Richard loves to spread positivity through his music and says that even if he is promoted or moves on, he will still find a way to keep singing for the customers, and grab a Big Mac afterwards. My father's brother, Uncle Chuck, was a man apart: apart from hygiene, apart from manners, apart from any social life outside of his addiction to dog-track racing and the creepy world of the United States Postal Service, where he worked.He said: “Many people tell me how I've helped them through a rubbish time they've had. A confirmed bachelor, Chuck haunted our family holidays like a ghost wrapped in a foul-smelling, beige cloth. Thanksgiving always seemed like the biggest holiday for Uncle Chuck: He would sit on our couch, which my mother would cover with a clean bed sheet before he arrived in order to save the furniture from his ripe and, at times, fungal smell.
He would drink beer after beer, trying to egg my father on in matters of politics and religion. The football games would go on and on, and there Chuck would sit, beer in hand, irritating everyone, refusing to leave. I remember my mother explaining the new plan to me, on a bright Thanksgiving morning when I was 5, and I remember Operation: Get Rid of Chuck kicking into action: at 8:00 p.m. sharp, we all retired to our bedrooms and put on pajamas, pretending that it was our bedtime. After my father had turned out the lights, Chuck felt awkward enough that he left.
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Then we all padded back into the living room, turned the lights back on, and watched TV until 11:00 p.m. or so, reflecting on the gaffes Chuck committed this year. It seemed to work, and though we never, ever discussed the plan again, we kept it up annually. Mom never told us what happened under the sheets, or if he tried anything the next time she slept over. Mom did tell us that she ratted him out to her own mother, who slapped her and told her not to repeat the story. Her mother-my grandmother-sent her back to sleep over at the cousin's house many more times. Mom never forgave her for that, she told me the day after her uncle died, explaining why she'd refused to go to the funeral. My own uncle-Mom's little brother-had just knocked on our front door, imploring her to attend.
Mom slammed the door in his face, and didn't speak to anyone in the family for weeks.īut Mom didn't need to divulge details of that night in her cousin's bed to drive her "uncles are not to be trusted" message into my brain. All she needed to do was raise her eyebrows when I'd come home from a sleepover at my own cousin's house. Worse, she'd put me through the third degree after babysitting a little cousin in a distant suburb.
#GAY MEN FEET CLOSE UP BED HOW TO#
Under Mom's uncle-scrutiny, I started to believe that if I wasn't on guard, one of my otherwise wonderful uncles-the guys who taught me how to fish, play poker, swear, and hit a baseball-would do something creepy.
If I found myself alone in a room with an uncle, I made sure I was a few yards away-a touch-proof distance. I had a tough time falling asleep at sleepovers, until I could hear my uncle snoring in another room.īeing paranoid around my own family sucked. I'm not sure what my Mom's uncle did to her but he might as well have molested me, too. Stereotypically, tattoos are acquired while drunk, but my uncle Jimmy doesn't drink. So, stone-cold sober one overcast night in late November 1991, we went to a tattoo parlor on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. This was just at the beginning of the ink-and-needle craze that has yet to fade in urban hipster culture, but no tattoo could be less hip than the ones we were getting: Chicago Cubs logos. This was something we'd half-joked about for years. Listening to the game on the radio in the kitchen or lounging on the couch watching TV-when the Cubs win the World Series, we'd say, we'll get tattoos.Įventually, we realized two things: 1) the Cubs will never win the World Series, and 2) any bandwagon jumper can get a tattoo after such an event-true fans would get the tattoo after the team finished, oh, 20 games out of first place, as the Cubs did that year. We spent some time looking at the flash-tribal, military, biker, gang, tits and ass-until a couple of chairs opened.