Any Major Dude
Any major dude with half a heart, surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart, falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning, it won’t be there no more
Any major dude will tell you
It’s a quarter to four in the morning, the Sunday after Easter. For a writer to wake with no particular agenda is a dangerous thing. Feist-Dog looks at me like “you’re mine!”
Listening to the Spotify Mix I made for Little Bird, I’m reminded that Farmer Jim Neal was absolutely a major dude with half a heart. I stole an imaginary dog from him, when I don’t want to admit that Little Bird and her mom, The Angel, are my muse, I say it’s Feist-Dog. Being a manly type, I’d kind of like to have a manly muse, but any major dude doesn’t get to choose these things.
Little Bird celebrated Christmas by bussin’ her head wide open. That’s an exaggeration; the scar isn’t as long as her finger, although she does have long fingers. Wonder where they came from? I think she’s getting used to me. I try to trick her by saying, “If you were a boy, I’d demand pictures,” thinking she’d become indignant about being a girl and send them anyway.
She said, “It itches, and my head hurts.” She’s absolutely getting used to my ways. Oh well, it was fun for a while.
She went to the movies with her uncle, The Original Adventure Kid. When Angel and I were born, he was already a teenager. How cool is that?” (Sorry for stealing your tagline, Dan.)
Since it’s not yet five, Feist-Dog pretends he’s not awake. He pretends he isn’t looking at me. Dogs are shit at pretending.
I had a dream about the Angel. She was just nineteen. Leaving Lance’s office, I see her. “You heading home?” I reach for her books when she smiles. We walk around the front of the Christian Center and Murrah Hall in the Spring. Closing off the road between the Academic Complex and the bowl was complete, and the landscaping was filling in. Trees had enough of their leaves again to leave gobo-like shadows on us as we walked under them.
A gobo is a piece of tin with a pattern punched into it, so when you place it between the lamp and the lens of a theatre light, it turns the instrument into a magic lantern, letting you create sensitive, beautiful patterns on stage. I’m not supposed to know that. I’m supposed to focus on FIFO and other methods of accounting for inventory, management theory, and goddamn fucking business statistics. I was NOT supposed to spend my days dreaming of the stage and the Angel. I was a very disobedient boy.
I asked about the Angel’s mom and dad. She asks if my sister is still coming to Millsaps in the fall. She doesn’t ask about the most disastrous formal date I had with Monkey’s best friend, where her undergarments exploded, and she tried to escape in front of a hundred and fifty very leery Kappa Alpha boys.
In the bathroom, two of the KA Rose girls, Kimberly and Meredyth, help her piece her underwear back together with bobby pins, tape, and all the other very practical things women keep in their purses.
At eighteen, you could still legally drink beer and wine. Monkey (my sister’s) best friend was eighteen. Uncle Boyd had neglected to get a date for the KA Black and White Ball because girls are scary, man. I loved taking the Angel places, but the rumors that my taking her to Black and White would foster were more than I was willing to burden her with. As I grew older, I learned that my feigned indifference fooled absolutely no one. Not even the teachers.
My sister, the Monkey, and my very own Mother conspired against me. “Take Chris!” They said. Usually, Chris would have been on my radar with chocolate-colored hair and coffee-colored eyes, and other features a gentleman doesn’t mention. There were three problems, though: her hair was shorter than mine (which was rapidly giving up the ship), she was still a senior in High School, and she was my BABY SISTER’S BEST FUCKING FRIEND. Of course, I agreed.
Chris was, and I’m sure still is, a very brave and adventurous child. I took her to the University Club for supper before heading to the Old Jackson Country Club near the zoo for the dance itself. Uncle Boyd does not dance well.
When I was thirteen, the Angel said I had to learn to dance, and she wouldn’t leave me alone until I’d done it. Sometimes, I tell the story like she was a stern mistress, ordering me on the dance floor. That’s not true. She was gentle and kind and understanding of my bitter and deathly shyness. None of the other kids picked up on this. I was so big and so loud. Nobody else noticed, but she did. In the fifty years I knew her, the only time I allowed myself to hold her hand was when she led me to the living room floor, where the kids were dancing. Nobody danced with us, but we had a tittering and excited audience of thirteen-year-olds.
