A SHOW OF LOVE FROM DOWN UNDER

Upon arriving home from treatment — over two hours after I was released — the day's mail contained this unexpected show of love from my niece Indira, Indi for short, and it made my entire week. She lives in Australia, so I only get to see her face-to-face once every few years, and she is growing into a teenager who inherited her New Yorker mother's sweetness and beauty. She's terrific and I wish I could see her (and her brothers and mother) more often. That said, this letter was a tonic, and I will cherish it forever. 

 

 

WE ARE FAMILY-Part Trois

Well, dear Vaulties... I’m totally overwhelmed, to put it very mildly. Last night I spent several hours on the phone with my long-lost big sister, Janice Blackmon, the first of our dad’s four kids, and to call that conversation enlightening would be a gross understatement.

Meet Janice Blackmon, my long-lost big sister!

But first a little bit of back story.

When I awoke on Tuesday morning I opened my Earthlink account and found a note from Facebook entitled “Are You My Brother?” Intrigued, I followed the link to the original note on Facebook and looked at the writer’s name and picture, swiftly concluding it was my sister, so I wrote back to verify our blood-relation, and a while later she wrote back. We arranged to speak on Wednesday night via the phone (she lives in Arizona) and after that I spent the interstitial time in a bewildered state of anticipation and mild dread. Would this older sister and I get along? Would we have anything in common other than blood? Would my unbridled normal state of “Buncheness” be off-putting to her? Those and other questions swirled around in my head.

When Janice called me I was delighted to find that she is as warm as can be, smart as a whip, funny as hell and pretty damned cool. The first half hour of our confab consisted of us doing the usual meet-and-greet niceties (“What do you do? “Are you married?” “Do you have any kids?” Et cetera), but the moment when the bond was cinched was when she related her problems with an asshole neighbor who smeared shit on her car’s windshield after the most minor of altercations, which resulted in her driving around until she found a gas station that would clean off the offending doody. (Whether it was human or animal excrement was not broached.) That story spurred her to mention another obnoxious neighbor who occasionally took issue with the music Janice would play; when I asked her to describe the music, she mentioned it was an album that her ex-husband once owned, a compendium of well-known songs that had had their lyrics re-written to humorously offensive/pornographic effect. As a huge grin spread across my face I stopped Janice in her tracks and, hoping against hope, asked her, “Don’t tell me that my big sister knows Blowfly???” She laughed, answered in the affirmative and without missing a beat segued into the lyrics of Blowfly’s take on the Frankie Valli’s 1975 Top 10 hit “Swearin’ To God,” namely the heartfelt “Spread Your Cheeks.”

Yes, my big sister is a genuine Blowfly fan, and thus began a lengthy conversation in which we unearthed and clarified all manner of missing pieces of our family’s convoluted puzzle. I won’t go into that stuff, but let it suffice to say that Janice and I see eye to eye on a hell of a lot of stuff that my younger sister Meredith and I could never share as common ground due to her being sixteen years younger than me and twenty-five years Janice’s junior; Janice and I are both products of a different time and place, while Meredith came of age in the 1990’s, a social climate much different from what Janice and I experienced, so there was much more mutually-shared bullshit for us to grouse and laugh about.

But whatever the case, I now have a living, breathing, communicating big sister who is no longer just a vague memory or a “What if…?” scenario, and I vow to keep in contact at least twice a week. She lives in Arizona and I have no clue when I’ll be able to get out there — my vacation budget and time are shot thanks to upcoming trips to the U.K. and Atlanta — but I can’t wait to hang with her in person.

I’m very, very happy right now. Quite a far cry from where I was not very long ago.

Another "Spawn of Oscar..." Excellent!

ANOTHER FATHER'S DAY

I hate Father’s Day. It’s the one day of the year when, no matter what else I may be doing, I’m reminded of my place in the father/son equation, namely that I don’t have one, as both a son and as a mate/father.

My relationship with my father was nothing I’d care to burden you readers with, but let it suffice to say there were issues and as a result of his absence from my life and the attention he paid to building his second family — and, to his credit, apparently making that work — I had no male role model to teach me how to be a man. That’s a process I find myself still muddling through on a day-to-day basis with varying degrees of success, and I genuinely wish I’d had a dad who’d taken a genuine interest in me during my adolescence, but such was not the case and I like think that considering the circumstances I didn’t do too badly. But here I am at the age of nearly forty-three with no mate and no offspring, and there’s a deep, dark, empty place in my existence that I struggle to ignore and carry on in spite of, but while I’m able to handle it most of the time the days leading up to and including Father’s Day kick me right in the heart. It was especially difficult this time around due to events in recent weeks that have caused me to consider where I am in life, why I’m so unhappy, and what I can do about it (I have no answers for that one yet, alas).

