Lazlow

“Lazlow is coming.” I didn’t know anyone named Lazlow and considering this little message was scribbled on the door of a less than sanitary bathroom stall the context of the statement left much to the imagination; and given the location, imagination might prove to be fact. This is information I wasn’t going to know and didn’t care to know. In life we encounter many of those things don’t we? Things that we can only ponder without ever getting the answers to. In fact entire college courses are devoted to such things, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, hell, even Science. None of those guys can say for 100% certainty how we ended up on this spinning rock in the vast blackness of nothingness without a Time Machine, and even Time Machines fell under that category of questions we’ll never get answers to, so ultimately what’s the point of debating it? I’m sorry, I sound cynical, don’t I? Well, despite being in a bar I’m not a drinker and I’m not drunk; and speaking just for myself, I’m in good health, I work a good job and my wife, despite being in her mid 40’s is still pretty damn hot and in good shape. So there, there’s some optimism for you.

What brings me here to “O’Dooley’s” almost every night after work is my son...if you can call him that...or even call him a “him”. His name is Timothy. Why does my son cause me to avoid coming home like the plague. Brace yourself, the answer will shock you. Timothy is mentally retarded. I’m a scumbag, aren’t I? Of course I am, because I’m supposed to love my child no matter what, at least that’s what the fuckin’ moron in the support group says. The parents don’t get any sympathy, all we get is people smiling at us and saying what a brave boy Timothy is. Timothy isn’t brave, he isn’t anything, he sits, correction, he’s strapped to a chair and he drools. That’s it. I’m not exaggerating. Okay, I am, he does get fussy when he’s hungry. And by fussy I mean he’d scream really loud and by scream I mean make moaning noises like Frankenstein and lurch forward in his chair with spit bubbling on his lips, hands grasping at nothing. Sometimes these episodes last, and I’m not kidding because I started timing them, 30 minutes to 2 hours. How in the fuck can a 12 year old mumble, moan and spit for 2 whole hours? I started going to O’Dooley’s when Roxanne, my wife obviously, asked me about schooling for Timothy.

“Schooling?” I thought. ''“He sits in a fuckin’ chair and drools? What the fuck is he gonna learn? What would be the point?”''

It’s not like he’d suddenly become intelligent and get a good job at a fortune 500 company. He’d be sitting in that goddamn chair until Roxy and I were in our late 70’s still having to put up with his hollering bullshit. I suppose I should piggyback what I’m saying by telling you that Timothy is the kind of mentally retarded where he is incapable of using his arms and legs. They’re not deformed or anything, it’s just the part of his brain that controls that part is disconnected or not connected properly. It was when she said that that all of this dawned on me.

I was pretty much doomed. Depression sets in when one has a realization that is unavoidable, and mine was that I was going to be tied to this...for lack of a more accurate word, child, for life. There was never going to be a moment where I didn’t have to dread putting up with him. Where I didn’t have to look at him...where he wasn’t cutting into my time with my wife. There would be times where she was just exhausted from dealing with him to tend to my needs. Selfish of course, but is it wrong for me to want that?

Any normal child you can throw them a couple of bucks and send them off to the movies or something...but with Timothy...it’s hard to get in the mood when your child screams and throws soup at the wall and you spend the next 10 minutes wiping it off all the while listening to more screaming. He actually hit her one day, my wife. He was throwing his cheerios one day and she gotta little too close and POW, hit her right in the eye, gave her a pretty good shiner too.

Timothy, had what I secretly call “retarded strength”. The basic idea was that he was unable to pull his punches, so whenever he did hit you it was with full force. The following day I went to her company picnic and spent the day getting dirty looks. She assured everyone that it was in fact Timothy who hit her but the stigma of domestic violence never leaves the husband. They all probably thought I was a horrible man making her blame it all on her retarded...I’m sorry, “special” son.

But that’s not the reason I’m here tonight. I’m here because of Jerry. Jerry is Roxy’s brother’s son and for all intense and purposes, the American dream. Junior varsity, football quarterback, moving on to college on a scholarship and God bless him, he’s a Patriots fan. A man couldn’t ask for a better son. You might say that I was jealous that Mark, Roxy’s brother, had such an awesome kid and I won’t lie, I was but I had gotten pass that point. Besides it wasn’t Mark’s fault we were cursed with Timothy, I had no one to blame but myself for him.

No, the reason I’m here because a few weeks ago Mark and Jerry came to visit, Jerry brought along his girlfriend, a cutie if I can say so, and I do, named Alicia, for Thanksgiving. Jerry knew about Timothy and his condition and made no issue of it. I could handle that if not for Alicia. Now, you might stop yourself and think that Alicia was mean to Timothy or unnerved by him, she wasn’t. She was actually nice to him, even talked to him and fed him his peas for fuck’s sake.

