The Tricky Thing About Puncture Wounds
Is that Intergenerational Trauma or are You Just Happy to See Me?
The Adrirondacks all-girls capital C sleep away Camp where I went every summer was aggressive in its outdoorsiness. Communal showers! Hairy Legs! Vegetarianism! It was also very straight and white and where it wasn’t it was The Indigo Girls kind of commercial pop lesbianism. It wasn’t leather and the Black Party. It wasn’t my dad. It was Westchester in the mountains. It was Larchmont by Canoe, albeit with hairy legs.
Years later, Dad would say that when he and Darryl came that summer on visiting day, everyone made such an obvious effort to let him know they were OK with him and his lover that the loudness of their acceptance felt like they were patting themselves on the back while simultaneously creating a distance between them (Westchester, Connecticut) and him (Chelsea, Limelight). But that August morning when they showed up, I didn’t realize it was brave or strange or worthy of a loudly framed acceptance like a greeting card pronouncing how their difference was OK BY US, I was just eleven and happy to see them and felt the swell of his love for me in the effort it took for him to make the time for the trip.
It was a five hour drive from The City and Dad still had his little silver car. It will be a year before he leaves it, hood smoking, on the side of the LIE and takes the long walk to Queens and the F train. It will also be a year before he breaks things off with Darryl for the second time. But that’s a different set of stories.
That August morning in 1991, I was standing in the field which stretched out from the dining hall when they emerged, I assume, from some parking lot somewhere. I ran to Dad and jumped into his arms and he did what he always did which was to say, “Whohoaha! Hi baby!” and then laugh a sort of breathless laugh like he’d had the wind knocked out of him and was more than a little mystified by the fact of me. Or by the fact of my love probably, the more likely story, now that I know the fuller version of the truth of the matter. And by the matter I mean what the matter was with him.
Years later, after his death, going through his things with my brother Toby we found a packet of papers; all notes on a possible memoir and all snippets of memory, pain, loss, and survival with the heading Spinario. Spinario: the boy with the thorn in his foot. Whatever that meant or could mean I wasn’t sure in that moment other than that when I got a thorn stuck in my foot I wound up with a staff infection and a limp for weeks. I was hobbled and my whole body hurt. When I called the doctor he said, “Yes that’s the tricky thing about puncture wounds. They look healed even when they are becoming septic.”
Spinario, it turns out, is actually the boy taking the thorn from his foot. He is in action. He is removing the pain. Perhaps hoping the wound will heal.
That day, 11 years old and dappled in sunlight and feeling the cool Adirondack dew in the grass around my ankles and the warm sun beginning to burn it off I didn’t notice his heart limping around, punctured; didn’t know there was anything to be healed. I just thought, Hooray! Daddy is here!
I wonder if it will always be this way; every gentle memory punctured by the wound I will never understand but which infected everything; which he was forever trying to remove; which is maybe why I write anything and definitely why I write this.
Pull it out.
Let it be healed.
Let it be so.
Spinario.
Beautiful words. So glad to ‘meet’ you.
Yes!! I can so relate to that puncture wound that seems fine. In both cases of heart and body….In the Sahel we watched for the red line coming off those indicating staph infections- walking around having no idea. Thank goodness for the other “side effects” in love and life to help us know something’s up- before the infection takes over ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ thank you for this on this bright morning!