The Tie

Dad taught me to tie it to get a Cub Scout merit badge, to shine my shoes for another one. I was being groomed, literally, to take my place in society. A tie circled my neck during the farce of my Bar Mitzvah, a bow tie at the Junior Prom, then ties every day that summer after my first year of college selling ads for the Apartment Guide dad had decided to publish. I was his hands in the world, just the young man to spring upon executives who would always buy a page from someone wanting to become just like them. We made enough that summer to pay for my second year at Northwestern. Nine months later I was back, but things had changed. War had broken out, and I don't mean Vietnam — I'd had enough of his hands upon the body of my psyche and the direction they'd pointed me in on life's road. This time, when he started to shout at me, 'You stupid...! ' I had some leverage, two powerful words: 'I quit! ' I pulled the tie off my neck the way a man whose death sentence has just been commuted might pull off a noose, went straight to the swimming pool at my friend Michael's, and dove in. A few days later I drove with my girl friend to Chicago to visit a buddy there, marvelling all the way at the green and gold quilt of the Illinois fields like some real-world Oz and at the rivers our land is laden with. I thought, 'My God, this beats pounding sidewalks in the hot sun! ' and vowed to find a way to make a life and living filling my eyes with such wonders. Back in St. Louis, dad kicked me out of the house. Every inch of the property became turf in a power struggle. I'd stop by to visit mom and he'd start screaming again. We'd wage war right there on the front lawn. Armed with the knowledge that I could hurt him and had, I groped toward an abstract pattern of light like someone coming up from under water, my body feeling my own for the first time.