I think I'm going to need a real drink up here.
Hi.
This is actually my first public reading
and I'd like to thank Leslie for selecting me
though I don't know why.
I mean she's never actually read anything of mine
except for a few smutty letters that I wrote to her years ago.
And earlier in the evening people
asked how Leslie and I met.
Well, we did have a very unnecessary affair
when I was 18.
I wanted a signature on a book and she gave me something else.
See, I'm quite nervous, we just roamed
around the campus or this little circle for like 10 minutes
and no one told us it was frat rush night
and you don't do those things to three gay men in a car,
you're just like.
So we feel that we were lost, right.
Hi, can you give us directions to the Modern Language
Association building.
And to our complete disappointment,
those frat boys knew where the Modern Language building was.
Well, I'm sorry I don't have poetry tonight,
actually I stopped writing poetry some time ago.
So I do have an essay that I'd like to read.
It is about my father.
I can just see you grown, another gay man writing
about their father.
OK, this one is called "Sire."
He's a man my sisters and brothers call dad,
but who I often address as Ross or Sire in conversation.
He's sire for he sired more than 17 children.
How else is one to describe producing so many children.
I say more than 17 because some time ago I
met another one of my father's children
and I do not know how many more of his children
are roaming North America.
This encounter did not shock me, but it did surprise me.
And why I reacted in such a confusing way, I do not know.
That large family is clear indication that my father
enjoyed sex and sex is the only act which
produces legitimate and illegitimate children.
I do not judge this for I do not have the moral authority
to deem frequent sex with one's own wife
and frequent sex with women other than one's own wife
wrong.
I am certain of this.
And so I have always known my family
only to include Ross's and 16 other children with whom
I grew up.
I do not consider Ross's other children, those with whom
I did not grow up as my family.
They interest me only as biological specimen
whose fate could have been mine considering my father's
sexual appetite.
This is not an entirely unlikely thing to ponder.
I do not know if my sisters and brothers with whom I grew up
share my sentimental definition of who comprises my family.
Probably not, they have subjected themselves
to other kinds of families.
For some reason unknown to me, the fact
that my family is large seems to wrinkle
and rile respectable citizens, at least
that is how they see themselves.
Some years ago, a woman penned my brother Richard
a letter scolding him for the demographics of his family.
She pointed to things like contraception, economics,
population density, land sustainability,
and food shortages.
I do not disagree with the woman,
some of her anxiety over the matters and her observations
are true.
Surely producing more children than one
can afford perhaps even love might
be unnerving to people who are concerned about such things.
I can see that this woman has a right to think as she does.
But let me tell you something about people like her,
these kinds of people are very rude
and their rudeness qualifies them
as bad people and bad people according to Western beliefs
go to hell without question and perfectly
and preferably without delay.
In this particular instance, Western thought
is something to be admired because it gives me
a petty victory.
I am sure all the mean thoughts I have for this woman
is in bad taste, but I like bad taste.
Why should I become defensive about someone
other than myself pointing out Ross's faults baffles me
for I am not partial to him and I'm not particularly protective
of him.
He was not and is not the kind of father
about which sons daydream.
I do not remember being instructed by him,
graphing orders to perform some task is not an instruction,
or complimented by him acknowledging my presence
or absence will not do.
I admit, I am not a good son by his standards.
I am a disappointment, more disappointing
than his other sons who drink too much,
who commit adultery, who eat peyote,
who convert to Christianity, or who marry unsavory women.
At last these things are excusable
because these other sons are skilled shepherds and ranchers
and carpenters, things that matter
on the reservation, things that I am not.
I have no comparable skills.
I can improve English grammar, but what a complete sentence
is compared to a well-fed cow.
I'm completely shaking up here.
But it's a cliche to claim not to know one's parents,
but how about somebody to describe myself.
I know this because I was school with people
who were full of not knowing their parents.
Still this is particularly true in my case.
Ross and I are separated by time and reality and language.
He is 82, I am not.
He trusts the goodness of living, I do not.
He knows the Navajo reservation, the language,
and its cultural baggage, I know the American landscape,
its language, and its cultural baggage.
In part this predicament can be attributed to American history.
For those of you ignorant of America and its history,
and there are many of you, the American government, that
is to say Americans, to be frank,
white people not so long ago decided that native cultures
were very bad, a native language is were vague,
and try to eradicate them.
This valiant effort failed and the result
was people like Ross and I. This is the easy part to pinpoint.
The other part, the part that involves
Ross and I as human beings, as father and son,
as an altogether different matter.
Ross's years, his life before me is hazy.
This haze is not uncommon between parent and child.
