Thaddeus Littleman
“No Colors Allowed”
A satirical novel of a London lad in serialised form
An hour passed.
I remained inside the red Kia Sorento on the sandy drive of The Aunt’s ‘double wide deluxe’ trailer house.
In that hour, I reconstructed the collapse of my universe, including our arrival in the States at Philadelphia International. Why no Littleman kin there to greet us? Did they lack propriety?
A storm had been brewing, but no rain — only winds and ominous, threatening skies direct from King Lear — my mum’s favorite play.
On the drive, we passed The Town Tavern — the parking lot jammed with motorbikes. There were no “pubs” in America, The Father told me. Just bars, or taverns.
On the red doors of the tavern, a sign read: No Colors.
Was that racist? Not only offensive but archaic?
While listening to The Father say they “got loads of deer — cute at first — but really they’re skinny suburban rats that carry deer ticks and Lyme disease,” I worried about dying in an auto accident. I was, after all, situated on the incorrect side of the auto.
“It’s a good thing the disease was found in Lyme, Connecticut,” The Father had said. “Imagine, the next town over, Clinton. Clinton Disease. Just doesn’t work, right?”
“Does it have anything to do with that president who molested his intern?” I asked. “What I have heard about that cigar still terribly upsets my intestines and my Fourth Wave feminist sensibilities.”
The Father said no. Clinton was a common name. They came from Arkansas. Then carpet-bagged to New York. Had both Clintons been rolled into a carpet and then bagged? What an odd idiom!
Two hours had passed.
I would not budge from the safety of the Sorento. In that car, I was making a statement — my protest. Go ahead — send the dogs, my Cousin the Gunman, the motorcycle gangs, the Atco police.
Shall I just sleep here, then, Father?
I saw a brown bird — a finch — picking at desiccated fibers. Consider the lilies! Why couldn’t I do the same? Wasn’t I in America, after all, in territory that once belonged to the Lenape and the Osage and the Shawnee Indigenous Peoples who lived close to the land? (Aye — I did my research).
The Aunt’s semblance of a house was located on Jackson Road. Broken-down cars littered the yards next to The Aunt who existed in a three-bedroom trailer, but The Father called it a deluxe rancher — three trailers engineered — or Gorilla-glued — together in the shape of a U.
It was mostly wooded property with pine trees, weeds, and overgrown bushes. It was hot and humid in South Jersey. Dead flowers, dehydrated impatiens, languished in rusted hanging baskets with aged blackened coco liners. The planters stood as lazy sentinels by what resembled an outhouse or a torture chamber. The first thing I would do once safe — water those plants, for Mum’s sake.
Living things shouldn’t be treated like trash.
After several repeated raps on the window, each one louder and empathetically eager, and with The Father’s pathetic eyes appealing to pathos, I finally surrendered, thirsty more than hungry, and needed to tinkle.
I departed the bunker.
For three hours, The Father had been inside. Just a matter of time before he tea-bagged me out. Black tea withdrawal can cause delirium tremens.
Could plaid boxers be used as a white flag? I walked toward the enemy like a P.O.W.
I found myself on the crumbling concrete steps covered in green algae with my plaid suitcase, my only friend, serving as a shield — hopefully as strong as that made by Hephaestus for Achilles. Yes — Mum read to me Homer while my Father was Homer of The Simpsons.
The Aunt, The Cousin, and the Cousin Other — or Cousin Z — came back after hearing rumors of the Surrender Thaddeus Agreement with Conditions and Riders.
“I’ve heard that you’re one odd dude, man,” The Cousin said.
“Then the press about me is correct, or you’ve been reading my Tweets.”
The Cousin laughed. Sure liked my accent. “Say, ‘Charlie bit my finger.’”
I obeyed. More laughter.
“Now say ‘Oh, Hermione, would you like to see my wand?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Say, ‘Father, I’ve just poo-pooed in me trousers.’”
“Yes, I understand,” I conceded. “My accent is rollicking.”
“I don’t know about that, but it sure is funny,” The Cousin said. “You can say anything, and you sound like one brilliant dude. You like guns?”
