My father had left us shortly after I was born, and to avoid having to pay a babysitter, as well as to further my revolutionary education, my mother would take me along with her to these Friday and Sunday night meetings. I would sit beside her not understanding what the speaker was saying and only able to follow the cadence of the voice as if I was watching a film in a foreign language. I became adept at knowing when a speech was reaching its climax or when applause was being elicited or when a comrade’s question to the speaker was opening up an entire new path of discussion. I was ill equipped for these meetings. I once fell off a row of folding chairs while asleep. Another time during a voice vote, I inexplicably shouted out “nay’” embarrassing myself and my mother. So beginning around the age of six, my mother concluded that it would be better for both of us if she simply left me home alone.

As you might guess, the solitude of home was not preferable to the ennui of the forums and branch meetings. I was frightened by everything, by the plunks and clinks of the apartment building, by the sound of footsteps in the hallway, by the thought that my mother this time might not return at all. My mother had posted the number of the meeting hall by the phone in case of emergency, which served only as a constant flashing reminder that danger was an ever-present possibility and that I would be helpless in the face of it. Everything I did while she was gone went toward constructing an alternate reality. The stories I read were expunged of conflict, the games I invented were of the lightest fare of the happiest people of the brightest colors, the stuff of contemporary Christian plots. The power of these modes of entertainment to distract me was temporary and the only real distraction that could cause the terror to fully abate was our thirteen-inch black and white television set. This was forbidden to me except for special occasions, but in my mother’s absence I would linger for hours in front of it, counting among my many friends the Jeffersons, the Bunkers, and Fred Sanford. As the evening wore on these programs were replaced by hour-long dramas which unsettled me with their darker scenarios. I am speaking about programs like ‘The Incredible Hulk” or “Fantasy Island,” or ‘That’s Incredible,” where I once watched as a man, in the interest of science, dove into a swimming pool with twenty-pound weights attached to his wrists and ankles, so that researchers could monitor the effects of drowning on a human being. I was petrified by this nightmarish content, but I would forego my bedtime and continue watching. The television set, no matter how terrifying it might become, was always a more palatable alternative than the reality that encircled me, waiting for a moment’s silence to rush in.

At some point, however, my mother began to realize the unhealthy drawbacks of such excessive television watching. It would destroy my mind, she told me, my intellect. It would turn my brain to mush. “It’s a boob tube,” she’d say. I was instructed to read or draw while she was gone. I protested. She insisted. I disobeyed. She demanded. I would open a book and pretend to be engrossed as she readied herself to depart, but as soon as she was out of earshot I would turn the television on. She caught onto this, tip-toeing back up the stairwell and pressing her ear against the door. If I denied my crime she would feel the back of the set as if checking a feverish forehead.

“Why is it hot?” she would ask.

“The light from the lamp must have made it hot, Ma.”

She tried being angry with me, but I could not be swayed by admonishment. She would affect disappointment hoping that would cause my conscience to kick-in. It did not.

As fate would have it, one day she discovered that she could remove the electrical cord from the back of the television set. Now, an hour or two prior to her leaving, she would unplug the cord and hide it. This did not elicit the effect she desired, either. As soon as she had exited I would begin to search for the missing cord. It was not as bad as you might think, the search kept me occupied, I was able to fix my mind on a goal and pursue it with relentless fervor.  It was an attainable goal, too, the cord was somewhere within the confines of our tiny apartment, and although there were quite a number of options of where it might be, the options nonetheless were finite. I dispensed with any appreciation for boundaries and rifled through everything like a seasoned burglar, her underwear drawer, her bra drawer, her diary drawer, her jar of keepsakes. Nothing was sacred and I always found the cord in the end.

Years of these treasure hunts went by. Twice a week for five years. I evolved out of dread at my mother’s departures and found myself looking forward to them as opportunities to indulge in the terrible elixir of situation-comedy. I would plot my viewing days in advance. If for some reason or other a meeting had been canceled or rescheduled and my mother stayed home I would list in terrible disappointment and frustration. Then early one Sunday evening when I was probably about ten years old, I watched in utter horror as my mother, in the somber ritual of a robed priest at mass, unplug the cord from the electrical outlet, remove it from the back of the television set, open her purse, place it inside and exit for her meeting. I listened to the key turn in the lock and then her footsteps in the hallway, then down the stairs, clip clip clip, and then gone. The battle was over. My mother had won. The night stretched before me interminably. My defeat was my imprisonment. A life sentence.

It so happened though that three blocks from where my mother and I lived was a pizza shop called ‘Uncle Charlie’s.’ It was a small dim place that had a video game and a pinball machine. The pinball machine appealed to a previous generation of which I did not belong. The video game, however, was always crowded with boys eagerly watching the action like gamblers at a cockfight. On afternoons I would insinuate myself among the older, stronger boys and watch them play. There was a masculinity to what they could accomplish, deftly reaching levels the younger boys could only hope to aspire to. I was horrible at the game. I never fully understood the rules. I panicked quickly under pressure and was too deliberate at aiming at the enemy spaceships. As the game progressed, everything moved faster and faster including my own plane. I’d fly through outerspace like a drunk driver, careening from top to bottom. There was relief when it was over, like returning to the waking world from a horrible dream. Then I would step back and let the older boys take the reins.

