As I walked here, coffee in hand, cookie balanced carefully on my journal, I passed men sitting on bus benches--men I knew not to look in the eye. For if I were to make eye contact they would try to talk to me. I draw this kind of attention wherever I go. Strange men with no boundaries like to see how far they can push me. I walked past the Greyhound station. The image of a dog, ever sprinting, made me dispair. We humans never let our fellow creatures rest. They must provide.
In the train station there are children. They are calling to each other like dogs in the night. They don't even know each other, I just realized, but one whines and then another calls back in response.
The great ceiling fans circulate. Are they whipping around to keep the air moving? Or to push the hot air down off the ceiling. Someone's feet smell. Not mine, I think. An old dot-matrix printer shrieks back and forth over a page. Tickets? Receipts for the day? A janitor comes by with a broom to brush the marble floors free of papers and dust. They miss the spaces underneath the massive wood benches. These spaces are perfect for little boys to crawl and hide away from their parents' eyes. They are small places where they can peek out on the world without being noticed. I hear little hands behind me. A boy is pulling himself up to peer over the bench at me.
Once this place was bustling, I'm sure. Many gates. Now they use just one.
It is quiet here. A man is talking on his cell phone--perhaps with someone who is right outside the station. "Why don't you come in here?" he asks. "It's probably a lot cooler in here than it is out there." He is wearing camoflauge shorts and a t-shirt with the arms cut off. He has a greying crew cut. He is absentmindedly jingling the keys in his pockets. His paunch sits on top of his thighs.
A woman hobbles by. She is wearing white platform flip-flops. Her toenails have been french manicured. It hurts her to walk, though she's not that old. Maybe 35? 40? No...she's older. 55 maybe. Her long, blond ponytail disguises her age.
The two are talking now. The train is late and they are both waiting for friends. She tells him that Union Pacific owns the tracks and Amtrak has to move out of the way if there is a UP train on the tracks. The toilets are backed up and there's a bad stench on the train. She knows this because the friend she is waiting for has called from a cellphone.
They begin talking about the recent shootings in Portland. The man is amazed that the shootings are downtown. He can guarantee they are over drugs. Innocent people can get hurt. He wants to buy a fifth wheel and move out to the desert with the coyotes. He says it "cay-oats." He also says, "shee-it."
He says he won't ride a Greyhound. I don't blame him. That damn exhausted dog on the side of every bus.
His laugh is high picthed like a maccaw. He says he quit smoking on April 12, 2002. He had to get the patch. 21 mg. 14 mg. 7 mg. He only had to take the 21 mg. patch and then he was quit. The patch stung his skin. He doesn't have the urges anymore. He hates the smell. But brags that if you buy the rolling tobacco you can save a lot of money. He went on a ten-day vacation with all his savings. Seventy-five dollars a month in a little kitty. He went to Crater Lake. He's spending this summer with his brother is Seattle. He hasn't seen his brother since his father died three years ago.
She keeps trying to butt in and say something, but he keeps piping up. Now he's talking about the Paul Allen Museum. He used to see Heart, Loverboy. Rush was the best concert he's ever seen in his whole life. He's seen REO Speedwagon and Santana in '76. He drank whisky and got loaded. Now that he's older he's amazed at what kids get in trouble for now. His trouble was getting drunk and playing chicken. Nowadays, the kids don't know how to have fun. They have fights, beatings, weapons.
A train is coming in from California. Only ticked passengers are allowed on the platform. The low rumble of the train and the bells clanging alert us all to its arrival. Everyone has gone outside to wait for it. The brakes are squealing. It takes so long for the train to fully stop.
People are flooding the station. They are wheeling bags behind them. A young girl stops to take off her sweatshirt. A blind woman is led by a golden retriever. The man in camoflauge shorts is still without his friend. He is pacing. The hobbling woman has dissapeared.
Against the side of the train the sun casts shadows of the people on the platform. The shadows move like squat, hunched versions of their other selves.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Sluts
We’re going on Burt’s boat today and you’re going…no ifs ands or buts about it, “she said.
I knew I would have to go, but I felt there was no reason I shouldn’t show my displeasure anyway. It was stupid. A whole Saturday wasted with some creepy old guy, my mom and dumb little brother.
“Well, can I at least go to Amy’s tonight? Will we be back in time for that, or are we gonna have to sleep out there too?”
She wasn’t listening to me anymore. “Go get your suit on and get a towel,” she said as she padded into the bathroom.
It was embarrassing realty, my mom dating. She was probably in there shaving her legs, or douching or something gross. Whatever women do to get ready for dates.
Burt. We had to spend the day with guy out of all the other losers. Burt was an old guy name. I had seen him once or twice at the neighborhood block parties and I guess he looked pretty normal, but Burt was a name for guys who wore white loafers with plaid polyester pants.
I picked up the phone and dialed Amy’s number.
Hi, Amy. Yeah…I can’t come over today.”
“Oh that’s too bad. Sara’s coming over at noon, and so are Brett and Joel.”
Crap! I was going to miss seeing Joel? Amy liked him, I knew it and now they were going to be together all day? I mean, I was prettier, but Amy was sluttier and guys like sluts. I bet they would be going out by the time I got back tonight.
“Well, yeah. My mom’s making me go out on some stupid boat with her boyfriend. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Burt pulled up in the driveway pulling his boat on a trailer behind his big maroon Oldsmobile. He got out of the car and walked toward our front door. He didn’t know I was spying on him. I wanted to see him pick his teeth or adjust himself or something, so I could prove he was exactly the loser I thought he was, but he just walked up to the door and rang the bell like any other guy.
“PamSteve!” my mother yelled when she heard the bell, and came rushing to answer the door. She ran into me still standing behind the window curtain.
“What are you doing? Go get ready!”
I started to walk up the stairs, her perfume in my nose. Ew. She had perfume on for Burt.
“Wait,” she called after me. “How do I look?” She was wearing preppy white shorts and bright white Keds. She kept them that way by throwing them in the wash with a cup of bleach every week. They always smelled like chlorine. She had long legs, that luckily I inherited, and they looked tan against her white clothes.
“You look good, I guess.”
I hated the men my mom dated. They were always ugly stupid men. Ron Laetner, that creep. He already had a live-in girlfriend who he wouldn’t marry but he was still after my mom. Most of the time she talked tough about him saying she wasn’t interested in a guy who wasn’t available but I knew she had her hopes up anyway. There were others too, Ben, who had a wife, and John whose wife had died but it was still weird because he was my science teacher in seventh grade.
I climbed into the back of Burt’s car and dug down in my bag for my walkman.
“Hi kids,” Burt said as he smiled wide at me and my brother. “This is going to be a fun day, huh?”
“Yeah!” shouted Stephen. I didn’t say anything. I just put my headphones on and turned up the volume. This day was gonna suck, but at least I could listen to INXS and dream about Joel.
There we were, swimming in Amy’s pool. It was night but the pool lights were on illuminating the surface from below. Amy and Sara and Brett were having a diving contest, but Joel was sitting with me…
No, no…
There we were up at Amy’s house and it was night, and Joel, Brett and Sara were there too. We decided to play hide-and-go-seek in the woods behind the house and Joel was it. I ran and hid behind a big tree. Joel found me first but didn’t want to go find the others. Instead he wanted to stay there with me.
“Brett is going to find Sara,” he said.
“What about Amy?”
“Who cares about her,” he said and then kissed me.
I daydreamed that one a couple of times over while staring out the window of the car. Stephen was kicking the back of mom’s seat and fiddling with the power window switches.
“Up. Down. Up. Down,” he said to himself.
Mom yelled, “Will you stop that, Stephen Edward!” and then she turned back to Burt, who you could tell was trying hard to ignore the fact that Stephen was likely leaving scuff marks all over the leather interior and sticky prints on the door. He was red-faced, but attempting to smile.
“So, Pam, your mom tells me you’re real good in school,” he said.
“I guess so.” What did he expect me to say?
“Well that’s good.” Mom smiled at him and then looked back across the seat at me.
“And she’s a real good swimmer too, right honey?” she said. “She’s even on the swim team.”
“Yeah. I swim the free and fly.”
“Well great! There will be plenty of water for swimming today,” he chuckled. He obviously didn’t get what I meant by swimming the fly. There’s no way you’d swim the fly in the middle of Lake Erie. I didn’t want to swim in Lake Erie anyway. The only swimming I wanted to do was in Amy’s pool.
We got to the marina and my mom, Steve and I stood on the dock as we watched Burt back the trailer with the boat down into the water. He was having a hard time angling the boat just right so that it wouldn’t hit the concrete berms on either side. Since it was July, I wondered why his boat wasn’t already in the water. It was clear he didn’t do this too much.
Finally he had the boat in the water and we all climbed in. My mom carried a cooler full of pop and sandwiches. I sat facing the rear and pretended to be interested in all the other boats. Stephen got into the seat next to Burt and watched him drive. We motored slowly out of the marina and into the open water and then Burt opened it up. He was trying to impress my mom by going as fast as he could and making sharp turns. Stephen was screaming and mom was hanging on to him tight. My hair was flying in my face, but I acted like I didn’t care and just sat there.
Burt anchored the boat a quarter mile off shore from what looked to be a sandy beach. Several other boats were nearby. They were mostly families out for the afternoon—dads drinking Millers from the can and moms watching their kids dive off the backs of the boats and splash around in the Lake.
Except one boat. There were four boys on the boat. Two of them looked older, like maybe in high school. And the other two looked like they were my age. No parents. They were doing cannonballs off the boat and yelling swear words as they hit the water.
“Douchebag!” Splash!
“Pud wacker!” Splash!
“Dickweed!” Splash!
Aw man, and they were cute too. One even looked a little like Joel. I couldn’t believe I was here with my mom and her ugly boyfriend and they were probably going to think he was my dad and see me over here and thing I was a dorky baby to be out here on a Saturday with my parents.
“Do you want an orange pop?” I looked around to see that Burt was holding his hand out, offering me an orange Shasta.
“No, no. I’m not…thirsty,” I said.
“Why don’t you go swimming, honey?” mom said. She was helping Stephen put on his arm floaties.
“No. I’m…cold. I’m going to go lay in the sun.” I heard her sigh. I don’t know what she expected from me. Did she want me to play happy family or something?
I spread my towel out on the flat bow of the boat and laid down on it, closing my eyes. I hoped those boys hadn’t seen me, and if they did, maybe they thought I was cute or something. Maybe I did see the blond one looking at me? Oh but then he would have seen my mom and Burt too, and my brother with diving mask and floaties jumping into the water and doggie paddling around.
I sucked my stomach in to make it look as flat as possible and propped my legs up so they didn’t look like fat sausages. I could hear mom and Burt at the back of the boat.
“I should really watch him swim. The water is deep here,” I heard her say.
“”Just come here. Nothing is going to happen.” Burt was whining.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the boys were not sitting on the side of the boat laughing and talking. Were they talking about me? I heard one of them say something like “purple,” and I had a bathing suit with purple stripes on it. I didn’t move. I didn’t want them to think I cared or noticed.
“Pam, come get a sandwich,” my mom yelled.” I heard the boys laughing. My mom was making me look stupid. I tried to ignore her, but she climbed up around the boat’s windshield to the bow and stood over me.
“Come get something to eat.” She was stern and wide-eyed.
I’m not hungry.” I closed my eyes again. She crouched down.
You’re being a little brat,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.
“I am not. I’m just laying here.”
“Exactly.” She gripped my wrist and yanked me up. “Now come and sit with us.”
Burt was tight-lipped and strained to keep a cheery note in his voice.
“Do you want baloney, or peanut-butter?” she asked me.
“Peanut-butter,” I mumbled, just as Stephen spilled Coke all over the floor of the boat.
“Goddamn it!” yelled Burt. He scrambled to grab a roll of paper towels before the pop soaked into the red indoor/outdoor carpeting. “This boat is practically new and it wasn’t cheap either!” he yelled at my mom.
“Here, let me do that,” mom said and got down on her hands and knees and took the paper towels from him. Burt stood up and walked to the front of the boat where Stephen and I were sitting. Stephen was crying. He clutched the remains of his soda in one hand and wiped his nose with the other. Burt glared at us and then looked back to watch my mother who was doing her best to mop up the mess.
I could see that maybe his boat wasn’t cheap, but he had hoped my mother would be and he had little use for the two kids she had towed along. So I stared straight at the back of his head, the whole time silently repeating over and over, you’re an ass, you’re an ass, hoping he would feel those words come out through my eyes and strike his heart.
.
“Let’s just go,” he said and hauled in the anchor.
Everyone was quiet the whole way home. Burt switched on the radio and listened to the Yankees and Red Sox game while mom stared out the window. Stephen was asleep; his head rolled forward and bobbed around with the bumps in the road. I bunched up my towel and wedged it in the corner next to him and then pushed him over so he would lean against it.
When we pulled into our driveway, I got out of the car and ran into the house without saying anything. I was hoping Amy and Sara would still be around, so I picked up the phone to call Amy’s house. I could hear my mom from the kitchen as I dialed.
“I can’t just leave my kids and go off with you Burt!” What was he still doing here? I hung up the phone. I hoped she wasn’t going to invite him to dinner. If that’s what she was doing, I wasn’t going to stick around.
