RICK CASTRO: DIARY-425/2020

So This Is How The World Will End: by Rick Castro 4/25/2020

Last night I dreamt of mendacity. In my dream I’m an adult/child still living with my parents in Monterey Park, CA. I want something from my brother’s room, but fear prevents me. Even though my father is the head of the household, my brother calls all the shots. This, is as it’s always been, even as children. After all, he is named Alfred junior after my father Alfred senior, and he is the favorite son.
I wonder if this is the case in all families. Do parents unconsciously or consciously choose whom they like?

Standing on a chair in front of Al Jr’s bedroom door, I slowly creak the door open as to not cause notice. I am slithering my arm through the narrow passage at a feeble attempt to find whatever it was I thought I need from the forbidden room. A slight lurch of my chair causes the door to swing open to reveal my father in his swim shorts, circa 1960.  We are both shocked to see each other. “What is it you want?,” my father questions. Forgetting what that was, I ask, “Why are you in Al’ jr’s room in your bathing suit?,” I step in the room revealing not only my father, but my mother also in her bathing suit. They are both in an adjoining sunroom between my bedroom and my brother’s bedroom. “I never knew there was a sunroom between our rooms?” I exclaim. Since I had never been in my bros bedroom in my entire life, this is news to me. Apparently there’s an entry way between both our bedroom closets. Mine is sealed off similar to Rosemary Woodhouse’s closet was from the Castevet's apartment in the film, Rosemary’s Baby. 

“Occasionally we use the sunroom whenever Al jr is not here,” my mother nonchalantly replies. “Oh wow!, I excitedly say, I can’t wait to access it from my room and use it myself.” “Your room has already been loaned out to Al’s fire department buddy, replies my father as unattached as possible. “What?, I am in shock, you rented out my room?!” “we didn’t rent it out, says my father, Al jr., loaned it out to his buddy, because you were no longer around.”

Throwing my arms up I scream bloody murder for being completely dismissed and ignored. Their response is to dismiss and ignore me. They go back to the hidden sunroom to sunbathe. I look into the sunny room, and see attached my room has been completely redecorated for the new tenet; a Laura Ashley version of the bedroom of Brick & Maggie from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

I wake up with heart palpitations. It’s a distressing way to start the day

The history is, I moved out of the family home the second I turned eighteen, within weeks my room was transferred into a sewing room, later a room for the new grandchild, my bro’s daughter. Everything in my former room was tossed without acknowledgment that they might’ve been things I cherished. Over the years every trace of me removed like I was ever more than a tenet. In the meantime, medals, awards and photos of me bro as fire chief line the mantels and walls as homage to the chosen sun, I mean son. Additional adornments added when his daughter was born. Now a shrine to the both of them, and briefly his wife of their short-lived marriage.

The only reason I have access to the luxury of Bee’s cabin is that both my parents are in the later stages of Alzheimer’s dementia, 
and I was able to wrangle a set of keys from my sister, right before she remarried a controlling religious fanatic.

They only reason I haven’t been “evicted”, is because they’re afraid to haul me away, once I told them I thought I had the plague. That and my bro is stuck in one of his many homes in Hawaii, unable to get a flight. It seems flashing an ex-fire captain badge does little during a pandemic. The only reason I am here is my determination to live my own life as I want, not their version of who I should be.
I wake up from a dream of mendacity to the reality of it.

So this is how the world will end.

copyright- rick castro- 4/2020

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