You’re probably wondering why this would upset me, it was because he behaved. He didn’t hit her, he didn’t scream, he didn’t blubber or spit in her face, he was a regular dancing frog. You remember that? The Dancing Frog from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the guy would find a singing and dancing frog but whenever he tried to show it to anyone it’d be a regular frog. That was Timothy, in private Roxy and I would have gone through hell trying to feed him but Alicia shows up with her brunette hair, hazel eyes and perky tits and all of a sudden little Timmy is the perfect little angel, Fuck me sideways.

Going to “group” the following day was equally insufferable. There’s a couple there, The Kimballs who annoy the ever-loving fuck out of me. Specifically the husband, a fat ass hairy sonofabitch named Ronald. He has a daughter named Cynthia who is a functioning retard. Meaning she’s able to walk and talk but she gets frustrated very quickly and prone to shouting and screaming. I will say that the one thing I do like about group is the knowledge that there are some people who are worse off.

What annoys me about Ronald however is his undying hope that Cynthia will one day get better. He keeps noting moments where she was more lucid than usual and each time he did he’d cry. Cry like a fuckin’ Oscar winner. Nothing is more disgusting than seeing a lard ass like Ronald Kimball blubbering like some fat hairy baby while his wife patted him on the back. Aside from feeling annoyed by the prick I actually felt sorry for him. Cynthia wasn’t gonna get any better and neither was Timothy. We were both stuck with huge financial burdens for the rest of our lives, and while Cynthia could receive partial schooling, she’d always be the retarded girl and no one dates the retarded girl.

No, Ronald and I were doomed to a life of pitying looks from the public and the constant chore of having to apologize on behalf of our offspring. There were times when I’d watch TV and see those fathers on TV with the fag boys pitying those poor bastards, but now, I actually envy those pricks. Because at least if Timothy was a fag somebody would love him, it might be awkward introducing my sons boyfriend to people but society was changing, people stopped caring about shit like that. Plus he’d be making a lot of money, fags run everything these days. There are plenty of famous fags too, that Doogie Howser kid, Mr. Sulu and Kevin Spacey...but I think that one’s only a rumor. Plenty of famous fags, no famous retards.

I take that back, there was Helen Keller, but she wasn’t retarded, she was deaf and blind, quite a fuckin’ combo but not impossible to work with...pretty fuckin’ hard though. No, my son was in a league of his own, a league of drooling, blubbering, wife hitting, screaming children who’d grow up to be drooling, blubbering, wife-hitting, screaming adults. I didn’t sign up for that. Everyone tells you parenting is hard but this, babies stop shitting themselves after they get potty trained which can happen as early as 2 to 4, my son will never stop shitting himself.

That’s why I come here, to O’Dooley’s. I come here to lick my wounds and contemplate my situation. Of course, I’d always come to the same conclusion, there was nothing I could do about it, and I order a ginger ale, drink it and go home hoping that Timothy would sleep and most of the time he would be. Mostly I’d think, Why me? There wasn’t a God I could blame, the only person I could blame was myself for whatever was in my DNA to create such a fucked up child. Why did I have to be stuck with this?

I thought about a moment when Timmy was a baby, he wasn’t exactly crawling but he was kinda lurching forward on his knees towards the edge of our pool and I saw him out of the corner of my eye and snatched him up before he fell in. I thought to myself “One day this boy’s gonna kill himself.”. If I knew then what I know now I would have let him fall. Then it hit me. Right then I knew what I should do about my situation, although I’d have to be careful. It’s funny how quickly the human mind works when it’s excited. Several ideas can sift through your brain in mere seconds and your mind plays the scenario out, working through all possibilities and lands on the full proof conclusion.

I finished my ginger ale, paid my tab, grabbed my coat and was out the door. Driving home I thought about what I’d do and how exactly would I do it. The mind can get the basics down when the idea is conceived but execution is a different animal. By the time I reached the 205 I was fully committed to my new course of action. It was around 9:45 when I got home, I opened the door slowly, Roxy would be asleep. It was quiet. I crept up stairs slowly, scowling at every creek and croak of the wood. It’s always weird whenever you’re about to do something you know you shouldn’t EVERYTHING is magnified, sounds, sight, smells. It’s crazy. I crept down the hall to the master bedroom to peek in on Roxy. She was out cold. She deserved the sleep and pretty soon she’d have many nights ahead of her to sleep. I closed the door and headed down the hall.

I opened the door to his room and saw him, in his chair, wheezing. Fuckin’ kid couldn’t even breathe right. My fists clinched tighter and I felt my nails dig into my palms, I took a step forward and thought to myself, “Lazlow is coming.”