Five: Mark
November 1985
Later, when my mother would ask about the camera, I'd tell her it was all Roger's fault. She hated that camera, but not as much as dad. Dad had an agenda against it. Seek and destroy. He wanted that old Nikon dead. From the day I brought it home he started barking at me:
"What is that thing Mark?"
"A camera? It's this new fangled invention used to take pictures of people." I said. Cindy rolled her eyes at me.
"Don't be a smart ass, Mark." Barked Dad. My dad always says my name after he addresses me. Shape up, Mark. Tuck in your shirt, Mark. There's a smudge on your nose, Mark. Clean your room, Mark. You're a lazy son of a bitch, Mark. You are not the son I wanted, Mark. Mark Mark Mark Mark. He sounds like a dog barking away.
Mom took a kinder tact. She always treats me like I'm made of glass, especially after Western Psyche. It's like she's afraid I'm going to suddenly shatter. Suddenly the world has provided a whole slew of terrifying possibilities, all leading to my demise. Kitchen knives, laundry detergent, fishing rod, aspirin, they're all suddenly deadly. She's not just scared of boogey men anymore, she's scared of me.
"Oh, it's a lovely camera, Mark." (She says my name a lot too. That was part of the reason I liked Roger, he rarely said my name.) "It's so nice that you have a hobby. Isn't it nice that he has a hobby, Harold?" She was dripping parental interest.
Dad just grumbled and lumbered away.
"Probably use it to take perverted pictures of the girl across the street," drawled Cindy. Cindy always drawled.
"Yeah, that's what you want isn't it? Naked pictures of What's-Her-Fuck across the street so you can have your lesbian fantasies about her!" I sneered.
"Mark! Language!" Tweeted Mom. I wasn't sure if she was referring to 'fuck', 'lesbian' or both.
Cindy threw a fork at me. That was nothing new either, Cindy was always throwing things at me. Good thing she had such terrible aim.
To tell the truth, it was mostly my family's general discomfort surrounding the Nikon that made me take up photography in the first place. The first pictures I took were terrible. Well, all but one. It was this shot of Roger with the guitar—the guitar that he would tell his parents was my fault—he was sitting on the steps outside our school, trying to restring it. It was late afternoon sun was shining through his shaggy hair, glowing like a halo, making him look like some sort of demented angel. In the soft afternoon light he became a strange kind of holy in his ripped jeans and plaid shirt.
It's strange how quickly and suddenly my parents swung form loving Roger to hating him. At first they were all atwitter, bouncing around the house and cooing about my 'new little friend'. Then he came over in his shredded jeans, his combat boots with the soles that flapped like hungry mouths and his shaggy, two color hair and suddenly they didn't like him so much. I guess he was just too much like me. Shabby, suburban waste with a hangover. He didn't even remember my last name, so he called my mother "Mrs. Mark's Mom". Good alliteration, but I'm not sure my mom really appreciated it.
Anyway, the whole camera/guitar fiasco started when he showed up at our house three weeks after Chris's party. Cindy answered the door;
"Marky! There's a psychopath on amphetamines here to see you!" she shouted (still managing to drawl).
I scanned my memory for someone who resembled a psychopath on amphetamines and came up with Roger and our neighbor's dog, Binky.
"Is it a Jack Russell Terrier?" I called.
"No, it's this kid!" Drawl drawl draaaaaaaaaawl.
"Is that you, Roger?!"
"No, it is I, Quaalude, the King of Siberia! I have arrived with my royal entourage of gold plated camels and my fifty virginal concubines! Fear me earthlings!"
Definitely Roger.
"I'll be right there, you're Royal Highness!" I yelled and thumped down the stairs. Cindy was standing at the bottom, looking disdainful. Next to her was Roger, leaning against the door frame with this scary manic sort of grin plastered across his face. Mom was standing in the kitchen door, looking faint.
"Hi Mark! Hi Mrs. Mark's Mom! Hi.....Angry Looking Female Person!" Said Roger, cheerfully. He didn't know it, but he'd sealed his fate then and there. He was officially No Good.
An extremely uncomfortable silence followed. Finally I broke it.
"So Roger, why are you here?" says I.
"There's this great junk sale on Fox Lane," says he. "A great junk sale?" says I.
"On Fox Lane," says he.
"I'll be back at five," says I to my mother dear.
"I hope you get hit by a car," says my darling sister.
