Characters: A Narrative
Thoughts on 90s summer nostalgia and the questionable characters of our youth.
I grew up in the Northeast in the 1980s and 90s. My parents, like most others at that time, didn’t really pay us much mind. It wasn’t uncommon to send your kid out the door in the early morning hours and not see them again until dinner time. More often than not, we’d come home starving and filthy. Landlines and showing up unannounced at each other’s houses were all we knew and we were lucky enough to live in a neighborhood that housed plenty of other kids our age.
Our next door neighbors were our best friends. The girls across the street, on the next block, our rivals. They had a pool and more money than we did and they often shunned us; the haves and the have-nots. While they stepped into their yard to cool off in the summer, we had the luxury of adventure. We’d take a shortcut through the cemetery that loomed across the street from our houses. Then we’d cut through small paths straight through to the creek we called “the crick.”
Our days were spent skipping rocks and cooling off in the dirty water. We had nature and the promise of unpredictability in our days. You’d never know who you’d come across, tucked back in the wild as we were. It was exhilarating. We had imagination and the challenge of having to entertain ourselves all day. Screw having access to a pool in the yard and parents that stocked the pantry and kept track of you all day. We were forced to figure it out … and we did. My childhood was filled with adventure and it shaped my mind into what it is today—rich with stories and the ability to adapt.
I never had to travel far to find things or situations to keep me occupied. Our house was a zoo, with four kids, all spaced about a year apart, two young parents that were in over their heads, and a diabetic grandmother who loved sweet treats and horror films. If we kids weren’t trying to kill one another, my parents would be arguing or trying to wrangle us.
My grandmother watched on from the perch of her rocking chair in the living room, a cookie no doubt tucked into her bra, ‘the boob tube’ playing Dark Shadows or anything with Clark Gable. We’d torment the poor woman when she’d babysit for my parents. Our hijinks ranged from stripping the mattress from our bed, which we’d ride down the steps, to sticking underwear on her small table fan when she wasn’t looking. I once crouched under the dining room table with my brother’s toy gun, filled with plastic pellets, and took aim at my grandmother in the next room. I fired a shot and hit her right between the eyes.
It was mass chaos and no one had their shit straight. We were wild to the max, noises ranging from whining to the screams of bloody murder day and night. And in between it all, there were all of the characters that found their way in and out of our home. I think back to my childhood and as a mother of young children now, I find myself shocked at the people my parents allowed around us. But it was a different time. People were different. We were all different.
My dad’s best friend was a short, Italian man named Mike. He had a thick black mustache and a head full of hair that was feathered back. He loved that hair and kept a plastic comb in his back pocket of his very short denim cut-offs. Mike would pull that comb out anytime the wind blew and threatened to mess up his coiffure. His netted crop-tops showed off his hairy belly and chest. As a kid, it was gross and we often told him so. The white high-top sneakers that made their way back into being trendy, (as all things eventually do), really set off his dedication to 80s fashion. My sisters and I would eventually steal those high-tops, douse them in nail polish remover, and attempt to set them on fire. Why? Because Mike was drunk and promised us money, but didn’t deliver.
We were ruthless. We were wildlings. And we loved our Uncle Mike. We just had a funny way of showing it. He was an authority figure in our eyes, but Mike’s playfulness kept him at our level. We were allowed to fuck with him, because more often than not, he let us. And he thought it was funny, too. Mike was a drunk and a drug addict at the end of the day. But we had no idea. We were young and innocent enough to go with the notion of the ‘fun uncle.’
When I think about Mike and my childhood version of him, I miss it. I wish I didn’t know the truth of who he was in any other form than what I perceived back then. But we grow up and we learn who and what people really are. What I remembered of Mike was that he loved us. He stuck around. He played with us. He tolerated our torture and our bullshit. And he really loved my dad. They were thick as thieves.
What shocks me the most when I play back those years is how young they were. As kids, we look at our parents and authority figures as ‘old.’ All of them are old. They’re supposed to know better and have all of the answers. My parents and Mike were only twenty years older than me at the time. Most of my memories of their shenanigans, combined with ours, are dated back to their 20s and early 30s. It blows my mind. At 40, I already reminisce about my 20s and 30s. I was such a baby still. There was so much I didn’t know and so much I had yet to learn. I expected and relied on these figures to get it right, to know the answers, to protect me. But they were just fucking around. They partied. They were trying to figure it out, to get it right. They didn’t know the answers because they never asked the questions. They protected us as much as they could protect themselves. And as a couple of young drug addicts, the point was almost moot. We were wayward and wild as kids and I could say the same for them. When someone becomes a parent, it doesn’t equate to maturity and grace.
I never knew Mike to be a dad and if he was, he never talked about it. He liked beer, quoits, cocaine, and women. He’d get so drunk, he’d often end up hurting himself, much to our delight. I have a fond memory of Mike leaning forward to pick a quoit up off the board, losing his balance, and sliding forward, head first onto the porch. It all happened in slow motion, because it was in slow motion. He was so drunk, his motor skills went offline. I can’t remember if he came away with splinters, but I remember the mark it left. It didn’t phase him. He probably woke the next day, clocked the scrape, and cracked open another beer.
