Movie Man (text only)
by Dan Senn
Her family gathered
on the patio between the garage and the house. He found a chair
near the barbeque and watched as the others talked. Their chairs
were turned away -- their necks fixed in a consensus. In this
place Stan was the camera they must avoid looking at.
It had been this way
for twenty-two years. Early on he learned not to be too playful
with the now grown nieces and nephews. It would only encourage
vicious, circling attacks accompanied by grins of glitter from
couched observers. From this he first learned the peculiar trait
of the regularly victimized -- where kindness or openness was
seen as a weakness, or as a ploy to use on future victims.
After a few minutes
he stood and went up the steps into the kitchen to a chair in
the corner behind the table collecting lunch. On this day Stan
was dangerously angry. He was volatile. Nothing much could be
lost anyways. An outburst would risk little. They had played the
homosexual card years ago.
In Stan's illegal work
of this day, he had long ago cultivated a detachment to the snub
of little people. Yet with these, he could never adjust. Their
incivility cut him now as it had when he was eighteen and would
not leave without their daughter. For awhile there he believed
that by having children, minds would change. With all hope gone
now, his tactics these days was to spread out the humiliations
to once a year -- to an infrequency that a daughter with unavoidable
feelings could bear.
As he sat there fuming
behind the German patato salad, a niece came from outside and
leaned up against the refridgerator. Her head was still turned
away when his mouth opened and said, "Come sit and talk with
me. I promise not to bite you."
Her spirit jumped
from her side.
Hysterically.
Then back again.
It was Stacy, a pretty
college student to be and twenty-two years his junior. She slinked
into the chair next to him and he began by asking some questions.
She would be going to the same college her Aunt Marilyn and Uncle
Stan had once attended. The dormatories were coed now. Same food
service. She would even be studying art and with some of the same
professors that had once twisted Stan's mind.
Forgetting the camera
now, the new rules attracted her sister to the table. Marilyn
joined them and they all talked. Amy was studying to become a
doctor. She had fallen in love with books and a noble professor.
Her grades were very good. The attachments to this place were
becoming weak, week-by-week.
As the screen door opened
the sisters glanced nervously out at the patio people, leaping
now to camera-conscious stiffness, then back to a shmoosing comfort,
they oft times spied him, breaking character -- this strange Uncle
Stan man who no one asked about.
©1991 Dan Senn
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