You see, I had been reluctant to write about it because this blog is supposed to mostly be about my media obsessions and stay somewhat light and entertaining, but almost three weeks ago I awoke late one night and checked myself into the local ER because I felt strange in an undefined way; not in pain per se, but I knew something wasn’t right and I needed to get checked out. I ended up stuck in the hospital for thirty-six hours, the first time I’d been in a hospital since the day I was born, and while it was determined that my blood sugar was spiking due to my meds needing an adjustment I was nonetheless terrified and spent much of my sleepless time thinking about how alone I was. As the parade of nurses took sample after sample of my blood and I endured both a stress test and echo cardiogram — despite all my bad behavior over the years, it turns out I have a strong heart, thank you very much — I kept mulling over the recent backyard cookout I’d attended in Long Island, an event that gathers as many as possible of my extended family of friends from far and wide and allows me to see my gaggle of non-blood nieces and nephews.

I’ve always had a way with kids and I love these children as if they were my own, so when I get a chance to spend time with them I relish it and sometimes when I play and interact with them I think of them as the children that, at the rate my life is going, I’ll never have. When I got out of the hospital I resolved to keep a much closer eye on my health issues, both for my own sake and so I can see these marvelous children grow into the equally marvelous adults I’m certain they’ll grow up to be.

Then this weekend rolled around and last night I attended a friend’s grad school graduation party and discovered that my niece Cleo was there. She’s an adorable, happy little four-year old girly girl who fills my heart with delight whenever I get to spend time with her, and last night she was running around in her Boston Red Sox cheerleader outfit — a far cry from her preferred fairy princess mode — , looking too cute for words. Seeing her made me well up with sadness over the lack of a family of my own, and I was actually relieved to leave early in an effort to avoid having to travel on foot during the torrential downpours that pounded the area (my friend lives six blocks and nearly four very long avenues away from the Vault, and I would have been soaked to the bone during the walk home). Upon arriving home I was able to set aside my familial yearnings by having a long phone conversation with my friend Lia (aka “Karate Hottie”).

But my longing for family was only compounded when I went to meet my two-week-old niece Aurora, the daughter of Tracey the Waitress Goddess and her husband, Brendan. I only met Tracey a little over three years ago and in that time she’s come to be more of a sister to me than my own blood sibling — no offense, Meredith, but our schedules haven’t allowed us to spend as much time together as I’d like — so the birth of her daughter means a great deal to me and I feel greatly honored to be considered family. Holding the tiny, wriggling infant filled me with emotion, and thankfully Tracey and Brendan were in a mood to chat and catch up while I marveled at the helpless little new person Tracey’d just brought into the world. The conversation helped distract me from my paternal emptiness, but when I returned to my flat I lay on my futon, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating a fatherhood that grows less and less likely with each passing day. I then sank into a depressed sleep, a slumber marked by an uncharacteristic absence of dreams. Now I'm awake and satisfying my fantasies of family by running some old Johnny Weissmuller movies and living vicariously through Tarzan, Jane, and Boy, a family unit I've taken comfort with since childhood, and one I know all too well could never be real. The magic of Hollywood, and all that...

Sorry for this downer of a post, but I had to get it out of my system. I’ll be back to normal by tomorrow, so I thank you for bearing with me.

WE ARE FAMILY-Part Deux

Today the continuing saga of the Bunche clan had another piece of the puzzle filled in with the aid of my sister, Meredith.
You may recall the story from just over a year ago when Meredith, whom I had not seen since she was an outrageously adorable under-five, contacted me from out of the blue thanks to the magic of the internet, but what I neglected to mention in detail is that Meredith is the second of the two kids from our dad's second marriage, the first of whom is Kenneth, whom I last saw when he was about five years old and on the wrong end of a pissed off Meredith. The last image I have in my memory of my brother is him howling in agony after he wouldn't stop bothering our sister, and she clocked the motherfucking shit out of him with a cute little Fisher-Price chain saw that she wielded by its blade (talk about style!).

Since our reunion I've asked Meredith to send me a shot of what the chain saw massacre victim looked like these days, and this morning she sent me this:

Yes, that bohunk who looks like a gene-splicing of Derek Jeter and the Rock is my little brother (that's Meredith mugging next to him). What I wanna know is how the hell two such eugenics specimens as my younger siblings share genes with my Charles Schultz-on-acid-looking ass.