The night my mother exited with the television cord, it occurred to me that, unlike a prisoner, I was actually free to go to Uncle Charlie’s if I wanted. I had a dollar bill that I had come by somehow. I withdrew it from my dresser drawer and looked at it. What evidence would there be that I had ever left the apartment? Not a trace. I visualized myself out in the city streets, walking. The thought of such empowerment unsettled me. There was something clandestine about the act, something akin to thievery.

At the present Uncle Charlie’s was owned by an overweight Jewish man with black hair and bushy eyebrows whose name was Joel, but whom everyone called Charlie.  He was eating a slice of pizza when I entered. The place was empty. The floor had been swept clean, the small tables cleared of debris. The clock on the wall read 8:50. I was prepared for him to ask why I was out at this late hour, but he did not. With disinterest he gave me four quarters for my dollar. I dropped a coin through the slot of the game, there was a loud beep as the box ingested it and then came to life with swirling lights and sounds. The machine beat out its drum-drum music as the enemy spacecraft flew in to attack. I fired at them, bullet after bullet and the spaceships disintegrated on impact. It was satisfying to destroy. And in my mind as I played, I began to play a different game than the one that was depicted. I imagined my spaceship was a communist spaceship and the enemy spaceships were the spaceships of the capitalists. The stakes of this duel energized me. On level one, I soundly defeated capitalism. And on level two as well. And then on three. As each subsequent level of the video game appeared on the screen, all who I had killed before reappeared to be killed again, and each time there were more of them and they were faster and more resilient, and each time I was up to the task. On and on I went. My weapons were the weapons of Marx, Engels and Trotsky, and the ships that came to kill me were piloted by Rockefeller, Reagan, Carnegie, the ‘rich asses,’ even Uncle Charlie himself. Eventually there was no chance whatsoever, the speed of the machine had grown exponentially, and in the midst of an impossible amount of capitalist spaceships I went down in flames. I stood at the machine dazed, spent. I had three quarters left. It was 9:20. There was plenty of time remaining in the night. I put another quarter in. I made a careless mistake and was killed on the first screen. It was 9:22. I put another quarter in. I was killed on the second screen. I slapped the side of the machine. Hey, Uncle Charlie cried out. I put another quarter in. I played with resignation, with defeat. An insult to the machine. “If I lose, I lose because I do not even care enough about you to try to win.” I lost. I had no more quarters. I looked at the floor for a possible stray. The floor had been swept clean. I was humiliated by my need. I felt sudden rage at the boys who always seemed in possession of an endless supply of quarters. The rage was replaced by sadness. It would be a long time before I came by another dollar. I wanted it back. I wanted to undo it. I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass of the machine. I looked gaunt, depraved, my eyes were bloodshot. I kept my head down so as to avoid making eye contact with Uncle Charlie as I exited. There was not a soul on the street. It was very dark now, very empty. I realized suddenly how odd it was for a little boy to be outside in the streets alone at a time of night like this. I was like someone who has ventured far out into a driving rainstorm before realizing that it is in fact a hurricane. I took the long, most well-lit way home. I walked slowly, hoping to affect an air of nonchalance that might dissuade a predator. A man approached me from the opposite direction, he crossed the street towards me, was he looking at me? was he going to say something? he looked old and deranged and then he passed. I entered my apartment building with great relief and walked the two flights of stairs to my floor. Perhaps my mother’s meeting had let out early and she was now home, frightened, irritated, waiting to chastise me for my senselessness. I opened the door and the stillness of the apartment washed over me.

On a shelf in the bookcase my mother kept a little brown sugar jar that she used to store spare cash inside. It was always filled with coins and crumpled up bills. When I had first discovered the jar it had seemed miraculous to me. I had always come to associate the jar and the money with my father. Perhaps the jar itself had actually once belonged to him and so I had imagined that the money in the jar was his too and that he had given it to my mother as a sort of one time alimony payment when he left. That night I unscrewed the lid and took out a dollar. I felt as if I was crossing an invisible barrier, but I did not recognize the boy crossing it. I went out again. This time without deliberation. The novelty of the experience had worn off, it seemed old hat now. It was completely dark, but I was not frightened by the darkness. Charlie was noisily sipping a Coke through a straw when I entered. He didn’t ask how I had come by another dollar. He gave me change. I played hard, I lost quickly. The quarters were gone. The clock read 10:12. There was a pinching in my elbow from the strain of clutching the joystick. I wanted to crush something in my hands. I had to pee badly and the sensation incited me. I thought briefly about tearing my shirt off, thinking there would be some satisfaction in that. I looked at my shoes. They seemed too large. My hands too thin. The shortcut to my home was through an alleyway.  It was jet black, but as a punishment for having spent and for having lost, I walked through it anyway. There was a recklessness to it which I deserved. I fantasized about being accosted by the shadows. I had homework to do, but it was too late to do it now. I had wasted the night. The only thing that could alleviate this discomfort, that could redeem me, that could let me pee, was to play the video game again. I entered the apartment. The stillness. I did not hesitate, I went straight for the brown sugar jar. The stranger removed a five-dollar bill.