Each memory stuck, as it were, in the irreparable plumbing of my head as a distinct smell. It's nothing revolutionary; smells just seem to have longer atomic memory decaying times than simple facts do. Yeah, I guess that's it. Therein is the emerald jewel in which my childhood is encased. It defines nostalgia for me. It's why I can't watch the Goonies without becoming a kid again. To this day I can't help but use emerald when describing something that's really green.
Now let me have a taste of that! All three at the same time in an orgy of vices!! Just like communism; better on paper than it is in reality. Trust me. At any rate, I happen to be 7yrs old romping around the hills of Oregon above the almighty Willamette River, unsure of whether I want to make the world's most definitive example of a bike jump, or carve out my residence for the next 20yrs from a 200yr old blackberry bush. That was day to day. Now, having an older girl teach you how to French kiss; that was definitely out of the ordinary.
OK. It's done. No gruesome details for you to get voyeuristic satisfaction out of. It's done, and my little sister is heading home, screaming her head off about my infraction, and I know my ass is grass. But, upon reaching home, my Mom is more amused than anything, but of course she imparts the obligatory-parental-suggestion to never do that again.
But now it hits. I remember her tongue. The clumsy way it moved around my mouth. My clumsy-in-the-extreme response to it. I was hooked. This was the first drug I ever did, and my life, indeed the soul of my being was irrevocably changed.
This is revealed in partial sentences, in a quicksilver fashion that leaves grammatical mistakes abounding. She was 8. I was 7. It wasn't doctor, but we both got naked. We both enjoyed each other. Obviously puberty had nothing to do with it, but some things are hard coded in. One can only laugh at the image of such younguns trying to explore the pleasure of sex at such a young age. I know, it seems offensive, but in the context of our innocence it had nothing to do with morality.
We found no answers but built up our stockpiles of questions to ask at a later date. There were a mountain of them. Those are memories, happy ones, that will stick with me. Of course, in accordance with the balance of all things, I also remember my best-friend's brother showing me his scars. Nonchalantly, he lifted up his T-shirt to display the violent spatter of scar-tissue that formed a trajectory across his chest. These were Cambodian escapees from South-East Asia during the conflict. This teenage brother who had nothing but good-will in his heart is the toughest motherfucker I have ever met. Fuck surviving. Show me the man who can take a fully-automatic machine gun in the chest only to greet you with a smile. Gangstas are pussies in comparison.
Memories are replete with such feelings, both good and bad, to the point where you wonder whether you will laugh or cry, and though it may seem cliché, it matters not which road you take, but rather the intensity of the experience that you can recollect.
Kicking around Japan for the past few months I thought I'd live out every man's dreams and experience that Oriental mystery. And I did. Fun, but fraught with peril. Forgive my dramatic flair; I guess it's just the lack of a shared-culture and miscommunication that is the biggest problem. So much so, in fact, that I went for a gaijin girl. And, goddamn, now that I'm sitting on the other side of the Pacific without a means to warm her body as she's sleeping in her cold-ass Shimonoseki apartment, I console myself with memories of Oregon. Babygirl, I know that one day you will return home to Oregon, and God-willing, by that time I will inhabit the forest and whisper to you. Memories of days gone past. Recollections of what mine of been; and always my love.
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