Midtown: a semifictional account of a summer spent in Omaha

Midtown Home
Click, click, clickity-clack: that old elm tree against my darkened window as the light from the street played shadows on my wall giving me the creeps until I was too tired to care at all and I fell asleep. On the summer nights I could hear the children, undisciplined as they were, running and laughing and yelling at each other until the neighbors told them to go home, and they went away: maybe home, probably not. Everywhere the sound of window fans and air conditioners blended with the music of ugly black bugs as it permeated the red and brown brick walls in a way it no longer does.
In the night moths would gather around the globe lights that scream “midtown Omaha.” The raccoons with their bandit masks would come out to steal our trash and knock over our cans, and the beautiful black bats would take to the sky in search of food. I would sit on the wooden floor or on my little bed just to listen. Listen to the night. The night in that old house that moaned and groaned and popped with the seasons.

Leavenworth
It never felt strange the way Sam K. came into my life again: just showing up the second day of a summer school geometry class and acting as if he’d never left. He was never really a friend, just an acquaintance, but now, after he had been to Alliance Nebraska or the Cooper Village home or wherever he had been, he seemed like a hero for anyone destined to house arrest or group home life. He was a hero; he knew it as he knew many things in life: he knew I would drink with him.
Nobody asked me to do anything before let alone drink, I knew everybody did it and I wanted to as well, but then I said I couldn’t because I had empty pockets.
“Bring about ten bucks tomorrow”
Off to Leavenworth, ten bucks in my pocket, walking in moccasins on broken bottles and over dead pigeons down Twenty-Fourth Street. I had no idea what would happen, I had no idea that I would not go to summer school chemistry again until the last day of class or be fully sober in geometry ever again. But every day we would walk to the All Nations and the Four Aces. Every day we would find some means of paying for what we didn’t need.

Knock-Off Birkenstocks
As summer came to our little metropolis the scent of flowers saturated the humid summer air, and I, in my fairly new knock-off Birkenstocks, sat laughing at the clouds and sun from my place under that Memorial Park tree with its giant leaves that shaded me and delicate flowers floating in the breeze. For a moment it seemed as if life was finally going to work out.
Those sandals, my mother bought them for me and we laughed about how some day I would have real Birkenstocks, but it’s not like anyone could tell the difference anyway. Those sandals looked so nice at first, like I really cared that I looked like I didn’t care, and those were the airs I put on.
It happened one day, I was wearing those sandals, like I normally did-my moccasins were really hot in the summer.
“Mason –Mason- are you listening”
“Yeah, mom”
“You’re not allowed to use the power tools, so why don’t you just take a nap and work on your art when you feel better.”
“I feel fine; I’m just a little tipsy”
“You’re flat out drunk, just go to bed, they wouldn’t have arrested you if you weren’t.”
Looking down at my shoes I could see why the police called me a dirty hippy: they were filthy and torn to shreds.

One Day in June
We all sat there. No socks or shoes. Laughing, joking, singing, dancing, listening to music. Nobody wanted to get up that lazy Saturday afternoon. Nobody wanted to bother to tell my sister to shut up. Bear Country was playing and we were all under the trees in Elmwood, where the day before several of my friends had covered the whole of the concrete in chalk drawings –a project I started and abandoned to the displeasure of two pretty young ladies I had the pleasure of calling friends- and where I hung out with some friends until my Mom got mad and made me come home. The food had been served and the stage where a folk band, bagpiper, beat-boxer and garage band had played was taken down. My mother and father were telling me to get in the car.
“Get in the car”
“No”
They left. Everyone left except Will, Catherine, Jenevieve, and Blaire, Sarah and the drunken Erin Emsick. So we played in the creek. We went on wading and bouncing on the log as Will smoked on the shore until he decided he needed to go home. Then we all knew we needed to go home. Through the park we strolled only stopping to sit under the most beautiful tree in the world. Our wet bodies grew cold, so all the sooner we made it to their home. All the sooner I called my own. All the sooner I met the police with the scent of my first drink on my breath. All the sooner I knew that I was hooked on this life.

Telephone Calls
I had been there far too long. On the ground I lay waiting for something to happen, waiting for my fingers to dial some telephone number. I waited. I waited for what could have been minutes; could have been hours. When I finally dialed somebody’s telephone number I cried and cried into the receiver, saying “I can’t get off the floor,” well all I heard was “try sleeping–““I’m too scared to sleep-““try sleeping.” I rolled and rolled until I fell asleep on my bedroom floor where I woke with a sore back in the morning. I went to work; I always went to work on Saturdays.

The Day Before Leaving
Her beautiful face; I remember smiling. She smiled at me, I tried smiling back. I tried. Tania, I remember with her little brother whose pet turtle has since run away. Rebecca stood splashing in the puddles as we meandered through the Old Market. We wandered through antique shops, down streets we knew so well. We laughed at the thought of having to leave, not being together. But what did my mother care she wanted me home to pack, she wanted me to leave my friends for a little while. She wanted. I wanted. Everyone wanted something, but I needed nothing I didn’t already have: desire. I had all this desire, but no motivation, no practical skills for compensation. The day before leaving, I couldn’t believe. My “last hurrah:” my last day to live by my own rules. My last day before leaving; I sort of knew I’d be back.

Where I Went
My house. For almost a season I lived there. Just a place that I lived in, but not in my head. My mind always someplace else. My mind was always in the past, future or what will never be, but not in reality. Conversations I will never have with people I will never see again: quips I’ll never use; these filled my head. But then I was there, I was nowhere; just where I lived for a season, just where I was supposed to improve, just where they gave me more pills than I can remember, just where I sobered up.
I wouldn’t call it my house: it wasn’t mine, it wasn’t anybody’s who lived there. But now I remember the strangeness; the awkward love; the roommates that came and went. I remember visiting home and running away as summer ended. I remember summer.

Finding Home
Some times it seems I won’t ever find a home; “but who needs a home,” one of my remaining friends told me “when you have somebody like me to love you.”
“I don’t know why I need a home” I replied “but I really think I do”
Then, haughtily, she started “as long as somebody loves you-“
“You don’t need anything else” I interrupted sarcastically and continued in a rather serious manner: “but home is where somebody loves you”
She brought up the point: “If somebody loved you at home wouldn’t you have found it by now, or do you think you might already be home?”
Home. I wasn’t ever at home in my own home, probably because I was never home, that is, unless I was alone, but now I can’t find a home, so now I’m always on my own, but never alone. I am lost; I haven’t always been lost. Maybe someday somebody will find me, but then who would want to find me.