For instance, the date of Ross's birth
is in an unreliable thing.
This kind of confusion is not unusual
though for the Bureau of Indian Affairs
is notorious for clerical errors.
It is likely the person who labored his life away
in a BIA office simply did not know the year.
And again I say this, this is a generous observation
on my part.
As a result, Ross's birth certificate
notes the year of his birth as 1921,
yet Ross's parents told him he was
born the year the stars fell.
An educated guess places this during the year in 1917,
a year a startling meteor shower filled
the night sky which people on the mountains
I come from witnessed.
You may ask yourself why am I bent by the small error
in a birth record.
Surely, the error was not his fault and it cannot be
rectified.
Well, here is this, when someone's proper age is not
known as a reliable fact, then it is a very bad
or at least a small omen that this person will always
be unknowable in a small degree to himself
or to a big degree to others, perhaps,
to someone like his son.
Somewhere between his birth and my own appearance
into the world, there's this other person.
Her name is Rachel.
She is the woman with whom my father fell in love
and married.
I cannot tell if Rachel was his first love.
It is unlikely for he was 23 and she was 12 when they married.
Because of her youth and her life with Ross,
Rachel perhaps never knew Ross best.
Well, poor Mary Kay Letourneau, she followed my mother.
Ross and Rachel's first meeting sounds like a cliche and now
for life.
But as a story I was told, I was not interested in the event,
rather I was curious about the bad behavior surrounding it.
I was sure they behaved badly.
At the time I had inquired, I was
beginning to understand and trust
that despite culture and geography
human beings without question, without doubt behave badly.
Instead, Rachel told me this lean and brief and completely
unsatisfactory story.
Your father, I met while I was sheep herding.
After that, once in a while he would bring me
candy and material for dresses.
I remember he would often bring calico.
Well, if you can find fault with that.
Ross was a young man then working on the railroad
and picking crops, traveling to places he had never been.
Then he found someone with whom he desired to share his life.
Nevertheless, someone did find fault. These someones were
members of Ross's family.
They found fault in her family.
Rachel's family is a family of medicine people.
Both her parents and her grandparents
knew several ceremonies, chiefly the mountaintop
way, the great star chant, and the waterway.
From when I am told these are sort
of what people would call esoteric ceremonies.
Rachel's family was also notorious for its drinking.
Her grandmother was half Mexican, raped
by a soldier or maybe a bandit.
From then on she was always an outlaw.
She was the first person in the Cascade Mountains
to own a whiskey distillery.
These two things, alcohol and ceremonial knowledge,
when paired place people under suspicion and scrutiny.
I cannot know whether my father's family disliked
the alcohol consumption or the ceremonial knowledge more.
I suspect they focus on the alcohol consumption,
but they dislike the ceremonial knowledge
most for Ross's family has no ceremonial knowledge,
even Ross has pointed out this lack many times.
The contention about ceremonial knowledge
is that healing and witchery are two things not
so different from one another.
And when ceremonial knowledge is coupled with alcohol,
good judgment might lapse and great or petty revenge
for great or petty reasons might be taken on people,
particularly in-laws.
On the other hand, Ross and his family
had land, even now they have more land
than all of the other families in Crystal.
The loss of family property was a major concern
as it always is when people marry.
Despite the ballyhoo, Ross and Rachel married.
Whether the occasion was joyous or celebratory,
it's not known by me or by anyone I know.
Ross might remember but he is reluctant to talk
to anyone about the event.
With the marriage, much land, perhaps too
much land for Rachel brought land into the marriage too,
came under the control of two people.
After a brief time all the usual things involved
in starting a family happened, children and more children
and several more children, in the end there were 17 of us.
Somewhere along the way, perhaps because Ross and Rachel were
prosperous, he worked at the tribal sawmill
and she will rugs, they were accused of witchery.
These accusations came from both Ross and Rachel's relatives.
I cannot say with certainty that they are false or that they are
true, but it's likely that they are partially true
and partially false.
My elder brothers and sisters know something
about this time in Ross and Rachel's lives,
but they will not discuss the matter.
I do not know why they are secret,
it is something I will never know.
Again, I think this is because people often behave badly.
One thing, this is a work from a longer essay.
So I'm going to be switching back and forth with it.
Ross's relatives, his father, his mother, his brother,
his sisters are people who are largely unknown to me.
On the BIA census card, there are 12 siblings listed and only
one father and only one mother.
Of these 12 I know two personally, Grace and Alvin.
I have met others, Jerry and Tom.
One of these two is the eldest.
Jerry moved from Crystal a long time ago,
Tom moved from Crystal a long time ago.
I understand this need to remove oneself from family in Crystal.
