#jackcilenti

Three things you don’t talk about in a bar are religion, sex and politics. I’ve never voted before, so that made me a pretty good bartender back in my day. Some guy sitting there would talk up about so-and-so. Next guy would argue his own point for his so-and-so and this could go on for hours. Turns out being something like I used to get into as a tyke, when I was little enough on the playground saying, “No! Ryder is my best friend!”

These guys sweating their wallets at the bar, I’d just say, “I hear ya,” with my arms folded across my pressed Express shirt. It’s a go-to, the I-hear-ya: I’m watching your mouth move, you’re clearly talking and moving your gestures all around, but nothing’s sinking in. I’m well beyond bored, borderline offended, but I’m not listening to a single word they’re saying with my arms folded with a convincing-enough nod, wrinkling up a perfectly good shirt. I hear ya.

I never worked harder for tips ignoring someone on a slow-motion Monday. Behind the bar, there’s only so many places to cringe, to hide, nooks and crannies to clean as in “cleanse myself from these three things mostly men talk cheap about.” I am the one selling here, I don’t say. Booze, you know, not you or some prick’s pick for office.

At Walt Disney this morning, kids have got another assembly. A familiar voice speaks into the microphone over the intercom system from the office saying, “Pardon the interruption... Teachers, will you please excuse any student running for office to the multipurpose room now. Thank you”.

XXX

I had an idea about who all was running for Secretary, Treasurer, VP and President. The candidates all Scotch-taped their campaign posters up on a designated wall facing the administration building. No staples, they were all told. From our class, both Raymond and Garrett wore shirts and ties, except that Garrett photoshopped his face over a man’s from a color Xerox. The sisters in class, Dahlia and Jasmine, to be honest, I knew they were scheduled to run for office too. I don’t remember seeing their pictures on campaign posters, but that doesn’t mean their posters were not made and taped. Jasmine is not wearing her usual footwear, the pair of boots that look like pink Uggs; the ones with little pink lights blinking when she’s skipping around.

Toby’s campaign message went something like In Toby, We Trust.

Will is wearing an orange shirt today. Here to Win is printed in black, which makes me think about Charlie Sheen, winning.

Sahar isn’t pronounced like Saw-hair. Trust me that kids’ names, beautiful names like hers make me terrified about teaching on that first day of school, so for practice - must have trained myself to make a conscious thought. Saw-har like hard without the -d. I think this way before I greet her, and the other 30 students in her class every morning.

Elizabeth goes by Lizzy for short and played basketball this one time at recess, the only girl marking woman-to-man defense the way she did after snack. Lizzy marked so well that some of the boys got fed up but their pride kicked in so they couldn’t just walk off the court all defeated, but they didn’t really want to play and risk the embarrassment, so the boys kind of rallied around each other for an unofficial timeout and then must have realized recess time was being wasted, so Lizzy and the boys, defeated, resumed. Lizzy was the only one smiling the entire time.

A week later, I was on yard duty and agreed to a game of pick-up at Lizzy’s invite. She’s got to be 4’ 4”, but she boxed me out so bad on defense that I couldn’t get a shot off even being the 6’ 1” that I am.

Since that recess with the boys, three to five of the other girls have been bringing their own basketballs to school.

XXX

Gabriel has his right leg crossed over his left knee, knees together like usual, but he’s slumped to his right side with a thumb pressing his temple, index finger drawn up to his forehead and below his forehead, he is wearing the same glasses he always wears and below his thinly-rimmed glasses, I make out a tear, and I am standing ten feet in front of Gabriel, coughing lightly into my fist, clearing my throat soft to myself at first, I’m trying, and I can look away - very well could - and I’m not looking away and I am looking down at the carpet for a moment, but I realize I’m looking down at the carpet because I care so much. When I look up at Gabriel, he’s looking at me through his everyday glasses, a steady face attached to a resilient body with this wondering face and my chin collapses to quivers before I can bring my hand up quick enough to catch it, so I turn around, start to feel hot at my back under my shirt, my saliva glands flood thick spit over my tongue and because I feel like Gabriel might think “You’re turning your back on me, too”? I turn left, shadowing my eyes, breathing out through my mouth as hot spit just can’t be swallowed; I feel my eyes getting hot and red as Jasmine rushes in from the hallway, into the classroom like she’s running away from home.  Her cheeks are flushed pink and her blue, baby-blue eyes look so much bluer against her bloodshot eyes with her face just crumpling now that she’s at least made it to homeroom.  I see her and literally heave from my chest, from my lower back and it’s like someone pushed me by the shoulder blades, had I been an angel, where my wings might be from, my lips purse, I tuck them into my beard but my forehead falls into the bridge of my nose and there’s just no fucking use for me now when I cross the threshold of the hallway door and take another step into the hall.  I should be taking in another breath of air, but I don’t make any kind headway that way because Toby is like five or six feet behind Jasmine. Toby looks like he’s fresh off a tour of duty like “What happened”?

He looks up to me and because this is one of those man-defining kind of moments, I think he is thinking “It’s okay, Mr. Jack”... and it is.  And because he doesn’t have to say anything at all, Toby hugs me by the small of my back because we can cry. It is okay to cry together.

