“Son of No Respect” originally appeared in issue 60.1 of Puerto del Sol.
The full moon peeks out from behind a stand of trees as a solitary figure stalks the shadows. A solitary imposing figure hulking through the winter woods, looking basically 100% badass with the moon shining through the skeletony branches of the shadowy trees, glowing hazily in the ominous nighttime. This dark, imposing, but also brave and noble figure is Son of No Respect.
Crunch, chuck go Son of No Respect’s boots in the crunching, chucking snow. Plus the wind whistling through the sinister trees. But then? Like a volume knob being gradually turned up, Metallica’s “Seek & Destroy” starts playing, only really, really slow. Like a 78rpm record on 33 1/3. Like some intestinal growling, some marrow-deep hunger. Like chug, chug, chuuuuuug!!!
Son listens and savors, gazing at the blind eye of the moon and doing the wizard thing with his hands, conjuring the forest spirits. Yes! Electricity crackles. YES! The ancient and malevolent spirits of the forest! Glowing eyes peer out from the underbrush, indicating the primordial beings that lurk close at hand! But Son of No Respect rules these woods! He has dominion over all that herein resides! He notes the crazy shape-shifting clouds and again does the wizard thing. Conjuring.
This whole deal’s like a mythical painting of sword-wielding heroes and evil dragon motherfuckers inclined unto battle. If they only knew the power of the forest primeval late at night, thinks Son of No Respect. He wishes for a crow to screech. Son would roar in communion with the crow. Sharing magnificent vibes. Or even better, an owl! A big-ass owl would really set the mood. He makes mental note of an owl, sitting menacingly up in his strategic vantage point of the crook of an ancient tree, checking everything out with his big eyes, and actually nodding as he, Son of No Respect, traversed beneath, conveying their powerful spiritual bond.
As Metallica chug their majestic crescendo and the song ends in its inexorable deathly croak, Son takes out his headphones to appreciate the nighttime sounds. Such as the humming of vital spiritual energies deep in the Earth. And yet, vilely, just up ahead the woods come to an unceremonious end and the spell lies broken at Son’s feet. A cul-de-sac. A fucking cul-de-sac? Son shakes his head. What bullshit! Man’s oppressive power over nature. He walks on through the last of the trees, his powerful private hinterland spilling out into a tableau of oppressively average suburban-type stuff. Yards and Toyotas and whatever the hell else. Like doghouses, maybe? But he’s just so far past that averageness. Walking by someone’s precious little garden, he kicks a smiling gnome, which just breaks with a feeble breaking noise. More bullshit. But also? What a perfect symbol of Sayreville, New Jersey. Streetlamps shine dully down on Son, who now amid the suburban bullshit appears as just a regular dude. A lone regular dude of admittedly advancing years with long, stringy hair, yet draped with a thoroughly bad-ass leather jacket with so, so many band patches carefully sewn on. Years of devotion, etc. Sabbath. Priest. Slayer. Death. His grim and compelling faith.
Son opens the door of his ‘98 Civic, which has seen better days, and cranks it. The stereo jumps to life. More Metallica while the rest of the town slumbers on, probably dreaming of doing their taxes. Ha! The Civic sputters, Son slices through the icy predawn tundra, past Panucci’s Pizza at the end of the block, which does a good lunch special. Past Ink Jammerz, the only place Son would consider going for the memorial tattoo he will one day get when Ozzy shuffles off his mortal coil. Except for Son and Metallica, ever-vigilant brothers in arms, the streets are deserted. Soon he arrives at a small industrial park where in front of a roll-down door sits Walter Fat-as-Fuck guarding bound stacks of The Sayreville Suburban. This guy would not last a single second in the mythical woods ruled by Son of No Respect. Walter would be such a lame peasant, covered in years’ worth of mud, begging someone to save him from even such a lowly threat as wolves. Or else begging for a crust of bread. Jesus, Walter. How did you get so fat just eating some begged-for bread crusts?
Under Walter’s bland gaze Son grudgingly loads stacks of Suburbans into the Civic before expanding his consciousness with a joint and prowling the streets in 2nd gear, from the window hucking papers onto driveways. He drives and hucks, smokes and drums on the wheel, reaching the last of the papers just as his left arm, ropy and asymmetrically muscled from his labors, registers the first pang of tiredness. As a small quadrant of sun rises yellowly over some houses, his quest accomplished, Son turns towards home. His thoughts fly ahead through the warming sky, finding a few swirls of still-cool nighttime air, back to the cul-de-sac and through the woods—no longer sinister or primordial—down a short path and into a modest backyard. Here in a low brick house, beguttered and detached of garage, is where Son of No Respect feels himself so unfairly relegated. The castle of his youth and indeed middle-age, lorded over by his parents who, truthfully, are mere regents even of this banal realm. Son’s thoughts fly to them, for he is not without mercy and indeed goodwill, but he knows that while he yet remains under their roof he is without advantage in this world, despite his manifold powers.