“Come on, let’s just go out. Just the two of us. There’s no reason today should be ruined just because of your kids. They can take care of themselves. Let’s go out and have some fun.” Burt said.
“I think you should leave.”
I heard the door slam and Burt’s car start and pull out of the driveway. I tiptoed down the stairs and poked my head around the corner. Mom had the fridge open and was pouring herself a glass of white wine.
“I can see you,” she said, her back turned to me. I stepped out from behind the wall and sat down at the kitchen table.
“You were a real brat today,” she said.
“Sorry.” I could tell she was mad. I had ruined her date with one of the only unmarried men who had asked her out so far. I wondered if she was going to ground me.
She went to the freezer for an ice cube and dropped it into her glass. She sat down next to me and took a big sip.
“I’m not that mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I brought you guys along for a reason. I didn’t really want to be out there alone with him. I know you were just trying to protect me.”
“Ha. Yeah.” I stood up to go to my room. I really hadn’t been thinking of her at all. But she thought I had been. I couldn’t believe she was happy I ruined her date.
“Amy called and left a message. You should probably call her back.”
“Yeah. Well…mom?” She looked up at me,
“Maybe we can just all go out to dinner tonight? Just the three of us.”
“Sure,” she smiled.
I knew I would have to go, but I felt there was no reason I shouldn’t show my displeasure anyway. It was stupid. A whole Saturday wasted with some creepy old guy, my mom and dumb little brother.
“Well, can I at least go to Amy’s tonight? Will we be back in time for that, or are we gonna have to sleep out there too?”
She wasn’t listening to me anymore. “Go get your suit on and get a towel,” she said as she padded into the bathroom.
It was embarrassing realty, my mom dating. She was probably in there shaving her legs, or douching or something gross. Whatever women do to get ready for dates.
Burt. We had to spend the day with guy out of all the other losers. Burt was an old guy name. I had seen him once or twice at the neighborhood block parties and I guess he looked pretty normal, but Burt was a name for guys who wore white loafers with plaid polyester pants.
I picked up the phone and dialed Amy’s number.
Hi, Amy. Yeah…I can’t come over today.”
“Oh that’s too bad. Sara’s coming over at noon, and so are Brett and Joel.”
Crap! I was going to miss seeing Joel? Amy liked him, I knew it and now they were going to be together all day? I mean, I was prettier, but Amy was sluttier and guys like sluts. I bet they would be going out by the time I got back tonight.
“Well, yeah. My mom’s making me go out on some stupid boat with her boyfriend. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Burt pulled up in the driveway pulling his boat on a trailer behind his big maroon Oldsmobile. He got out of the car and walked toward our front door. He didn’t know I was spying on him. I wanted to see him pick his teeth or adjust himself or something, so I could prove he was exactly the loser I thought he was, but he just walked up to the door and rang the bell like any other guy.
“PamSteve!” my mother yelled when she heard the bell, and came rushing to answer the door. She ran into me still standing behind the window curtain.
“What are you doing? Go get ready!”
I started to walk up the stairs, her perfume in my nose. Ew. She had perfume on for Burt.
“Wait,” she called after me. “How do I look?” She was wearing preppy white shorts and bright white Keds. She kept them that way by throwing them in the wash with a cup of bleach every week. They always smelled like chlorine. She had long legs, that luckily I inherited, and they looked tan against her white clothes.
“You look good, I guess.”
I hated the men my mom dated. They were always ugly stupid men. Ron Laetner, that creep. He already had a live-in girlfriend who he wouldn’t marry but he was still after my mom. Most of the time she talked tough about him saying she wasn’t interested in a guy who wasn’t available but I knew she had her hopes up anyway. There were others too, Ben, who had a wife, and John whose wife had died but it was still weird because he was my science teacher in seventh grade.
I climbed into the back of Burt’s car and dug down in my bag for my walkman.
“Hi kids,” Burt said as he smiled wide at me and my brother. “This is going to be a fun day, huh?”
“Yeah!” shouted Stephen. I didn’t say anything. I just put my headphones on and turned up the volume. This day was gonna suck, but at least I could listen to INXS and dream about Joel.
There we were, swimming in Amy’s pool. It was night but the pool lights were on illuminating the surface from below. Amy and Sara and Brett were having a diving contest, but Joel was sitting with me…
No, no…
There we were up at Amy’s house and it was night, and Joel, Brett and Sara were there too. We decided to play hide-and-go-seek in the woods behind the house and Joel was it. I ran and hid behind a big tree. Joel found me first but didn’t want to go find the others. Instead he wanted to stay there with me.
“Brett is going to find Sara,” he said.
“What about Amy?”
“Who cares about her,” he said and then kissed me.
I daydreamed that one a couple of times over while staring out the window of the car. Stephen was kicking the back of mom’s seat and fiddling with the power window switches.
“Up. Down. Up. Down,” he said to himself.
Mom yelled, “Will you stop that, Stephen Edward!” and then she turned back to Burt, who you could tell was trying hard to ignore the fact that Stephen was likely leaving scuff marks all over the leather interior and sticky prints on the door. He was red-faced, but attempting to smile.
“So, Pam, your mom tells me you’re real good in school,” he said.
“I guess so.” What did he expect me to say?
“Well that’s good.” Mom smiled at him and then looked back across the seat at me.
“And she’s a real good swimmer too, right honey?” she said. “She’s even on the swim team.”
“Yeah. I swim the free and fly.”
“Well great! There will be plenty of water for swimming today,” he chuckled. He obviously didn’t get what I meant by swimming the fly. There’s no way you’d swim the fly in the middle of Lake Erie. I didn’t want to swim in Lake Erie anyway. The only swimming I wanted to do was in Amy’s pool.
We got to the marina and my mom, Steve and I stood on the dock as we watched Burt back the trailer with the boat down into the water. He was having a hard time angling the boat just right so that it wouldn’t hit the concrete berms on either side. Since it was July, I wondered why his boat wasn’t already in the water. It was clear he didn’t do this too much.
Finally he had the boat in the water and we all climbed in. My mom carried a cooler full of pop and sandwiches. I sat facing the rear and pretended to be interested in all the other boats. Stephen got into the seat next to Burt and watched him drive. We motored slowly out of the marina and into the open water and then Burt opened it up. He was trying to impress my mom by going as fast as he could and making sharp turns. Stephen was screaming and mom was hanging on to him tight. My hair was flying in my face, but I acted like I didn’t care and just sat there.
Burt anchored the boat a quarter mile off shore from what looked to be a sandy beach. Several other boats were nearby. They were mostly families out for the afternoon—dads drinking Millers from the can and moms watching their kids dive off the backs of the boats and splash around in the Lake.
Except one boat. There were four boys on the boat. Two of them looked older, like maybe in high school. And the other two looked like they were my age. No parents. They were doing cannonballs off the boat and yelling swear words as they hit the water.
“Douchebag!” Splash!
“Pud wacker!” Splash!
“Dickweed!” Splash!
Aw man, and they were cute too. One even looked a little like Joel. I couldn’t believe I was here with my mom and her ugly boyfriend and they were probably going to think he was my dad and see me over here and thing I was a dorky baby to be out here on a Saturday with my parents.
“Do you want an orange pop?” I looked around to see that Burt was holding his hand out, offering me an orange Shasta.
“No, no. I’m not…thirsty,” I said.
“Why don’t you go swimming, honey?” mom said. She was helping Stephen put on his arm floaties.
“No. I’m…cold. I’m going to go lay in the sun.” I heard her sigh. I don’t know what she expected from me. Did she want me to play happy family or something?
I spread my towel out on the flat bow of the boat and laid down on it, closing my eyes. I hoped those boys hadn’t seen me, and if they did, maybe they thought I was cute or something. Maybe I did see the blond one looking at me? Oh but then he would have seen my mom and Burt too, and my brother with diving mask and floaties jumping into the water and doggie paddling around.
I sucked my stomach in to make it look as flat as possible and propped my legs up so they didn’t look like fat sausages. I could hear mom and Burt at the back of the boat.
“I should really watch him swim. The water is deep here,” I heard her say.
“”Just come here. Nothing is going to happen.” Burt was whining.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the boys were not sitting on the side of the boat laughing and talking. Were they talking about me? I heard one of them say something like “purple,” and I had a bathing suit with purple stripes on it. I didn’t move. I didn’t want them to think I cared or noticed.
“Pam, come get a sandwich,” my mom yelled.” I heard the boys laughing. My mom was making me look stupid. I tried to ignore her, but she climbed up around the boat’s windshield to the bow and stood over me.
“Come get something to eat.” She was stern and wide-eyed.
I’m not hungry.” I closed my eyes again. She crouched down.
You’re being a little brat,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.
“I am not. I’m just laying here.”
“Exactly.” She gripped my wrist and yanked me up. “Now come and sit with us.”
Burt was tight-lipped and strained to keep a cheery note in his voice.
“Do you want baloney, or peanut-butter?” she asked me.
“Peanut-butter,” I mumbled, just as Stephen spilled Coke all over the floor of the boat.
“Goddamn it!” yelled Burt. He scrambled to grab a roll of paper towels before the pop soaked into the red indoor/outdoor carpeting. “This boat is practically new and it wasn’t cheap either!” he yelled at my mom.
“Here, let me do that,” mom said and got down on her hands and knees and took the paper towels from him. Burt stood up and walked to the front of the boat where Stephen and I were sitting. Stephen was crying. He clutched the remains of his soda in one hand and wiped his nose with the other. Burt glared at us and then looked back to watch my mother who was doing her best to mop up the mess.
I could see that maybe his boat wasn’t cheap, but he had hoped my mother would be and he had little use for the two kids she had towed along. So I stared straight at the back of his head, the whole time silently repeating over and over, you’re an ass, you’re an ass, hoping he would feel those words come out through my eyes and strike his heart.
.
“Let’s just go,” he said and hauled in the anchor.
Everyone was quiet the whole way home. Burt switched on the radio and listened to the Yankees and Red Sox game while mom stared out the window. Stephen was asleep; his head rolled forward and bobbed around with the bumps in the road. I bunched up my towel and wedged it in the corner next to him and then pushed him over so he would lean against it.
When we pulled into our driveway, I got out of the car and ran into the house without saying anything. I was hoping Amy and Sara would still be around, so I picked up the phone to call Amy’s house. I could hear my mom from the kitchen as I dialed.
“I can’t just leave my kids and go off with you Burt!” What was he still doing here? I hung up the phone. I hoped she wasn’t going to invite him to dinner. If that’s what she was doing, I wasn’t going to stick around.
“Come on, let’s just go out. Just the two of us. There’s no reason today should be ruined just because of your kids. They can take care of themselves. Let’s go out and have some fun.” Burt said.
“I think you should leave.”
I heard the door slam and Burt’s car start and pull out of the driveway. I tiptoed down the stairs and poked my head around the corner. Mom had the fridge open and was pouring herself a glass of white wine.
“I can see you,” she said, her back turned to me. I stepped out from behind the wall and sat down at the kitchen table.
“You were a real brat today,” she said.
“Sorry.” I could tell she was mad. I had ruined her date with one of the only unmarried men who had asked her out so far. I wondered if she was going to ground me.
She went to the freezer for an ice cube and dropped it into her glass. She sat down next to me and took a big sip.
“I’m not that mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I brought you guys along for a reason. I didn’t really want to be out there alone with him. I know you were just trying to protect me.”
“Ha. Yeah.” I stood up to go to my room. I really hadn’t been thinking of her at all. But she thought I had been. I couldn’t believe she was happy I ruined her date.
“Amy called and left a message. You should probably call her back.”
“Yeah. Well…mom?” She looked up at me,
“Maybe we can just all go out to dinner tonight? Just the three of us.”
“Sure,” she smiled.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Discovery
She climbed once
to the pulpit
to be tempted by the devil.
On her way
she saw small signs
that said don't go.
A tree bent low to the ground.
It loved the earth,
a momma's boy.
And great ravens overhead
calling at her,
perhaps mocking her
from their black bellies.
She rose past them
with sweaty palms.
She was amazed her feet
knew how to caress every rock
into supporting her.
to the pulpit
to be tempted by the devil.
On her way
she saw small signs
that said don't go.
A tree bent low to the ground.
It loved the earth,
a momma's boy.
And great ravens overhead
calling at her,
perhaps mocking her
from their black bellies.
She rose past them
with sweaty palms.
She was amazed her feet
knew how to caress every rock
into supporting her.
Loser
In sixth grade, I was tracked into Mr. Schroeder's class along all the problemed kids. The A-D-D dysfunctionals, the slow learners, the poor kids, the losers.
For such a short man, Mr. Schroeder managed to generate a lot of rumors. But he was the angry type. So it's possible that he stirred up people's imaginations whenever he got yelling. Several years later, when I was in that far-removed place called high school, it was rumored he was dying from AIDS. But that year, we heard he was having an affair with my teacher from the year before. We liked to call her "Mrs. Furrybutt." So I reasoned that's why I was in his class. Mrs. Furrybutt had specially placed me with him.