“Only when aimed at individuals like Adolf Hitler.”
“You ever shoot a gun?”
Did a water pistol count? The Cousin asked my age.
“It’s Thaddeus. My name is Thaddeus Littleman, formerly of Golders Green, London, England, NW 11. And are you requesting actual years of life, including womb time, or intellectual and emotional age?”
The Cousin was — shall I say flummoxed? “But — but — but Thad is only one syllable! I’d turn gay saying Thaddeus. I like Rad Thad or Thad Rad. Anyway, you’re goin’ huntin’ wit me, and after that, you’re gonna love guns — like that Kiss song — ‘Love Gun.’”
He grabbed his Mr. Johnson, or what Yanks call a dick. Excuse my crude vernacular, mates!
The Cousin raised his shirt to show his black and purple and blue marks — battle scars from the paintballs.
The Cousin rambled in a stream of unconscious somnambulatory, replete with rhetorical diversions —
(Yes, my mum taught me the rhetoric of Aristotle) —
such as — Did they have paintball in England? Did he scare me? Why was I so weird? How did my mom die again? Did it really happen that way? Horrible! Was I sad? Did I believe in God? He didn’t believe that shit — a bunch of hocus pocus. I would like America better. He didn’t know his uncle, but I would love guns and huntin’ down chicks. We’re going to have shit loads of fun, but ditch the gay jacket and fairy boy shoes. He always wanted a younger sib, almost as much as a puppy pitbull. His sister’s younger but was a toad-shit.
“She calls herself Z,” The Cousin said, “but I call her Triple X because the only future I see for her is porn — low budget porn.”
It was only a matter of time before The Aunt gave me a humongous hug.
The obligatory lies continued about how “big” I got. To a Littleman, a few millimeters may be ginormous. Caught in a wrestling hold, my face was flushed against her exposed bristly armpit, a million daggers against my conditioned and moisturized skin — my nasal passages were clipped like one of those clothespins — strung out there on the line.
Did The Aunt not believe in routine pit checks? I sneezed. Was it the mildew, pine needles or body fungus? Then the scratching started. Loads of unpleasantries I could withstand — foul language that substituted for humor, incorrect subject-verb agreement, a limited understanding of French, and peanut butter on a bagel, but improper hygiene — egads! L’horreur de tout ça!
Yes — my mum taught me French. The Father liked what he called French fries, but they’re actually called chips.
Her black, curly nasal hairs needed trimming; the sun caught the luxurious growth of hairs on the curve of her ear. Oh, where was my scythe? She wore a floral sundress, yellow and light and loose. Way too loose. Nipples on The Aunt are, by way of being female, facts, but even facts are nauseating: like the Queen making toilet on the royal commode. I just shivered at the thought of The Queen making a stink — and then I would walk into the Royal bath as a Royalist and then leaving as a Republican.
Cousin Z didn’t say anything, except that the computer in the den was hers. “So don’t touch it!” she yelled.
The Cousin whispered, “I think she wants you. Cousin sex is legal in Dirty Jersey. You two could do some home porn.”
As a gentleman, I introduced myself and gave her my hand; had she never touched anyone before? Did they shake hands in America? I knew they didn’t bow, but I bent down and said it was a pleasure to meet her.
No — no — no — I wouldn’t dream of touching her computer. Did I need to mention it was fear of germs than mere courtesy? She probably picked her nose and itched her nether regions — what mum joked as “nooks and crannies” and then forgot to sing ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ while cleansing rigorously with hot water and soap.
The Cousin asked if I left behind some piece of ass. The Father translated: did I have a girlfriend.
“I have a girl I fancy, whom I call Jewel, and yes, I understand I’m only twelve, and I realize the odds of a distant relationship across a vast ocean, churning, cold and forbidding, lasting until marital age is rather nil, but the heart cannot keep from loving, right?”
Did I have to talk that way? I gazed at her blankly.
“Well,” she said, “with so many — many . . . words.”
“Yeah!” The Cousin said. “You make me feel stupid. I don’t want to have to punch you every time you make me feel bad about my brain.”