As Yul Brynner once said, "It is a puzzlement!"

WE ARE FAMILY

“Happy families. What’s that all about, eh? A bloody busted flush is what it is. You surround yourself with other people so the night doesn’t seem quite so dark. Shout down the sound of the wind with arguments about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. Best not to kid yourself. Best not to give any hostages to fortune. You’re on your own in the end. Always. Where the hell else would you want to be?”
— John Constantine

Family. I can seriously do without family. All family has done is bring me pain, confusion or dysfunction, or even a grab bag of the three, so I have actively avoided most of my surviving family members and that has suited me just fine.

Until now.

Two Friday nights ago I returned home from another shift at the barbecue joint, slightly tipsy and surly (as usual), and when I sat down to peruse the day’s email I expected nothing out of the ordinary. The usual attempts at identity theft (thank you oh so much, Craig’s List), scheduling announcements for the Japan Society, eBay “watched item” alerts, and miscellaneous stuff from assorted friends were all there, but my attention was riveted by a message entitled “Greetings from a Bunche.” “What the fuck is this,” I asked myself, and then I saw who it was from. One Meredith Bunche, my little sister who I have not laid eyes on in twenty years.

Yes, you read that right: my little sister, Meredith.

Now some of you may be saying, “Hold up! Bunche has a sister?!!?” Yes, dear readers, I am not a unique mythical beastie, and therein lies a backstory.

I am the second of my father’s four children, and as we all share a parent, I consider them siblings, none of that “half” nonsense; the eldest is Janice, who has to be about fifty and whom I have not seen since about 1975, then there’s me, the only spawn from my folks’ sixteen-year sentence — not a story that will be told here — and after dad remarried came Kenneth, now twenty-seven, and Meredith, now twenty-five.

I never got to know Janice for reasons that remain obscure, but I think it may have had something to do with my dad’s emotional distance and desire to keep much of his history very much in the past, and as for Kenneth and Meredith, they were the new kids, and by the time they came along I was in high school while they were little and needed constant attention. Dad and I tried to foster some sort of relationship between us — with much prodding by my mother — and, to be honest, by then it was too little too late.

I had met little Kenneth a couple of times, but I never felt like a part of his family, then after Meredith was born I tried to connect again, and that was the one time I ever saw them both, him being five, she being three.

My sister, circa 1989.

The discomfort between my dad and I was put aside for the day as I attempted to bond with those two little people who, amazingly, shared my lineage and existed in flesh and blood, rather than just being recounted memories of distant relations or soon-to-be-deceased coffin-dodgers. Seeing these wee Bunches in their formative state was the first time I can recall truly feeling old despite being only twenty-one, so I can only imagine how my dad must have felt.

Kenneth acted exactly like I’d expect a slightly-older brother to, running about rambunctious as hell, while I was utterly enchanted with the huge-eyed girl child who looked quite a bit like what a café au lait version of her mom would have at the same age. She and I were on the floor, surrounded by an explosion of well used crayons, drawing pictures of bunnies and such, and my heart melted as I turned into a total moosh, helplessly wrapped round this sweet tyke’s little finger and enjoying every second of it. I thought she was adorable as hell, and I knew without a doubt that she was of my blood when Kenneth would not stop bugging her while we were drawing, and after Meredith had repeatedly yelled at him to leave her alone, she bashed him upside the skull with a cute little toy chainsaw (does Fisher-Price still make those?). As he howled in pain she returned her attention to me, and we went back to drawing pictures with crayons. Need I mention that he didn’t fuck with her again that day?

And that was the last I saw of her and Kenneth.

As the years passed and the age of the affordable home computer dawned, I fervently searched the internet for any clue as to the whereabouts of my younger sibs — I did not have Janice’s married name, so that was not an option — with not luck whatsoever regarding Kenneth, but Meredith’s name popped up several times in reference to her collegiate track career. The two photos I found of her showed a lovely, athletic young woman whose features betrayed more of my dad’s line than in her toddlerhood, complete with the half-closed eyes and tentative smile displayed since time immemorial in snapshots of my old man where he was clearly annoyed at being photographed, and that familiar expression showing up on another face really bugged me out.