I had always been a smart kid. I got to go to advanced reading class and was in with the gifted and talented crowd. But I don't remember much about Mrs. Furrybutt's fifth grade classroom, except for getting into lots of fights. And she was supposed to teach me about fractions. I should have known how to add, subtract, multiply and divide 3/4 and 1/8. But I ignored most of those lessons and never really caught up.
So it was really my fifth grade failure that earned me classmates like rowdy boys Bobby Sparks, and Jim McCartney, and girls like Sara Sporol and Lynne Hazard who were already sneaking into their parents' liquor cabinets. Sara's fate was to become a deadhead. In high school, she dropped a lot of acid, and eventually dropped out, but not before coming to class once wrapped in a bed sheet and nothing else. Her sixth-grade self was wacky and creative. Too smart for her own good. She was there probably because her parents were alcoholics and didn't pay any attention to her or her grades.
I could have been her. Or Lynne, who got pregnant when she was 15. Or any one of those kids. My newly divorced mom and federal-assistance school lunch program scrawled "bad seed" on my destiny file. I couldn't do math, and I was in the habit of coming to school an hour early every day. I tucked myself into a secret spot next to the lockers so no teachers would see me because I didn't want to be home alone after my mom left for work. Another year of that and instead of coming straight to school, I might have been meeting another latch-key kid to smoke cigarettes or have sex before class.
But there were two new kids in school that year. Mike and Heather. And I think it was my destiny to know them. Their parents were friends and had moved to Aurora at the same time. As the new kids, they both got dumped into the same classroom. To the teachers, they were neither smart or stupid. They were complete unknowns, like two unshaped lumps of clay.
So they weren't related, but Heather knew everything about Mike, and made fun of him a lot. I think she was embarrassed to know him. Once, she whispered that Mike's older sister had made her and Mike pretend to get married. She made them walk down the isle and even kiss. Heather beat herself up over that.
But it wasn't hard to see why Heather said she hated Mike. He was a chunky, dim-witted kid. He'd do anything the other rowdy boys asked him to do, just so they'd be his friend. They would make him do weird things in the locker room after gym class. They would laugh about making Mike give himself a swirly in a dirty toilet. I don't know what else they made him do. Mr. Schroeder yelled at him a lot, not understanding that he was being bad because the other boys were egging him on.
Heather liked horses, a lot. She had a paper route and bought her own horse and paid for its board all by herself. She was the shortest kid in the class, and I don't think she ever made it past 5 foot, even by the end of high school. She was never popular but she was mouthy and unafraid and I liked that. She brought an element into to school that hadn't been there before. She introduced competition, and I latched right onto it.
We'd call each other to complain about how much we'd been studying for the science test the next day and then we would compare grades. We'd talk about our social studies essays. She was writing about the Romans. So I had to write about something harder. I picked Charlemagne. No one else in the class could even pronounce "Charlemagne."
We became Mr. Schroeder's math nerds. He was obsessed with computers, and made us learn to write in BASIC to create simple scripts that would determine the area of a triangle or the circumference of a circle. We were partners, and did the best. We were so good that while the other kids were crashing their Apple IIEs, Mr. Schroeder taught us how to create a picture on the computer screen, by assigning a color to each and every pixel.
Heather became my best friend. We fought hard against each other all through high school AP history and advanced science classes. I usually won. Except she was better when we went on a weekend trip to Cornell University for Model Congress. I just sat there and didn't know what to save. She won an award. I don't know where she is today. But I think she saved me.
Mike became my step-brother.
For such a short man, Mr. Schroeder managed to generate a lot of rumors. But he was the angry type. So it's possible that he stirred up people's imaginations whenever he got yelling. Several years later, when I was in that far-removed place called high school, it was rumored he was dying from AIDS. But that year, we heard he was having an affair with my teacher from the year before. We liked to call her "Mrs. Furrybutt." So I reasoned that's why I was in his class. Mrs. Furrybutt had specially placed me with him.
I had always been a smart kid. I got to go to advanced reading class and was in with the gifted and talented crowd. But I don't remember much about Mrs. Furrybutt's fifth grade classroom, except for getting into lots of fights. And she was supposed to teach me about fractions. I should have known how to add, subtract, multiply and divide 3/4 and 1/8. But I ignored most of those lessons and never really caught up.
So it was really my fifth grade failure that earned me classmates like rowdy boys Bobby Sparks, and Jim McCartney, and girls like Sara Sporol and Lynne Hazard who were already sneaking into their parents' liquor cabinets. Sara's fate was to become a deadhead. In high school, she dropped a lot of acid, and eventually dropped out, but not before coming to class once wrapped in a bed sheet and nothing else. Her sixth-grade self was wacky and creative. Too smart for her own good. She was there probably because her parents were alcoholics and didn't pay any attention to her or her grades.
I could have been her. Or Lynne, who got pregnant when she was 15. Or any one of those kids. My newly divorced mom and federal-assistance school lunch program scrawled "bad seed" on my destiny file. I couldn't do math, and I was in the habit of coming to school an hour early every day. I tucked myself into a secret spot next to the lockers so no teachers would see me because I didn't want to be home alone after my mom left for work. Another year of that and instead of coming straight to school, I might have been meeting another latch-key kid to smoke cigarettes or have sex before class.
But there were two new kids in school that year. Mike and Heather. And I think it was my destiny to know them. Their parents were friends and had moved to Aurora at the same time. As the new kids, they both got dumped into the same classroom. To the teachers, they were neither smart or stupid. They were complete unknowns, like two unshaped lumps of clay.
So they weren't related, but Heather knew everything about Mike, and made fun of him a lot. I think she was embarrassed to know him. Once, she whispered that Mike's older sister had made her and Mike pretend to get married. She made them walk down the isle and even kiss. Heather beat herself up over that.
But it wasn't hard to see why Heather said she hated Mike. He was a chunky, dim-witted kid. He'd do anything the other rowdy boys asked him to do, just so they'd be his friend. They would make him do weird things in the locker room after gym class. They would laugh about making Mike give himself a swirly in a dirty toilet. I don't know what else they made him do. Mr. Schroeder yelled at him a lot, not understanding that he was being bad because the other boys were egging him on.
Heather liked horses, a lot. She had a paper route and bought her own horse and paid for its board all by herself. She was the shortest kid in the class, and I don't think she ever made it past 5 foot, even by the end of high school. She was never popular but she was mouthy and unafraid and I liked that. She brought an element into to school that hadn't been there before. She introduced competition, and I latched right onto it.
We'd call each other to complain about how much we'd been studying for the science test the next day and then we would compare grades. We'd talk about our social studies essays. She was writing about the Romans. So I had to write about something harder. I picked Charlemagne. No one else in the class could even pronounce "Charlemagne."
We became Mr. Schroeder's math nerds. He was obsessed with computers, and made us learn to write in BASIC to create simple scripts that would determine the area of a triangle or the circumference of a circle. We were partners, and did the best. We were so good that while the other kids were crashing their Apple IIEs, Mr. Schroeder taught us how to create a picture on the computer screen, by assigning a color to each and every pixel.
Heather became my best friend. We fought hard against each other all through high school AP history and advanced science classes. I usually won. Except she was better when we went on a weekend trip to Cornell University for Model Congress. I just sat there and didn't know what to save. She won an award. I don't know where she is today. But I think she saved me.
Mike became my step-brother.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Garbage
The busier we get the more garbage we produce. Bike rides and long walks exhanged for short drives and road rage, gardens for fast food. Fat, sugar, caffiene to power through and alchohol to dull the pain. Guilt, excuses and dissapointment instead of closeness and connection. Promises. Promises. The toxic waste of our relationships neglected: misunderstanding, apathy, lonliness. Fall asleep exhausted on the couch and wake up with an aching back. Money spent on unnecessary things. Bribery to the soul to keep going a little longer...pint of ice cream to mimic pleasure, lovely colorful scarf to replace joy, new CD to substitute for soul. Stuff. Our garbage cans overfloweth with the packaging of haste. We hear ourselves say, "Just do it now, I don't have time." We dream of vacations, dropping out, the release of failure.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
More "Lost"
G. told me I needed more sex in Lost so I added some. (She always tells me that.) I also got closer to ending the story, but it's not done yet.
Tell me what you think so far.
Tell me what you think so far.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Mercury in retrograde
M: Begin the day by forgetting everything. Climbing out of the shower, remember a meeting that's to begin in 8 minutes. On the way, detour three times due to two accidents and a stalled train. Get to meeting a half-hour late. Once there, remember another meeting that starts in an hour. Leave the first meeting immediately to make it in time for the next. End day with a mental breakdown after getting lost in SW Portland. Discover exit under construction, get dumped into who knows where, try to recover by turning right, somehow end up disoriented at the top of Terwilliger. Tears.
T: 8 hours of furious work. Flight to San Diego rerouted to LA because of the fog that rolls in off the ocean. Drive 2 hours south to hotel in a San Diego suburb where all the streets are all named Bernardo. West Bernardo Drive. Rancho Bernardo Drive. Coranado Bernaro Court. Arrive at midnight. Fall into stupor. Dinner consists of a mint on the hotel pillow.
W: Get lost on the many Bernardo streets. 10.5 hours in tiny conference room with nine other people. Bleary eyed. Stuck an extra night in the same city for the same reason we couldn't get into it: fog. Drink heavily. Raid the mini-bar. Who cares how many m&ms eaten.
Th: Wake up at 4 am. Drive to airport. Catch flight. Land. Drive to office. Work.
F: Self pity, undoubtedly.
T: 8 hours of furious work. Flight to San Diego rerouted to LA because of the fog that rolls in off the ocean. Drive 2 hours south to hotel in a San Diego suburb where all the streets are all named Bernardo. West Bernardo Drive. Rancho Bernardo Drive. Coranado Bernaro Court. Arrive at midnight. Fall into stupor. Dinner consists of a mint on the hotel pillow.
W: Get lost on the many Bernardo streets. 10.5 hours in tiny conference room with nine other people. Bleary eyed. Stuck an extra night in the same city for the same reason we couldn't get into it: fog. Drink heavily. Raid the mini-bar. Who cares how many m&ms eaten.
Th: Wake up at 4 am. Drive to airport. Catch flight. Land. Drive to office. Work.
F: Self pity, undoubtedly.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Lost
Let's get lost,
won't it be bliss?
Let's get crossed off everyone's list...
"Let's get lost," she said, making sure to stare directly into his eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, lost. Really lost. Let's go somewhere we've never been and try not to remember how we got there."
"Okay, but why? Why now?"
"Because I want to see what happens."
"Well, I think it's impossible," he said. "Around here anyway. We could go someplace like Canada, without a map or anything and get lost. But around here, I just don't see how it can happen."
They decided the best place to start was the river. They went there in the summer to swim and to throw sticks for the dog to fetch. They had swum as far out as the middle of the river where the current pulled the hardest, but they never crossed to the other side. They didn't know what they would find on that shore.
"From the beach, there's just a line of trees over there. We could find anything ... a farm, a roa d, a factory," he said.
They were packing the necessities in small plastic bags: a shirt and shorts to wear over their bathing suits, a pair of sandals, matches, a candy bar each. They planned to hold their bag on top of their heads with one hand, and use their other arm to swim across the river. She wished there were more room--enough for a blanket or a flashlight--but it would be hard enough with these few items.
"We'll just have to make a fire for warmth and hope we can find berries for food," she said.
"Or we can catch a rabbit," he said.
That night, with her plastic bag on the floor next to her bed, she dreamed of the bottom of the river. She swam down and touched the silty bed. The seaweed wrapped its way around her fingers and wove through her hair. She swam through beams of light filtered down from the surface, and brushed against brown, scaly fish. She remembered how her grandpa said the scales were sharp.
When the sun came up, he was at her window. They hiked all the way to the beach before it was even eight o'clock. Stripping down to their suits, they packed their clothes into the plastic bags, and waded into the water. Crossing the river was easier than expected. Her shirt got a bit wet, and he lost the matches through a hole in the corner of his bag. But the water was calm in the early quiet of the morning.
They climbed onto the shore and looked across to where they had just come from. "It looks just like this side looks, when you're looking at it from that side," he said.
On the other side of the trees, they found a wide, paved road. It was black and smooth with a yellow dotted line running down the middle. It came to a dead stop at the river. It was empty. They walked right down the middle until the pavement gave way to earth that had been baked into deep ridges, cracked and crumbling in the heat of the sun.
She walked inside one of the grooves, one foot in front of the other and followed close behind him. She watched his shoulders move in time with his step. Noticed the things that caught his eye: a deep hole the perfect size for a snake, shiny stones, bits of milkweed fluff caught in spiderwebs. A mad chirping came from the bushes at the side of the path and he stopped to investigate.
"I think it's a baby bird. It must be learning to sing! It's making all sorts of silly noises, just like a human baby does when it tries to talk." He was easily amused.
Where had they met, she wondered. She couldn't remember. It seemed he had always been there, a boy on her block. She could always tell him from a distance by the way he walked. She would be sitting there in a pile of leaves, or peeling moss from the sidewalk and she would spot him in the top part of her eyes, ambling forward with a syncopated stride. She remembered playing games...kick the can, hide-and-go-seek... and then a moment where the object wasn't to hide anymore but to be found by exactly the right person, and then hide away with him. No matter how hard she looked, he stayed hidden. She found countless others. He must have found a spot she'd never think to look though other girls never had much trouble.
