David McElroy

My plumbing problem wasn’t a big deal, but the solution was beyond my meager fix-it skills. I went next door to ask my neighbor whether he knew how to replace the “seat and springs” on a faucet.

He and I worked on the problem together for about an hour before he decided he couldn’t do it either, so he called another neighbor — someone I don’t know — who lives about a block away. He said Brian used to work in plumbing a long time ago, so he could fix it.

After my neighbor left and it was just Brian and me, we were comparing notes about which neighbors we knew and didn’t know. I mentioned one guy who’s never been very friendly and Brian agreed.

“He seems kind of like a jerk, but I suspect it’s mostly that he’s not very social,” he said. “He just doesn’t have any social skills, unlike you, ’cause you’re obviously social and outgoing. I’ll bet you could talk to anybody. He can’t do that.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking, but I laughed inside. Me? “Social and outgoing”? Well, I see why he thinks so. And I found myself conscious once again that I was running a “social script.” Without thinking about it, I was playing the part of the friendly neighbor.

But I was just running an unconscious social script. It didn’t mean a thing.

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It was early on a Sunday morning. I can’t describe my parents’ bedroom, but I know where we lived. I can’t tell you what else was going on. I just remember playing with my father on their bed.

My favorite game on all of these Sunday mornings was when he would let me climb onto his legs and he would lift me into the air, higher than a little boy knew was possible. I laughed gleefully and wanted to ride again and again.

I was a happy little boy in those moments.

This faded photograph from my baby book is the only physical evidence of those times, but my memory is more powerful than a photo anyway. You might not be able to tell in the darkness of the old picture, but that’s my father’s face on the lower left. I’m on top of his legs and he’s holding onto me with his outstretched hands.

Now that my father has been dead for more than three years, I wish I could erase all of the bad things about him in my memory. I wish it were possible to lose all the evidence of the angry and abusive narcissist who hurt me.

I wish I could hold onto just the loving and tender moments with my father, because those memories are powerful.

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Although I didn’t say anything, I felt disgusted. I listened carefully, like an anthropologist documenting life among a primitive tribe.

I was sitting next to four teens — all female, ages from 16 to 19 — on break at their restaurant jobs. They all know me casually, so they don’t filter what they have to say. I routinely hear their normal conversations.

I won’t quote their actual words, not because I wasn’t making notes — I was — but because I’m not willing to quote the sort of language they were using. They were talking about the porn they watch, sometimes with others and sometimes alone.

It was all about “tits” and “pussy” and “dicks.” These teens talked about these things as casually as people 30 years ago might have discussed their favorite television shows. From this porn they watch, they’ve learned their bodies are fat and ugly — although three of them are actually normal size — because they’re not the skinny women with silicone-enhanced breasts they see in porn.

They discuss what a big deal it is for a man to have a giant penis. (One of them said her fantasy was “12 inches.”) They all wanted breast enlargements. And one talked openly about surgery on her labia — because “everybody knows” that an “outie is ugly.”

I feel like an alien here. And I’m again reminded that my quaint values — the ones which most decent people held not so long ago — are no longer welcome in this degenerate society.

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