In Seattle, we have an idiot savant named Richard Peterson.
For 20 years or something, he stood outside the Kingdome and played the trumpet
in the rain, until they blew the dome up in 2000. There was a documentary about
him in the Seattle International Film Festival last year, Big City Dick,
which chronicled his general retardation, his temper tantrums, his medical problems,
his established rivalry with the guy who plays tuba at the Seattle Center, and
his minor fame via some Stone Temple Pilots album. Even in his late 50s, Richard
Peterson was obsessed with his mother, who was also his only friend. In the
film, he talks a lot about how his dad was mean and didn't like him. At the
end of the movie, Mom dies, and it's revealed that she had hooked up with a
traveling musician while dad was away in the service, and we all understand
why Richard got the Christ beaten out of him all the time.
This is the only explanation I've got for Uncle Steve. Whenever I mention something
unacceptably bizarre that Steve has done at a family function, my dad will say,
"Hey, go easy on Steve-- his dad didn't like him very much. It messed him
up."
I'm really not sure where to begin with Uncle Steve; which quality is the most
descriptive of his general impropriety. He is mom's middle brother, the fourth
of seven otherwise normal siblings. I'm not sure of his height-- he once told
me he was 6'7", then amended it to 6'10" another time. Our family
is tall, but no one on mom's side tops 6'3". It doesn't matter: He's terrifying
to behold, either way. Steve is thin and balding, and he wears plaid lumberjack
shirts. He has bad teeth, a leathery face, and the quintessential gin-blossomed
nose. Sometimes he'll show up with a creepy shallow mustache. He lives with
my grandmother's disabled friend, helping her around the house in exchange for
rent, after being out of work for a couple years. I like to imagine that his
job is "reaching stuff."
In perfect accordance with nature, the universe, and How Things Should Be,
Steve was a carnie for most of his life. When I was in my late teens, he resurfaced
in the city, from white-trash Yakima, where I guess there must have been a year-round
carnival, because that's where he'd been since I'd been alive. I know he was
a heroin addict for a long time, and that he was in Vietnam pre-carnival, but
other than that, Steve's life is a swirling nebulous mystery to me. Not that
I think about it a lot.
Mom, in contrast to Dad, blames Alzheimer's for her little brother's
behavior. She just latched onto this recently; before, it was a combo of Steve's
dad and drugs and Vietnam that was responsible for Steve, like everyone else
assumed. But now it absolutely must be Alzheimer's, because "He'll tell
the same damn story every single time I see him. I must've heard 25 times how
he beat that damn rock 'n' roll trivia video-game machine in Astoria.
He can't remember what happened five minutes ago!"
However, Steve does not have fucking Alzheimer's, that's for damn sure. What
he does have, and has always had, is a desperate, heartbreaking, and supremely
irritating inferiority complex which compels him to brag about how smart he
thinks he is. In particular, he loves regurgitating music and movie facts. My
dad co-operated a mainstream music venue with Steve in the late '70s and early
'80s, and Steve believes that this makes him world's foremost expert on bands
who played there once, 30 years ago.
I mean, it makes sense: Vietnam and drugs and Dad, and living in a carnival,
or any one of them alone, could be held accountable for the way he thinks it's
acceptable to behave, to crow and hint and taunt people with his immense brainpower.
Steve doesn't give a shit if he's told you the same story of intellectual triumph
before-- as long as you're impressed. He's just a giant, freaky, dysfunctional
carnie-for-life who wasted his life on heroin and knows it, and he knows you
know it once you've taken one look at him. He's grasping at straws to change
your mind.
It's infectious, I've found out, because my boyfriend and I will
catch ourselves telling Steve stories to each other over and over again. There's
the fucking trivia machine in Oregon, and the time there was a bear
loose in St. Helens, Washington, and when it was captured, he said something
witty to someone else about "Hey, you fed him, drugged him, and took him
for a ride! I bet he's in heaven!" and everyone laughed, and the time a
fucked-up Steven Tyler kissed him, and he was like, whoa, dude, I don't "swing"
that way! Now, Sean tells the story of the time "Uncle Steve told that
fucking story again," and we both work Steve quotes into inside jokes.
But our favorite incident is Mother's Day.
