Living on a Fault
I
Our house straddles the Mesa Fault, the rift in the ground
that brought Santa Barbara down in 1925. Following
that fault line, a serious crack divides our patio
into two continents, disappears inside under carpet and tile,
and emerges, splayed across the concrete kitchen floor,
where fissures radiate from the main crevice like a map
of Amazon tributaries—signs of lesser spasms in the earth
since the floor was poured in ’84, and a warning for the future.
II
To describe my family, when my parents were alive
I used to explain that my mother and sister were nurses,
my brother, a neurologist, and I’m a psychologist. I would add
that if none of us could help, my father sold life insurance.
His work was his mission. In 1925, he would have stood
with Messieurs Kurtz, McFarland and Hayden, hawking
insurance to the newly homeless in a demolished city.
Some would say he would be taking advantage of a disaster.
Others, that he’d be barking up the wrong tree. But at five years old,
he had had St. Vitus’ Dance. He recalled the priest giving him
the Last Rites. Like many adults who survive a deadly childhood
illness, he was positive about life, his work and would not
have understood such skepticism. His job was helping people
look ahead, even standing amid the rubble of the present.
III
My father enjoyed religio-politico-philosophical discussions
and telling jokes. He was thoughtful and practical,
and he did not understand his pre-gay son. I was the 12-year-old
who saw how I differed from my male peers but did not yet grasp
what those differences signified. For most of my childhood,
my father and I lived estranged in the same house.
As junior high approached, I worried. I knew we would
be changing for gym class and showering, but I had a fear,
certain that it would say something about me that I could not bear
to be true: What if I got an erection in the shower?
Unthinkable as it was to consider talking to him, my father
was the only person around who might be able to help. Working
up my courage to ask him took the entire summer but eventually
—school around the corner—I found him alone in the living room
reading the paper. I felt the ground lurch under me just thinking
of speaking with him, but I steadied myself. He invited me to sit.
I stood. I swallowed and asked…
He did not explode. The earth did not split open under me.
Still holding the paper up, my father thought for a moment. Finally
he spoke, calm and reassuring:
“Turn on the cold water.”
I nodded, left the room and he went back to his paper. Who knows
what he thought, but he had surprised me. For the first time,
I was not fearful. I had hope…in me. And in us.
After the Edson Smith Photo Collection Santa Barbara 1925 Earthquake Damage – De la Guerra Plaza
Ronald A. Alexander’s writing was interrupted for 25 years by a composition professor’s tepid appraisal of his early poetry. Then in 1995, diagnosed yet surviving AIDS, he took a friend’s advice: “If you’re not going to die, write!” Together the two developed a novel of the AIDS pandemic. Yet, attending writer’s conferences, Ron would steal away to poetry workshops. Eventually he could deny it no longer. He had succumbed to poetry.