There was a double standard, really, between the girls and boys in my family. Mike was too young at the time, and never went out, but my sister Marcie was 17 and I was 16. She had to be in by 10:00 pm. My father thought this a safeguard against teen pregnancy and fiscal burden. I could come home, drunk or sober, any time I wanted.

My sister decided one day to go to a play in the Third Ward staged by an alternative theater called Theatre X. I’d never heard of it, but I knew Marcie. Within her resided an unappeasable desire to contrive an altar of rebellion. Theatre X had to be a spooky place where routinely one risked, where inscrutable happenings led to tests of faith, where boundaries exploded into negative airspace, where our breath denied in the vacuum following an unspecified aftershock or the pulse of a tsunami grasped at flotsam and submerged, with the grim reaper surveilling, from overhead in the balcony, people dating, replicating. X was a special letter, like Racer X, the mystery brother to Speed, and it signified things undefinable, like the elusive “Solve for X.” Xavier was the only name that started with X, and though Xavier was an important saint, he was obscure and favored missionaries, thrill seekers who communicated in hand signals and clung to margins, providing sanctuary for new converts stacked like cordwood I in the monstrance’s shadow. And the xylophone, the only instrument of X-type, looked like an animal with a tremendous row of jagged teeth crouched from its station in the orchestra. There were x-factors, X marked the spot of buried treasure, later in our lives, “The X Files.” X was an alphabetical cloak and dagger, an enigma machine in a single character. X was also the last letter in the word sex, a word that scares every person on planet earth 100% of the time, except for Marcie, or so my father believed.

The play had started at 8 pm and would run three acts. Apparently, my father was not aware of this, because when he came home at 9:30, smelling of alcohol, he demanded to know where my sister was. Immediately, we called the theater to explain the emergency.

They didn’t seem to understand, claimed, “We can’t go barging into the audience in the middle of the third act and remove your sister.” Marcie could have gotten pregnant at that very moment, while I was on the phone with them, while my father grabbed the phone away from me and shouted into the receiver. She might in fact be inseminated already and require emergency contraception (as of 1979, this meant probably a douche as Plan B did not exist). Mysterious biological forces worked here. At Theater X anything could have rendered us destitute with no money for the tavern, short of rent and trading food stamps for museum admissions. Would I finally see skeletal remains of T-Rex and ankylosaurus still fighting it out for control of a Cretaceous wetscape? No! And poor Limey would go on Welfare, his tappers dried up with Pop sidelined, Limey’s bar rag converted to accommodate dust. I would scrounge for ganja, rely on Masterpiece Theater (showcasing Edward Gorey) for music and muse, my predilections in the contrarian anatomy of women nixed by poverty and lack of transport. It would be heart-breaking! Demoralizing! Pop’s commitment to wetbrain and mine to leftbrain defunded, unsecured, penniless! We would both literally die of ennui while Marcie’s belly grew. 

My father informed the stage manager, “My daughter better be in the lobby of the theater when I get there,” slurring better be and theater. He went into the bedroom to his secret hiding place that even Uncle Herbie knew about, obtained his Browning 9mm with the 14 shot clip, and my mother’s Walther PPK, which she had never actually fired after he foisted it upon her one Christmas night. He gave me the lesser pistol, the one with only seven shots, rounded up the remainder of the family, including Michael and Marlene, both out past curfew for the first time ever, and loaded them into the station wagon. He told me to ride shotgun, but I told him “Mom should sit there,” which to him seemed somehow reasonable. Perhaps he thought the family should present in descending order of social relevance crossing downtown. A mother chauffeured in the back seat might hint at insurrection to a passing patrol car. I sat on the passenger side beside the rear door, and as my father drove to the theater, ranting and explaining about his obligation to protect the family, I secretly removed the Walther from my coat pocket and slid it under the car seat.

