Name, Rank, and Serial Number

Name, Rank, and Serial Number

“The first fiction is your name.”
---Eileen Myles

The first name I recall recognizing was
Butch, my nickname, and that was me,
the little fire plug, the tempestuous toddler
with the fullback’s thighs.

1949--Kindergarten,
that tall dour woman, Miss Something,
called me Arnold,
and I would not respond.
I didn’t know who that was.

“That’s your name, young man,
Arnold Glenn Bryden.”
I sat stoic and stared a hole in her.

“How about Glenn, do you like that name?”
Thinking it over I seemed to recognize
myself in that name, Glenn,
so I simply nodded assent
and never did answer to Arnold.

1950--First grade,
my mother had divorced Mr. Bryden,
an asshole, a womanizer, wife batterer,
a soldier who shot himself in the foot
in the Aleutians to escape going into combat,
who married my mother at 16
because she told him I was his prodigy,
and he gave me his name
and his disdain, and 25 years later,
after my mother died, he and I discovered
that he had only been the first
of my several stepfathers--
but when I was 6 years old,
living in the Navy projects
near Ballard, my mother remarried
and I was blessed
with a new last name, Stilwell;
Arnold (Glenn) Stilwell.

I was still Butch at home,
still Glenn at school,
and still was never Arnold;
my last name seemed irrelevant.

1953--my mother divorced
Mr. Stilwell, who was manic/depressive,
would eat a whole box of dry cereal
for breakfast, and molested me,
we think, and my little sister.

1954--Art Buttkus drove up
one morning in his 1950 black Mercury
fastback, rumbling with twin glass packs,
festooned with twin spotlights,
all handsome in his leather jacket
and Tony Curtis hair
and Cornel Wilde smile,
eager to corral my beauteous Mom,
and to become Stepfather IV,
the last of that ilk, new head of household,
but same old shit on a daily basis,
and I was told that now I was
(Glenn) (Arnold) Stilwell (Buttkus)
and my school records
stymied clerks and administrators.

When I was a junior in High School
my parents decided that Mr. Buttkus,
a felon, bully, child molester,
and Archie Bunker precursor
would adopt we three kids;
and so my little sister,
who was a real Bryden,
and my little brother,
who was a real Stilwell,
and me-myself-and I,
who would never find out
who the hell his real father was,
all became legally and officially
the Buttkus Bunch.

My High School diploma read:
Glenn Arnold Buttkus.
My U.S. Navy discharge
and three college degrees
also did.

1964--early on in college
I was called Cowboy,
because I wore my hair long,
wore western high top boots
and a thick studded belt
on my black Frisco jeans.

1966--while in the Navy
I was called Big Time,
because all my liberty
was spent downtown,
watching movies for ten hours,
having a big time.

1968-1978: During my dynamic
thespian decade, I became
Sancho Panza, Benedick, Macduff,
Starbuck, Becket, Harry, Bobby, Ronnie,
Alex, several Shakespearean mechanicals
and Greek and Roman spear carriers,
the Drifter in a bar with Woody Strode,
the Commendatore and God--
immersing my self in the that lovely
schizophrenic world of an actor,
letting loose cops, cuckolds, queers,
archbishops, and cowboys,
the mutts of the past,
the diverse guises of the ID;
all alive, with short expiration dates,
but all me for a time,
for several times.

As Alexis Zorba once said,
“I have other names, if you are interested.”

Glenn Buttkus October 2010