Or maybe it was Grandma's birthday, or my mother's birthday. We were to meet
my family and my sister's family at "The Olde Spaghetti Factory",
which, if you don't have one where you live, is like a combination between a
Chuck E. Cheese, the haunted mansion at Disneyland, and Medieval Times. It's
very dark, and there's lots of velvet-embossed wallpaper and creaky wooden chairs
and dusty fringed lamps hanging from the ceiling. It's like seven bucks a plate
for the entire meal, from bread to cafeteria-grade salad and spaghetti to the
little finale-scoop of ice cream. Your soft drink comes in a souvenir glass.
A family staple.
OK, anyway; we met at a place, and Sean and I were late, and there were two
seats left, and one of them was next to Steve. Of course it was. I gallantly
took it, sparing Sean. At some point in his convoluted lifetime, Steve worked
at the local newspaper in pissant Longview, Washington, and he is aware that
I sometimes write film reviews for newspapers in Seattle, so he likes to target
me for movie-talk. I was expecting it.
"Hey, Megan, have you seen that movie? Love Affectionately?
With, uh, Hugh Grant?"
"Uh, no. I haven't seen Love Actually. It looks
a little syrupy for me."
"Hey, guys, has anyone seen Love Affectionately?
I rented it the other day. Good movie. Good movie."
My mother also tried to correct him, but he blithely ignored her and said,
"Love Affectionately" a few more times. It was, in every way, like
he was doing it on purpose.
"What about that movie, The Ladykillers? Has anyone
seen that one? Where the guy, what's his name, dresses up like the big black
lady?"
Sean had seen it and said it was good. Steve talked about the
parts he liked, and Sean nodded, no doubt kicking himself for responding. Steve
asked, "Do you know who directed that one? The Ladykillers?"
"The Coen Brothers," Sean and I sighed in unison, silently making
a pact to not say anything else to Steve for the rest of the meal.
Then Steve did this: "How about, uh... Raising Arizona?
Who directed that?"
"The Coen Brothers," one of us said.
"What about, um... Fargo?"
Is he fucking baiting us? He obviously knows. What person on
earth who has heard of the Coen brothers doesn't know who directed Fargo?
"Also Coen Brothers." I silently willed our food to come, hoping
to derail Steve's strange litany.
But no; he KEPT GOING. "The Hudsucker Proxy?"
"The Big Lebowski?" "Barton Fink?"
Flash! I realized what he was doing. Uncle Steve's favorite movie
of all time is O, Brother, Where Art Thou? He enjoys quoting the line
"I'm a Dapper Dan man!" and chortling to himself, and then segueing
into the Foggy Bottom Boys thing and tries to sing the motherfucking song. He
was merrily leading us down the O., B., W. A. T.? path, naming Coen
Brothers movies in an effort to get one of us to bring it up so he could do
his spiel. But even though I'd made the leap, I wasn't willing to just say,
"O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" and push him over the edge.
He'd think he had won. I did something else instead.
"THEY'RE ALL FUCKING COEN BROTHERS. YOU KNOW THEY ARE. YOU AND I BOTH
KNOW THAT EVERY MOVIE YOU JUST LISTED WAS DIRECTED BY THE COEN BROTHERS."
I just swore in front of my grandmother. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was her birthday
because I'd given her flowers. She scowled across the table and, in a low, calm
voice, said, "Megan. Elizabeth." Her words had nary escaped and were
echoing in the high spaghetti factory ceilings when, ping, the waiters showed
up with the food.
I got a call that night from Mom, to say that Grandma had called her, to say
that I really hurt Steve's feelings at dinner. "He just likes talking about
movies, Megan. You didn't have to be so mean."
My mom doesn't know who the goddamned Coen Brothers are, so it would be feeble
and pathetic to try to explain that they have an extensive film catalogue, and
how Steve had recited most of it in an effort to lure us into making him look
smart. In his opinion. There was no way out-- I was a mean little know-it-all
brat. Fine, everyone already thought that anyway.
When I hung up the phone, I told Sean that Uncle Steve, a 51-year-old man,
had told his mother on me. Sean laughed. "That's what you get for talking
to Steve, man. You know better." and it's true.
I know that Grandpa Jack was in the Navy. Not that I'm accusing my grandmother
of anything, but I bet Uncle Steve and Richard Peterson could tell each other
some stories.
Meg van Huygen lives in Seattle. This is her second
story for Lime Tea. Her first is here.
