Fourteen Things my Father Forbade

(excerpt)

[…]

6.

One night when I was on the verge of sleep, my father whispered in my ear that he loved me so much that he forbade me to sweat.

Running in the park with my friends, I could not help sweating.

He did not want to hear me saying that I could not help sweating. He asked me if I could not help running either.

You walk, he said, you are not a dog like your friends.

Only now, older, can I understand my father’s concern with me hanging out with dogs. I see kids in parks with their tongues dangling out of their mouths.

7.

If I ever have a son, I will love him the same way my father did. I will protect my son’s ears like my father did mine.

My father forbade me to listen to music. I knew it was because of the melody. He mentioned the melody several times, how they make people all shaky.

You know how as a kid you wake up wanting something you never mentioned wanting before. I asked for a radio.

A year ago I asked for the radio and my father said: wait and you will get your radio. I was going to be patient, but I wanted my father to describe me how I was going to get the radio.

My father brought one home. I was not expecting it anymore.

There was a store down the street where my father bought everything we needed like that.

I could see the store from my window. I sat there waiting for my father to come out with the radio in a box. My father was able to walk in front of you and not be seen. One day I opened a bottle of grappa to taste it: so transparent, like water glowing. I sat at the window with the bottle, without taking my eyes off the street. I heard the door when it was too late to hide the bottle. My father pushed the back of my head with the palm of his hand and put the other palm under my chin so I could not take my eyes off his eyes. He kept my head in that position for a minute and said nothing. The glow of the grappa was in my eyes. My father waited until the grappa came out of my eyes, in little drops.

My father did not go to the store to buy the radio. He got it from his brother Raffaele. It was a big silver radio. The radio transmitted nothing but static. I turned up the volume and static became a waterfall.

[…]

Published in No Colony vol. 2

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