BARBARISM BEGINS AT HOME - JUNE 1985

ABRAHAM “LINC” ZEBLIN

It was 1985 when I was forced to prove my “manhood.” I was six years old. My older brothers had this brilliant idea to leave me inside the woods behind St. Francis just to see if I could find my way home and to test if I was man enough to not cry. My brothers explained to me at six about how all of them were men, including my brother Truman who was just two years older than I was except that in my brothers’ eyes, he was much “tougher” than I am in the courage department. They always made fun of me about how none of them were afraid of anything I was scared shitless about.

I tried to be tough, to not cry (which was fucking hard to do being alone), or to call out for my mother who was always so over protective of me because I was her “baby” and I was what she called “sensitive.” I cringe at that word. Who would want to be called sensitive in front of brothers who were always beating you up for being soft as a marshmallow?

I did however manage pretty well in those woods as a six year old. My brothers had given me a four hour time limit to figure my way out and if I couldn’t find my way out in that time span, well then, I had fucking hell to pay. I would be scrutinized and laughed at and tortured and then locked in my brother Grant’s closet which was full of dirty football gear making my initiation process of becoming a “man” even worse than hell itself.

For the first hour, I explored. I figured if I just walked straight down a path I’ll end up at the back of the school where the old playground used to be behind the rectory. That old playground was the subject of many a school ghost story and if my brothers had left me there instead of the woods I would have screamed bloody murder and then start crying like a pussy.

I whispered to myself. You’re crazy, Abe. Go get ‘em, Abe. Be a man, Abe. As a kid, my mantra was to always encourage myself. I was my own Dr. Phil without the crazy, yelling feedbacks.

By the second hour, I found myself staring at a small pond, made so dirty from trash it gave off the smell of rotten eggs and my brother Grant's closet. Curiosity got the better of me as always and I wondered if there was some hidden treasure in that pile of rotten mess, just like the stuff those kids found in The Goonies. What I found however was something even better than a pirate ship (well, in my opinion). It was a small abandoned house, with dirty windows half way opened with a porch full of overgrown weeds. I started to cry to because that house looked so fucking sad and then I remembered who the hell I was. I was fucking Abraham Zeblin and if my brothers saw me crying they would call me a disgrace. ‘

I looked for signs of life inside that house but none of it existed. There were small empty rooms with flowered wall paper turned gray. My parents always made it a point to never walk inside people’s houses I didn’t know, yet I knew this was a different situation. The house was owned by no one in particular and I made it my purpose to take care of it.

The house was my escape from my brothers. I finally had something which wasn’t a hand me down from them and I finally found a place which was almost like my very own tree house where I could listen to music anytime I wanted to. I was pretty good at air guitar back then and lip-synching to The Clash. Though my brothers treated me like a piece of shit, they did give me the opportunity to appreciate music in general. I wasn’t the best speller nor was I a great reader in the first grade but god damn it; I was the only one who can recite ever single Smiths’ song.

After four hours, I was still inside the abandoned house cleaning like a maniac, using water from the dirty pond which didn’t really help much. I was so lost in my cleaning I didn’t realize I lost the ability to become a man in front of my brothers.

In fact I was gone so long, when my brothers decided to pick me up from the woods, they couldn’t find me. Worried with the thought I was abducted by some perverted old man or some serial killer Wisconsin is full of, my brothers decided to confess to our mother about what they’d done to her little sensitive Marshmallow.

My family lived in the east side of Appleton, near downtown. It was the older part of the city and our house was probably the oldest of all the houses on our block. Our house stood in the corner of Amelia Street, newly painted back then in USC colors of cardinal red and gold in honor of them winning the Rose Bowl in January.

Our house was usually painted with different colors whenever my family’s sports team won a championship. It didn’t matter what sport or whether it was college or pro or even the fucking Olympics just as long as they won, then you better believe our whole house will pay homage to them. The funny thing was although our house was always interesting to look at; our patched up grassy yard was something else entirely. Aside from my mother and me, the “Marshmallow,” my father and my brothers were rough guys. They were all involved in sports, they hunted and fished and joined log rolling contests over at Door County. They we always outside be it 20 below or 90 degrees roughing each other up with tackles and head butts. In the Zeblin family history of medical care, our family doctor can give you a whole list of twisted ankles, stitches, broken arms and fingers and which kid broke which body part. It was a trophy in my family to have those broken bones. It went to show how tough we all were in my father’s eyes. I was ten years old when I broke my left arm and god damn it I was fucking proud, it was my fucking gold metal in the Zeblin Olympics.

