In 1995, I wrote a rough draft
of what probably would have become the longest personal essay in the history of
the written word. I titled it *Al, the Prowler, and the Siege at Dodge
Boulevard*. The project was a memoir recounting “events” that I either, willingly
or unwillingly, had participated in or had witnessed between 1961 and 1978. The
time frame stretched from my first semester in college to the years when lived
in an apartment complex off Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, Arizona.
A lot of memorable and
sometimes crazy things happened during those times. There were days when I felt
as if my friends and I were characters in some weird sitcom. Today, many of those
things would be fodder for blog posts (and probably will be), and a few of them
would be fodder for a reality show. Happenings included (but were not limited
to) ditzy teenagers, local bad boys, a phantom prowler, a real prowler, crank
phone calls, police reports, a couple of subpoenas, and a busted window.
I abandoned the project
about a month after I started it.
I had completed the first
draft when a man who had once been a good friend of mine died. I put the essay
away and didn’t look at it again until a few years ago. Once in a while, I take
it out, thinking that maybe I should finish the story.
I woke up about 3 a.m. today
and started thinking about why I wanted to write that essay. In 1995, the
message I wanted to get across is this: Sometimes things (and people) are not what
they seem to be on the surface—or what you dearly or desperately want them to
be. Sometimes the people who are supposed to love and protect you are the ones
who are trying to hurt you. And sometimes, someone you don’t think cares about
you at all really does give a hoot about you in their (the new gender-neutral
*their*) own weird way.
No comments:
Post a Comment