Mom gets livid with rage only on very rare occasions. The last time I saw her so upset was when we miscommunicated 5 years ago, about where she'd be picking me up from a LARP event. This time around it began over something more innocuous: bad Mapquest directions. We were trying to get to IAmaMage's place so I could pay a visit. We were fine up until getting off the freeway/motorway, whereupon rush hour traffic happened at around 1:00pm. After getting lost multiple times and mentally slapping myself for not bringing Mage's number to call, we finally got into the driveway.

The time with Mage was partly very insightful, partly 'scary'. He'd convinced me to run a game of Vampire: The Masquerade for him and a few others. Think of it as postmodern Gothic D&D. I figured I hadn't done something geeky in awhile, so I needed to fill my quota. At around 3pm, his mom came in and proceeded to unload on Mage's brother, who shot right back at her. In essence, he wouldn't do anything because she kept yelling at him, and she wouldn't stop yelling because he hadn't done anything he was supposed to do around the house. I just sat there and wondered why I felt nothing; maybe a childhood cliche.

After that, Mage and I took a break for an hour and just swapped life stories around the local bowling alley. Aside from the talk about drug use and family history, he mentioned I seemed "like an old friend" to him. Some people just have one of those faces; I'm beginning to think maybe I just have one of those minds (or souls, whichever sounds better)?

Eventually we stopped the session right after the boys had loaded up on massive amounts of fictious ammunition and big guns. After all, why go half-assed? At around that time I decided to call Mom to check in and ask how things were. At first I wasn't sure how to interpret her: calm, controlled...but like she was talking through her teeth. Ah ha, she was, and the puckering lips and word spitting sealed it: she was royally pissed. Because of the hour she "dicked around" getting lost, she lost a 100 bucks, got into a massive fight with her boyfriend Scott and seemed to have a Murphy's Law day, sponsored by my trip. I actually felt a chill run up my spine when she described, in detail, just what kind of bloody putrescent pile of blood and skin she wanted to make Mage; she doesn't entertain murder often. I knew I was fucked and I accepted that fact.

The fucked part came in the form of her pulling up and angrily saying, "You drive the truck." I made for the passenger side, not quite understanding. "You drive the truck," she repeated with the same venom. She said it once more as I ran to the driver's side. As I got in she screamed obscenities at the house, pouring every ounce of hate she could into it. Pulling away I was glad I hadn't mentioned several very choice pieces of information (not legal, don't ask), which saved me from her turning it on me. Still, didn't feel anything.

What she did do, though, is force me to drive along LA freeway/motorway traffic for the full hour and thirty minutes home. This was my first real time on a freeway. A vague sense of terror possessed me as I overcompensated and gripped the wheel like a corpse occasionally. She bitched clear and loudly at me about everything: how I should be going through my boxes rather than at the last minute, how I needed to prepare better for events and maybe keep a checklist, where she went wrong in raising me so that I bent over backwards for people who "wouldn't do the same for you and couldn't give a flying fuck." She'd done the same things and thought I wouldn't have to suffer the Hell that she did. She said that her consistent verbal assault and the traffic driving mimicked rush hour.

A tiny part of me wanted to yell at or slap her across the face for putting me through that Trial by Fire. I was like that generic ship at sea in a fierce and horrid storm, battered by the litany of livid bitching, which then turned to casual stories. Cars and truck-rigs were pressed along me like chinese lantern lights, far enough apart to bounce and flash their lights all around my eyes like some diseased festival. My eyes kept darting around, trying to focus, willing myself to pay attention, still remain flexible and not lock-up. It got worse as I went along. Almost got into two accidents on the way.

What disturbed me most, though, was my reaction to it all at first: nothing. When I was younger, I used to flinch and shrink away inside when Mom verbally dug into me. Now, her rage just passed over and around me. I calmly spoke, put in bits about how I agreed with this point, could improve that about myself...and gradually she calmed down, even smiled toward the end. I was like a professional, doing it from instinct and part of me knew just how to push her this way or that. It wasn't until I saw those unblinking yellow eyes in my mirrors and the speedometer move to 70mph that terror slowly possessed me.

Eventually we stopped somewhere near the house and decided to eat somewhere that was open late. I still felt very shaken so I ordered a large pina colada/Captain Morgan strawberry thing. We talked for awhile about people in my life right now, situations, lots of things about the past.

I'm still surprised I'm up actually, but I felt this odd compulsion to wait and see if Diana would show. I'm also wondering if my 1,000+ pg. Lord of the Rings tome will show itself. I searched for over an hour trying to find that thing. Either mom and I had a mutual hallucination I brought it back, or the house has swallowed it.

Stranger things have happened.

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