Fake Family Perceptions

The last time I met Mathew was when I was 17 during my grandmother's funeral. The only other time I met him was when I was a child, maybe 7 or 8 when my parents and I lived for a few years in a rental house after my parents were foreclosed out of the house they built and the one that I visited years later when it was owned by the lady who rear ended my first car. I was too young to know if we were doing good or just pretending. We had a christmas tree with all the ornaments, the lights, and the presents. But shortly after that, I remember being evicted from that house also, my parents were sued for non payment of the lease and for damages of the property, mostly through a time when I was playing with loose change when I was taking a bath and chipped the enamel on the tub along the rim of the drain.

I remember seeing that in a videotape recording that was given to my parents in a set of court documents of proof the damages the realty company was wanting to collect on us. It instilled a sense of bad luck in me I remembered, that I was the reason they were being sued. It wasn't of course, just a visual marker that I somehow link with my cousin Matthew because somehow I knew my parents were pretending to my Uncle, Aunt, and their family.

They were a hyper-religious family, from what my dad said when his brother was 18 he was talented baseball player and went to college on a scholarship, he met my aunt and was wrapped up in a cult-ish religious group. He burned his baseball trophies and gave all his money and possessions up to the church. They were educated, knowing Russian and German. During the fall of the Berlin Wall and later the Soviet Union, Matthew's parents went on a pilgrimage there for many years to convert the collapsed state's number of atheists into "their so-called Christian cult" as my mom would repeatedly say arrogantly before they showed up.

I had a bias built up before I even met them, and was too young to form an opinion before they left, not to see them again for years. Shortly after that visit, our family began its trek through an emotional wilderness that had us fall out of contact with them.

Shortly before leaving, My grandmother died, Matthew and I met again, taking part as pallbearers at her funeral. It seemed apparent to me that his life was on track, he was going to Cal, studying engineering, while I was turning the corner on what I wanted to be. I was studying art, wanted to continue doing that as it gave me the only sense of stability and support I have ever known. My parents hated it for the most part and were quick to say hey, Matthew is studying engineering. Why don't you do that, it will be an easier life? I stuck with art. Family worries about you being able to afford a sandwich, not if you can be happy with your accomplishments when you are on your deathbed.

I was full of idealism and belief as this thing I found kept me disciplined. I wanted out a hateful environment full of the pain of everybody in my family. The preacher giving the sermon at my grandmother's funeral spoke of a life as full of pain that death was the end of that pain. He was my grandmothers' minister for at least 30 years, and I didn't believe him for a second, thought what he was saying was full of shit. I wasn't turning away from what I thought I wanted.

Looking back, I think our youth was spent not knowing anything about the outside world, just wanting to go out and experience what we didn't know. My third encounter with Matthew, we were both in our mid-thirties, he has a son about Marco's age, Caleb. I had seen pictures of him on facebook with his wife and his son, the photos of the three looked cute posing out in the Colorado landscape. He showed up with his sister, my other cousin. It was weird given the last time I saw her was in the rental house when she was a baby crawling around. She was in interior design school and just married to a lawyer whom both lived in Atlanta, it was a good night, though I found out Mathew was just very recently divorced and Caleb was with his Mother.

After a few drinks and an attempt as some nachos with chili on them, apparently, they place green chili on all bar food in Denver, we went back to Matthew's house for the evening to hang out further and ring in the new year. Our car was thrashed with ice and road salt, the elevation made it sputter weirdly, and the icy conditions froze the passenger side door locks and trunk, breaking them. It ran, but I kept a constant monitor on the fluid and worried the sounds would worsen/ worse misfire and break down. We arrived, and Matthew and I were looking at my car. I said it's a really cool car, I don't know why I said that in fact, the car keeps me in my place worrying about getting it paid off before it decides to break down for real. It constantly keeps me on edge. In fact, I didn't think it was a cool car. I thought it was an oversized, temperamental shit box people bought when the made financial mistakes.

Nice a VW he said, I have a Jeep on a lease but am afraid of driving it around here because the mileage restrictions are low for the price and will get an added fee if I go over, which is easy to do in Colorado. We went in and caught up. I felt a little uneasy, looking at the insides of the house. The garage was filled with various fragments. Kayaks and outdoor equipment in the garage. Complete furniture sets in the living room and kitchen. Granite countertops and nice cabinets. In my past life I was in cabinet manufacturing and pay attention to the hinges and interior details, though I have only lived in old spaces with job built cabinets and years of enamel paint on them. The upstairs had multiple bedrooms. It was a lot of stuff.