Anyway, I attempted to contact her through the links provided and never heard anything, so I gave up on a regular search, only checking the internet periodically and yielding no results. Then, out of the blue, I received the following:

Hi Steve,

So, I am fully aware that this email is a complete blast from the past, but this is Meredith Bunche...long time no see or speak! I did some digging on the Internet to find your email address--and you might be wondering why I would do such a thing out of the blue. Well, the world is a small place and has a strange way of bringing people together. The first encounter I had with your name came about two years ago. I was working for The WB television network, and saw your name in the company directory (at that time AOL Time Warner since you were working for DC) but then found out that you left the company and I kind of let it go. A few years later, you have entered my life once more! I recently started working for this company called Spacedog and we have partnerships/relationships with both Top Cow comics and Tokyopop, which I am sure being the comic guru that you are, have heard of. To bring myself up to speed on the comic book/graphic novel genre, I picked up a few books to read through and when I was nearly done with Y: THE LAST MAN, I saw your name as editor! My first reaction was "Holy shit, how awesome!" and then I was like "Wow, I have this really strong urge to email him." So, never being one to fight my instincts...I'm emailing you! You just seem like a really interesting person, and since we share the unique Bunche last name, I hope that you are open to communication...I don't think I've seen you in almost twenty years!! Life is crazy I know.

I am also going to be making my first venture to Comic Con in February, which from what I read, you are quite the expert! So, how are you??!! I hope that I haven't taken you completely off guard (who am I kidding...I'm sure I have) and that you write back. Its just so interesting how I keep coming across your name/path. I hope that all is well with you and you are happy and healthy. In this weather, I know it is hard to be either of those things. Ugh, I hate the cold. If you feel like it, please write back. It would be great to hear from you and get to know you even a little bit. I'm all grown up now and really would like to know more about you. Take care and I hope to hear from you soon! Plus, if we get stalled on the personal stuff, at least we have professional stuff to talk about now too!

-Meredith

Needless to say, I was completely gobsmacked.

Shaken from my tequilaed-up surliness, I immediately wrote back, after which I called my friend in London, the only person I knew who might be awake, and bawled uncontrollably as I told her what had happened and how ecstatic I was. The next day, my sister wrote back, and after some giddy back-and-forth exchange of info we agreed to meet for dinner and “getting to know you” time. She also sent me a link to this recent photo of her.

The days crawled by — I would have seen her sooner, but I wanted to take Meredith out to dinner, and I needed to get paid — and the anticipation gave me major league agita, but soon enough, the day rolled around and I set off to the Lower East Side, not far from where she lives, for a hole-in-the-wall eatery called the Clinton Street Baking Company.

It was cold as a motherfucker when I stepped above ground at the F train’s 2nd Avenue station and Houston Street, the wind chill bringing things down to near zero degrees, but I was oblivious to the blast from a frost giant’s ass. I was as nervous as I have seldom been and my mind was a bedlam of raging insecurities; what if I fuck this up somehow? What if we have nothing to say to each other? What the hell kind of big brother can I possibly be to her at this stage of her life? All those worries and more rocketed about in my head, and as I headed east on Houston it seemed like some demented architect spirit was invisibly adding more blocks with each street I crossed, gaining cheap yucks by giving me yet more time to over think the situation.

I arrived at the restaurant slightly early to stake out a table toward the rear, a space that would hopefully provide a small measure of privacy for the family reunion of two, and I ended up sandwiched into a claustrophobic spot between two other tables. When I hung up my stuff and looked around, the place looked more upscale and chi-chi than anyplace I would normally frequent, but I was there, so I would make the best of it.

I went into the restroom and washed my face with cold water, successfully shocking my nervousness away and focusing my emotions to a semblance of stability. “Butch up, man!” became my mantra, and with one last look in the mirror I stepped back out into the restaurant and sat down. Usually, when waiting for someone I pull out a book and read, but the comfort of fiction would do nothing to make the time pass until the real life human drama began, so I sat for what seemed like hours while only three minutes elapsed.

Then my sister walked in.

I could see that she was just as nervous as I was, and after a few seconds we embraced. She was tall, my height, and very slim, so slim that I thought I might have crushed her when we hugged, and when we let each other go it sank in that I last saw this grown woman when she was just a tiny little girl. I actually started to shake, and then told her, ”This is just too weird!” She agreed, and when we sat down we engaged in a bit of small talk regarding my comics career and what I was doing now, then what she was up to, but in no time we began talking about our family.

