Nonfiction / Martin Perez 

 

:: The Floor is Lava and Other Imagined Tragedies ::

Every­thing and every­one and every­where was safe in the eight­ies. Thrust deeply into “trick­le­down the­o­ry,” the over-reliance on bright, buzzing neon signs on store­fronts, big curly, AquaNet-sprayed hair, and short, black poofy dress­es and fish­net stock­ings, and “old peo­ple” Fri­day night tele­vi­sion melo­dra­mas like Dal­las and Fal­con Crest on CBS, peo­ple casu­al­ly chain-smoked cig­a­rettes in movies because it was cool and the Marl­boro Man was hot as fuck, and nobody got can­cer. Mis­in­formed rumors of how HIV and mon­keys con­flat­ed into exis­tence hadn’t made their way into pop­u­lar pub­lic con­scious­ness. We stayed out late nights as eight-year-olds, and rode around a big south­west city in a warm desert on an old bus sys­tem, and nobody was ever robbed or kid­napped or a vic­tim of social injus­tice. We also lived a big lie.  

         Of course there were abduc­tions at that time, and of course peo­ple got sick from the can­cer sticks, and of course peo­ple were hav­ing unpro­tect­ed sex and dying from Aids and of course the Night Stalk­er kid­napped, tor­tured, and raped women. The gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion just didn’t know about it for a while. Worse, it felt like the eight­ies decid­ed dan­gers would be less dan­ger­ous if peo­ple didn’t know the extent. Dur­ing a ride along with a sher­iff com­man­der decades lat­er, I was told, “If peo­ple knew how dan­ger­ous the city was, they wouldn’t live here.” It didn’t mean crime didn’t take place. So, I sup­pose a more appro­pri­ate way to put things is that every­thing was dan­ger­ous. We just didn’t care. 

         The lack of infor­ma­tion super­high­way cre­at­ed a deep milieu our ever-increas­ing pop­u­lous coun­try seem­ing­ly strug­gled to sur­face from, and it both helped and hin­dered my child­hood among a for­est of con­fus­ing inputs. We didn’t have cell­phones, but long spi­ral cords for kitchen phone head­sets. We didn’t have com­put­ers, but the five and ten o’clock news. Rather than the social net­work, we relied on mail car­ri­ers or friends down the street and across fences for trust­wor­thy infor­ma­tion. It could be either good or bad news, and it wasn’t always clear which for sev­er­al months or years. Was I safe like I thought, or was I in immi­nent dan­ger at every turn? I don’t know if igno­rance is bliss, but if the turn of phrase were a per­son, I might have been it. Most of my mem­o­ries of child­hood cen­ter around week­end base­ball games with the neigh­bor­hood kids, and play­ing foot­ball in the streets, and maybe mak­ing crafts at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter. But even I, on clos­er inspec­tion, knew that things were dark­er, some­how worse. I knew that what­ev­er har­mo­ny I came across was momen­tary. 

         Car safe­ty was no excep­tion when it came to con­fu­sion. We often rode in the cramped back jump seats of my father’s lime green, Ford Super Cap pick­up when I was a boy, my baby sis­ter nes­tled in a boost­er chair across from me. Nei­ther of us wore seat­belts because they weren’t required yet, and pos­si­bly not even installed. It was the sec­ond truck Dad owned – a dai­ly dri­ver they call them now–and as Span­ish songs played, I watched Ma Bell tele­phone poles flow by, and imag­ined a bare­ly vis­i­ble, shad­ow-like crea­ture, leap­ing from pole to pole, skip­ping from tree­top to tree­top. I don’t know why this alien-look­ing man with elon­gat­ed arms and legs hopped from thing to thing, oth­er than that’s what he did any­time we went for a car ride. I guess it’s sim­i­lar to why I played the “floor is lava” game dur­ing recess at my grade school. It is just some­thing that filled my ever-cre­ative mind. The even stranger thing, how­ev­er, was that these thoughts weren’t as unique as I expect­ed. They weren’t as sin­gu­lar, which is trou­bling. Turns out that a lot of kids across the Unit­ed States imag­ine the same thing. And the floor is lava? There was a fifties sci-fi movie where astro­nauts trav­el to a plan­et and stay in the shad­ows because, yes, the floor was lava.  

         How much of the past is my mem­o­ry, and how much have I sim­ply made up to fill the emp­ty spaces between pho­tographs and sto­ries I’ve been told? Maybe there were seat­belts in Dad’s awful green pick­up truck. Maybe net­work tele­vi­sion did run ran­dom pub­lic ser­vice adver­tise­ments that spoke to dan­gers of unpro­tect­ed lust–I do recall a teary Native Amer­i­can icon on the side of a crowd­ed, lit­ter-filled riv­er, and while entire­ly dif­fer­ent, still relat­ed. It is pos­si­ble that the floors weren’t lava, but entire gen­er­a­tions of kids grew up imag­in­ing it any­way, because even today, I can ask my twen­ty-year-old daugh­ter if she ever played “the floor is lava,” and she sparkles, as if men­tion­ing it unlocked a core memory.

