Love Is A Palindrome -- Part II: "A New Hopelessness"

Three weeks, eighteen panic attacks, and a few dozen Xanax later, my father and I set off for Boston. The drive to Boston was going to be the longest time I'd spent with my father since the divorce. Over the previous five years, I’d only seen him once a week, pursuant to a typical negotiated settlement agreement whereby children and chattel become synonymous. Each Saturday he took me to my piano lesson, and then out for lunch at Roy Rogers, home of the all-you-can-eat fixins’ bar. I enjoyed the fixins' more than the meal itself -- sometimes I wouldn’t even get a hamburger, I’d just get the bun and fill it with tomatos, lettuce, pickles, and enough ketchup to drown Gollum. But even if the fixins' bar had been removed due to health code violations (the sneeze glass didn't always live up to its name), I still would have insisted on eating at Roy Rogers. It made me feel like a cowboy, and I could use all the butch I could get.

"Jonah!" my mother shouted to me, as he pulled into the driveway. "Your fucking father is here!"

My father hadn't actually driven up to the house since the divorce; my mother always made him park a block away when he came around for our weekly visits.

"I don't want him to know my business," she'd say, as if we were running a drug cartel out of the living room.

But considering that we had to pack the car with all my stuff this time, which included eighteen boxes, forty-three stuffed animals, and several bags of canned tuna fish, my mother allowed him to park in the driveway, as long as I covered all the windows with construction paper so he couldn't see into the house.

"He gets an hour, no more," she said, peering out through the lime green paper, chewing her nails in anticipation of his arrival.

"But what if we're not done packing in an hour?"

"I don't give a shit, hire a fucking camel." She examined the construction paper closely, rearranging a few sheets for maximum coverage. "And couldn't you pick a darker color? He can see right through this."

Fortunately, the endorphins were pumping so fast and furious that we packed the car within twenty minutes. That, and I could carry several Miss Piggy dolls in one hand, which took up about half the car.

“Do you really need all of those Miss Piggys,” my dad asked. “Isn’t one sufficient?”

It was a reasonable question, and a question that showed exactly how little he knew me. Not that he was really to blame. There’s only so much you can learn about someone who has eighteen pickles stuffed in his mouth at once.

With the Piggys safely stowed in the backseat – and a few stuffed in the trunk, against my wishes, as no one puts Piggy in a corner -- we headed out. I took a last look at the house that had been both my prison and my haven for the past ten years. My mother was still peering out through the construction paper, half-seething, half-mourning, alone once more to fend for herself. I left three boxes of tampons in the bathroom cabinet, to give her a head start.

We hadn’t been on the road long before we made our first pit stop. I was doing fine until the Connecticut border, when the environment took on a surreal, Who-ville quality. There were towns I’d never visited. Malls I’d never been to. Supermarkets I’d never heard of. It might as well have been Zimbabwe. That’s when it all came together, in one perfect, horrible, intensely nauseating picture – everything I was leaving behind, and everything I was heading to. The Welcome to Connecticut sign might as well have been pointing to the nearest asylum.

My father was patient when I asked him to stop, at least the first three times. But by the time Mile Marker 45 rolled around – four and a half hours into a trip that was only supposed to take four hours total – his patience was wearing thin.

“Dad, pull over!!!” I shouted for the fourth time.

Either out of divorced father guilt or concern for his car, which had mysteriously preserved the new car smell even at six years old, he pulled over again, this time right in front of the biggest Hamburgler statue I’d ever seen. Alas, even the great Hamburgler in all his glory could not make me forget my troubles at that point, and I raced inside to the waiting toilets.

“Jonah, we’re never going to get to Boston at this rate,” he shouted after me as I ran past Ronald McDonald’s mortal enemy, my arms flailing. Vomiting rates somewhere between family vacations and prostate exams on things that I'd rather avoid in this lifetime. Contrary to popular belief, homosexuals do not enjoy prostate exams. What we do in bed does not involve a rubber glove, a doctor's coat, and a jumbo-sized tub of vaseline. At least, not usually. “What could possibly be left in there to puke up?”

But I wasn’t just vomiting Count Chocula out of my system. I was vomiting up lawns and polished rocks. I was vomiting up tampons and frozen lemon juice. I was vomiting up divorce and child support. I was vomiting up the past eighteen years of my life. And once all that was gone, I was afraid there’d be nothing left.

I charged passed the Connecticut welcome center, with its "welcome to our state, now why the hell are you here?" brochures, and into the restrooms, which had been labeled a "Clorox-Free" zone. I suspected the label meant that the restrooms were cleaned with Clorox products, but actually "Clorox-Free" means the opposite. I was going to report that glaring error to the proper authorities, but I was too busy with my head in the Clorox-Free toilet bowl.

I made another mental checklist of things to worry about, beginning, as usual, with "sharing a public restroom with 18 other teenage boys," and ending with "making more mental checklists of things to worry about." I repeated it in my head several times, hoping to find the logical fallacy in at least one of the 49 fears, but they all appeared eminently rational, at least in my frenzied state. Worst of all, I was now beginning to associate the Hamburgler with my anxiety. Yet another cartoon character I'd have to avoid in the future, along with Yosemite Sam and the evil Smurf.

I felt a paper sticking out of my coat during one particularly violent dry heave (my father was standing outside the stall door by this point, as several rush hour commuters had notified management that a "12 year-old kid was dying in the bathroom"). It was the letter, with my palindromic roommate's name and hometown. I took it out and ran my fingers up and down his name. I found strength there, in 12-point Times New Roman.

Mark Kramm was waiting for me, and I wasn't going to let him down, dammit. He had been let down enough in his life, first by his parents for giving him a palindrome for a name, then by every girl who had ever rejected him because of it, and every sports team that automatically cut him first. Mark Kramm just might be my soulmate, and I wasn't going to let that be ruined by a little reverse peristalsis.

I left the restroom with new resolve. I had a new purpose -- to fight for the rights of palindromic people everywhere. And Mark Kramm was going to be my first triumph, or victim, depending on your perspective. Why hadn't I thought of this before, I wondered. This must be what Jews feel like when they find Jesus.

I got into the car, Clorox- and Count Chocula-free, ready to battle the bigoted, non-palindromed members of society, and simultaneously shine a light of hope on Mark Kramm, college student, roommate, American Hero.

"Let's go," I demanded, buckling my seatbelt and slipping Cher's greatest hits -- her gender-neutral voice being an inspiration of antiestablishmentarianism -- into the CD player.  "Step on it, pops!"

My father looked at me curiously, but didn't say anything. It was our first bonding moment in five years.

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Coming Soon: Love Is A Palindrome -- Part III: "Great Expectorations"