"I hope you get the cobs and die," says I. And then we're off.
"That's a really charming family, you got." Said Roger as we turned on to Lion Street.
"Aren't they, though?" I smirked.
"Especially your sister, she's a real peach." He kicked a rock and grinned at me from under his hair.
"Oh yes. A sweeter sister you could never hope to meet." I was drowning in sarcasm. "Are we actually going to a junk sale?"
"You bet we are! There's something there that I really want to show you! It's totally awesome!" There it was again. That crazy glint in his eyes. His whole body seemed suddenly charged with electricity. He sped up till I had to jog to keep pace with him.
"What is it?" I gasped, clutching a stitch in my side. Man was I out of shape.
"Can't tell you. Just wait and see. It's fantastic!!" He sped up even more and soon we were on Fox Lane.
"There! Isn't it amazing?" He was absolutely glowing.
I scanned the table cluttered with junk. There was a set of old glasses form the thirties, a pile of yellowing Time Magazines, this extremely creepy baby doll made of china, and an acoustic guitar with pock marked finish and only one string.
"What am I looking at?" I asked, scanning the table incase I'd missed something.
"The guitar, idiot!" he scooped it up gently, almost reverently, like it was a baby or a piece of crystal. "It's gorgeous," he breathed.
I had to wonder if we were talking about the same guitar.
"It only has one string, Roger."
"I can get more."
"It's dying!" I protested. "It needs to rest in peace."
"It just needs a little love. I'm going to buy it." He ran his blunt fingers over the cracked surface.
I glanced at the price tag. "Well it's only five bucks. I guess you could do worse."
"Yeah," he sighed. He was in love. Moon struck. By a guitar.
"How about you look around while I pay for this. Maybe you'll find something great, too." He suggested. I honestly doubted it, but then who knew? Maybe there was something to this guitar that I just wasn't seeing. Anything odd enough to be sacred......it had history and personality, that guitar. Roger was resurrecting it. He loved it already, and it was damn ugly then. He'd love it even more once he had it fixed upI knew for sure that Roger didn't wish on crooked toenails or spilled sugar or anything like that, but he did believe in things that were just a little skewed, just slightly damaged. I mean, he's friends with me, isn't he? So if he thought I'd find something here that I'd love just as much as the guitar maybe I would. It wouldn't hurt to look anyway.
With that in mind I rummaged around the table, picking things up, turning them around, trying to find something—anything—that seemed special enough to save from the junk yard. I half expected to feel a shock like a low volt electrical current running up my arms when I touched the right thing, only that didn't happen. In the end, it was sheer desperation, a need to make Roger think I'd found something just as special as he had, coupled with a very mild interest that made me pick up the old Nikon black and white camera.
"Found something?" asked Roger. I noticed that the guy running the sale had thrown in a case too, probably grateful that someone had actually taken the guitar.
"Uh, sure. Yeah." I held up the camera.
"Cool," said Roger. "You take pictures?"
"As of today, sure I do."
"Okay. Let's go."
And that was it. The camera cost me ten bucks. It was probably worth way more than that and I wondered why it was going so cheep since it was in really good condition. Turned out it had belonged to guy's ex-wife. She was a photographer for National Geographic and she left the camera when she split. Apparently she came back a week after the junk sale to get it back. Too bad for her, I'd already bought it, and I wasn't about to give it up. Like I said, I was too busy annoying my family with it to even consider returning it. It was fantastic how angry it made Cindy and Dad.
That was, of course, before I took the picture. One good picture, that was all it took to make me want to take more, better pictures. I've always been like that. Once I do something okay, I set my self a new goal. I want to do it better and better.
So Roger had his guitar and I had my Nikon. We made an interesting pair, constantly fussing over them. Fiddling with this and that. And woe betide anyone who touched them without our permission. They were our babies. The first things we really loved. It was so unbelievably corny that we should both find them on the same day, at the same yard sale but sometimes life just throws flukes like that at you.
Note: okay, chap five and we have not only the camera, but the guitar as well. All in one swell foop (fell swoop? O well). I know it's a tad contrived, but I wanted to get it in, and I knew that if they didn't both get them in the same chapter that it would take about ten more chapters just to get them in there. Also, I know that photography is different from film making, don't worry, he'll get a video camera eventually. So, all rejoice! Mark has something to distract him from drugs, so he can stop being such a bad little boy.
