Spending Time with the Schaffer's

"Steven, would you please close your legs!?" 
"No." There were five of us in the car. 
I think Ellen was driving with my mother in 
the passenger seat 
and Steven and I and Stephanie were stuffed 
on that one bench in whatever the little four-door was. 

Long Island outside the window. 
I never really had any opinion of it. 
My brain was headed to a waterpark
in the summer and I think I had headphones:
maybe Green Day or the Offspring (this was pre-
Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Crass, Distraught, Dead Nation, etc.)
and I just pressed myself thru time and didn't think 
what any of it meant.
Stephen was older than Stephanie. A couple years. 

I was the smallest, sitting inbetween them. 
Nowhere in the car were: Bobby F. and my half-sister 
Natalie: They were excused because Natalie was too 
old and Steven and Bobby didn't get along 
that I'm not sure of, or doesn't make sense. I 
guess I was about ten years old, I think.... 

Later in life, when I turned 21, and began to 
openly drink around my relations all the time 
(especially in Florida when we'd gone there to visit 
Aunt Rose's side of the family) I had a party 
in some rented hall and invited the Schaffer's; 
you see. I'd gone outside to smoke one of my 
cigarettes (Was it after Giuliani you couldn't smoke 
indoors?) and Steven thought he'd just get some air. 
When we were talking I mentioned how much 
I liked to read and I think he asked me
what I liked and I said Bukowski
and did my best to quickly describe him. 

"Oh. So he's like free verse, I suppose? I don't really
like that." He went on to openly state
how he was the cruel, insensitive Republican 
the media would endlessly berate on television.
I was drunk on nicotine & music (I got the dj
to play Here Comes Your Man) and the night air
trying to drink my lungs in return. So,
it was gone after a minute. 

We went back inside where it was warm. 

****