My first thought was what did we do wrong. My second was how was this all being paid for. Funny how my first thought was what our failures were financial. We lightly talked about what happened over a bonfire later that night. She was a faculty member at a local college. The house was far too expensive for them to afford and he was in the process of looking for an apartment that was smaller for him and his son. We stayed a couple of days and hung out through the new year. The next day we tooled around Boulder and chatted a little bit.

He was worried about the house and what was the appropriate space for him and his son, We said we are fine with little space and most of the time Marco, and we share the bed. It's fine. It's all fine. We didn't know where we wanted to go. He said Denver was cool, but the hours were long, and employers know that everybody wants to live there so they can charge employees a little less as a surcharge and most will take it... Despite the high rents and how everybody is getting pushed further and further out of the city.

We said we were thinking of moving and couldn't handle it in Houston anymore, Harvey was dreadful and felt like the city sort of broke. Too many people are moving there and owning a house felt a risk given you couldn't leave town in the event of a natural disaster and not knowing if you were going to be trapped in a flooded house. It was strange because I was from there I said, and it feels like it no longer exists.

"How was the family business?" he asked.

"It failed fantastically," I said.

Our company finally collapsed in the middle of building an excessively custom project for an NBA player's house. Cabinets for his gun collection.

He laughed, I did too.

"Did you meet him?"

"No, never," I replied. "But it's all gone now."

Yeah, our wife's divorce is messy, I had to tape her to prove that she was engaging in domestic violence. Was she hitting you I asked? no, it was psychological. And afterward, she kept saying she was in the criminology profession, that the court always sides with the women, you will never see your son or have custody. I looked around the house and saw all the wedding and family photos, they were all of the spectacular places with a perfect family dropped into the center of the scene, an extended von Trapp family out in the pristine American west. We can't afford this house, we are selling it at a loss. I don't think we can manage it together as a business arrangement. We are out in two weeks. Damn, I'm sorry.

Yeah

"My family was in the church and learned about business late," he said. "I was envious of your family's position."

Ha!, Why? I said I was envious that you got to go to all of those places. We were locked day in and day out in that business barely keeping it all together. We never took a vacation anywhere unless it was to go to a funeral. For what? To crash and burn and have terrible credit anyway, to default and leave people hanging? That wasn't worth it either.

I always questioned the church and my upbringing, He said. My dad treated those in the church first and did not consider anyone else outside as worthy. We went out and saw incredible things, but it was always the church family first. The moment I started questioning it we began separating, my mom is the one who is keeping us together for the sake of my son.

I had known some of this prior as my dad said he talked to their other brother and Matthew's dad conveyed that his son was a fuckup. I'm sure my dad said the same as me.

"It's funny," I said.

What?

You have this thought of my dad being this successful business person, he's just like your dad. He never considered his family first, only his business. I respect what he had to do, but he wasn't a balanced individual. He treated the people he did business with first before his family. He put together Christmas presents of his partners before he came home to enjoy Christmas with his family. In fact, those partners smelled the desperation and put him in some nasty situations I said. I witnessed it when I came back for six years. It ran its course, and I'm lucky for it. I went back because I told myself it was what I was supposed to do, just like you bought this house, it was what you were supposed to do. Maybe there is no such thing anymore, and we can do anything we want. I remember this McDonald's happy meal I got when I was a kid, Ron Stone a Texas television news personality did this weekend show called the eyes of Texas where he would tour amazing sites around the state. It was this book that was included of a list of cool places to go, one of which was Big Bend National Park. I was in the backseat a little older than Marco saying wow, Brewster County is enormous, can we go there someday, Dad said, yeah, eventually. He never went anywhere, we never really went anywhere because of addiction to work and how it inflated his ego.All of it was a performance to others while we barely kept our heads above water. I thought about it off and on and is a decision why we are doing the magazine with Marco. It's important to get out so that he can see. I'm unlearning some mistakes and hope that we keep having the opportunity for me to unlearn a few more. Its funny, they are the same person it sounds like, yeah, I said. Fucking Cartwrights, they are weird ass people. We both had a drunken laugh in agreement.