The first became a Mormon and lived as a farmer,
the other followed the Native American church
and lived as a rancher.
I cannot tell you much else about these individuals,
this is just as well.
They do not concern me in any meaningful way.
They are Ross's brothers, they belong to him.
They are my uncles only because someone pointed out
this fact of biology, this construct of culture to me
and I accepted it.
This is not true with Alvin and Grace.
These two people I have come to respect in a very
limited and reserved manner.
I have accepted them as uncle and aunt, not as
individuals who are related to me by biology, by culture.
I have accepted them because they were present in my youth.
They were present with horses to ride and gingersnap cookies
to eat.
Now understand this, what I just said
I know is a sentimental recollection.
I understand it is nostalgic, yet it is a true statement.
As with all things, there is the other version.
Thank you, Cameron, for that line today.
Ross's sibling can be unmerciful in their cruelty.
Here is this.
After a brief visit to Crystal, I transported grace back
to Gallup New Mexico where they are residents in an adult care
center, a nursing home really.
On the way there, she advised me on various matters
in my life, money, a home, a vehicle, a marriage, livestock.
These are usual matters which concern an aging now
for a woman like Grace.
Excuse me.
Of course, this is something I am
assuming I really do not know what
concerns a person like Grace.
Still, Grace's speech, the directive of it,
the commandment of it, that do this and to do this
and only this way of it was familiar for she
and her brothers Ross and Alvin have
recited this litany as to us their children many times.
Some of us listen and some of us did not.
And let me, this phrase, let me just repeat it, some of us
listen and some of us did not, we just did not.
This particular speech is never nice to hear because
like all things Grace and Ross and Alvin say,
they say it in the Navajo language
and the Navajo language bears the straight and sting
of strict authority.
Each time I hear the speech, I am humble,
this humbling happens because the reality
I know, the reservation I know best
has survived from one decade to the next because
of those things.
Oh God, I need a drink.
Why did they give us water.
Well, transporting aunt Grace back to Gallop,
she commented along with all the other things
which concerned her that I should leave alcohol alone,
that I should have other drugs, that I should leave drugs
alone.
I did not agree and I did not disagree,
I nodded, I acknowledged her.
Then she said this, "All your maternal relatives,
the [? Toadlenas ?],, died because
of alcohol, Rachel's family."
This translation, the English of it carries no meaning for me
really, yet to hear the same thing and now for me is this,
"The [? Toadlenas ?],, your mother,
your mother's sister, your mother's mother,
your mother's father, your mother's grandmother
were drunks who drank themselves to an early death.
There is more to it."
Aunt Grace said, to have your elders particularly
your maternal elders abandoning you
as a source of shame and disgrace.
This abandonment in the specific way
is notoriously shameful and notoriously disgraceful.
I thought to myself, Oh why could not
my maternal relatives have been drunks who live long lives.
The things money, home, vehicle, marriage, lifestyle, alcohol,
drugs which concerned Grace and her brothers
do not concern me or they concern me
in a very limited way.
I earn a small income, I am a teacher, I do not own a home,
I live in an apartment, I drive my sister's vehicle,
I am not married, I cannot stand livestock,
I drink more than my share of liquor,
I use drugs when I can afford them.
These things do not concern me, they concern Grace,
they concern Ross, they concern Alvin,
they concern people other than myself.
Yet and yet again there is this contradiction
the things my aunt Grace said about being
abandoned by my maternal relatives sort of wounded me.
My aunt Grace does not understand
this thing she said, my whole hurtful meaning
to Ross and his other children, but it does not
hold hurtful meaning for me because my maternal relatives
were shadows.
And Grace and uncle Alvin were the visible ones in my life
and her stinging comments placed something between us.
I am not sure what this something is but as before,
that sort of wounded me, but only sort of.
Although aunt Grace's comments were cruel,
I did not respond in a cruel way as I regularly
do to people, particularly my own family.
Instead, an effort not to throw Grace out of my vehicle
and leave her stranded by the highway in her wheelchair.
I decided that for the remainder of the week,
Grace would no longer be my aunt,
instead Grace would be Ross's sister.
I'm sweating for that.
Several years ago a medical doctor
diagnosed Ross as having various ailments, that is
the word he used, the doctor.
The principal one being prostate cancer.
I suppose prostate cancer qualifies as an ailment.
My eldest sisters Theresa and Charlene,
my brother Richard and I were present
when the doctor informed us of this.
The particular doctor smiled, nodded to us,
and made the cordial gesture of inviting us to sit down.
We sort of smiled back, did not nod,
and were too uncomfortable to sit down.