Ah, he thinks, Mother, Father. For want of but perhaps a small loan of $20,000, which would have allowed me to bring forth unto the world a guitar shoppe of mine own, I remain under your dread thumbs, pitiful minor tyrants that you are!
He knows their routines to such a minute degree that while still several miles distant, he can intuit their every action, their every thought, can envision what they perceive at any given moment in their lowly domestic sphere! Son’s spirit avatar enters a kitchen door and proceeds up a set of carpeted stairs into a pink-tiled bathroom, where, ensconced in a cloud of steam, bathed in ribbons of hot water, stands his father, No Respect Himself, lathering his ample gut with a bar of Irish Spring, his mind befuddled and thwarted by topics of great import. Son knows that his father wonders about all these significant things, such as the Vast Powers of the Human Heart, the Very Nature of Good and Evil, and the Grand and Secret Workings of the World, yet No Respect Himself remains woefully ignorant of any True Wisdom. His mind destined to remain forever Earthbound, allowed resolution only when concerned with topics of middling import such as the Alchemy of Mortgage Rates and the Dread Beast of Hypertension! Yes, Son intuits, when No Respect Himself turns to the Big Questions of Life, his mind becomes scattered as the deodorant soap passes over his doughy folds of skin and across an extravagantly bald head, the last tenacious tendrils of his hair hanging in limp wads over his ears, and he is compelled to return to his usual dwelling: a space of awe and bafflement, which he believes must be the Condition of Man, who he sees as basically a noble ape-type thing who nevertheless yearns to apprehend the Stuff of the Cosmos despite limited success in this department. If only you believed in me somewhat, thinks Son. Your own glory might not have been thusly thwarted.
Son drives on, his thoughts still with his father who now closes his eyes and lets the hot water run down his face and belly, which is covered with spidery hairs that seem to be growing thicker and more plentiful by the day. Son can hear him sigh and groan, taking a moment to note how good the acoustics are. The tinny reverberation, such a wonder of physics! But also, underlying this, No Respect Himself realizes the tiniest pang of depression due to, even at his advanced age, not yet being a Great and Powerful Man in the World. He looks into his fog-free mirror and stretches taut the skin of his cheeks to better facilitate the scraping off of stubble. Then he turns the water all the way to cold and stands under the icy stream, exhaling in little puffs and hoots, purifying himself in the needle-like pain.
Meanwhile, his mother—Gentle Marcy, who despite the tyranny of her assigned role has been a kind and warm presence in Son’s life, held dear if at a distance. For Gentle Marcy, the small victories are perhaps enough: a pie cooling on a windowsill; a large-eyed kitten besequinned upon a sweater! Even now Son sees her as she descends the stairs and looks through the window and past the backyard, past the shabby patio furniture and the persistent weeds poking through cracks in the concrete, and beholds Son of No Respect’s woodland domain where none but he dare venture. She then continues into the kitchen and switches on her countertop radio, set always to Power 105.7, No Respect Himself’s employer of close to 30 years.
“This Power 105 Traffic Jam is brought to you by the PNC Bank Arts Center, presenting Billy Joel in concert this Saturday. Two lanes are closed on the Turnpike after a chicken truck jack-knifed...”
Shortly hence, Son sits outside in this selfsame backyard finishing another smoldering joint and, in this moment, feeling something akin to contentment. What is his life if not one of righteous struggle? What has he done if not hone his abilities to a razor’s edge, awaiting only the proper moment in which to prove himself? He has withstood things that would cause others to run and cower and has emerged from the other side unscathed. And he will do it again when the need arises and he is called upon. Even now, in bleak winter daylight, the vital energies of the world are not lost to him! Son sits tired but gimlet-eyed as the majesty of his high swirls inside him. He pictures himself summiting a blizzardy peak, guitar soloing while simultaneously sword fighting attacking fiends. The clouds roll in grimly and release their thunderous percussion and blazing lightning. Craaack! Booooom! Purple explosions, the magnificent heat of battle! The wailing of his guitar hovering above the pained screams of the dispatched and malformed foes! Son drops his roach into the old Folgers can already brimming with roaches and stands unsteadily.
“Hey, Ma,” he intones moments later as he enters the steamy kitchen, placing Gentle Marcy’s complimentary copy of the Suburban on the counter, not that there’s anything even remotely consciousness-raising in it, but she likes it. He notes the wonderful sizzle of bacon and eggs as the news’s banalities fill her head with non-mattering distractions. Bruce Shannon going on and on about some backed up shit on the Major Deegan. Open your eyes! Son wishes at his mother! Find out what’s really going on out there! Sheep!
“How was work, sweetheart?” Gentle Marcy asks. He only shrugs, because what can you say? Don’t let it grind you down! Maintain the fire in your soul! Marcy returns to the bacon as Son grabs a Coors Light from the fridge. He senses No Respect Himself upstairs, putting on a suit that hasn’t been in style since the Reagan administration. Utilizing deft camouflage techniques to arrange his hair into what’s surely a convincing comb-over. He feels that his appearance could be considered stately. A man must maintain his essential dignity and bearing. A neat suit and careful attention to grooming and hygiene aligns all sorts of positive things. Whatever power animates the universe surely appreciates such efforts from its creations! Cinch waist clasp, smooth shirtfront, a final misting of hairspray to keep his coiffure from blowing off like a flapping banner should he encounter above-average winds. No Respect Himself inspects his reflection in the full-length bedroom mirror and finds it agreeable.