As most of you know, I have very little difficulty discussing the details of my own life but considering that my sister is involved in the particulars of this story, I will not relate what we discussed, but I will say that we share some similar memories and that she came out just fine. In fact, I have to state that she’s apparently much better adjusted than I am — not much of a surprise there — and definitely destined for great things.

What I will share with you is that she lives on the Lower East Side with a boyfriend who sounds pretty cool, has a sly sense of humor, and seems to embrace the joy of living in healthy ways, both emotionally and physically, that I wish I had been capable of when I was her age. I learned all of this while noshing on the pricey but exceptional crab cakes — trust me, they’re the only good ones I’ve ever eaten in NYC — and homemade biscuits, and in no time we were at ease with each other. And that’s nothing short of amazing since for all intents and purposes we were total strangers, although strangers united by blood and an uncommon surname. I have often spoken disparagingly of my childhood situation, but when I spoke with Meredith I saw none of the negativity that I have carried for so many wasted years, and perhaps her act of reaching out and finding me will be the first stage in a psychological/emotional healing that has been too long skirted. I would also like to get to know my brother, Kenneth, and at last that may be possible.

Dinner ended too soon, and after about two and a half hours of highly emotional gushing — 98% of which was mine, since I’m very sensitive, as you may have noticed — we had to leave, she back to her boyfriend and work the next day, and I back to my chilly apartment and the tape of the evening’s new episode of HEROES (guess who made out better on that one?). But before we parted, we whipped out our digital cameras and snapped shots of us together as proof that we both exist.

Yeah, I know. She’s gorgeous, and I look like a bespectacled pineapple with an Afro and “hipster” facial hair, but I assure you that we are related. Mess with her and I will unleash some serious Kumanoken whupass on your sorry behind. Just see if I don’t!

So, now I have some family, and that’s great because I have always wanted a little sister. I’m a born nurturer and am very supportive and protective of my loved ones, so, Meredith, you and Kenneth now have a big brother. I hope that I won’t disappoint.

NOT-SO ANCIENT HISTORY

One of the many things that suck about being a descendant of a mostly close-mouthed family governed by an emotionally oppressive southern matriachy is the paucity of documented evidence about our ancestors and their stories, tales that have slipped through the cracks of history because "we didn't talk about those things." What little that I have been able to glean of the history of my mom's side of the family mostly goes back as far as the late 1880's/very early 1900's, much of that is piecemeal at best, and considering the horrors contained in much of it I can't honestly say I'm surprised by little of this lore being passed down. Fortunately photgraphy was around at the time, so in some cases I am able to attach a face to some snippet of my family's painful minutia.

My maternal grandmother gave up the ghost just after Thanksgiving in 1988 and when my mom traveled back to Alabama to settle her mother's estate, she returned with many artifacts of her mother's, including the one photograph known to exist of my great-grandfather, Liggon James. (see below)

I was already very much aware of the genetic stew that makes up my lineage, but I was taken aback when I saw the image of my great-grandfather. Here was a dude who looked like he could have been the guy they used as the model for the cartoon character found on the Pringle's New-Fangled Potato Chips container, in other words, he looked like a quaint "gay nineties" white guy. When I asked my mother about it, she related to me what little history about Liggon that she could recall (he died when she was very young).

As previously stated, my mom's family was basically a matriarchy, but that bastion of strong women was founded by my great-grandfather. You see, his mother was a freed slave whose name has been lost to time and when she was a young woman in the 1870's she worked in the home of a white employer as a housekeeper. According to what my mother was told, during her time there my great-great-grandmother was raped by her employer and Liggon was the unwanted result. When he was old enough to understand why he looked quite unlike the other kids, Liggon was told of how he came to be and from that point on he firmly defined himself as Black with a capital B, and when he was old enough to start a family he made sure that each of his many daughters got a college education so they would never have to endure what his mother went through.

Other than the story of his origin, the only remaining Liggon tale that my mom related to me was of how he held a well-paying job as a foreman of a construction company, and at the company's main office there was one of those stores where employees could buy all manner of goods for greatly reduced prices. When Liggon's very dark-skinned wife, Saveda, arrived one day to shop, one of the company executives took Liggon aside and said, "Look, we all love our nigger whores, but for Christ's sake, we don't bring 'em to work!" When Liggon informed the guy that this was no "nigger whore" but his wife, the executive flipped out because that was the first time he realized that my great-grandfather was not exactly a white man. Shortly thereafter, Liggon was drastically demoted in position, but he didn't give a shit because he had already saved a lot of money and therefore there was nothing that could really be done about it. Take THAT, you cracker pricks!!!