Another slow motion memory that always comes to mind is the time my sister punched Mike in the chest and sent him flying into our dining room table. She had been practicing a particular punch, one where you put your fist a finger length away from your object of destruction and you punch as hard as you can. The movement seemed ridiculous to us and when it was presented to Mike, he agreed to it. He was drunk. Of course he was drunk. My sister stood in front of him, the rest of us behind in a fit of giggles. She held her fingers out toward his chest and positioned herself. Without much effort, she balled her fist up and slammed it forward. Mike took a slow-mo dive backwards, landing straight into our glass dining room table. It didn’t break, but my dad was still pissed.
Everything Mike did was in slow motion. The way he spoke and moved offered up the suggestion that he was in no hurry. There was nowhere to be but right where he was. I liked that about Mike. I remember having his full attention and as a kid, having one’s attention was as good as gold. Mike gave what he didn’t have; attention, laughs, and a shitload of memories, even if he was as high as a kite doing it.
My siblings and I were not without uncles in our lives. If they weren’t embodied through the friends of our parents, they were embedded throughout our family. We had a handful of uncles on either side, our parents both being one of six or seven siblings. Tie in the men our aunts married and we had an abundance of paternal figures. Two out of four of my dad’s brothers really took the cake when it came to their roles. Neither were ever married, nor did they have children. They loved drugs and alcohol more than procreating.
My Uncle Donald loved Pink Floyd and cannabis and most of his days were shaped around the two. He’d tell stories of ‘The Floyd,’ which we pretended to listen to. He’d take to the backyard to light a joint before my dad yelled at him about smoking around his kids. He was always lurking somewhere, showing up on random days and times without calling first. If no one was home to answer the door, he’d berate my dad the next time he’d see him. Don didn’t drive, so trekking to our house from downtown was a feat for him. It really pissed him off.
When my dad got remarried, my Uncle Don begged me to leave the reception so we could go back to his apartment a few blocks away and smoke some a joint together. When I declined his dirt weed, he scoffed at me, and stomped back inside. A few minutes later, seemingly having forgotten our conversation, he joined me on the dancefloor, where he bucked and jolted in a series of awkward moves, his signature look of horror and confusion pasted on his face.
Don was a character unlike any other, never to be taken seriously. He was known for dramatizing everything he said and most of the time, it was said mere inches from our faces. He was a sprayer when he talked, despite his consistent cottonmouth. It wasn’t pretty. When I became an adult, he took to calling me a ‘beautiful woman’ and would chase me through the house, begging me for hugs. It was not uncommon for my dad to have to chase him off. If he’d ever get his hands on me, he’d hug me for an uncomfortable amount of time, burying his scruffy face into my neck as he made weird noises.
I know it all sounds awful, but it was just Uncle Donald. He was fucking weird. He’d show up every year to Thanksgiving dinner that no one invited him to, where he’d proceed to load up his plate and chew with his mouth open. My dad hated it, but the rest of us would shoot each other looks as we giggled at the ridiculousness of the man. He was pure entertainment.
My Uncle Don’s greatest on and off again rival was his brother, Richard; my Uncle Bucky. I rarely remember the two being in the same house together; they were always fighting about something. They lived downtown, a few blocks from one another. Their rival had to do with stolen drugs, or maybe a stolen girlfriend; either way, someone had stolen something along the way and I’m not sure either of them even remembered the truth. They’d occasionally make up and get messed up together.
Don didn’t like to drink, so he’d get high and Buck was always drunk, so he’d accentuate his altered state and smoke Don’s dirt weed, which he probably never paid for. Don was always in a tizzy about Buck. He’d go off on a tangent and when it got to be too much, my dad would make him leave. We’d watch him through the window as he made his way up the street, still going off to no one in particular, throwing his arms to the night sky to accentuate his point.
Buck rarely said a word about Don. But Buck rarely said any words. He was always so drunk, they were unintelligible. More often than not, Buck would open his toothless mouth and instead of words, drool would fall out. Like Uncle Mike, his motor skills went kaput. Bucky tried to follow Don’s lead, maybe even trying to trump his role of the Creepy Uncle, by following my sisters and me through the house, eyes half open, drool spilling out of his mouth and into his scruffy beard. His arms outstretched, he’d bark demands at us young girls to “give your Uncle Bucky a kiss!” Again, we’d hightail it, leaving my dad to defend us.
As kids, we delighted in the ridiculousness of these people. As an adult, it’s sometimes horrifying to think about. A lot of the behavior that was tolerated was just a product of the times we lived in. We didn’t know any better and maybe they didn’t either. It’s frustrating when I see people in the media picking apart the behavior of people from decades ago; things that were said or done. It doesn’t make it right … it’s just how it was. Time changes the rules of what’s acceptable and unacceptable.
I try not to stare too long from my middle-aged lens when I look back at these people. They were younger than I am now, with either a slew of children or a slew of addictions. We were lower class and everything was harder. My people didn’t come from people that had any privilege or the good grace of parents that had the time and energy to invest into the well-being of their children. It’s just not how it was. They added color and character to my childhood, even if the memories are a bit cringey and creepy. I have boring uncles and there’s not much I remember about them. But Don and Bucky? I’ll remember them for the rest of my life. And because of my grandmother, anytime I see someone stuffing a treat down their top, I think, ‘they must be a diabetic.’