Son sips his Coors Light and looks through the window as the radio announces, “...which brings the total number of deaths to 239,” causing Gentle Marcy to declare the situation “so awful.”
“The world is a cold place, Ma,” he says. He knows only hard-ass dudes can hack it. He has witnessed the world’s hard-ass dudes in action, doing things that would make your eyeballs shrivel up and die. Son crushes his beer can to show that he is one of those dudes, more or less, and tosses it into the recycling bin and stalks off. For just an instant, Marcy wonders how her son, once a happy and shining-eyed boy, can have these emotions in him. She knows that his heart has been through the wringer, been to places she can never ask about, his medical discharge and the many months in the hospital, so she makes allowances and tries to love him all the more. She returns to her stovetop as Power 105 mentions with great excitement the triumphant rescue of puppies from neglect and impoverishment due to the bravery of a local pizza guy. See, radio? It won’t kill you to give people some nice news every once in a while!
No Respect Himself had been a huge Rodney Dangerfield fan back in the 80s or thereabouts, back when being a huge Rodney Dangerfield fan was an understandable and even popular thing to be. You could quote Rodney Dangerfield to much success back then. He’d recite whole “I get no respect” bits, pantomiming the loosened red tie and flop-sweat with exquisite skill. He really was good at it, and, watching him, people would say, “Hey, No Respect! Right on!” and the name just stuck. And so his son became Son of No Respect. Simple as that. He even kind of liked it, having a nickname, being part of something. But now No Respect Himself disavows the moniker. In Son’s opinion this is because he is old and can’t hack it anymore. This was the general problem with life: there you were, cool and aware of the score, and then one day, without warning, the rules changed and you could no longer deal. Just like that—it was over and done, your powers left you and your vitality deserted you and all you could do was go off to sit recliningly somewhere and wait out the clock. So in a gesture of kindness and solidarity, Son has continued calling his father No Respect Himself. Time was a ruthless shit but maybe some bulwarks could still be erected.
Father and Son now approach each other on the stairs, meeting near the middle, the poetry of which is not lost of Son. A moment not of greeting but of mutual recognition flits between them.
“Heeyy, No Respect!” says Son with laidback vibes as he swings his jacket over one shoulder.
“Eeehh,” replies No Respect Himself, toothlessly showing the back of his hand.
This comical display causes Son to chuckle, which, due to the recent doobie, quickly-slammed Coors Light, and a slight tilting as he shoulders his jacket, throws him just barely off balance, and laughing, he lists backwards. He claws for the banister but finds it unfairly out of reach. Son falls into his father and together they tumble down the carpeted stairs just as Gentle Marcy steps into the foyer to announce that No Respect Himself’s breakfast awaits, becoming the lone witness of this unfolding calamity. Son, briefly registering his mother as a phantom presence in the corner of his eye, wonders what she sees as the two of them, intertwined, tumble. He wonders what claim he has on these people, is he a permanent fixture in Gentle Marcy’s and No Respect Himself’s hearts or has he been a mere tourist in them? He longs suddenly to show them the winter woods at night. No, he then thinks in the fleeting moment, he longs for something else but cannot find the words. As the foyer spins, Son of No Respect remembers a woman he’d seen just the day before in her car waiting at a red light. He was in the next lane jamming out and upon seeing her stopped cold to observe what she surely assumed was a private moment—looking into her rearview, adjusting its angle and carefully puckering her lips, applying lipstick, perhaps doing this for someone, hoping to be thought more beautiful, but who knew. He felt incredibly grateful to see this gesture or effort, whatever it meant.
And No Respect Himself, still falling, his right knee glancing off the banister, sees a day decades earlier when he’d been truly happy: a bright spring morning with his older brother—Elliot, dead of a heart attack almost twenty years, whose funeral had been held on another bright spring morning, a day on which it should have been impossible to feel anything aside from gratitude for the mere fact of being alive, and Rachel, his brother’s widow, standing by the coffin, who, even in her grief looked so beautiful, far too young and beautiful, he’d thought, to be a widow, and he can no longer think of her, or his brother, without also smelling the cemetery’s newly-cut grass—when he and Elliot, still in grade school, had traipsed through the woods behind their grandparents’ Connecticut home and discovered a rabbit warren and peeked inside to find a bunch of sleeping baby rabbits, each of them barely the size of a baseball, their downy sides rising and falling in quick, short breaths, all together like a single fluttering miracle.
And as father and son are brought finally to rest by the disinterested floor, Gentle Marcy’s heart flies to them, becoming an unquenchable roaring flame at the sight of one leg at a cruel angle, and a pale, hirsute forearm protruding strangely from the glorious leather jacket that is, thankfully, draped over the very worst of it. What realm is this, she wonders, that she has suddenly entered?