And after that, she'd spend days waiting for him to call, and then go out and return to her answering machine's blinking light. She'd leave the messages unlistened to, unanswered because she couldn't bear the sound of his voice and she feared she would reveal everything to him just by talking.
He was unreliable. Some days he would call to say he was coming over and never show up. Other days, she would meet him walking down the street and he would forget whatever he was about to go do just to be with her. It was those moments that she forgave him. It felt precious to be at his side. But those times he dropped everything for her, she realized the times he didn't show up he had been distracted by some other pretty girl. And so even though she was sitting with him on the park swings at that moment, it was likely someone else was out there waiting for him.
"I'm hungry," she heard him say. He stopped and turned around to face her. "I have no idea where we are either. Are you satisfied? We're lost."
"We're not lost," she said. She was irritated. She hadn't come this far to turn back now. "I know exactly where we are. We're on a road, and if we turn around and walk back the other way, we'll eventually get to the river, then swim across it, then be home."
"Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me. I thought we were supposed to try not to remember."
"Well, it's hard to forget," she said. She didn't know why it always had to be so difficult with him. Why nothing ever meant the same to him as it did her. She was still waiting for the day when she would ask him, "What are you thinking," and he would answer, "I can't live anymore without telling you..." and for her face to flush and heart to stop beating.
She held out her hand. "Come here. Close your eyes," and she took his hand and led him off the road and through thr brush to the side of the road. Blackberry thorns tore at their clothes and insects bit their ankles but soon they were under a canopy of old trees. It was as if summer had ended and fall began here. She could smell the sugary sweet decomposing of maple leaves turning to earth beneath her feet.
In the clear space between two great tree trunks she stopped and faced him. Taking his other hand she whispered, "Keep your eyes closed," and then closed her own. She began to whirl them in circles so many times she felt dizzy.
Keeping her eyes shut tight she said, "Now you lead me. Keep turning different directions. If we can't forget on purpose, we'll make it was confusing as possible on purpose." And so they took turns guiding each other, making sure to take an odd number of turns along the way until the woods became dense and blocked out most of the sun. It was late afternoon already and only diffuse light filtered down. She thought she saw small creatures scurring past their feet like tiny glowing lights.
She really was beginning to feel lost. She couldn't tell whether she was heading East or West anymore. And it didn't matter whether she said left or right. They could walk in circles or straight lines in this forest twilight and never know the difference.
"It feels cool. It smells so good here," he said and turned to face her. He was glowing a little too. "I didn't know why you wanted to do this. I was afraid to show up this morning, but I suprised myself. It was all mysterious, I guess. I guess that's what I like about you. You're willing to be mysterious for me."
He had grabbed hold of her hand again, although they both had their eyes open now and for the first time all day, she realized she would be spending the night in these woods instead of in her own room. His fingers felt bony and calloused and she wondered why they hadn't seemed that way before. She couldn't think of anything to say, and so she said, "I'm hungry."
They walked on through the woods scouting for mushrooms and berries. Darkness was closing in around them and the woods around them seemed even bigger now, the ferns towering over their heads. They had to push the ladder-like fronds aside as they made their way through, and scale over enormous, fallen logs that filled their noses with a deep, decaying smell.
He led her down to the edge of a clear pool. The trees stood back from its edge as if on purpose to let the water reflect the light of the moon. A fish jumped out of the pond, disturbing its surface and pushing the light into ever-expanding rings.
"Let's go in," she heard him say. He dropped her hand and wandered off down the bank, shedding his shirt and shorts as he went.
She had wanted nothing but this all along. To be alone with him under the stars. In spite of her shyness, she stripped off her clothes and followed him in. He had already made his way out to the center of the pond and was treading water there. She pushed off and swam the whole distance without coming up for air, surfacing when she spotted the outline of his legs in the moonlight.
Floating there next to him, she wondered if she should say it. It was there in her throat if she could only make it come out loud, "I've always felt..." and then she stopped herself. Did she only feel that way because she had never thought to feel a different way?
She realized he was looking at her. "Your hair is beautiful," he said and stretched out his arm. He ran his fingers over the top of her ear and down her neck and rested his hand on her shoulder. She tried to smile at him, but she noticed that his nose looked bigger than it had before, and his eyes were dark and sunken. She pushed the idea from her mind thinking perhaps it was just the distortion of her vision in the darkness. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, placing her lips softly on his, and tasted the small beads of water that rested there. She felt him exhale and then move closer to her, and then wrapped his legs around her so they hung together in the middle of the pond.
She felt something deep in the pit of her stomach. A satisfaction. A terror. But only kissed him again, and let him kiss her back. She pulled away when his kisses felt too hard, the softness gone and all bones pushing into her face. She looked at him. "I'm cold," she said, because she was shivering, although she had never felt warmer.
They left the water and dressed. Her shirt and shorts would hardly keep her warm, and she wished he had not lost the matches so they could build a fire. They began to look for shelter, "A low hanging branch? A hollowed-out boulder? Something like that?" he said aloud, as if saying it would make it appear. But they found nothing but moss and dried leaves, and so they swept those into a great pile and lay down together in the woodsy bed.
"I think now that we're here, we should stay here," he said. His hand was resting on the small of her back. "I don't feel like finding our way home."
"Really?" she was surprised.
"We could just keep going. We need to find food, at least. But we could stay here too. There's fish in the pond. We could fish and swim and stay here together."
She couldn't imagine what it would be like to live here, only with him. Their clothes would soon be worn and shredded, and they would live naked like animals and huddle together for warmth. She felt his fingers sliding underneath her t-shirt, next to her skin inching forward like a caterpillar. She turned to face him. His nose had grown again, and his skin looked green or blue with gaping black pores. But then in the next instant he was the same again. She stared wide-eyed.
She stuttered, "I...I thought we'd go back tomorrow. I'm sure we can find our way back. It won't be that hard."
"But you're the one who wanted to come here!" He was snorting and whining. "I like it here!"
"I do too. I..." and then she was sure of it. He was not what he seemed to be. The moonlight had exposed him for what he was--black beady eyes and pig-snouted. She slowly sat up and got to her feet. This wasn't what she thought it would be. It wasn't what she wanted. He was wriggling on the ground, trying to stand. She backed away from him slowly.
"Stay!" he screeched as she ran into the dark, branched whipping her face.
She felt sick to her stomach, a heavy pressure in her abdomen at the thought of what she'd done. Her vision was closing in but she fought to stay alert and keep moving. She had brought this on herself. She had opened something up in him that made him need her. He was close behind her, shrieking like a bat and she had done this to him. She was leaving him there in that state, abandoning her creation in the middle of the woods where she had led him. It couldn't be undone. There was no returning to the way it was.
She was lost, and with him dragging just steps behind her, she ran blindly trying to put distance between them. She tried thinking about which direction they had come from, which way the sun had been overhead when they had walked that day, everything she had ever read about survival in those books she read about castaways and orphans. All she could remember is that were she to get trapped in an avalanche of snow she should dig herself a little hole and spit to orient herself to which way was down. But she remembered they had made it so there was no direction. No up, down, East, West, left, right. The only way to find her way out was just to imagine herself leaving, and then do the real walking along the same imaginary line.
She closed her eyes and heard him somewhere, now not even wailing half-human noises. The transformation was complete and he was bellowing like a half-cow, half-great cat. She was sorry for him. But not sorry enough to stay and comfort him. She had seen too many other girls taking care of thing just like him--cleaning out the pens and filling the troughs.
With her eyes shut, she walked one foot in front of the other along the path she saw in her mind. It appeared slowly, a brick, a section, then the whole stretch. Ot was there inside her, she just had to ler herself see it. A golden road so enclosed in darkness that she felt it was the right path, and it was. She was back at the river.
In the night the water was black and cold, but she plunged in fully clothed watching her t-shirt balloon out to her sides. She dove in deep.
Her path went down through the water so she followed it. Past enormous bulbous plants that glowed like lamps. There was a whole world down there she never even knew about. Houses and streets, dogs barking little bursts of air bubbles and cats swishing their tails through the water. Strange people with slightly bloated faces walked to and fro, sat at kitchen tables, went into bars and movie theaters. Hovering above them, she wondered if her path had been leading her there all along. Was she meant to remain here, her own face getting fuller and heavier with the weight of the water above her? It looked that way, for the path descended into the heart of the city and ended murkily there.
The current pulled her hard down the path but she only had a small bit of breath left. Though the path had led her out of the woods, she wasn't sure she wanted to continue following it. She kicked hard against the water, resisting it with her whole body until she surfaced, gasping in deep breaths of cold air, and soon crawling up onto the shore and out of the water.
won't it be bliss?
Let's get crossed off everyone's list...
"Let's get lost," she said, making sure to stare directly into his eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, lost. Really lost. Let's go somewhere we've never been and try not to remember how we got there."
"Okay, but why? Why now?"
"Because I want to see what happens."
"Well, I think it's impossible," he said. "Around here anyway. We could go someplace like Canada, without a map or anything and get lost. But around here, I just don't see how it can happen."
They decided the best place to start was the river. They went there in the summer to swim and to throw sticks for the dog to fetch. They had swum as far out as the middle of the river where the current pulled the hardest, but they never crossed to the other side. They didn't know what they would find on that shore.
"From the beach, there's just a line of trees over there. We could find anything ... a farm, a roa d, a factory," he said.
They were packing the necessities in small plastic bags: a shirt and shorts to wear over their bathing suits, a pair of sandals, matches, a candy bar each. They planned to hold their bag on top of their heads with one hand, and use their other arm to swim across the river. She wished there were more room--enough for a blanket or a flashlight--but it would be hard enough with these few items.
"We'll just have to make a fire for warmth and hope we can find berries for food," she said.
"Or we can catch a rabbit," he said.
That night, with her plastic bag on the floor next to her bed, she dreamed of the bottom of the river. She swam down and touched the silty bed. The seaweed wrapped its way around her fingers and wove through her hair. She swam through beams of light filtered down from the surface, and brushed against brown, scaly fish. She remembered how her grandpa said the scales were sharp.
When the sun came up, he was at her window. They hiked all the way to the beach before it was even eight o'clock. Stripping down to their suits, they packed their clothes into the plastic bags, and waded into the water. Crossing the river was easier than expected. Her shirt got a bit wet, and he lost the matches through a hole in the corner of his bag. But the water was calm in the early quiet of the morning.
They climbed onto the shore and looked across to where they had just come from. "It looks just like this side looks, when you're looking at it from that side," he said.
On the other side of the trees, they found a wide, paved road. It was black and smooth with a yellow dotted line running down the middle. It came to a dead stop at the river. It was empty. They walked right down the middle until the pavement gave way to earth that had been baked into deep ridges, cracked and crumbling in the heat of the sun.
She walked inside one of the grooves, one foot in front of the other and followed close behind him. She watched his shoulders move in time with his step. Noticed the things that caught his eye: a deep hole the perfect size for a snake, shiny stones, bits of milkweed fluff caught in spiderwebs. A mad chirping came from the bushes at the side of the path and he stopped to investigate.
"I think it's a baby bird. It must be learning to sing! It's making all sorts of silly noises, just like a human baby does when it tries to talk." He was easily amused.
Where had they met, she wondered. She couldn't remember. It seemed he had always been there, a boy on her block. She could always tell him from a distance by the way he walked. She would be sitting there in a pile of leaves, or peeling moss from the sidewalk and she would spot him in the top part of her eyes, ambling forward with a syncopated stride. She remembered playing games...kick the can, hide-and-go-seek... and then a moment where the object wasn't to hide anymore but to be found by exactly the right person, and then hide away with him. No matter how hard she looked, he stayed hidden. She found countless others. He must have found a spot she'd never think to look though other girls never had much trouble.
And after that, she'd spend days waiting for him to call, and then go out and return to her answering machine's blinking light. She'd leave the messages unlistened to, unanswered because she couldn't bear the sound of his voice and she feared she would reveal everything to him just by talking.
He was unreliable. Some days he would call to say he was coming over and never show up. Other days, she would meet him walking down the street and he would forget whatever he was about to go do just to be with her. It was those moments that she forgave him. It felt precious to be at his side. But those times he dropped everything for her, she realized the times he didn't show up he had been distracted by some other pretty girl. And so even though she was sitting with him on the park swings at that moment, it was likely someone else was out there waiting for him.
"I'm hungry," she heard him say. He stopped and turned around to face her. "I have no idea where we are either. Are you satisfied? We're lost."
"We're not lost," she said. She was irritated. She hadn't come this far to turn back now. "I know exactly where we are. We're on a road, and if we turn around and walk back the other way, we'll eventually get to the river, then swim across it, then be home."
"Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me. I thought we were supposed to try not to remember."
"Well, it's hard to forget," she said. She didn't know why it always had to be so difficult with him. Why nothing ever meant the same to him as it did her. She was still waiting for the day when she would ask him, "What are you thinking," and he would answer, "I can't live anymore without telling you..." and for her face to flush and heart to stop beating.
