Bobby Likes A Lot of Things

Origin Stories

Bobby's origin myth begins on a a dirt road. Insects flit around in the sun, dogs laze nearby. Gloucester's cool blue waters crash near docks in the distance. The driveway on the left at the top of the hill, miles away from the expensive Rockport beach houses, is his. 

His tall Amazonian mother and her towering sister live beside each other with their families, like deep-voiced Twits as written by Roald Dahl, but kind-hearted. They have brown-eyed, swarthy sons just months apart. Emile will grow to be 6' 5", a handsome ogre of a man. Bobby is a leap year baby, which means he will Benjamin Button his way through life, naive and wise all at once.

As kids they will swim at the big stone quarry or in the ocean like handsome mermen in some Fellini-esque softcore porn. On the beach, they'll stomp gently on the sand until it squirts with life; they will collect bags filled with clams to bring home to their mothers only to find out it's red tide and they have to return the creatures to the sea, kicking shells along the way. Red tide means you'll die if you eat the seafood, the ultimate oceanic urban legend, except it's true.

In high school, their motley crew of fishermans' daughters and teachers' sons will trek to Montreal on the weekends to play pop-punk shows. Their van will get turned back at the border, because someone forgot their passport. But they're a collective, they leave no band behind. They will belt Saves The Day all the way home at dawn and it's a night he'll still talk about when he's 30 (going on 8).

***

One summer day, Emile and Bobby sit in The Barn, the de-facto clubhouse behind Emile's childhood home, outfitted with crumbling couches, band equipment, a thin layer of cobwebs and dust coating every wooden surface, old wine bottles, the rattling old barn windows.

A jarring howl sounds in the distance. The boys amble to the front yard. A neighbor shuffles down the road, raising a cloud of honey-colored dust, shimmering in the light. It is always the perfect summer day in Bobby's stories. Perfect until a stranger hands you Willy, your mom's dog, with one less eye than he had this morning.

"Pittbull got yer dog," the stranger says matter-of-factly and walks away.

Bobby tells this story, gasping for air he's laughing so hard. It's not that he didn't care for Willy's pain. It's the neighbor's frankness that's too much, the simplicity of the statement, the Massachusetts inflection.

Years later, Bobby fights with his parents. His father, a gruff high school music teacher, implies he's a deadbeat, no job, living on my floor. He makes Bobby come back to Gloucester to get rid of his paintings. "Tired of your shit," his father mumbles in a hard Yankee twang. I'm heartbroken because on campus Bobby's paintings were legendary, like he was the Bob Dylan of art school but softer, more bearlike. His senior show had pieces that rivalled R Crumb's bodacious beauties and J.M.W Turner's sunlit skies. Now we were in the attic, deciding which pieces to toss and what to keep.