I was a quiet, soft-spoken child. Things like trick-or-treating, were a difficult chore for me. It was kind of the way many little kids saw brussel sprouts. While I knew that I was supposed to like it, I would force myself to look like I enjoyed it. This was during the short period of time where I was very quiet. This way of being was, contrary to the current, unable to shut the F up Yuri that we all have grown to know and love, but I digress. I would get to the door, clam up and speak quietly. As they would open the door, I would start out saying “trick-O” and would fade to a volume frequency only audible to dogs and rodents. My father often would be a few feet behind me. He would be glancing at his watch, because the quality time we were spending together on the 15 minutes he had given us to trick-or-treat was getting in the way of his "stories." God forbid we took too long, because he wanted to make it home in time for a Charles Bronson movie which he had seen a million times that was going to be on KTLA 5 that night. This was odd for several reasons. One being that he already had the VHS player set to record the movie he had seen more than most men have seen a urinal. Two, being that he already had recorded this particular Bronson flick on top of one of my cartoon cassettes the week before. Three, all Charles Bronson films have the same story line. Bronsoorriseastwood, they all had the same premise.
On a side note, my father made it his duty to make sure he would show me what it meant to be a man like other fathers. Unfortunately he wasn’t sure exactly what it was that men did, so he used TV as an aid. He would make me watch Bronson, Norris, Eastwood and any other machismo bullshit hero he could dig up. He would also make me watch Tyson fights on a constant loop, because that apparently teaches a young boy how to be a man. It was along the same lines as the episode where Homer forces Bart to stare at the Virginia Slims ad. It was something to that effect.
Back to the story at hand, while exhaling his Benson Ultra-light, he would come from his cloud of smoke, in his harsh Russian accent, say to me, “speak up, if you don’t they won’t hear you.” This was his fatherly way or at least the closest to that role I ever knew him in. This would in turn make me blush, grab the candy and walk away with my head low. Actually, until the age of 12 or 13 that was my father’s response to every sentence that came out of my mouth.
In between houses, my dad would put out his hand trying to get me to spar with him. We both knew I was never going to be a boxer, nor be in many fights during my lifetime. He would still put out the hand that was not holding his cigarette and say in his calmest tone "nyoo?" This in Russian means "come on..?" I would engage for two or 3 hits of the his palm until I would eventually whine about how stupid this boxing crap was. My father of course would cut me off and tell me some story about how he got one of the many cuts on his hand over his many street fights as a kid in Russia...
"Yuri, you see cut my finger? I almost bleed to deathh. He beat the hell out of me. I was smoll and then work out, got big and no von bother me now."
I would be thinking, what the hell were you doing getting in street fights anyways? Also, if you are looking for fights now, as a grown man, while living in the suburban valley of LA, that's just sad.
In school I would sit as far to the back of the classroom as possible. This way I would avoid getting asked questions. I would sit quietly until called upon or picked on. Being a little, chubby boy, with a big head, pinkish-white skin so light that you could see my veins, huge eyes and a weird Russian name didn’t help my cause either. I kind of resembled a caricature until I eventually grew into my huge head years later. There The name Yuri, for some reason only got me associated with stupid nicknames and bodily functions that didn’t help my child-self much either. To American children my name for some reason sounded like the word “Urine.” On the first day of school, the torment would always begin once the teacher would take role and attempt to say my name, stumble and then spell it out. They would then proceed to compliment me on how unique I was at the time. While as an adult, the sentiment could be understood, to a child, this was anything but a compliment. To me, the concept of being different was like being telling me that I was an alien and proved what I had knew all along, that I didn’t belong.
Aside from being simply an awkward kid, I also had two left feet. While many boys were inclined to go play soccer ball or basket during recess I would often be found playing house or simply chatting it up with the girls. Even then, we should have known I was gay. I became ridiculously good at making macramé friendship bracelets and lanyards. I had few friends besides my cousin Nicole to give them too who was in the same grade and equally as awkward as myself. By the end of the third grade, my mom had so many of them she began to re-gift them to other relatives.
(the be continued...)
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