She held out her hand. "Come here. Close your eyes," and she took his hand and led him off the road and through thr brush to the side of the road. Blackberry thorns tore at their clothes and insects bit their ankles but soon they were under a canopy of old trees. It was as if summer had ended and fall began here. She could smell the sugary sweet decomposing of maple leaves turning to earth beneath her feet.
In the clear space between two great tree trunks she stopped and faced him. Taking his other hand she whispered, "Keep your eyes closed," and then closed her own. She began to whirl them in circles so many times she felt dizzy.
Keeping her eyes shut tight she said, "Now you lead me. Keep turning different directions. If we can't forget on purpose, we'll make it was confusing as possible on purpose." And so they took turns guiding each other, making sure to take an odd number of turns along the way until the woods became dense and blocked out most of the sun. It was late afternoon already and only diffuse light filtered down. She thought she saw small creatures scurring past their feet like tiny glowing lights.
She really was beginning to feel lost. She couldn't tell whether she was heading East or West anymore. And it didn't matter whether she said left or right. They could walk in circles or straight lines in this forest twilight and never know the difference.
"It feels cool. It smells so good here," he said and turned to face her. He was glowing a little too. "I didn't know why you wanted to do this. I was afraid to show up this morning, but I suprised myself. It was all mysterious, I guess. I guess that's what I like about you. You're willing to be mysterious for me."
He had grabbed hold of her hand again, although they both had their eyes open now and for the first time all day, she realized she would be spending the night in these woods instead of in her own room. His fingers felt bony and calloused and she wondered why they hadn't seemed that way before. She couldn't think of anything to say, and so she said, "I'm hungry."
They walked on through the woods scouting for mushrooms and berries. Darkness was closing in around them and the woods around them seemed even bigger now, the ferns towering over their heads. They had to push the ladder-like fronds aside as they made their way through, and scale over enormous, fallen logs that filled their noses with a deep, decaying smell.
He led her down to the edge of a clear pool. The trees stood back from its edge as if on purpose to let the water reflect the light of the moon. A fish jumped out of the pond, disturbing its surface and pushing the light into ever-expanding rings.
"Let's go in," she heard him say. He dropped her hand and wandered off down the bank, shedding his shirt and shorts as he went.
She had wanted nothing but this all along. To be alone with him under the stars. In spite of her shyness, she stripped off her clothes and followed him in. He had already made his way out to the center of the pond and was treading water there. She pushed off and swam the whole distance without coming up for air, surfacing when she spotted the outline of his legs in the moonlight.
Floating there next to him, she wondered if she should say it. It was there in her throat if she could only make it come out loud, "I've always felt..." and then she stopped herself. Did she only feel that way because she had never thought to feel a different way?
She realized he was looking at her. "Your hair is beautiful," he said and stretched out his arm. He ran his fingers over the top of her ear and down her neck and rested his hand on her shoulder. She tried to smile at him, but she noticed that his nose looked bigger than it had before, and his eyes were dark and sunken. She pushed the idea from her mind thinking perhaps it was just the distortion of her vision in the darkness. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, placing her lips softly on his, and tasted the small beads of water that rested there. She felt him exhale and then move closer to her, and then wrapped his legs around her so they hung together in the middle of the pond.
She felt something deep in the pit of her stomach. A satisfaction. A terror. But only kissed him again, and let him kiss her back. She pulled away when his kisses felt too hard, the softness gone and all bones pushing into her face. She looked at him. "I'm cold," she said, because she was shivering, although she had never felt warmer.
They left the water and dressed. Her shirt and shorts would hardly keep her warm, and she wished he had not lost the matches so they could build a fire. They began to look for shelter, "A low hanging branch? A hollowed-out boulder? Something like that?" he said aloud, as if saying it would make it appear. But they found nothing but moss and dried leaves, and so they swept those into a great pile and lay down together in the woodsy bed.
"I think now that we're here, we should stay here," he said. His hand was resting on the small of her back. "I don't feel like finding our way home."
"Really?" she was surprised.
"We could just keep going. We need to find food, at least. But we could stay here too. There's fish in the pond. We could fish and swim and stay here together."
She couldn't imagine what it would be like to live here, only with him. Their clothes would soon be worn and shredded, and they would live naked like animals and huddle together for warmth. She felt his fingers sliding underneath her t-shirt, next to her skin inching forward like a caterpillar. She turned to face him. His nose had grown again, and his skin looked green or blue with gaping black pores. But then in the next instant he was the same again. She stared wide-eyed.
She stuttered, "I...I thought we'd go back tomorrow. I'm sure we can find our way back. It won't be that hard."
"But you're the one who wanted to come here!" He was snorting and whining. "I like it here!"
"I do too. I..." and then she was sure of it. He was not what he seemed to be. The moonlight had exposed him for what he was--black beady eyes and pig-snouted. She slowly sat up and got to her feet. This wasn't what she thought it would be. It wasn't what she wanted. He was wriggling on the ground, trying to stand. She backed away from him slowly.
"Stay!" he screeched as she ran into the dark, branched whipping her face.
She felt sick to her stomach, a heavy pressure in her abdomen at the thought of what she'd done. Her vision was closing in but she fought to stay alert and keep moving. She had brought this on herself. She had opened something up in him that made him need her. He was close behind her, shrieking like a bat and she had done this to him. She was leaving him there in that state, abandoning her creation in the middle of the woods where she had led him. It couldn't be undone. There was no returning to the way it was.
She was lost, and with him dragging just steps behind her, she ran blindly trying to put distance between them. She tried thinking about which direction they had come from, which way the sun had been overhead when they had walked that day, everything she had ever read about survival in those books she read about castaways and orphans. All she could remember is that were she to get trapped in an avalanche of snow she should dig herself a little hole and spit to orient herself to which way was down. But she remembered they had made it so there was no direction. No up, down, East, West, left, right. The only way to find her way out was just to imagine herself leaving, and then do the real walking along the same imaginary line.
She closed her eyes and heard him somewhere, now not even wailing half-human noises. The transformation was complete and he was bellowing like a half-cow, half-great cat. She was sorry for him. But not sorry enough to stay and comfort him. She had seen too many other girls taking care of thing just like him--cleaning out the pens and filling the troughs.
With her eyes shut, she walked one foot in front of the other along the path she saw in her mind. It appeared slowly, a brick, a section, then the whole stretch. Ot was there inside her, she just had to ler herself see it. A golden road so enclosed in darkness that she felt it was the right path, and it was. She was back at the river.
In the night the water was black and cold, but she plunged in fully clothed watching her t-shirt balloon out to her sides. She dove in deep.
Her path went down through the water so she followed it. Past enormous bulbous plants that glowed like lamps. There was a whole world down there she never even knew about. Houses and streets, dogs barking little bursts of air bubbles and cats swishing their tails through the water. Strange people with slightly bloated faces walked to and fro, sat at kitchen tables, went into bars and movie theaters. Hovering above them, she wondered if her path had been leading her there all along. Was she meant to remain here, her own face getting fuller and heavier with the weight of the water above her? It looked that way, for the path descended into the heart of the city and ended murkily there.
The current pulled her hard down the path but she only had a small bit of breath left. Though the path had led her out of the woods, she wasn't sure she wanted to continue following it. She kicked hard against the water, resisting it with her whole body until she surfaced, gasping in deep breaths of cold air, and soon crawling up onto the shore and out of the water.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Halloween deep
"Don't be scared. That's not a real clown. It's just someone dressed up as a clown."
-Either Dylan or Nick Elsbury
-Either Dylan or Nick Elsbury
Monday, October 31, 2005
Shuffle off
Saturday night I slept curled in a little ball, preserving the scant warmth my body was emitting. Although frost licks the rooftops in Buffalo, and we were wearing scarves and hats that afternoon, Doug still hadn't turned his heat on. Eventually, the air under the quilt was heated by my body, and I felt warm.
Aside from that, I had a great time. I met Doug for breakfast early that morning. We walked down Elmwood Avenue, one of the last parts of the city that hasn't given in to decay and poverty. It's still thriving--the place where all the young people want to be. We headed into Allentown, where the Towne Restaurant is still serving up chicken souvlaki and oily coffee (bottomless cups--great for poor college students).
Later, we drove out to the lake, past the old grain elevators that sit where Lake Erie meets the Buffalo River. Their massive silos have been vacant for decades. The industrial decay gave way quickly to windy, country roads. It was a bright sunny day, and the autumn leaves were at the peak of their fall color.
Doug was caretaking for a friend's cottage. It was just down the street from Mickey Ratts, a place I spent many summers convincing my mother to take me to. It's a place where twenty-somethings come on summer nights to drink Bud Light, play beach volleyball and pick each other up. By day, families lumber down the dirty sand beach (trucked in from somewhere, I'm sure) with their beach chairs and heavy coolers. As a 12-year old, it was the closest I could get to a day at the beach.
Though the cottage was less than a mile away, it was in a different universe. The small, white building was tucked in at the end of a row of houses and looked right out onto the water. Doug's friend was a photographer who spends his summers working weddings and his winters travelling through places like Bolivia and Kenya, which was what he was currently doing. I poked around the house to find bookshelves lined with art books, good literature and weighty volumes on cultural studies. His house smelled clean. His linens were laundered. I thought briefly of meeting him, starting an affair...stormy...exciting...then remembered I am married. Funny. I don't even know what he looks like, but his home told me enough.
Doug checked the mail and then we climbed down the steep wooden stairs to the beach.
I never realized that underneath Lake Erie lies a massive bed of shale. It was everywhere, along with smooth, rounded sandstone rocks. The sharpness of the shale against the sandstones seemed impossible. How could two types of rock so different get in one place? I chose a egg-shaped stone that was white and heavy to carry home in my suitcase.
And we walked, which is always the most fun way to spend time with Doug, because he is not distracted by a million other things. In the city, he was checking his cellphone, saying hi to people on the street, stepping into stores. But on the beach with only the water, the rocks and me we talked about writing and making music, old friends, and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The beach was infested with ladybugs. They gathered on rocks, driftwood, dead leaves. Thousands of them. Were they dying? Mating? Laying eggs to hatch in the spring? We also discovered an odd form of water plant, the size and shape of a grapefruit, but bright green and covered with seed pods. Doug joked it was corn on the cob meets seaweed (meets christmas ornament, I added).
We walked until the beach ended, turned around and headed back until we came to a divey beach bar. We decided Baileys and coffee would hit the spot on a cool fall day.
The bar smelled like that combination of beer and stale cigarette smoke. It's the way every pool hall and bowling alley in the country smell, no matter what state you're in. College football was on the big screen TV. Doug told me a story about S.D. I had never heard. It filled in a piece of a puzzle for me. Something I had wondered about for a long time. Something that confirmed that the decisions I made long ago, based on gut intuition, were the right decisions. (That's vague, I know. I'm being purposely so.)
Though I could have stayed at the beach all night with a bottle of good red wine and a toasty fire in the fireplace at the cottage, we drove back to Buffalo for dinner. We stopped for pizza (as only you can get in Buffalo) and an extraordinary treat for a former WNY-er gone vegetarian: veggie chicken wings! Wedges of eggplant, breaded and fried, and doused in wing sauce (Frank's Red Hot and butter, if you must know) and served with a side of blue cheese sauce, celery and carrot sticks. Divine!
That night, we ended up at a house party. His roommate's band was playing there. The house was packed with college students mostly dressed as zombies (the undead was a a popular Halloween theme this year). We were the oldest people there.
As I waited for the bathroom, a guy in a Chewbacca suit asked me, "Whose place is this?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Cool. YOu know it's a good party when total strangers show up." Maybe it was his house and he was messing with me.
Down a flight of stairs and into a dark cavern of a basement, pipes exposed, and bent nails stuck dangerously out of big support beams. This was the kind of house that could have been part of the underground railroad, You could imagine secret passageways that were bricked off long ago. But that night, three men in nothing but white body paint, wifebeater t-shirts and tightie-whities were playing death metal. Their faces were painted to look like skulls. We lucked out, since we arrived right at the end of their set. The band we were there to see was up next: Knife Crazy, and they were good. A drummer, bass player and guitarist dressed up as two bananas and a hot dog (phallic?)
The skull band had only made peoples' heads bob, but two songs into Knife Crazy's set we saw it happen. A guy in front of us simply let himself fall sideways--started movement--created space. The tension broke. The dancing started. I was on beer #4 at that point, and more than happy to join. A John Cusack look-alike slammed into me, and made me spill my beer all over my coat, but I quickly forgave him. When was the last time I had the chance to be drunk at a basement punk show?
"DO YOU LIKE LAB COATS? I LIKE LAB COATS! LET'S BE SCIENTISTS!" they screamed.
After that, on to another bar with a Neil Diamond cover band (bad) and then to yet another party with another band. But soon, the eggplant chicken wings in my stomach were rising up against me, in cooperation with the amazing amount of beer I had consumed, so soon I found myself back at Doug's place to settle in for a cold, cold night.
Buffalo. It really is a beautiful city. It's old and crumbling. There's poverty and crime. But...it's cheap for exactly those same reasons, and that means that real artists, making real art can afford to live there. I saw it everywhere. There's art happening in basements and garages. Out of the decay of Buffalo comes creation. It's as if the death of the city creates a blank canvas available for the imagining of a new life.