As I was getting closer and closer to home I knew something was wrong. Instead of my brothers playing in the yard, waiting for me, there were police cars, the local news crew and Mr. Marshall from down the block who went shirtless during the summers. Apparently, Mom panicked and called the police which in turn, my so called "disappearance," became a newsworthy event. I came home that day full of dirt, with spider webs stuck to my hair, and totally confused.

I was just a few yards away and I can hear my mother in a panic talking to a cop while showing him my awkward school picture. “This is his recent picture,” she was telling the cop. “Reddish brown hair, brown eyes with specks of green on his right eye, see, it’s what makes him different, and freckles everywhere.” My mother said pointing out my differences between my brothers and me. As soon as I heard that, I knew I was in trouble.

“We swear we were just leaving Linc there for a little bit. We didn’t mean for this to happen.” My brother Ike looked scared. “We didn’t know he’d really disappear like that.”

“You left a six year old in the middle of the woods, what did you expect to happen? His fairy godmother to save him? Do you really think he’ll find his way home?” My father’s voice was calm which meant he was extremely pissed off. He would yell and scream but once his demeanor turned calm, my brothers and I knew we were in deep shit.

I called out to them. “What’s going on? What’s with all these people?”

I found out of course they thought I was missing. Dad was very proud of me that day since I was able to survive a “harrowing” experience inside Appleton’s woods. Out of all my brothers I was the one he had faith in continuing our family’s military history. He thought I was a “true soldier,” whatever the hell that meant. He had this overzealous vision of me but I wasn’t what he wanted me to be. While my brothers were busy playing their sports, I was in my room listening to The Smiths and wishing I can sing like Freddie Mercury. While they were winning log rolling contests and hunting with Dad I was with my mother in our Zeb-It Pizza parlor using a mop as a microphone, singing along to the jukebox full of Sinatra and Dean Martin songs as I helped her clean after hours. As a six year old I begged my mother to enroll me in tap dancing lessons because I wanted to dance like Fred Astaire.

Dad tolerated my hobby but made it known he wasn’t very pleased. He tried to instill in me some kind of “manliness”, like teaching me how to lure fish or to hunt for the perfect deer. Grant it, I was a little rough on the edges. I wasn’t exactly a mama’s boy. I got detention every fucking time I did something I wasn’t supposed to do. I always got caught while Paolo and Oliver never did. It was Mom who understood me though. She often told me how I would cry as a little kid whenever I saw something sad or beautiful.

“You tried to hide it but it never worked. Even at one you were the type of kid to pat someone on the back if they were hurt. You don’t know how much that made me smile,” my mother explained to me. It was no wonder I was called a marshmallow.

Dad was hard to convince with my preferred choice of life. Singing and dancing to him, wasn’t a real job. It was the pussy way of joining the work force. My Dad’s idea of being included in the work force was actual blue collar work where you got down and dirty, where you sweat and earn what you’re making. My brothers eventually found jobs which became the definition of manliness in Dad’s eyes but I disappointed him. Singing, dancing, and music were not what he expected out of me.

“You are what you are,” Mom told me. “Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise, especially your father and those damn brothers of yours.”

Her advice to me was to love whomever I loved and if she meant what she meant it really didn’t matter if that someone was a man or a woman and because of those uncomplicated words she gave me early on, I never really thought much about my sexuality even though the media made it known I was somewhere in the “border” which I found amusing.

I grew up with a very “apple pie” type of family, as Oliver often called it. Dad was an American Marine who fell in love with my mother when he saw her bartending in a pub in Germany. My mother Greta is a tough German girl with a sweet and understanding side. She loves the ballet; she loves the opera but she was still strong enough to handle her Jaegermeister and tackling her sons to the ground in our front yard during family football games. Dad named all of us after Presidents. He is a true blue American and believed everything America stood for. There’s Grant, then there’s Frank, Jack, Ike and Truman. All of them, like I mentioned before had a Midwestern man’s quality to them except for me, the one named after Abraham Lincoln. Believe me, because of this, not only did my nerd status stay with me from kindergarten on; my Lincoln nicknames followed me everywhere. From Lincoln log, Penny, Mary Todd, Emancipation Proclamation, 16thP, Linc, Illinois, Zap it, Zip it, Ziplock Bag or Zebulan…

After the woods experience, my brothers laid off their harassment for awhile, finding more amusement in the Nintendo system we all pooled together from our allowance. As for me, I couldn’t keep my “tree house” a secret for too long. It only took about a week for me to tell Paolo.