I knew, if true, I’d be dead by high tea time.
The Aunt laughed. “Farts use longer syllables around here, Thaddeus. You’ll have to excuse their ignorance. It’s their father, the damn lousy sperm-donating bastard.”
She said my Father had super sperm, but for the likes of him — her ex sperm donor — as well as that “blessed angel he had married across the pond” — the one that was so “out of his league.” But it wasn’t a normal, Littleman trait — intelligence and culture and charm, she guessed. They got “moron sperm,” an egg after the “consummate-by-date” on the carton.
Inside the dwelling, where the open windows brought zero comfort from the humidity and the humility and the Brobdingnagian bugs, The Father focused me down the hall — hands on my shoulders — still shaking, to show the room I’d be sharing with The Cousin.
I kept saying, “This is only temporary. This is only temporary. Is it only temporary?”
Then I realized: no city; no church chimes; no Kebab shop takeaways; no British Museum; no Royal National Theatre; no Hyde Park; no Picadilly or Trafalgar Square or pigeons. No Soho. No Globe Theatre. No Wimbledon. No Hammersmith Odeon concerts. Or Barbican operas. Or Royal Albert Hall orchestras. No walks along the Embankment with mum. No Heinz beans or digestives or cucumber sandwiches or Ploughman’s lunch or proper fish and chips.
The Cousin demanded the lower bed because of his frequent trips to “the crapper.” Did they use a chamber pot? Or an outhouse?
Every inch was covered in posters of Pink Floyd, Rush, Led Zeppelin; one was wider than a double bed; then there were the swimsuit women from Sports Illustrated.
The Cousin kept the “good stuff” on his iPhone — any type of porn, man!”
The ceiling was black. “Tonight, I will show you the stars,” The Cousin said. Painted stars and planets in fluorescent polka-dotted the black ceiling. “With blacklight, it was a regular planetarium, man! It’s really chill when I get strobe going too,” he said. “A class trip to the Franklin Institute inspired me, man. The universe stuff freaks me out. Makes me feel small, you know. But here, it’s my universe.” He then glared at me. “And this is my universe. Understand? Don’t even think of touching anything.”
Of course, the only way to confirm the room free from questionable fluids would come from black lighting every object in that chamber of horrors. I overheard The Father once tell my mum of a college roommate who used a sock as a receptacle for his auto-eroticisms.
A few of The Cousin’s habits — candidates — hung simultaneously limp and stiff over his bed. Recoiling in horror — the only sane response.
“Quite a room here, Billy Boy,” The Father said. “I’m trippin’, man, just looking at everything. Is it 4:20 yet?”
“At night, man, it all comes alive!”
“Righteous!” The Father said. Embarrassed, I nudged him. The Father was not even back a day, and he already was changing — bitten by a Jersey Devil Zombie.
The Aunt suggested fresh air. Her son enjoyed wildlife. “Kids these days need sunshine,” she said. “Go outside. Have a blast! Just stay away from that tavern down the street.”
“We can exercise and hunt,” The Cousin said. “We can kill two birds with one stone.”
“Correct, mate, if you like birds dead,” I quipped. No one laughed.
The Father, be careful. Why could he not see the desperation? Why take me away from all that I loved — all whom I loved — despite my tears? Didn’t my face scream please rescue me, Father? All I wanted: hide inside the discomfort of the Sorento. Could water and food and Yorkshire blended tea be brought out — after a roiling boil, of course? Could I pitch a tent outside? I would be fine, I guess — if I had, too — living in the woods by myself. How about a cabin?
I pictured such a place — my Main Place — like a hermit thrush, singing with the graceful ease of my solitude and my misery. Open a vein, mate, and bleed memoirs over pages of parchment — a testament against The Father and homage to The Mum.
Could the ‘Surrender Thaddeus Agreement’ be torn apart? After all, what good was the Chamberlain Munich Agreement with Hitler? Could I retreat, double-quick, leaping into the redoubt of the red Kia Sorento? Could I commence a starvation protest like Gandhi? What could be done to stop the downward march to madness and incivility?