Portland is a town of crafters and would-be artists. But let's be honest...all the people who could devote their lives to art are busy working in ad agencies so they can pay those West coast bills. We set aside a sunday afternoon for handmaking, but only after we've decorated our homes with Pottery Barn. It's a smooth affluence that imitates art, as Rebecca Solnit says.
When I first moved here, I was so in love with this city. I've outgrown my passion for it. Somedays, I hardly feel like I live here, and especially returning to it after a day in a broken-down town where I felt so alive.
Aside from that, I had a great time. I met Doug for breakfast early that morning. We walked down Elmwood Avenue, one of the last parts of the city that hasn't given in to decay and poverty. It's still thriving--the place where all the young people want to be. We headed into Allentown, where the Towne Restaurant is still serving up chicken souvlaki and oily coffee (bottomless cups--great for poor college students).
Later, we drove out to the lake, past the old grain elevators that sit where Lake Erie meets the Buffalo River. Their massive silos have been vacant for decades. The industrial decay gave way quickly to windy, country roads. It was a bright sunny day, and the autumn leaves were at the peak of their fall color.
Doug was caretaking for a friend's cottage. It was just down the street from Mickey Ratts, a place I spent many summers convincing my mother to take me to. It's a place where twenty-somethings come on summer nights to drink Bud Light, play beach volleyball and pick each other up. By day, families lumber down the dirty sand beach (trucked in from somewhere, I'm sure) with their beach chairs and heavy coolers. As a 12-year old, it was the closest I could get to a day at the beach.
Though the cottage was less than a mile away, it was in a different universe. The small, white building was tucked in at the end of a row of houses and looked right out onto the water. Doug's friend was a photographer who spends his summers working weddings and his winters travelling through places like Bolivia and Kenya, which was what he was currently doing. I poked around the house to find bookshelves lined with art books, good literature and weighty volumes on cultural studies. His house smelled clean. His linens were laundered. I thought briefly of meeting him, starting an affair...stormy...exciting...then remembered I am married. Funny. I don't even know what he looks like, but his home told me enough.
Doug checked the mail and then we climbed down the steep wooden stairs to the beach.
I never realized that underneath Lake Erie lies a massive bed of shale. It was everywhere, along with smooth, rounded sandstone rocks. The sharpness of the shale against the sandstones seemed impossible. How could two types of rock so different get in one place? I chose a egg-shaped stone that was white and heavy to carry home in my suitcase.
And we walked, which is always the most fun way to spend time with Doug, because he is not distracted by a million other things. In the city, he was checking his cellphone, saying hi to people on the street, stepping into stores. But on the beach with only the water, the rocks and me we talked about writing and making music, old friends, and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The beach was infested with ladybugs. They gathered on rocks, driftwood, dead leaves. Thousands of them. Were they dying? Mating? Laying eggs to hatch in the spring? We also discovered an odd form of water plant, the size and shape of a grapefruit, but bright green and covered with seed pods. Doug joked it was corn on the cob meets seaweed (meets christmas ornament, I added).
We walked until the beach ended, turned around and headed back until we came to a divey beach bar. We decided Baileys and coffee would hit the spot on a cool fall day.
The bar smelled like that combination of beer and stale cigarette smoke. It's the way every pool hall and bowling alley in the country smell, no matter what state you're in. College football was on the big screen TV. Doug told me a story about S.D. I had never heard. It filled in a piece of a puzzle for me. Something I had wondered about for a long time. Something that confirmed that the decisions I made long ago, based on gut intuition, were the right decisions. (That's vague, I know. I'm being purposely so.)
Though I could have stayed at the beach all night with a bottle of good red wine and a toasty fire in the fireplace at the cottage, we drove back to Buffalo for dinner. We stopped for pizza (as only you can get in Buffalo) and an extraordinary treat for a former WNY-er gone vegetarian: veggie chicken wings! Wedges of eggplant, breaded and fried, and doused in wing sauce (Frank's Red Hot and butter, if you must know) and served with a side of blue cheese sauce, celery and carrot sticks. Divine!
That night, we ended up at a house party. His roommate's band was playing there. The house was packed with college students mostly dressed as zombies (the undead was a a popular Halloween theme this year). We were the oldest people there.
As I waited for the bathroom, a guy in a Chewbacca suit asked me, "Whose place is this?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Cool. YOu know it's a good party when total strangers show up." Maybe it was his house and he was messing with me.
Down a flight of stairs and into a dark cavern of a basement, pipes exposed, and bent nails stuck dangerously out of big support beams. This was the kind of house that could have been part of the underground railroad, You could imagine secret passageways that were bricked off long ago. But that night, three men in nothing but white body paint, wifebeater t-shirts and tightie-whities were playing death metal. Their faces were painted to look like skulls. We lucked out, since we arrived right at the end of their set. The band we were there to see was up next: Knife Crazy, and they were good. A drummer, bass player and guitarist dressed up as two bananas and a hot dog (phallic?)
The skull band had only made peoples' heads bob, but two songs into Knife Crazy's set we saw it happen. A guy in front of us simply let himself fall sideways--started movement--created space. The tension broke. The dancing started. I was on beer #4 at that point, and more than happy to join. A John Cusack look-alike slammed into me, and made me spill my beer all over my coat, but I quickly forgave him. When was the last time I had the chance to be drunk at a basement punk show?
"DO YOU LIKE LAB COATS? I LIKE LAB COATS! LET'S BE SCIENTISTS!" they screamed.
After that, on to another bar with a Neil Diamond cover band (bad) and then to yet another party with another band. But soon, the eggplant chicken wings in my stomach were rising up against me, in cooperation with the amazing amount of beer I had consumed, so soon I found myself back at Doug's place to settle in for a cold, cold night.
Buffalo. It really is a beautiful city. It's old and crumbling. There's poverty and crime. But...it's cheap for exactly those same reasons, and that means that real artists, making real art can afford to live there. I saw it everywhere. There's art happening in basements and garages. Out of the decay of Buffalo comes creation. It's as if the death of the city creates a blank canvas available for the imagining of a new life.
Portland is a town of crafters and would-be artists. But let's be honest...all the people who could devote their lives to art are busy working in ad agencies so they can pay those West coast bills. We set aside a sunday afternoon for handmaking, but only after we've decorated our homes with Pottery Barn. It's a smooth affluence that imitates art, as Rebecca Solnit says.
When I first moved here, I was so in love with this city. I've outgrown my passion for it. Somedays, I hardly feel like I live here, and especially returning to it after a day in a broken-down town where I felt so alive.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Update: Men and women...
I updated Men and women in Key West. Those two paragraphs are the most difficult things I've ever written.
On being lost
Perhaps the only time I was truly lost was when I was seven. It was my first day of school in a new town. My mom put me on the bus in the morning, and I got off with all the other kids and found my way to my classroom. In the afternoon, I made it back to the bus somehow, but wasn't familiar enough with my new neighborhood to know where to get off. The bus was empty, and the driver had finished her route, and I was still on it. I don't remember how I got home that day.
As a child, I remembered places I had never been before. I blurred real and imaginative spaces. On a tour through an 18th century farmhouse, I felt I knew the place. That credenza, that drawer full of flatware. I knew them.
My friends have always called me the "normal one," because, I imagine, I have never appeared lost to them. I think the truth is that I have never tried to anchor myself too securely. I take comfort in knowing I can live anywhere, pick myself up, meet new people, make a new life. I have done it a dozen times.
In seventh grade, I cast myself off from my three best friends with a dramatic note:
Dear Libby, Amy and Sarah,
Goodbye.
I spent the summer in exile: babysitting, going to tennis lessons, watching television. I would do anything but play a part in the girl dynamics that had developed.
In tenth grade, my best friend forced me out. I had no choice. I remember coming home one night and spotting a party going on at her house. A dozen or so people we knew in common were hanging out on her back deck acting stupid. They were making jokes about getting high on oregano, rolling oregano joints from from the spice rack and stiff cardboard and lighting them on
fire. Perhaps they really were stoned, but it's not the cue I picked up. What I felt was their icy stares and unwelcoming recognition of my presence.
We are kept in place by the people who surround us. When we are cut off from them, we become someone else.
Both times, I found new groups of friends, neither as satisfying as the old. My new skin did not fit right.
I will return home in two weeks. I worry about seeing someone I know who will force me to locate myself. Their "hello, aren't you...?" will make my body flesh and tie me to that place again instead of allowing me to remain an observer in a parallel dimension. I also worry about not feeling tied. That the bricks and wood beams of buildings, the maple and oak trees won't talk to me. They'll refuse to play my remembering game.
As a child, I remembered places I had never been before. I blurred real and imaginative spaces. On a tour through an 18th century farmhouse, I felt I knew the place. That credenza, that drawer full of flatware. I knew them.
My friends have always called me the "normal one," because, I imagine, I have never appeared lost to them. I think the truth is that I have never tried to anchor myself too securely. I take comfort in knowing I can live anywhere, pick myself up, meet new people, make a new life. I have done it a dozen times.
In seventh grade, I cast myself off from my three best friends with a dramatic note:
Dear Libby, Amy and Sarah,
Goodbye.
I spent the summer in exile: babysitting, going to tennis lessons, watching television. I would do anything but play a part in the girl dynamics that had developed.
In tenth grade, my best friend forced me out. I had no choice. I remember coming home one night and spotting a party going on at her house. A dozen or so people we knew in common were hanging out on her back deck acting stupid. They were making jokes about getting high on oregano, rolling oregano joints from from the spice rack and stiff cardboard and lighting them on
fire. Perhaps they really were stoned, but it's not the cue I picked up. What I felt was their icy stares and unwelcoming recognition of my presence.
We are kept in place by the people who surround us. When we are cut off from them, we become someone else.
Both times, I found new groups of friends, neither as satisfying as the old. My new skin did not fit right.
I will return home in two weeks. I worry about seeing someone I know who will force me to locate myself. Their "hello, aren't you...?" will make my body flesh and tie me to that place again instead of allowing me to remain an observer in a parallel dimension. I also worry about not feeling tied. That the bricks and wood beams of buildings, the maple and oak trees won't talk to me. They'll refuse to play my remembering game.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Meditation on apples
Honeycrisp apples are the invention of mediocrity, come to fruition this fall. An enormous genetic windfall. It's the first time I've ever heard an apple promoted on the radio. The name: "honeycrisp." So literal and American. It the simpler, less sophisticated cousin of the gala and the fuji.
One has to eat a honeycrisp with a stack of napkins handy. Otherwise you will l have sticky hands and wrists and drips on your chin and all over the furniture. It is not an apple for the delicate.
Honeycrisp. Honeycomb. Crispy Crunch. Honey smacks. Crackle pop.
No matter how big and beautiful, I just can't trust a honeycrisp apple. Like a big, blowsy, Las Vegas trophy wife. Painted face, sequined jeans and stiletto heels. Not too much trouble but still disturbing.
It's what the executives wanted from a red delicious, which is truly a bit of marketing genius because although they are red they are never delicious but rather mealy and too sweet. Easily bruised. Over-waxed.
Red delicious. Superstitious. Regal bitches. Sew on stitches. Made for riches.
One has to eat a honeycrisp with a stack of napkins handy. Otherwise you will l have sticky hands and wrists and drips on your chin and all over the furniture. It is not an apple for the delicate.
Honeycrisp. Honeycomb. Crispy Crunch. Honey smacks. Crackle pop.
No matter how big and beautiful, I just can't trust a honeycrisp apple. Like a big, blowsy, Las Vegas trophy wife. Painted face, sequined jeans and stiletto heels. Not too much trouble but still disturbing.
It's what the executives wanted from a red delicious, which is truly a bit of marketing genius because although they are red they are never delicious but rather mealy and too sweet. Easily bruised. Over-waxed.
Red delicious. Superstitious. Regal bitches. Sew on stitches. Made for riches.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
The list begins
Well...now it's official. There are people out there who hate me because of what I write on my blog. There's certainly one person out there who's on the list...and there may be two.
I learned tonight that B gave my blog link to a former co-worker who passed it on, and that person passed on, blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum, until the former co-worker whose bridal shower I raized got the link. Ooh. Ouchie. It's also one big possibility that a certain former boss has gotten hold of it too.
Oh well. It's not like I posted it naieve to the fact that she might read it someday. I knew it was always a possibility. The whole point of this was not to hide.
What is this expectation that we have simple feelings? That either we like each other or we don't and it's as easy as that?
I'm feeling more and more caught as I go down this path and leave the safe stuff for the riskier stuff. There's venom in there, darkness, a cheat, a hoarder, a two-faced liar, a critic. I can't write if I can't talk about that stuff.
B and I talked today about diving into the irrational. It came up in reference to gardens, when I told her to not be rational about plants. The same way you can't be rational about art, or god. How can I put this? I can read books upon books about where to put certain plants--in the sun or shade--and how much to water them, or whatever. But when you put the books aside, and just do it, and just listen in a slightly different way, you know exactly what to do with that plant. It's opening up to something beyond learned knowledge. It's like learning to dream when you're awake. Learning to feel the warmth radiating out of the shape of a petal and knowing that its meant for a warm spot.