         But rec­ol­lec­tion nev­er is exact­ing or pre­cise, is it? Mem­o­ry always seems to float between nowhere and every­where. It’s squishy, then flat­tens out when we grab it and frame it as a thought, becom­ing more “real.” I can visu­al­ize old­er movies as if I saw them yes­ter­day, and yet the details are com­plete­ly wrong when I pop in the DVD (in a man­ner of speak­ing). I recall the ter­ri­fy­ing scene where a young blonde girl in a red sleep­ing bag gets smashed against a tree by a mon­ster that grabs her. The scene ends as down feath­ers explode and scat­ter in the night­time wind in the 1979 movie “Prophe­cy,” but it doesn’t hap­pen that way when I rewatch the film. Instead, it’s a young boy who is not flung but smacked by the crea­ture, and the sleep­ing bag is yel­low. The explo­sion of feath­ers is still there.  

         I imag­ine a time when my father drunk­en­ly crushed my toy police car under his boots on Christ­mas Eve or there­abouts. The large, red and green Christ­mas tree lights glowed, tin­sel twin­kled, and plas­tic nee­dles were vivid. But did that real­ly hap­pen? I am not cer­tain. Maybe only some­thing sim­i­lar. My father also cut off a chunk of flesh from the tip of his index fin­ger when the door han­dle of our yel­low sev­en­ties Chrysler car caught him, so for the rest of my life, my dad had a stub­by dig­it in the mid­dle of his left hand. I remem­bered the car had a small­er, round body. But when I searched the inter­net for the car, I didn’t find any­thing of the sort. The clos­est I came to a car resem­bling the image in my mind was a mon­stros­i­ty called the Chrysler Laser, man­u­fac­tured between 1980 and 1984, with a hatch­back. The car may not have been a Chrysler at all, but that is how I remem­bered it. I ques­tioned if it was even Dad’s left hand? 

         A friend once told me there is fact and there is the truth. What a per­son choos­es to believe has no bear­ing on whether one is exclu­sive to the oth­er, and as writer Maya Angelou implies, one can even obscure the oth­er. We may only believe in our truth, which is at best a dis­tant rel­a­tive to the facts, but still as valu­able. It informs how we nav­i­gate our world. But it can also be com­plete­ly wrong. 

         Day­dreams and imag­ined things filled my life like smeared, greasy mul­ti-col­ored baubles in a vase as I got old­er, too, but it may have been pre­cise­ly because I’d rather live in wist­ful thoughts than face real­i­ty, and I won­der how tied to avoid­ance the mag­ni­tude of my imag­i­na­tion was. That is, was the more vivid the mem­o­ry of things, real or imag­ined, synced to my increas­ing avoid­ance of real-life expe­ri­ences? Uncer­tain­ty as to whether some things are true or fan­ta­sy was matched only by the verac­i­ty of the mem­o­ries. Did I sit by myself dur­ing lunch and draw in a sketch­pad or write in a jour­nal about dif­fer­ent worlds and dif­fer­ent places rather than speak to my high school class­mates, espe­cial­ly girls? Yes. Did I also wish I had the for­ti­tude to speak with girls dur­ing high school? Also, yes. But I couldn’t have both. I chose what I believed was a path of least resis­tance. I wouldn’t feel the emo­tion­al tumult of with­draw­ing from expe­ri­ences if I sim­ply cre­at­ed an alter­na­tive world in art­work and sto­ry. I don’t think I was alone in this strat­e­gy, how­ev­er. 

         The bru­tal­i­ty of world-build­ing and real­i­ty col­lid­ing was hor­rif­ic and fre­quent, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, unavoid­able. See, no mat­ter how much I felt my cre­ative mind pro­tect­ed me, it didn’t real­ly. If I were stuck in quick­sand, I would con­tin­ue sink­ing even if I felt I wasn’t. I could imag­ine lava mon­sters and that the ground was made of lava, skip­ping from rock to rock (or what­ev­er oth­er arbi­trary fea­ture was “safe” to avoid get­ting burned), but it wouldn’t pro­tect me from real life.  

         When I was in col­lege, I ran into an old friend, a beau­ti­ful young woman who grad­u­at­ed as Salu­ta­to­ri­an from my high school a cou­ple of years pri­or. She was danc­ing in a gen­tle­men’s club. As luck would have it, or not have it, that was the first time I had seen any woman in the nude with­out slick mag­a­zine paper or cel­lu­loid movies show­cas­ing them. I was with some bud­dies. 

         “Did you see her?” an acquain­tance asked.  

         “Yes, of course,” I returned, non­cha­lant.  

         “I’m gonna see if she will fuck me,” he said. “Or I’ll tell every­one about see­ing her.” 

         “That’s messed up,” I said. 

         “I don’t care. It was her choice to dance naked,” he said. 

         While I’m not sure what world the young woman had cre­at­ed where she didn’t con­sid­er run­ning into ex-class­mates from high school a pos­si­bil­i­ty, the bru­tal nature of what one detestable man pro­posed shoved real­i­ty in her face. Who knows, maybe she did think things through and was okay with it. It felt dirty to be there, then, in that place. Either way, she didn’t cave to his pres­sure. At least, not that night. It was fif­teen years before I learned that same acquain­tance was con­vict­ed of statu­to­ry rape and child endan­ger­ment of his step­daugh­ter. He was sent to a Mary­land pen­i­ten­tiary for thir­ty years.  