XXX

           Tuesday, kids have what’s called Mini-P.E., Mrs. C calls it. In the afternoon, for forty-five minutes before dismissal, the kids do their stretches, take a lap and play. The ground is hot. “Do we have to do pushups?” one of the kids say, because the stretch-leaders have the grass underneath their young palms and aren’t keen on sympathy, yet. Or they’re not keen on masochism. Blissful, I’d say instead.

Mrs. C to the kids, Mrs. C to me in front of the kids and Jessica to me here and now is saying, “I break down in class usually on the last day of school.” I’m thinking I didn’t even make it that far. She says to me a couple things I already know and I nod acknowledging her. Jessica is saying to me, “It’s hard on them because it’s not even pride, you know. They’re nine and ten years old getting up in front of the school, the whole school with parents there, with all their teachers. They’ve practiced their speeches in front of family and Mom and Dad are telling them to slow down, to relax, to pace themselves and all of them poured themselves into those posters, too. It’s awful when they lose. And, I can’t believe, none of them won. So, so sad.”

I say to Jessica, “Yeah, I, uh,” I stammer. I start again to say, “I looked at them all coming into the classroom and remembered my mom and dad when they got a divorce when I was nine, I was their age, and just reminded me about a little of how I might have felt. Opened up some feelings when I saw them like that, so I kind of sympathize with them I guess, a lot.”

Jessica tells me she’s sorry. She says, “I was one of the lucky ones. My parents have been together for thirty years.”

I find myself saying, “I hear ya.”

XXX

Toby, I call him Toby McGuire like Spiderman. He looks up at me and asks, “Mr. Jack? You ever run for student body at your schools?”

I am telling Toby, “Yes. I did, long time ago, though.”

“Did you win?” he’s asking me.

I say, “No, no I didn’t win,” I’m telling Toby.

“Did you cry, Mr. Jack?” Toby asks.

I look down toward Toby. I want to say “I don’t remember”. I want to say “Yes I did”. I feel like I need to say “ I don’t remember”, and that “You won’t either someday”.

There just has to be some easy wiggle-room kind of way to tell Toby from the heart something about politics, but we’re not in a bar. Toby and I are standing on the hot blacktop after pushups, and I am not a bartender anymore. I’m a substitute teacher, but I’d like to think there’s a little bit more to me than a fill-in or next-best-thing to an actual teacher, a real teacher some girl said to me in a bar once somewhere, like, “Oh, so you’re not a real teacher?” she had said.

I am saying to Toby, “You know, it’s funny,” and my father’s words are coming to mind or they’re not and I’m just telling Toby it’s funny the way my father had said it’s funny when my good friend and soccer teammate Matthew passed away ten-some years ago when Toby maybe wasn’t born yet.

Next thing I’m saying is, “A dear friend once told me, ‘Jack, what is it? It looks like seven different emotions just ran over your face.’ Abbey, she asked me, ‘What are you thinking about?’ and I cried out that I loved her while she started crying and asked me about how did I know and what is love anyway.

“My point here is, Toby, that I wish I could have looked like you. I wish I could have had been strong like you and Jasmine and Sahar, Lizzy and Gabriel and Will and Garrett when I got my heart broken, too.

“Some things in life aren’t like math; some things just don’t always add up. Does that make sense, what I’m saying to you?”

Toby says, “Yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes some things just don’t make sense, is what you’re saying.”

“Yeah, well, we take my case - I loved someone who didn’t love me back; you ran for student body. Sure there were votes and like in math that all added up in like tallies and ballots - all of that - but let me ask you something. Now, this might be a tough question and you sure don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, but let me ask you something... After you came up with your slogan, In Toby, We Trust, and after making your campaign posters, hung them by the library; practicing the speech you wrote and then had the courage to give that speech like you did in the multipurpose room over the microphone, after all of that, all-all of that, did you vote?” I ask.

“Yes, I voted.” Toby says.

“Then you did all you could, right?”

“Yeah,” Toby tells me. “I guess I did. Didn’t really see it like that,” he says.

I am telling Toby, “With all of my heart, I loved my dear friend who didn’t love me back that way. With all your heart and soul, you wanted to be a part of next year’s office.”

I ask, “Do you feel like you lost a part of your heart today or do you feel like you’ll run again next year?” And then Abbey’s words come out of my mouth. I ask Toby, “What are you thinking about?”... and it makes sense why I was crying and I want to run home.

XXX

but instead I look up at the sky, hesitate to take my Wayfarers off, don’t because I don’t need Toby to see what’s about to happen again, and I am only looking at the sky because the sun just might dry my tears away.

Toby looks at the sky too, but not in the same way I am and Toby is asking me a question that’s somewhere around the lines of, “What seven was Abbey talking about, Mr. Jack?” but I don’t mean to be somewhere else. All I hear from Toby is something about seven different emotions.

So I’m saying, “Seven different emotions?” which comes out like a question.

Toby says, “Yeah.”

I ask, “What about them, bud? Sorry,” I am saying.