And the more I practice it, the more I have to go for the venom. The more I have to write what is really there. The more you embrace the rational, the more you leave the rational stuff behind, like science, or being polite. It's just too hard to dig down so far and then come up saying, "Oh yes, I've had a very nice time."
Is it faith? Or is it sticking your hands down into the soil and feeling that everything is connected, and you are part of that connection. That love is connected to hate, that life is connected to death, and that flowers talk, and a person can feel one thing while feeling the exact opposite at the same time, and and that it is not so simple.
Ah, well. Sorry D. I didn't have fun at your shower. Doesn't mean I don't like you. Doesn't mean I didn't wish you well.
I learned tonight that B gave my blog link to a former co-worker who passed it on, and that person passed on, blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum, until the former co-worker whose bridal shower I raized got the link. Ooh. Ouchie. It's also one big possibility that a certain former boss has gotten hold of it too.
Oh well. It's not like I posted it naieve to the fact that she might read it someday. I knew it was always a possibility. The whole point of this was not to hide.
What is this expectation that we have simple feelings? That either we like each other or we don't and it's as easy as that?
I'm feeling more and more caught as I go down this path and leave the safe stuff for the riskier stuff. There's venom in there, darkness, a cheat, a hoarder, a two-faced liar, a critic. I can't write if I can't talk about that stuff.
B and I talked today about diving into the irrational. It came up in reference to gardens, when I told her to not be rational about plants. The same way you can't be rational about art, or god. How can I put this? I can read books upon books about where to put certain plants--in the sun or shade--and how much to water them, or whatever. But when you put the books aside, and just do it, and just listen in a slightly different way, you know exactly what to do with that plant. It's opening up to something beyond learned knowledge. It's like learning to dream when you're awake. Learning to feel the warmth radiating out of the shape of a petal and knowing that its meant for a warm spot.
And the more I practice it, the more I have to go for the venom. The more I have to write what is really there. The more you embrace the rational, the more you leave the rational stuff behind, like science, or being polite. It's just too hard to dig down so far and then come up saying, "Oh yes, I've had a very nice time."
Is it faith? Or is it sticking your hands down into the soil and feeling that everything is connected, and you are part of that connection. That love is connected to hate, that life is connected to death, and that flowers talk, and a person can feel one thing while feeling the exact opposite at the same time, and and that it is not so simple.
Ah, well. Sorry D. I didn't have fun at your shower. Doesn't mean I don't like you. Doesn't mean I didn't wish you well.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Foulbrood and queenless
Here's an update on the beehive from our beeman, Tom.
Hey Tony and Pam,
Yes, your observations are correct. One western super was removed and the honey was consolidated in the remaining one for stores for the winter. The hive is healthy but not as vigorous as I had expected. I havested only four frames of honey. The production for all the hives is down to only a third of what last year offered up. Kind of sad, plus I'm very sure that Janis's hive has foulbrood and will soon need to be destroyed. Its really an awful bacterial disease, plus I think her hive is also Queenless in the process, but it makes little difference when death is imminent. I hope all is well with you both. I'm not sure when extraction is going to take place but I wil keep you informed.........Tomas
Hey Tony and Pam,
Yes, your observations are correct. One western super was removed and the honey was consolidated in the remaining one for stores for the winter. The hive is healthy but not as vigorous as I had expected. I havested only four frames of honey. The production for all the hives is down to only a third of what last year offered up. Kind of sad, plus I'm very sure that Janis's hive has foulbrood and will soon need to be destroyed. Its really an awful bacterial disease, plus I think her hive is also Queenless in the process, but it makes little difference when death is imminent. I hope all is well with you both. I'm not sure when extraction is going to take place but I wil keep you informed.........Tomas
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Writing
I am here on the Oregon coast for a writing retreat. This is the first time I've connected to the world in two days. Writing is hard and lonely. I've been eating alot of junk, pacing around the room, drinking coffee, tea, wine, beer. My back hurts. I have a headache that begins in my right temple and ends behind my eye.
Men and Women in Key West isn't finished yet. I should have taken Harley Davidson's question to heart when I first read his comment...because it cuts to the heart of the problem...what is the resolution to the story? Did the narrator break up with Carlos? Did she marry him? What happened? It's a strong piece. My readers here have had intense reactions. But it's not done. Huh. Who knew?
Small House is just the beginning of what will be a much longer piece. I've been working on that most of the time I've been here, and it's hard. It's going into some deep emotional shit. But little bits of beautiful inspiration have come at important moments. I spent Thursday just free writing...blabbing my memories on the page with no shape. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning with the image of the staircase in my head, and then remembered pulling up the carpet when we moved in. I love it when that happens. I'm going home at the end of October to work more on it. I want to be there, to look at the house, walk around the streets where I used to walk. I think there's a whole book there in that little house.
It rained all day yesterday which kept me inside working. It's dry today and the beach is close by. My room overlooks a well-groomed golf course, and men in baseball caps and khaki shorts keep driving by in white-canopied golf carts. It's going to be hard to stay inside with the sun and ocean calling me out, and the stupid little men swinging their clubs around in my line of vision.
Men and Women in Key West isn't finished yet. I should have taken Harley Davidson's question to heart when I first read his comment...because it cuts to the heart of the problem...what is the resolution to the story? Did the narrator break up with Carlos? Did she marry him? What happened? It's a strong piece. My readers here have had intense reactions. But it's not done. Huh. Who knew?
Small House is just the beginning of what will be a much longer piece. I've been working on that most of the time I've been here, and it's hard. It's going into some deep emotional shit. But little bits of beautiful inspiration have come at important moments. I spent Thursday just free writing...blabbing my memories on the page with no shape. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning with the image of the staircase in my head, and then remembered pulling up the carpet when we moved in. I love it when that happens. I'm going home at the end of October to work more on it. I want to be there, to look at the house, walk around the streets where I used to walk. I think there's a whole book there in that little house.
It rained all day yesterday which kept me inside working. It's dry today and the beach is close by. My room overlooks a well-groomed golf course, and men in baseball caps and khaki shorts keep driving by in white-canopied golf carts. It's going to be hard to stay inside with the sun and ocean calling me out, and the stupid little men swinging their clubs around in my line of vision.
Small house
When we moved into the house, the first thing my mother did was pull up the old shag carpet. It came up easy to reveal smooth, oak hardwoods underneath. We swept up the carpet tacks and the years of dirt that had filtered down through the fibers to form a grainy sediment. The carpet backing had acted as a fine sieve, only letting the finest particles through.
It was a small house, but there was room enough for the three of us. It had a tiny pink kitchen with a pink push-button stove. A narrow staircase led to the second floor where there were three small bedrooms. My mother’s was the largest, and my brother’s and mine were exactly the same size, both with a ceiling on one end that followed the steep slope of roof above. Even though there was only a short stretch of hallway in between them, sometimes it seemed that my mother’s room was miles away.
I was a kid who wanted to exist below the radar. I had good grades and a bookish nature. My teachers liked me and I had friends, so there was little to worry about, especially in comparison to my brother, who kept getting into trouble at school. He took more of my mother’s energy. Sitting each night at the dining room table, struggling to get my brother to do his school assignments, her own college books piled on one end of the table and a mass of bills and receipts before her, she had little time for me.
But it was easier for me without my mother’s attention. So much so, that when I spent time at my friends’ houses I bristled to be around their parents. My friend Nicole, especially. When I was at her house, I felt uncomfortable until we escaped to her bedroom to listen to tapes and read magazines. Her mother stayed home during the day, and every evening her father would walk in the door and they would eat dinner together at exactly 4:30. Her mother would place neat piles of freshly laundered clothes on the foot of her bed. Nicole would ask her mom if she could go out that night. I thought, “Why bother asking?” Sometimes her parents would make her stay in, or ask her to be home by nine. My mother was just leaving the house by then, her friends pulling in the driveway ready to go out dancing. I didn’t ask to leave the house, I just went.
So on New Years’ Eve 1989, I expected my mother to be gone. She had arranged for my brother to sleep at a friend’s house, and had plans to go out with her new boyfriend. But by eight that night, she was taking off her smart red shirt dress and black heels, washing the makeup off her face, taking off the gold, braided hoop earrings, and putting on her pink bathrobe. From my room down the hall, I heard her crying.
I walked quietly to her door, and stood on the edge of the rose-colored rug. She was laying on the edge of her bed, with its large dark spindled frame that had to be arranged at an angle just so it would fit in the room. The matching dresser took up most of one wall, and a giant, heavy-framed mirror hung over it. I could see her back, reflected in its surface. She was breathing deeply, her head tucked into her chest and arms wrapped tight around her sides.
“Mom?” She didn’t answer. “Mom, I invited some friends over tonight. They’ll be here soon.”
“Shit,” she said. She got up quickly and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She was running the water in the sink, and opening bathroom cabinets, banging their doors closed again. I heard her sharp footsteps across the tiles. The doorbell rang, and I went down the stairs to answer it. From the window on the landing, I could see Nicole’s parents pulling out of the driveway, dressed up for a new year’s party.
Nicole was there, and so was Gail, and ten minutes later, Seth and Erick arrived. They had a liter of Coke, potato chips, and a bag of M&Ms. We all crowded into the little t.v. room, Gail and Seth on the loveseat, and everyone else sprawled on the blue rug to watch a movie. I left my friends who were making rude noises and loud, stupid jokes to get glasses and ice for the Coke. The ice clinked, the floorboards creaked under my feet in the small kitchen, my friends turned the volume up on the television. I knew every noise was making its way up through the ceiling to where my mother was likely weeping.
She stayed upstairs all night in her room, maybe making a feeble attempt to watch Dick Clark, or maybe just listening to me and my friends. I knew she was trapped there, but I wanted her to stay out of sight. But just before midnight, she came down the stairs and went into the kitchen. She was still in her robe.
“Your mom is home?” asked Gail.
My mom appeared in the doorway. She had a stack of plastic cups and a bottle of champagne in her hands. “It’s almost 1990,” she said, and looked around the room at us. My friends were quiet. No one answered her. So she said, “Let’s have a toast.” She handed us each a cup, and popped open the champagne. She poured a small amount into every glass.
I sat there and just stared at her. Her hair was a mess. She looked tired. I didn’t want to know this lonely woman in her pink bathrobe. I had let others in to witness the look on her face, the same one I saw from the stairs when she thought I had long fallen asleep, and sat tucked in the corner of the couch listening to the same song over and over again. A tiny fragile thing, she was thinking of my father and where it all went wrong. The look that made me want to blow the roof off the place, shatter the windows and tear down the walls. Throw her out into the cold and walk the other way. The look that made me feel it was up to me to keep this place together. I wanted to wrap her up in a little package, bundle her tight and place her in a drawer or cupboard to hide her away where others couldn’t hurt her. Where she would be safe.
“Happy New Year, everyone,” she said, the tone of her voice strained into false gaiety. And then she disappeared upstairs again, leaving us to sip our champagne.
My friends’ parents pulled up shortly after midnight to pick them up. The house was quiet, and I made sure to sweep up the potato chip crumbs and stray M&Ms from the floor. My mother’s room was dark when I went upstairs, but I could heard her shifting positions under her covers as I got into my bed. I settled into place too, and drifted down into sleep.
It was a small house, but there was room enough for the three of us. It had a tiny pink kitchen with a pink push-button stove. A narrow staircase led to the second floor where there were three small bedrooms. My mother’s was the largest, and my brother’s and mine were exactly the same size, both with a ceiling on one end that followed the steep slope of roof above. Even though there was only a short stretch of hallway in between them, sometimes it seemed that my mother’s room was miles away.
I was a kid who wanted to exist below the radar. I had good grades and a bookish nature. My teachers liked me and I had friends, so there was little to worry about, especially in comparison to my brother, who kept getting into trouble at school. He took more of my mother’s energy. Sitting each night at the dining room table, struggling to get my brother to do his school assignments, her own college books piled on one end of the table and a mass of bills and receipts before her, she had little time for me.
But it was easier for me without my mother’s attention. So much so, that when I spent time at my friends’ houses I bristled to be around their parents. My friend Nicole, especially. When I was at her house, I felt uncomfortable until we escaped to her bedroom to listen to tapes and read magazines. Her mother stayed home during the day, and every evening her father would walk in the door and they would eat dinner together at exactly 4:30. Her mother would place neat piles of freshly laundered clothes on the foot of her bed. Nicole would ask her mom if she could go out that night. I thought, “Why bother asking?” Sometimes her parents would make her stay in, or ask her to be home by nine. My mother was just leaving the house by then, her friends pulling in the driveway ready to go out dancing. I didn’t ask to leave the house, I just went.
So on New Years’ Eve 1989, I expected my mother to be gone. She had arranged for my brother to sleep at a friend’s house, and had plans to go out with her new boyfriend. But by eight that night, she was taking off her smart red shirt dress and black heels, washing the makeup off her face, taking off the gold, braided hoop earrings, and putting on her pink bathrobe. From my room down the hall, I heard her crying.