         And the young, naked woman? She lat­er hung her­self at the age of forty-four, leav­ing behind a hus­band and chil­dren. 

         I think about her on occa­sion, but strange­ly, as a tan­gent to the sto­ry of my hor­ri­ble male acquaintance’s words and actions. Her sto­ry is pos­si­bly more dis­tress­ing. Oth­er times, I think about some of the peo­ple that Richard Ramirez, a Mex­i­can like me, tor­tured and killed, not like me. There were four­teen vic­tims of the Night Stalk­er, who roamed dur­ing my child­hood. He took their lives by force. What was going through their minds? Were they cling­ing to a col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion that might exist, where they sought more con­nec­tion so they felt less alone on this dim, blue plan­et that wob­bles along in a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly void space? 

         Were those daugh­ters, sis­ters, and moth­ers, hus­bands, broth­ers, and sons imag­in­ing they were some­place else, away from the hor­rors they expe­ri­enced until the very end? What do peo­ple think about when con­front­ed with that sort of trau­ma and cer­tain­ty of death? Did the Night Stalk­er prey imag­ine every­thing crum­bling around them? Were they like me, and thought that the eight­ies were gen­er­al­ly safe because they didn’t know any bet­ter and had been told oth­er­wise? Did they remem­ber the floor being made of lava when they were young, too?  

         These days, I imag­ine run­ning over peo­ple while I dri­ve my own car through peace­ful neigh­bor­hood streets. I see myself plow­ing into them like an Atari video game, their sur­prised faces aghast, and I watch as their shad­ows flail in slow motion, first upward into the air, then as they fall back down, a bag of bones, a clump of human flesh, to the asphalt. I don’t imag­ine it once, like an acci­dent, but fre­quent­ly like an obses­sion, and it vague­ly reminds me of those shad­owy crea­tures that used to run along­side Dad’s old truck all over again and I wor­ry that mere­ly think­ing about it feels like I’m con­fess­ing some­thing ter­ri­ble, and then wor­ry that wor­ry­ing about it is strange or cor­rob­o­rates guilt, and won­der if I’m the only per­son to have intru­sive thoughts like this.  

         I couldn’t be. It’s been con­firmed time after time when I talk to oth­ers, young and old. Walk on a crack, break your moth­er’s back, count tiles on the ceil­ing, and straight­en papers on a desk even if they aren’t orga­nized and just straight­en them, dammit, they must be straight, and shad­ows at night hold secrets, and it is safer not to wear a seat­belt so you don’t get stuck in a lake and drown, and while you are at it, hold your breath when you watch peo­ple in movies or tele­vi­sion do it, and nev­er go hitch­hik­ing, but do go home with a stranger for a one-night stand because what is the worst that could hap­pen, and do not under any cir­cum­stance answer when some­one calls your name in an emp­ty room because that is death call­ing. Maybe we are all weird. Maybe we are all more com­fort­able world-build­ing and not remem­ber­ing the one we are born into in favor of respite in less hor­rif­ic real­i­ties.  

         As for my father and his fin­ger, fur­ther research bore out that he lost a bit of his ring fin­ger on his right hand. I still can­not find that Chrysler car, though. 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

I write lyric essays because they are the best of me, the most vul­ner­a­ble of me, and the most rel­e­vant of who I am as a Mex­i­can man in today’s tur­bu­lent world. In many essays, I explore my Mex­i­can upbring­ing, a con­fused and mis­guid­ed father’s advice, and an impas­sioned search for my iden­ti­ty despite the sex­u­al, emo­tion­al, and phys­i­cal trau­mas endured. Adul­tery, rape, misog­y­ny and run­ning away from her­itage in acts of rebel­lion all take place with­in the pages I write. The bal­ance of essays shares mem­o­ries of my father’s sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion and how I sought redemp­tion through those same tales. I hope to encour­age read­ers who strug­gle to find iden­ti­ty in a world that often oppress­es and deval­ues human con­nec­tion, with rich anec­dotes that broad­en emo­tion­al hori­zons. In brisk and pow­er­ful writ­ten jour­neys, musi­cal­i­ty, poet­ics, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and humor, I evoke what it means to embrace life in the face of fail­ure and sor­row. In the end, the read­er is equipped with a new life through sto­ries of fear, beau­ty, dis­cov­ery, and accep­tance. 

 Mar­tin Perez is a Mex­i­can MFA stu­dent at Ver­mont Col­lege of Fine Arts and a pre­vi­ous Writ­ing Fel­low at St. Mary’s Col­lege of Cal­i­for­nia’s MFA pro­gram, focused on cre­ative non­fic­tion. He has a BA in cre­ative writ­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona and grad­u­at­ed sum­ma cum laude. He cur­rent­ly lives in Tuc­son, Ari­zona, where he also teach­es Eng­lish at a pri­vate high school.