Why we were uncomfortable entails many things.
My sister Theresa and Charlene are the first
of these uncomfortable things.
My sisters do not like each other very much and disliking--
not liking each other goes back further than I can remember,
and the source of their disagreement is the thing I
cannot know.
These two sisters grew up in almost the same way.
They were their parents and grandparents companion
which is to say they learn good and bad habits from three
sets of people.
Somewhere in between learning good and bad habits,
they were shown a way of life on which
to model their lives, including how to conduct themselves.
I find this important and valuable for not many people
can claim the same thing.
Certainly, not many of the people I know.
In the course of all of this, they
were schooled on the reservation then sent away
to live with Mormons until they graduated from high school.
These two sisters as well as others
took responsibility for me at various times in my life
when Ross could not.
He could not take responsibility for me
at these various times for all the usual single parent
reasons.
Somewhere along the way, the bad thing
between Theresa and Charlene happened from which
that feelings like resentment and envy resulted.
I suppose their upbringing should
have circumvented the event, though this is not
altogether true.
The model they had, four sisters in the way in which sisters
were supposed to relate and treat one another
was not a good one.
The model they had was Rachel and Marie and Flora.
Rachel is the woman who brought us
into the world and Marie and Flora her sisters.
These three sisters are a separate story.
Let it suffice as far as I know, these three sisters
did not treat one another very well.
All this, my sister's distaste for one another,
the mystery reason behind the distaste,
and the bad behavior of their mother and aunts
had accumulated over the years and I saw it
in the examination room where the doctor was cordial to us.
My sisters did not greet each other and remained apart.
Ross is aware of my sister's feeling toward each other.
Perhaps, he has spoken to them about their bad behavior
and they chose to ignore him.
This is perhaps why he overlooks the matter altogether.
He has a Navajo word for it, it is a word which states the act
and carries the inflection of bitterness.
Ross's indifference to the matter
did not ease the unpleasantness.
There is this other thing of unpleasantness.
From the moment a medical doctor examined the Navajo,
medical doctors have told Navajo people
about things about themselves.
Excuse me.
Perhaps they are true things, they are not true things.
The point is they did not have to be
quite so ruthless in the diagnosis
and quite so rude in the prognosis.
Soon after this initial meeting, a bright someone
formulated overall bad concept of a hospital
to serve Navajo people.
There were some ideas conceived to benefit us,
the idea of a place became a reality of such a place.
From the beginning, there has never
been comfort in the idea of such a place
and there is no comfort in the reality of such a place, none
at all.
All this discomfort makes me wish
very hard for all these things and people who created
them to go poof and disappear.
This is not the kind of wish one has
when one sees the pink velour hat in a mercantile window
and remarks out loud, I wish I owned that pink hat.
My wish is serious.
If my wish were granted my food would taste better.
Yet and yet again, reality like it always does remains.
When I choose I might glimpse this reality
into melodramatic mood of Navajo people
while they watch soap operas on a television
mounted awkwardly to a wall.
I might even allow myself to see it
in the set of curtained windows and waxed hallway floors
and the squeaks of people who populate the wards as they
go about dispensing poor medical care, this missing Navajo
people's idea about the human body.
I might see the very same thing very clearly
in the bland colored folders upon which
our names and hospital numbers are inscribed.
With no air conditioning and not much of anything
else the place resembles something bleak and unforgiving
like the setting of a standard independent film.
What can people do, what can my people
do, but give it a chance.
Likewise, how can it not be for us, hospitals or bad places,
they've always brought only disappointment.
When he was a young man, government doctor official
types came to the reservation to recruit young men
to serve in the armed forces during one conflict or another.
I think this particular scout was World War II.
They set up temporary hospitals to conduct
physical examinations of the young men who wish to sign up
for military service.
As part of this process, the examiners
had to draw blood for some good reason or another.
When Ross had his blood extracted,
the sight of his own blood was something he did not expect,
he fainted.
Of course soldiers who faint at the sight of blood
can never be a good thing, thus, he
was refused entrance into the military.
I am glad of this.
My eldest brother went to war and did not
return in good shape.
You see, there has never been a time
when a hospital or a hospital somebody,
or even worse a temporary hospital or temporary hospital
somebody has said Ross you're healthy as a horse.
Although, this might not be a benevolent thing
to say for horses on the reservation
I know best are malnourished or get crushed
by vehicles sometimes both.
Then, there was the task of informing
Ross of his condition and its entanglement.
My sisters and brother glanced at one another
for even they who are fluent in the Navajo language
where lost for the word prostate.
They knew the Navajo word for cancer for cancer
is not a new thing to Navajo people.