November 1985
Later, when my mother would ask about the camera, I'd tell her it was all Roger's fault. She hated that camera, but not as much as dad. Dad had an agenda against it. Seek and destroy. He wanted that old Nikon dead. From the day I brought it home he started barking at me:
"What is that thing Mark?"
"A camera? It's this new fangled invention used to take pictures of people." I said. Cindy rolled her eyes at me.
"Don't be a smart ass, Mark." Barked Dad. My dad always says my name after he addresses me. Shape up, Mark. Tuck in your shirt, Mark. There's a smudge on your nose, Mark. Clean your room, Mark. You're a lazy son of a bitch, Mark. You are not the son I wanted, Mark. Mark Mark Mark Mark. He sounds like a dog barking away.
Mom took a kinder tact. She always treats me like I'm made of glass, especially after Western Psyche. It's like she's afraid I'm going to suddenly shatter. Suddenly the world has provided a whole slew of terrifying possibilities, all leading to my demise. Kitchen knives, laundry detergent, fishing rod, aspirin, they're all suddenly deadly. She's not just scared of boogey men anymore, she's scared of me.
"Oh, it's a lovely camera, Mark." (She says my name a lot too. That was part of the reason I liked Roger, he rarely said my name.) "It's so nice that you have a hobby. Isn't it nice that he has a hobby, Harold?" She was dripping parental interest.
Dad just grumbled and lumbered away.
"Probably use it to take perverted pictures of the girl across the street," drawled Cindy. Cindy always drawled.
"Yeah, that's what you want isn't it? Naked pictures of What's-Her-Fuck across the street so you can have your lesbian fantasies about her!" I sneered.
"Mark! Language!" Tweeted Mom. I wasn't sure if she was referring to 'fuck', 'lesbian' or both.
Cindy threw a fork at me. That was nothing new either, Cindy was always throwing things at me. Good thing she had such terrible aim.
To tell the truth, it was mostly my family's general discomfort surrounding the Nikon that made me take up photography in the first place. The first pictures I took were terrible. Well, all but one. It was this shot of Roger with the guitar—the guitar that he would tell his parents was my fault—he was sitting on the steps outside our school, trying to restring it. It was late afternoon sun was shining through his shaggy hair, glowing like a halo, making him look like some sort of demented angel. In the soft afternoon light he became a strange kind of holy in his ripped jeans and plaid shirt.
It's strange how quickly and suddenly my parents swung form loving Roger to hating him. At first they were all atwitter, bouncing around the house and cooing about my 'new little friend'. Then he came over in his shredded jeans, his combat boots with the soles that flapped like hungry mouths and his shaggy, two color hair and suddenly they didn't like him so much. I guess he was just too much like me. Shabby, suburban waste with a hangover. He didn't even remember my last name, so he called my mother "Mrs. Mark's Mom". Good alliteration, but I'm not sure my mom really appreciated it.
Anyway, the whole camera/guitar fiasco started when he showed up at our house three weeks after Chris's party. Cindy answered the door;
"Marky! There's a psychopath on amphetamines here to see you!" she shouted (still managing to drawl).
I scanned my memory for someone who resembled a psychopath on amphetamines and came up with Roger and our neighbor's dog, Binky.
"Is it a Jack Russell Terrier?" I called.
"No, it's this kid!" Drawl drawl draaaaaaaaaawl.
"Is that you, Roger?!"
"No, it is I, Quaalude, the King of Siberia! I have arrived with my royal entourage of gold plated camels and my fifty virginal concubines! Fear me earthlings!"
Definitely Roger.
"I'll be right there, you're Royal Highness!" I yelled and thumped down the stairs. Cindy was standing at the bottom, looking disdainful. Next to her was Roger, leaning against the door frame with this scary manic sort of grin plastered across his face. Mom was standing in the kitchen door, looking faint.
"Hi Mark! Hi Mrs. Mark's Mom! Hi.....Angry Looking Female Person!" Said Roger, cheerfully. He didn't know it, but he'd sealed his fate then and there. He was officially No Good.
An extremely uncomfortable silence followed. Finally I broke it.
"So Roger, why are you here?" says I.
"There's this great junk sale on Fox Lane," says he. "A great junk sale?" says I.
"On Fox Lane," says he.
"I'll be back at five," says I to my mother dear.
"I hope you get hit by a car," says my darling sister.
