State of Play

Oliver and his sisters played a game when they were kids. He forgets exactly what they called it – “Maybe just ‘Cops,’” he says.

In the game, he and his older sister pretend they’re cops – they’re partners – and they go on a lot of cop calls, and then they have lunch at a diner, at a pretend diner, where their younger sister plays the waitress at the counter. She takes their orders and often dishes out clues to some crime they’re trying to solve.

They order sandwiches they would never eat in real life, like tuna melts or turkey clubs. They don’t even know what those sandwiches are, but cops on TV order them in dingy diners on their lunch breaks, so they order them, too, in their game along with coffee, which in real life they never drink either, but the TV cops do…with sandwiches. Oliver’s younger sister doesn’t actually make what the other two order. She gives them graham crackers or makes them toast and pours glasses of water like it’s coffee, and Oliver and his older sister pretend to eat what they order.

In the game, they have a cop car. The dashboard is an old steamer trunk, and they have two straight-back chairs they set up for the seat. The steering wheel is always a problem. They can never concoct one that mimicks real steering. They usually settle for a Frisbee or a pie tin, but one day they find a hubcap they start using. They like it because it has the size of a steering wheel, and it’s a car part so it lends reality to their car. They each have a ring of old keys they pretend are keys to the car door, the trunk, the ignition, and to their pretend handcuffs.

Sometimes, they’re motorcycle cops, and they ride around the street on their bikes and end up somewhere else on their street at a crime scene. Their little sister plays the crime victim or the burn victim or the perpetrator – whatever character their game needs – a beaten wife, a counterfeiter, a bank robber.  She fills all the extra roles.

At some point in the game and not every time, Oliver’s partner – this female cop, who of course is his sister – and he end up in his bed. In the game they’re having an affair. Like the sandwiches, they don’t know exactly what that means, but cops on TV and other characters on TV have “affairs.” They know it involves sex, but they’re not sure they know what that means.

They lie next to each other naked or at least exposed from the waist down. Oliver tells me sometimes his sister touched his erection. He says he put it really close to her, but never inside. They are children playing and exploring. Oliver says that if his parents had opened his door and seen them lying like that, they would have freaked out.

“They probably would have grabbed us by the hair,” he imagines, “at the very root of our hair, at the scalp, probably tearing the scalp, and would have shaken us by our hair, slapped our faces till they were purple, and slammed us into the walls. Then they literally would have kicked our asses down the hall, pushed us down the stairs, and flung us by our arms, or our hair if we had any left, out into the front yard like trash they wanted out of their sight.”

He pauses for a moment then continues. “I’m not sure what we would have done from there. We would have gotten the hell away from the house as fast as possible, that’s for sure. It would have involved a lot of terror and crying. We probably would have ridden our bikes around the neighborhood a lot, possibly for days. I imagine no one would ever talk about it again.”

Oliver shifts in his seat. He leans forward resting his forearms on his thighs and rubs his hands together. Looking at his worrying hands, he keeps his eyes from me. “I think that kind of play is very natural for kids,” he says, “but looking now as a parent if I came across my kids playing or lying like that, I’d be upset. I’d be troubled – I would be gutturally disturbed. I would think something very evil had been visited upon my home. I’m not sure I could handle it. I don’t think I would handle it well.”

Oliver stops rubbing his hands. He clasps his fingers together and looks me straight in the eye. “I think, though, that kind of play is very common. People don’t talk about it,” he says, “but I think it’s common.”

He looks down. He’s rubbing his hands again, and he speaks again, “Or maybe I’m just hoping it’s common. Maybe it only happens in bad families.  No one ever talks about it.”

Oliver pulls on his chin once. He quickly leans back and folds his arms tightly. He sits silently looking out my studio window. After a distant pause he says, “It’s just not talked about.”

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Image

“Children Playing Stencil” – Photo by bob badhatstand, FlickrCC https://tinyurl.com/yyadnlju