“I was asking about what Abbey was talking about, your friend said you had seven different emotions run over your face.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I am telling Toby. I say, “Seven emotions,” I say and feel the sun working on my eyes. I look back at Toby looking up at me. I say, “Seven emotions, you know, it’s funny.” My dad’s words are coming out of my mouth, again. I say, “Never really figured that out”.

“I mean, well,” I change my mind. “Toby, you must have felt something today, right? Like I might have felt when Abbey said that to me a long time ago”.   I say, “What did you feel today? You don’t have to come up with seven different feelings - they call that mixed emotions - but how did you feel, Toby?”

Toby looks down at the hot, push-up pavement. He squints up to me and starts to say, “I mean, I don’t really know, Mr. Jack. Felt like I lost and I don’t mean like the election or the race, you know?”

I say to Toby, “Yeah, I can understand that.” Thirty-three years old, I am thinking and I am thinking, my math is dirt, but then it dawns on me that Toby is ten years old so the math adds up to twenty-three years between us, and this reminds me that my soccer number back at eighteen years old had been twenty-three. But then it dawns on me, what I was talking about with Jessica or Mrs. C a few minutes before. I say, “I can understand that, bud. Feels like a big loss because it is, and nobody can take this feeling away from you. This feeling, bud, it’s called grieving; you’re mourning the loss. How do you feel through this grief?” I ask.

Toby says, “I feel sad. I felt angry before, but then there was nothing really to do about it, so I don’t know: mostly sad, though, I guess.”

“It’s good to talk about it, Toby. You know, talking about this with adults is best. We are a little older and have seen some things you, at ten years old, might not have experienced yet.

“But back to my point. You tell me you’re feeling sad and  that’s not only normal - perfectly normal - when you lose something like, say, an election at school... but it builds character and maturity, and given the situation comes when your friend loses an election or something like it, you can say, ‘Hey, I’ve been there, man,’ and that’s called sympathy.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask Toby.

“I’m thinking,” Toby starts, “I’m thinking about this sympathy thing you’re talking about. Mr. Jack, so when I uh -”

“When you sympathize, yes,” I say.

“Right,” Toby says, “so, I would sympathize,” he enunciates. “I would be, what, like, sympathizing with the other kids in my class when they lost, too?”

I tell Toby, “Yes, that’s what you’d be doing is sympathizing, or you would be offering sympathy to, say, Gabriel - all eight of you share in this experience.

“Now, if one of your classmates didn’t run and they say to you, ‘Hey, you did really well today and I commend you for your efforts,’ then that’s called empathy. They can imagine what you’re going through with losing the election and they feel for you.  They offer their support for you trying so hard.

“What do you think about that, or, what do you think about empathy?” I ask.

“So, wait,” Toby is saying, “so you say sympathy is something that happens to someone that happened to you and then empathy is something that happens to someone and it hasn’t happened to me though, but what you’re saying is I have to use my imagination to know what they’re going through?”

I’m telling Toby “Yes,” but I pause before I say, “So, um.” I change my vantage point and ask, “So, let’s get back to those seven different emotions for a quick minute. I don’t mean to assume,” I am saying (as I’m blocking out my father’s wisdom - what makes an ass out of you and me bullshit) and I’m not giving credit to what Toby will hear about in high school, from any other source but me. Instead, I say, “Seven different emotions; we’re talking about empathy or sympathy here and you’re trying to tell me what seven different emotions Abbey had been talking about running across my face. What do you think they might have been?” I add, “And, Toby, this isn’t required, you know. You don’t have to answer. To be honest, you would be doing both us a favor, but like I say, you don’t have to talk about it ”.

Toby interrupts me to say, “No, Mr. Jack. It’s cool. You help me all the time.” Toby says. “These seven different emotions, I think I don’t know, but I mean, she - her name is Abbey, right? Yeah, so Abbey cried, so maybe she was sad about something like maybe today and Gabriel crying. I wanted to win, too; it was frustrating today that I didn’t.” Toby paused a moment.

I waited along with him for Toby to catch up on his thoughts.

Toby asks, “Wait. What was I saying?”

“You were saying about frustration and -”

Toby says, “Oh yeah!” and then, “Frustration is an emotion, right?”

I nod and cross my arms making an X over my chest. He’s onto something, I am thinking.

Toby says, “But why would Abbey be frustrated? Or upset or sad or angry like that? I mean,” he says, “that’s why I would cry.

I shrug and say, “Beats me,” and I smile downward at Toby and then carry that smile though its slight change while I carry the changing smile toward the sun before I crumple again.

I uncross my arms from my cross-my-heart across my chest and rest my hands on my waist with my palms sweating open to my hips, like I’m waiting on something; like my next motion would be toward my watch.

Toby says to me, “Or maybe she was happy, Mr. Jack.”

“They call that tears of joy or tears for joy or something like that, right, bud?”

“No, I don’t think that was it, either, Mr. Jack,” Toby says.

I look at Toby squinting through the sun up at me. He says, “But Mr. Jack, you just told me it. I forget what you told me. You said it’s called a what’s-it-called?”

I cock my head ot the side and wait a moment.