"I hope you get the cobs and die," says I. And then we're off.
"That's a really charming family, you got." Said Roger as we turned on to Lion Street.
"Aren't they, though?" I smirked.
"Especially your sister, she's a real peach." He kicked a rock and grinned at me from under his hair.
"Oh yes. A sweeter sister you could never hope to meet." I was drowning in sarcasm. "Are we actually going to a junk sale?"
"You bet we are! There's something there that I really want to show you! It's totally awesome!" There it was again. That crazy glint in his eyes. His whole body seemed suddenly charged with electricity. He sped up till I had to jog to keep pace with him.
"What is it?" I gasped, clutching a stitch in my side. Man was I out of shape.
"Can't tell you. Just wait and see. It's fantastic!!" He sped up even more and soon we were on Fox Lane.
"There! Isn't it amazing?" He was absolutely glowing.
I scanned the table cluttered with junk. There was a set of old glasses form the thirties, a pile of yellowing Time Magazines, this extremely creepy baby doll made of china, and an acoustic guitar with pock marked finish and only one string.
"What am I looking at?" I asked, scanning the table incase I'd missed something.
"The guitar, idiot!" he scooped it up gently, almost reverently, like it was a baby or a piece of crystal. "It's gorgeous," he breathed.
I had to wonder if we were talking about the same guitar.
"It only has one string, Roger."
"I can get more."
"It's dying!" I protested. "It needs to rest in peace."
"It just needs a little love. I'm going to buy it." He ran his blunt fingers over the cracked surface.
I glanced at the price tag. "Well it's only five bucks. I guess you could do worse."
"Yeah," he sighed. He was in love. Moon struck. By a guitar.
"How about you look around while I pay for this. Maybe you'll find something great, too." He suggested. I honestly doubted it, but then who knew? Maybe there was something to this guitar that I just wasn't seeing. Anything odd enough to be sacred......it had history and personality, that guitar. Roger was resurrecting it. He loved it already, and it was damn ugly then. He'd love it even more once he had it fixed upI knew for sure that Roger didn't wish on crooked toenails or spilled sugar or anything like that, but he did believe in things that were just a little skewed, just slightly damaged. I mean, he's friends with me, isn't he? So if he thought I'd find something here that I'd love just as much as the guitar maybe I would. It wouldn't hurt to look anyway.
With that in mind I rummaged around the table, picking things up, turning them around, trying to find something—anything—that seemed special enough to save from the junk yard. I half expected to feel a shock like a low volt electrical current running up my arms when I touched the right thing, only that didn't happen. In the end, it was sheer desperation, a need to make Roger think I'd found something just as special as he had, coupled with a very mild interest that made me pick up the old Nikon black and white camera.
"Found something?" asked Roger. I noticed that the guy running the sale had thrown in a case too, probably grateful that someone had actually taken the guitar.
"Uh, sure. Yeah." I held up the camera.
"Cool," said Roger. "You take pictures?"
"As of today, sure I do."
"Okay. Let's go."
And that was it. The camera cost me ten bucks. It was probably worth way more than that and I wondered why it was going so cheep since it was in really good condition. Turned out it had belonged to guy's ex-wife. She was a photographer for National Geographic and she left the camera when she split. Apparently she came back a week after the junk sale to get it back. Too bad for her, I'd already bought it, and I wasn't about to give it up. Like I said, I was too busy annoying my family with it to even consider returning it. It was fantastic how angry it made Cindy and Dad.
That was, of course, before I took the picture. One good picture, that was all it took to make me want to take more, better pictures. I've always been like that. Once I do something okay, I set my self a new goal. I want to do it better and better.
So Roger had his guitar and I had my Nikon. We made an interesting pair, constantly fussing over them. Fiddling with this and that. And woe betide anyone who touched them without our permission. They were our babies. The first things we really loved. It was so unbelievably corny that we should both find them on the same day, at the same yard sale but sometimes life just throws flukes like that at you.
Note: okay, chap five and we have not only the camera, but the guitar as well. All in one swell foop (fell swoop? O well). I know it's a tad contrived, but I wanted to get it in, and I knew that if they didn't both get them in the same chapter that it would take about ten more chapters just to get them in there. Also, I know that photography is different from film making, don't worry, he'll get a video camera eventually. So, all rejoice! Mark has something to distract him from drugs, so he can stop being such a bad little boy.