Arriving at the theater, my father ordered me to come with him. He held the Browning in his coat pocket like a giant penis. I extended my index finger, pocketed my hand to match his and appear his backup. When the usher saw my father’s bulge, he led us into Concessions and went for the stage manager. I stayed behind my father, keeping my pistol facsimile outside his shoulder and behind, to prevent him getting a good peek. I pondered his trigger finger: Was it steady? How drunk was he? Would the police be called, precipitating a hostage situation? Had he clicked off his safety? I attempted a look on my face of objectivity, a Rod Serling mannerism, quiet and confident. I was the X man who spoke between, the codebreaker, the levee twixt dry land and rising water, the hostage negotiator. I knew my father and his mind, but not his level of intoxication. I did not know Theater X, but had to guess at their normal. And I had tried, if I could, to stay out of literally everything that ever happened in the human world, so, at this moment of intense alarm, I might react with calm, focus and wisdom. I tried to be a Hummel, a work of glass, frozen inside a display case, protected from dust and mites, from intentions. In the back of my mind I heard Rod Serling reading softly from his masterpiece, “Requiem For A Prizefighter.”

The stage manager spoke to my father as if he were a child. He explained, “The play will be over in minutes, and Marcie will be safe and sound, not pregnant, you’ll see.” My father demanded a time limit and we muddled about like characters in some film noir. I imagined specifically “Key Largo” and their extreme tensions, hunkering as the hurricane pummeled the inn, until finally a phone call...I told my father sincerely, “Don’t worry, Pop. Marcie’s fine and soon we’ll be happily home.” I smiled. My father slowly pivoted, measuring distances between himself and many panicky employees.  They weighed opportunities against his threat of gunfire, shuffling about, then suddenly freezing as he faced them, sharing glances, transferring from one to another an amorphous dream of surprise and disarmament. I watched as fear penetrated their faces, overwhelming any plot, any effort to oppose, to separate my father from the object condensing his rage, precipitating his threatened violence…I observed my father calculating, as he looked from one intending hero to the next. Had he brought the extra clip with him?

He checked his watch three times after the time limit expired. I counted as seconds dismally ticked…Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...We all waited.

Inevitably, the stage doors opened and, one by one, patrons departed, crossing the lobby to the exit doors. Young and old theater goers yammered and filed past, unaware of my father’s broken heart, his fear of fertility, his hostility toward courtship which might lead predictably to tactile stimulation, conquest, a budget including diapers and formula, or some manifestation of son-in-law. He scrutinized potential suitors, competing males who might inseminate, deplete our savings, increase cortisol levels, shorten our lifespans, replace our tepid genes. His cheeks quivered like I’d seen the wings of a butterfly do just before it expired inside a killing jar. He did not control the situation. Rather, the situation itself dominated, ruling his assault in the muggy atmosphere, making him ineffectual, small, though armed, and strangely silent, dumbfounded, unable to slur a single sentient line, unable even to yawn or pass out on his feet.

We all waited.

Apart from him, Biology remained vibrant and alive, by degrees canceling his hubris. His face shone like a plum, appeared submerged as in a yellow tide pool of mucosal slime, a buttery ooze you’d find leaking from the exploratory fingernails of an alien on a movie set. And I perceived envy. With no sign of his daughter, but with people exiting, I wondered, “Will you hold your fire or act out like a kid?”  And where would he begin with 14 shots supporting his initiative? So many times he’d spoke to me with pride, “This piece is not a six-shooter.” Could he reload? Would he crouch, hold the pistol with both hands to improve his accuracy? Would his training as a military police officer during the Vietnam War crystalize his inner soldier, sanctify his attack? Or would he shoot from the hip like a gangster, exploding a hole in his leather coat? Would he take hostages, demand a jet to Cuba? Would there be a shootout, ushers crashing through the display case at Concessions, kids diving for cover behind bins full of empty popcorn tubs and candy wrappers?

Would Marcie come out with a date?

Finally Marcie emerged from the stage doors, dateless to everyone’s relief. I waved to her with my free hand. “Oh,” my sister said in a superimposed sisterly manner, “you came to pick me up! How nice!”

We left the theater quite refreshed by the cool October night and got into the car. I told Marcie to sit down in the middle of the back seat. As she crowded in against Marlene, I got in next to the door and carefully replaced the Walther into my coat pocket. With Michael pressed against the window opposite, I felt quite good. They hadn’t seen me, my younger siblings, when I’d hid the gun: I’d made sure of that. I knew it was no plaything. My father lectured Marcie all the way home about the curfew, and told her she would never again be able to go to Theater X. Marcie, a future meteorologist, renowned within the family for her power to evaluate sudden maelstroms, and now a theater goer as well, said, “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Dad.”                                                              

  END