I was with my father in a large gymnasium where a basketball game was underway. It was late at night, and I was exhausted, and had hoped to find my husband and infant daughter. They were nowhere to be seen and I had grown weary of wandering in the huge arena. Although I wanted to go home, running into my father had made me feel as though I should stay, or as though I should pretend that I thought I should stay. I felt neglectful.
While watching the game, my father and I proceeded to try and impress each other. I made attempts to gain his positive attention away from the game, while he made attempts to appear other than he actually looked: overly heavy, burdened, and deeply sad.
My father, who in the waking world does not have a brother, was watching his brother play in the game. I observed this observation quietly, feeling jealous. Then my attention turned to examine the brother. He was an exact replica of my father in many ways, although very slim and a bit younger-looking, much like I have seen my father appear when he was college-aged. But he was dressed awkwardly, in too-tight, longish khaki shorts that looked terribly uncomfortable, and a sweatshirt that was too small for him. And he also moved oddly, as though he were in two dimensions and could only slide up and down the court, without pivoting or rotating. He moved in this fashion sporadically, though, sort of leaping and prancing about with great energy but without much effect on the game or the ball.
I thought to myself, is this what I look like when I move? Am I like my father’s brother? I noticed his face looked exactly like my dad’s, only you could see that it was possessed by a different spirit, a different person. I thought, is that what I look like: my father, only a different person with my father’s face? I wondered if my father felt disturbed by how feminine his brother’s movements were (like me?), and whether he compared himself often to this, and found it to his distaste: a female-like version of himself, playing a man’s game; fascinating, yet repulsive?
The game seemed to be more like aerobics than basketball, and my father’s brother stood out as the only white guy, and playing badly, or… just differently. But then I saw a certain grace in what he did, a fluidity that I appreciated, and I thought, maybe I don’t look that stupid after all. Maybe I inherited some fluid skills of motion from my father.
Then I immediately felt trapped, physically and emotionally. All desire to impress my father had evaporated in an instant. I felt as though it was expected of me, somehow, to behave superficially, to be a cloying daughter, and I felt a powerful need to escape this.
I retreated to a lower-level bathroom in the concrete mass of the arena, and then tried to find a way out. I found some high-up, tinted windows and saw that it was dawn. Early morning had arrived, and I’d gotten no sleep, and had lost track of my husband and daughter. I felt miserable and lonely as I found a door to the outside, which led me to a vast, abandoned concrete parking lot dotted by sodium lights twinkling in the silent grey air. It was a beautiful dawn; the air was fresh and cold and the sky was like a perfect drink of water. The cement all around me was a prison, and my father the warden, and I was sneaking off into the gorgeousness, on the industrial fringes.
I wanted to be home, safe, and back with my true self. I felt impure, as though I had betrayed my very being. It was bittersweet, for as dawn was serene and still, and I was in myself and listening to myself, I thought, I am not yet everything I want to be.