Cold War uranium mining did this thing cancer to Navajo people
and is the thing that has not ended.
And so after a while of silence, my brother
elected to tell my father of his condition.
My sisters excused themselves to the lobby.
I stuck around for a moment then left
because I could not stand there while Richard
said to him something like, "You have prostate cancer.
This is a very bad thing.
It will make your life not fun.
One of these not fun things is that you will soon
lose the ability to have an erection."
For a man like Ross who produced 17 or more children, who
enjoyed virility and its advantages,
there is immeasurable loss in such a statement.
And so like the other days Ross confronted
a hospital and its personnel this particular visit
came to a bad end.
He was made aware of his cancer, it
was an ailment neither the hospital nor the doctor
could cure.
So they sent him home with his eldest daughters still
not liking each other.
If you get the impression I know Ross
through speculation, events, and other people, it is true.
He and I cannot communicate in a clear manner.
I speak a language, English, he hardly understands or speaks,
he speaks a language, Navajo, I understand well but do not
speak.
In fact I find it difficult to follow Navajo
as other people speak it.
The Navajo Ross speaks and the Navajo other people speak
are often different.
His vocabulary is larger and clearer
and the vocabulary of other people is not.
This is not condescension or prejudice,
it is simply an observation.
You see when two people, strangers cannot speak to one
another and ask questions like what subway rail would be best
to catch if I wish to see the heart of Manhattan because one
does not understand the other's language,
it is a very small inconvenience.
This very small inconvenience between a father
and a son such as Ross and I, it's
an entirely different thing.
I say thing because I cannot call it a problem.
A problem is a set of difficult circumstances
a human being is made to suffer for a while
as it resolves itself.
I cannot call it a barrier.
A barrier can be moved or hurdled or kicked over
if it really is necessary.
Since it will not resolve itself or nor can I remove it
by physical force, I cannot call this thing a problem
or a barrier, so it remains a thing.
I suppose it is a good thing we cannot communicate effectively
with one another for there are occasions on which I might say
cruel and bad things to him.
I might say cruel and bad things during the most inappropriate
times.
Then again I might stay nice and wonderful things.
This autumn while waiting to assist
my brother Richard or something or other,
Ross ordered me to release his flock.
In the Navajo language, an order is unmistakable.
At my age I found his order irritating.
It was irritating because I did not own any sheep in the flock.
The various siblings of mine do, but they are not
around to care for their animals.
Begrudgingly, I went to the sheep corral
and let his flock out to graze.
As my family sheep rushed out, a small number of them
brought out a sorrowful feeling.
In my youth when I was bothered by my family
to assist with caring for the sheep,
there were a great number more of them.
Now there are a few ewes and fewer goats.
At that moment there seemed little promise
for a successful lambing season.
The conundrum regarding how I feel about Ross's dwindle flock
and my small part in their care and existence
added more irritation.
Had I been able to speak the Navajo language,
I might have been able to communicate
to Ross my irritation.
I might have been able to communicate my slight sorrow.
There are moments Ross appears calm
and heroic, other times he's exasperating and disruptible.
These are the times I like him least because he
is at that moment, a cliche.
Then there are moments when he is something else altogether.
This is what I mean.
Late one afternoon upon his return
from his daily routine of eating at the senior citizens noon
meal program, most likely macaroni and cheese,
driving 10 miles to the local United States Post Office
to find nothing and accomplishing
all the things involved in this routine,
he asked me to accompany him.
We drove to a certain spot on the highway
where his flock regularly escape the confines of the barbed wire
fence erected to keep domestic animals like themselves
from straying onto the highway.
I do not like doing this thing, shepherding his flock,
I do not like it for sound reasons,
but namely because I am not a shepherd.
Still I dutifully exit his truck and rounded up the strays
and herded them back through the barbed wire fence.
When I had finished, I turned around
and saw Ross stooped over examining something
on the highway shoulder.
He then tucked his cane under his arm and hopped.
Yes, hopped a few steps.
I walked faster to see what he was doing.
He did it again, hopped.
When I near him I saw he was imitating or mocking
a grasshopper.
Which one, I cannot say with certainty.
Perhaps, the grasshopper tired of the game
or perhaps I scared it off, whatever
the case it took flight.
Ross wants to disappear into the sagebrush.
He placed his cane back beneath him.
I do not know what he thought he was doing
or if he made a conscious decision to do what he did.
I do know this though, he smiled and frowned at himself
and ignored me as he climbed back into his truck.
At these moments, he is an ordinary human
being perplexed at his ordinary human desires
and confused by his ordinary human actions.
I like him best when he is this, an ordinary human being.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]