Thirteen ended up with Uncle Boyd having his first girlfriend, not the Angel, but a girl named Katie, who announced she was my girlfriend. Katie didn’t live to see fourteen. That pretty much ruined Uncle Boyd with girls till today. It might get better this afternoon, but I’m not willing to bet. There have been many afternoons when I thought it’d get better.
To really love a woman
To understand her - You gotta know her deep inside
Hear every thought - See every dream
And give her wings when she wants to fly
Then when you find yourself lyin’ helpless in her arms
You know you really love a woman
Sorry, listening to Spotify again.
Chris, Monkey’s best friend, trusted Uncle Boyd to be a gentleman. She also felt it was important to show me she could keep up with me on the Champagne, glass by glass. Fortune favors the brave. I should have either stopped her or curtailed my own consumption. You could make an entirely new person with the difference in our sizes.
For most of the party, you couldn’t tell Chris was affected by the California sparkling wine I said was champagne at all. She was a GREAT DATE and made Uncle Boyd feel very comfortable, despite losing her underwear on the dance floor. (My Roses restored her) On the long drive back to North East Jackson, though, I noticed she was no longer speaking English. Whatever language she was speaking, Uncle Boyd didn’t speak it.
Describing what happened next, the eve before Christmas Eve, to my boy Campbell Cooke, I said, “Do you remember that scene in Animal House where Pinto and Otter put Pinto’s very drunk HIGH SCHOOL date in a shopping cart, and leave it at her parents’ house?”
“Of course, it’s a classic, UB!”
“Now, imagine good ole Uncle Boyd, delivering your mom’s closest friend to her parents, The Right Reverend and Mrs. Cherney, in the same state.”
Whatever fate might have befallen other boys, Uncle Boyd was forgiven. I think her parents knew I was a gentleman. I think Chris let me pet her hair once, but that’s about as far as it ever went. Chocolate brown hair is like catnip for me.
In the bowl, the angel and I take a sort of zig-zag path through the people. Neither of us was terribly social creatures, though I pretended to be. Being seen supporting something is a simple act that both my parents insisted on.
Rowan Taylor made it even simpler, “At your size, nobody is gonna miss you, Boyd.” My Dad’s friends were only too willing to send Uncle Boyd before the cannons. I was glad to do it.
I wouldn’t say the angel and I gossiped, but she had opinions on people, generally much more generous than mine. Walking up the hill, where the Olin Science Building is now, I asked her about what she was reading. Other than “why are you so goddamn beautiful?” What she was reading was a pretty important question to me, and one I was actually willing to ask.
The following year, the Chi Omegas asked Uncle Boyd to be the very last Owl Man. I’m not sure why their national office turned against the idea, but the Owl Man court was made up of some of my best friends, and a boy who made me jealous by keeping time with Maria Karam.
Before the Owl Man Ball, Madolyn Roebuck and my sister, the Monkey, then a freshman, asked UB, “If you were gonna get a crown for Owl Man, what would you get?”
“Burger King gives them away if you get a Whopper, fries, and a Coke.” I said.
For the rest of the twentieth century, that cardboard Burger King Crown, decorated with Chi Omega bumper stickers, hung on the wall so I could see it going to sleep, and see it when I woke up.
At her dorm, I ask the Angel about her roommate. A girl we knew from High School. I tried not to notice her eyes, her smile, her hips, her tiny hands with two tiny dots that looked like a vampire bit her when we were six.
No kisses between us. She’s too perfect—a creature not of this earth, but the center of my world.
I’m afraid Feist-Dog, and I played a trick on you. That’s not a dream, it’s a memory—sorry, dude.
I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them for ever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes just for one day
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be heroes just for one day
We can be us just for one day
Any major dude. Any major dude at all with half a heart would tell you, my friend.
