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LIGHT WITHOUT HEAT

FC2

Contents

Different Distances...........................................................................1Instructions..................................................................................13Light Without.................................................................................15Pennsylvania..................................................................................39The Saddening.................................................................................141Crystal Castles...............................................................................47Pineal Gland..................................................................................61Throw Him in the Water........................................................................63Nevada........................................................................................77The Celebrations..............................................................................79The Most Amazing Attic........................................................................93The AuralSec Story, A Corporate History, Chapter 7: Our Dependable Grampy.....................97Animal Attacks................................................................................113Glossary......................................................................................115The Board Game Monopoly.......................................................................123The Sodding...................................................................................141Pastoral......................................................................................143Iceland.......................................................................................151Some Kirkpatricks.............................................................................153Acknowledgments...............................................................................175

Chapter One

Conceived in a canopy bed in the Waldorf overlooking the wet black street along Central Park at dawn Sunday morning after an exhibition of my father's artwork at the Grace Gallery downtown. Warhol was there. Everything sold. Even the charcoal sketches tucked in Dad's black portfolio. Fabulous. Cocaine piled on silver trays and cases of Dom and Mylar pillow balloons. Best night of their lives.

In the bathroom at a Denny's on the long drive home from Piscataway, NJ. Dad had a job interview to paint houses.

In a Red Roof Inn at the juncture of three major highways ribboning into different distances, each with catastrophic, traffic-stopping accidents miles away. Dad never painted. Painted the walls of our first apartment canary-yellow, dreaming of landscapes and latex splattered from a ladder onto an enormous canvas below.

In a tent behind a condemned Lutheran church in Pittsburgh on the way back from six straight Dead shows. He had visions.

On the living room floor on a school night while my grandparents slept upstairs. It was their first date, my first experience of love.

It was the best night of their lives.

Born in the backseat of my father's Buick.

In the backseat of a taxi stuck in rush hour traffic. Stuck behind an accident. In two feet of snow.

In the backseat of a NJ Transit bus stuck in the Holland Tunnel, three weeks too soon.

In the lobby of a downtown hospital and named for my grandfather, dead in the war. For my Uncle, dead in the war. For Warhol.

In the backseat of my father's Merc. Olds. Cutlass.

Named for the war.

Drought.

Meteors destroy my grandfather's house in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We spend the summer rebuilding. At night Mom thumbs dusty letters sent to my deceased grandmother during the war. Hail dimple-dents the hood of my father's Cutlass.

Mom dreams Dad painting plums, painting over plaster cracks, painting an orchard.

Mom dreams the night sky. Dad paints meteors. Climbs the steep slate roof of somebody's beach house on Long Island and paints the brown shingles midnight blue.

Learning to walk.

A record April snowfall blankets the East Coast. My first childhood memory.

Falling from the top of basement stairs cutting forehead. Despite the blood, my parents decide I can tough it out.

Scars.

My father's Merc bursts into flames.

Dad painting all night, Mom walking me by the hand slowly upstairs at seven, putting me away for the night so she can get down with some low funk (thumping up through the floor from below) and a tall glass of rye while Dad splashes paint across canvases in the cold, wet basement.

Led Zeppelin, Clapton. The Who.

Dad in the mirror combing my wet hair back with the black comb from his breast pocket.

Eno, Bowie, Reed, Blondie. The Dead Boys.

The first of many conversations my father will have about lenses and mirrors. He drops a salad bowl on the kitchen floor and slashes open the palm of his right hand. Wraps the wound in an old plaid shirt and watches it fill with blood.

Donna Summer. The Bee Gees.

Dad falls down a narrow well in the backyard. Lost for a day, Mom discovers him in the old hole sobbing. After 58 hours, rescuers lift him alive from the well surrounded by flashing bulbs and microphones and cheers.

Kindergarten. Drawing devils with black and blue crayons and asked to stand in the trash can when I refuse to select another color from the crayon box.

Asking Mom for a baby brother.

Mom dropping ice cubes freshening the drinks.

Dad painting black holes.

Sent home with a note.

The smell of my father's black comb.

Dad douses the door of my elementary school with gasoline and lights it on fire. Somebody pulls the fire alarm and we're evacuated out the back door while firemen flood the building.

Warhol visits and Mom makes meatloaf.

Warhol calls and says he's going to visit but never does.

Liza Minnelli sends my parents a postcard from Japan. Dad shows it to me and tries to explain the joke, why she'd sent it: an enormous lobster, claws poised open above its head, menacing tourists on a Tokyo street corner. They can't figure out how Minnelli got their address. Pour themselves drinks and turn up the stereo.

The Go-Gos. Public Image Ltd. The Birthday Party.

First recollection: shooting at other neighbor kids with toy pistols.

Gallery fire destroys a year of Dad's work.

He never paints again.

This Heat.

Picked last for recess kickball. Hunger strike: hoard peanut butter sandwiches in locker. First fat lip. Shot twice in the stomach by classmate with a concealed pellet gun.

Dad phones bomb threats from area payphones to cancel school. Gives me tubes of paint and names them as he squeezes each onto a clean wooden palette: umber, ochre, sienna.

Titanium, cadmium.

Draws my fingers through each and pulls my hands across canvases carpeting the living room floor. Cleaning our hands together in the basement basin. Turpentine still burning my nose, we hang our paintings together, covering every black wall.

Dad phones Mom twice and hangs up.

Poised at the wheel of the Merc pointed toward the distant border. Telling me we're leaving. Telling me we're going home.

Drawing secret maps during recess. Composing elementary manifestos. Declaring daily skirmishes and...