Potted Meat Sandwiches

That’s what my mom used to make me for lunch as a kid. Mrs. Baird’s very own white bread, spread corner to corner with Armor’s finest potted meat. I was no stranger to vienna sausages either. Fried bologna sandwiches? You betcha!

The house I grew up in was infested with cockroaches. Shit sucked, but what could we do? Try as they might, my parents set traps, sprayed all kinds of dangerous chemicals, called professionals in; nothing worked. Our house was at the bottom of the hill in front of the gutter, when it rained our whole yard was flooded. That brought roaches of all kinds. Big, small, hissing, i’m talking everything from babies to blue ribbon award winning championship roaches.

When my parents divorced and my mom moved out, I basically had control of the house. I came and went as I pleased. I’d give my dad some vague story about where I was going, who I’d be with, what we were doing. It didn’t matter, he knew none of it was true. Unbeknownst to me, he had been recording my phone conversations. I found the tape recorder he was using hidden under his bed. It had all kinds of incriminating calls I had made on there. Lots of drugs deals, conversations with friends about the lies we were construing for the weekend. A lot of ins and outs!

I moved out shortly after that. My dad never said anything or confronted me about the phone calls on that tape, and I never really spoke to him too much after that. I’d call every now and then, but he’d never answer. His machine would always pick up, imagine that. I never leave a message.