24/7. I have these… flashes. These “triggering memories.” Going to the beach, just me and her. Eating Breakfast Jacks at Bolsa Chica, the salt in the air, a quiet, simple, and completely honest moment of peace. She was a defender, too. If anyone ever fucked with me or my brothers, she’d be on them like a goddamn wolverine. She’d have beat the shit out of them. There was a fierce, ugly, and completely beautiful loyalty in there.
And she loved me. Or, she loved the idea of me. I was the “golden boy.” The tall, handsome, blue-eyed one. “This is my Jimmy,” she’d say, parading me around like a goddamn trophy. I got the special treatment. The praise. And it gave me a confidence that was as beautiful and as fraudulent as her Elvis stories. But it was confidence. And for that, I’m… thankful. My brothers, the “weak links,” they got the other side of that coin.
And my little brother, Ryan. Christ. When I finally left, when I pulled my own ripcord at thirteen, he got left behind. He had to fend for himself in that beautiful, ugly, and completely toxic shithole. And that… that’s one of the highest regrets of my goddamn life. I see the broken parts in him, the parts I ran away from, and I know I was the one who jumped ship and let him drown.
But my mother… regardless of the chaos, the lies, the closed-fist rage… she was a survivor. A beautiful, ugly, and completely honest one. The stars never aligned for her. She got dealt a raw deal. She was constantly being bent over by society, by family, by her own goddamn bad decisions. And she never, ever, ever got a break.
But she didn’t die.
Last I heard, she’s in her seventies. Living in a trailer in Temecula. Got the diabetes. Lost a leg. The face all wrinkled. A quiet, ugly, and completely tragic end to a loud, ugly, and completely tragic life. I haven’t spoken to her in light years.
But you have to respect the sheer, beautiful, ugly, and completely relentless tenacity of it all. She wasn’t good. She wasn’t kind. She was a goddamn natural disaster.
But she was, in her own fucked-up, street-smart way, a survivor. The last of a breed.
