Abio episode 5: Life with Bulk - January 14 2024
Our family life disintegrated once the Bulk moved in.
Mom insisted it was just one date, one dance. Nothing to fear. Patty and I knew better, but we were kids.
Bulk moved in and took up residence in his underwear on the couch, using the coffee table for his dozens of wordsearch booklets, his only hobby, an ashtray, and a half-carton of Lucky Strikes that he kept on the bottom shelf.
He took charge of the household, telling us who would do what and when, mostly arbitrary deeds. He loved to say, “My way or the highway.”
One Christmas turned into a fist fight between the Bulk, my brother-in-law Phil, and me over a pillow to sit on under the Christmas tree.
Bulk said to me, “Put that pillow back in your room.”
I said, “No, I’m sitting on it.”
He tried to rip it from me. That’s when Phil got fed up and jumped him, fists flying. I punched the side of Bulk’s head once and it caved in my pinkie knuckle. That’s when I thought,” Punches are fake. Movies are bullshit.”
When Bulk got hold of the vacuum-cleaner pipe, the fight abruptly ended. Everyone took their gifts and went home. Christmas was over by 10 a.m. I still love that pinkie for its bravery.
You might ask, “Hey, Steve. Why were you living above a bowling alley? We thought you lived in a two-story house where you hung your pillows out your bedroom window to cool them.”
A year earlier, Bulk had convinced my mother to sell our downtown house for $10,000(1970?) and rent an apartment above the bowling alley. He then bought an aluminum trailer to put beside his parents’ trailer on Boone’s Mountain outside of town.
He also had enough of mom’s money left to buy an aluminum camping trailer and we rented a permanent spot for it out at East Branch Dam. We would vacation there in the summer.
Nice place. It was lined with first-come docks and the water was warm. Lots of skiing and boating going on.
Bulk just so happened to have friends and cousins who also rented permanent spots nearby for their aluminum trailers, so there was always a clan of Bulks hulking about, living in swimming trunks and T-shirts, eating hot dogs, and yelling obscenities into the toilets of the open-pit public bathrooms. “Hey, lady, we’re working down here.”
I liked East Branch Dam because I saw my first bare butt there, or at least the upper half. I was sunning on a dock alone next to a busy dock. A beautiful blonde girl finished skiing, swam to neighboring dock ladder, and began to climb.
I noticed instantaneously that her bikini bottoms were halfway down her butt. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. It was really happening, right in front of me. She didn’t seem to notice the tight elastic band pressed firmly against her lower cheeks.
She kept climbing. Eight feet away. Water dripping. She climbed that whole ladder to the top, and only then did she hitch up her bottoms. She never once looked behind her. I was transfixed and so thankful.
Years later I met that girl at a party. Her name was Paulette and she was a private nurse for a wealthy spinster who owned a carbon factory. I told her she was my first bare butt as a young teen and how amazed I was. She laughed like she remembered it. We started dating that very night and stayed together for over a year while I was in college. Paulette was super smart and so cute, like she could be in French movies without speaking French. We’re still friends.
Meanwhile, back at East Branch Dam on another occasion, on my bike, I skidded on loose sand, fell, and broke my left collar bone. I could wiggle it.
I hurried to our trailer. Bulk was playing Canasta with the neighbors. “Bulk,” I said. “I need you to take me to the hospital. I just broke my collar bone. It really hurts.”
He sighed, cussed, and threw down his cards. “Damn it. That’s 30 miles away,” he said. My mother offered to drive, but he said, “No. I’ll do it, Gauldamn it.”
So, I lay propped up in the backseat, suffering with melting ice. Boots rode shotgun. Bulk sat at the wheel, driving 25 mph the whole way, looking for radio stations. Cars were passing him. Smoking his Luckies, he drove so slowly that the hospital couldn’t reset my collar bone because it was too badly swollen by then. It had fused crooked.
Sister Carol took me in. We did devilish things to Bulk during those times. We tossed a cup of sugar on the ground and unscrewed his gas cap.
When he saw it, he called the cops and had his clunker towed to the automotive shop where they cleaned his tank. No signs of sugar.
I collected lipstick-stained cigarette butts from public ashtrays in the ladies room at the Strand Movie Theater where I cleaned up at night, and stuck them in his car ashtray.
A friend and I went into my bedroom, rolled up catnip joints, lit them, stunk up my bedroom, and then turned up my stereo because I knew Bulk was sleeping on the couch.
He barged it, smelled catnip and incense, and figured he’d busted a drug ring. He called the cops. I told him it was catnip. He said, “Stop lying.”
Chief Bert interrogated me alone in the kitchen. He knows I’m a prankster, not a gangster. He said, “What the heck is going on here?”
I told him. “It’s catnip, Bert. We’re pranking Bulk. We bought it at GC Murphys.” I showed Bert white paper and glue on the plastic bag where we tore off the Catnip label. “You can send it to the lab if you want.”
Deputy Tom was interrogating Robbie in the living room and things were not going as smoothly as they did in the kitchen. I forgot to tell Robbie that it was catnip. I was going for realism, so Robbie thought he was smoking marijuana and would now go to prison. I had no way to communicate with him.
Bert whispered to Tom briefly by the window. Showed him the glue spot on the catnip bag. Tom turned to Robbie. “Robert. Go straight home and promise never to do this again.” Robbie promised and ran out the front door. Bert and Tom told Bulk they would call him if something came up. Bert told me I was not allowed to leave town, so I walked down to the pool hall where I found Robbie playing 9-ball and explained everything. He was mad, but he laughed anyhow.
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