Pure Writerly Moments 3

A Lesson from Uncle Harold

Uncle Harold was the first adult I met who thought he could say anything he wanted. This was way back before social media and the angry heads of Fox News, but it was the high times of Howard Stern and shock jockeys. Still, 1990s-era Miami – and especially Miami Beach – seemed this strange place where the normal rules of civility did not apply. And from that fertile soil, out popped Harold, eternally with a cigarette in one hand and a martini, a beer, a mojito, or some other drink in the other. In his younger years with a fashionable shirt, in his middle-aged years without a shirt, his beer belly popping out prodigiously.

When I was sixteen years old, he asked, "Do you like the taste of pussy?" I'd barely had my first kiss. I was entirely innocent, but I had the feeling he just said it to get a rise out of me. I was quick as a whip back then. "Sorry, they don't eat cats in New Mexico. That must be a Miami Beach thing." He was quicker. "You know what the fuck I'm talking about." "Wait! You mean, vah...vah...vah..." I fake stammered, "vagina!"

Sure, I was smart – an honors student – but that meant shockingly little in a world where street or beach smarts were the gold standard, and only marathon gabbers could get a word in edgewise. I never had the gift of gab. I always thought words, written or otherwise, should somehow have something important to say. The fat should remain unchewed. Let silence rule.

"So says the smartass who can't get his mouth near a tasty box!"

*

I get the call in Nagasaki. It's 2023 and I'm a middle-aged man. Uncle Harold had choked to death. He wasn't really my uncle; he was my uncle-in-law. And even that might be a stretch. After all, I wasn't entirely sure if my aunt was my aunt, my cousin, or what. The entire lineage on my Cuban side often gets confused. At one point, he and Aunt Polly owned a condo on Miami Beach.

A condo where there were human turds in the lobby and in the elevator.

"You see, we don't have to pay as much because the owner's son lives in the same building. He has some kind of weird association with shit. I don't know. All I know is that there are turds in the elevator, and my rent is lower than most."

I was too shy back then to ask who cleaned up the shits (if anyone!).

*

Back then, everyone smoked, but everyone also pretended they wouldn't die of lung cancer. I judged my mom and dad harshly for being smokers, even as early as elementary school. As a third grader, I would chide them about the dangers of second-hand smoke and how they were damaging the health of their own kids. I sometimes wonder what the youth of tomorrow will think of people like me. They will judge me for eating meat and consuming energy in ways that expel greenhouse gasses into the environment. The children of tomorrow will ask, "Did you really eat meat from animals that had to die cruelly just because you like luxury calories? Did you really consume energy made from fossil fuels?"

The Harolds of tomorrow will be people like me who insist on eating meat and expelling fossil fuels. I also think people will smoke in the future too, just for the hell of it (though science will have made early cancer detection easy). Also, if we're not lucky and regulations on social media don't kick in at some point, there will be millions of variations of Harold filling our social media, YouTube, and micro-(anti)social-media landscapes. "Hey kid, do you like the taste of pussy after eating a cruelty-made hamburger while burning some early 21st century fossil fuels just because you can't stand some dweeb telling you you can't throw your own fecal matter at your teacher?" You know what? I'm already bored just reading that sentence. Swipe left.

*

But Harold was never boring, at least not when he had a drink in him. Not in the late 20th century. If he slowed down, put another drink in him, wind him up, and watch him go. In the 21st century, I think Harold would need to be armed with a smartphone, accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok (Truth Social?) – and he would need something else, not simply something to shock...perhaps he would need a tribal ideology as well...