I walked quietly to her door, and stood on the edge of the rose-colored rug. She was laying on the edge of her bed, with its large dark spindled frame that had to be arranged at an angle just so it would fit in the room. The matching dresser took up most of one wall, and a giant, heavy-framed mirror hung over it. I could see her back, reflected in its surface. She was breathing deeply, her head tucked into her chest and arms wrapped tight around her sides.
“Mom?” She didn’t answer. “Mom, I invited some friends over tonight. They’ll be here soon.”
“Shit,” she said. She got up quickly and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She was running the water in the sink, and opening bathroom cabinets, banging their doors closed again. I heard her sharp footsteps across the tiles. The doorbell rang, and I went down the stairs to answer it. From the window on the landing, I could see Nicole’s parents pulling out of the driveway, dressed up for a new year’s party.
Nicole was there, and so was Gail, and ten minutes later, Seth and Erick arrived. They had a liter of Coke, potato chips, and a bag of M&Ms. We all crowded into the little t.v. room, Gail and Seth on the loveseat, and everyone else sprawled on the blue rug to watch a movie. I left my friends who were making rude noises and loud, stupid jokes to get glasses and ice for the Coke. The ice clinked, the floorboards creaked under my feet in the small kitchen, my friends turned the volume up on the television. I knew every noise was making its way up through the ceiling to where my mother was likely weeping.
She stayed upstairs all night in her room, maybe making a feeble attempt to watch Dick Clark, or maybe just listening to me and my friends. I knew she was trapped there, but I wanted her to stay out of sight. But just before midnight, she came down the stairs and went into the kitchen. She was still in her robe.
“Your mom is home?” asked Gail.
My mom appeared in the doorway. She had a stack of plastic cups and a bottle of champagne in her hands. “It’s almost 1990,” she said, and looked around the room at us. My friends were quiet. No one answered her. So she said, “Let’s have a toast.” She handed us each a cup, and popped open the champagne. She poured a small amount into every glass.
I sat there and just stared at her. Her hair was a mess. She looked tired. I didn’t want to know this lonely woman in her pink bathrobe. I had let others in to witness the look on her face, the same one I saw from the stairs when she thought I had long fallen asleep, and sat tucked in the corner of the couch listening to the same song over and over again. A tiny fragile thing, she was thinking of my father and where it all went wrong. The look that made me want to blow the roof off the place, shatter the windows and tear down the walls. Throw her out into the cold and walk the other way. The look that made me feel it was up to me to keep this place together. I wanted to wrap her up in a little package, bundle her tight and place her in a drawer or cupboard to hide her away where others couldn’t hurt her. Where she would be safe.
“Happy New Year, everyone,” she said, the tone of her voice strained into false gaiety. And then she disappeared upstairs again, leaving us to sip our champagne.
My friends’ parents pulled up shortly after midnight to pick them up. The house was quiet, and I made sure to sweep up the potato chip crumbs and stray M&Ms from the floor. My mother’s room was dark when I went upstairs, but I could heard her shifting positions under her covers as I got into my bed. I settled into place too, and drifted down into sleep.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The driveway
In winter, Gail’s mom would be outside in her red, knit hat, shoveling the driveway, even for only a quarter-inch of snow. She used a curved metal shovel to scrape along the driveway, getting right down to the surface, leaving it clean. Deep black against cold white, it clearly marked where our yard ended and theirs began.
In the summer, the driveway would be meticulously re-blacktopped and sealed. It ran in between our houses, hollyhocks and evergreen shrubs lining it on our side, and wild mint volunteering on their side, next to their side door. From my bedroom window, I looked across the driveway, to the mustard-yellow house. At night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I would watch her mother through their kitchen window, doing the dishes, answering the phone, getting a bowl of ice cream. I’d see the upstairs bathroom light flick on and then off again, and then her dad would lumber down the stairs, past the window at the landing. Her older brother’s window usually remained dark.
Gail’s own room was on the other side of the house, but I would wait to catch a glimpse of her through the window on the landing of the stairs, padding up to bed. Sometimes, she would hear me calling her name, and she would come to the window. We would whisper across the divide. "What are you doing? Nothing. Do you want to do something tomorrow? " We imagined we could string two cans together on a length of wire, or rig a little bell so that we would know when the other was calling.
One August night, we slept out on the driveway, watching for shooting stars. There were too many street lights drowning out the stars in the sky, so we watched cars pass by instead. Tucked inside our sleeping bags we played word games and told stories, naming the mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads. Somehow we managed to sleep all night on the hard surface and woke early when the sun made its way down between the two houses, and the chill of the morning dew made it impossible to doze. When we woke, we were different people. We were no longer friends, because we knew too much about each other.
I would still wait at my window each night, but she would never come. I would think about our plan to string a wire across the divide, a line straight from my heart to hers, now disconnected. I was casting without catching anything, slack and searching.
Later that summer, I woke one morning in my own bed to the sound of voices coming from the driveway below. It was Gail and two others I recognized, Ryan and Sarah. They were just waking up too, or perhaps they had been up all night. I stayed there under the covers and listened to them talk, their voices raspy with the moist air. I knew I had to get up, go to the bathroom, make my breakfast, ride my bike uptown and pretend it didn’t matter she had left me out. I had to pretend that I hardly noticed I didn’t exist anymore. I had to pretend that I was just another neighbor, living in the house next-door.
In the summer, the driveway would be meticulously re-blacktopped and sealed. It ran in between our houses, hollyhocks and evergreen shrubs lining it on our side, and wild mint volunteering on their side, next to their side door. From my bedroom window, I looked across the driveway, to the mustard-yellow house. At night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I would watch her mother through their kitchen window, doing the dishes, answering the phone, getting a bowl of ice cream. I’d see the upstairs bathroom light flick on and then off again, and then her dad would lumber down the stairs, past the window at the landing. Her older brother’s window usually remained dark.
Gail’s own room was on the other side of the house, but I would wait to catch a glimpse of her through the window on the landing of the stairs, padding up to bed. Sometimes, she would hear me calling her name, and she would come to the window. We would whisper across the divide. "What are you doing? Nothing. Do you want to do something tomorrow? " We imagined we could string two cans together on a length of wire, or rig a little bell so that we would know when the other was calling.
One August night, we slept out on the driveway, watching for shooting stars. There were too many street lights drowning out the stars in the sky, so we watched cars pass by instead. Tucked inside our sleeping bags we played word games and told stories, naming the mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads. Somehow we managed to sleep all night on the hard surface and woke early when the sun made its way down between the two houses, and the chill of the morning dew made it impossible to doze. When we woke, we were different people. We were no longer friends, because we knew too much about each other.
I would still wait at my window each night, but she would never come. I would think about our plan to string a wire across the divide, a line straight from my heart to hers, now disconnected. I was casting without catching anything, slack and searching.
Later that summer, I woke one morning in my own bed to the sound of voices coming from the driveway below. It was Gail and two others I recognized, Ryan and Sarah. They were just waking up too, or perhaps they had been up all night. I stayed there under the covers and listened to them talk, their voices raspy with the moist air. I knew I had to get up, go to the bathroom, make my breakfast, ride my bike uptown and pretend it didn’t matter she had left me out. I had to pretend that I hardly noticed I didn’t exist anymore. I had to pretend that I was just another neighbor, living in the house next-door.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Men and women in Key West
A warm, ripe tomato dressed in vinegar and salt is always a surprise. The sharpness of the vinegar balances the seductive feel of the fruit on your tongue.
I remember the first time I ate one that way. A small dish of tomato slices rested on the table between Carlos and me, his Mamà and Papà and MamÃ's boyfriend, Ernesto. I took a slice and passed the dish to Carlos.
Carlos had warned me about his grandparents' unconventional relationship the day before, as we made the drive from Miami to Key West where they lived. Ernesto and his wife had been their neighbors for many years. When his wife passed away, he moved into the house soon after. Since Papà was too old to be interested in sex, it didn't take long for Ernesto to move into MamÃ's bedroom too. Papà didn't mind too much, because he liked the company. The old men would sit in the front room together, watching television all day. It was clear from MamÃ's fiery red hair stacked high on her head and her deep belly laughs that she wore the pants in the family.
The two old men piled their plates high and silently worked their way through them, as Mamà peppered Carlos with questions in Spanish. She didn't speak very much English, and I had only a semester's worth of Spanish class, so I gave up trying to follow their conversation, though I could tell they were talking about me. I took small bites of salty chicken, rice and fried plantains and tried to act like I didn't know it, letting my eyes drift around the bright blue kitchen and out the window to where neighborhood kids were playing in the street.
My plate was clean except for the tomato. They weren't my favorite, but since I didn't want to be rude, I divided it into quarters with the edge of my fork and took a bite. "Mmmm. This is the best tomato I've ever eaten," I said to Carlos, who quickly translated my words to his grandmother. "Ella dice, es major tomate que en la vida ha tenido." She smiled and pushed the dish of tomatoes toward me.
From where I sit now, hundreds of miles and more than ten years later, I can look back across that table and see what I was blind to then: an old woman full of pride for her grandson. She was expecting that he would soon have a bride.
For me, it was a cheap vacation to Florida. I had been waiting for it all winter, weighing the cost of continuing to date Carlos against spending a week on the beach. Trudging through the Rochester snow and wind, a few extra weeks seemed an easy price to pay. When we got back, my plan was to wait a few more weeks for the Viennese Ball, and then break up with him.
He was good at making a show of being a good boyfriend, bringing me roses and buying me little presents all the time. But he lashed out when I returned his phone calls too slowly, or spent an evening out with friends. Our arguments were tiresome battles, and when I would try to leave, feeling exhausted and mentally bruised, he would refuse to let me go. He'd keep me hostage in his room until I broke down and lost my anger.
Earlier that day, after we checked into the hotel where we were staying, Carlos opend a bottle of wine. He sat on the edge of the bed holding a delicately wrapped box in his hands. It was a present for me. I untied the ribbon, letting it fall to the floor and slipped off the paper. A black lace teddy lay folded inside a cushion of red tissue paper. He wanted me to put it on.
I tried it on in the bathroom with the door locked. It was cheap and itchy, something I would have never bought for myself. The material gapped between my breasts and was loose where it should have been snug. I stood on the edge of the tub so I could see myself in the small mirror above the sink. I saw the reflection of another woman--the woman Carlos wished to see. A woman who adored him and would never leave him. A woman who made him respectable to his family. A woman who would walk out the door to make love to him. I lingered for a moment on the cold tile floor inhaling the smell of rusty water and Dial soap until Carlos knocked on the door.
Mamà and Carlos chatted in Spanish as she cleared the table. As her guests, we were not allowed to help. I watched her make after dinner coffee by placing grounds and water in a small, stove-top coffee pot and set it on the burner. A pan of milk warmed next to it. She took down bright yellow cups and saucers from the cupboard, poured in the milk, then the strong black coffee and set it before me. "Café con leche," she said.
It was rich, like drinking dessert. It was more milk than coffee, which seemed odd to me, my only experience being greasy cups of coffee and single serving creamers at Denny's. Normally, I wouldn't think to sip a hot drink on a warm night, but it seemed the perfect thing.
This world, with its good tomatoes and dark coffee was like a slightly brighter version of my own. It was a place of intimate families and neighbors, spicy language and strong women. Where men and women fought and loved with a greater intensity.
Mamà smiled at me and said something in Spanish I didn't fully understand. "She says you're pretty," said Carlos. I looked at him and he looked back expectantly. "Gracias," I whispered, and stared at the floor, embarrassed.
I remember the first time I ate one that way. A small dish of tomato slices rested on the table between Carlos and me, his Mamà and Papà and MamÃ's boyfriend, Ernesto. I took a slice and passed the dish to Carlos.
Carlos had warned me about his grandparents' unconventional relationship the day before, as we made the drive from Miami to Key West where they lived. Ernesto and his wife had been their neighbors for many years. When his wife passed away, he moved into the house soon after. Since Papà was too old to be interested in sex, it didn't take long for Ernesto to move into MamÃ's bedroom too. Papà didn't mind too much, because he liked the company. The old men would sit in the front room together, watching television all day. It was clear from MamÃ's fiery red hair stacked high on her head and her deep belly laughs that she wore the pants in the family.
The two old men piled their plates high and silently worked their way through them, as Mamà peppered Carlos with questions in Spanish. She didn't speak very much English, and I had only a semester's worth of Spanish class, so I gave up trying to follow their conversation, though I could tell they were talking about me. I took small bites of salty chicken, rice and fried plantains and tried to act like I didn't know it, letting my eyes drift around the bright blue kitchen and out the window to where neighborhood kids were playing in the street.
My plate was clean except for the tomato. They weren't my favorite, but since I didn't want to be rude, I divided it into quarters with the edge of my fork and took a bite. "Mmmm. This is the best tomato I've ever eaten," I said to Carlos, who quickly translated my words to his grandmother. "Ella dice, es major tomate que en la vida ha tenido." She smiled and pushed the dish of tomatoes toward me.
From where I sit now, hundreds of miles and more than ten years later, I can look back across that table and see what I was blind to then: an old woman full of pride for her grandson. She was expecting that he would soon have a bride.
For me, it was a cheap vacation to Florida. I had been waiting for it all winter, weighing the cost of continuing to date Carlos against spending a week on the beach. Trudging through the Rochester snow and wind, a few extra weeks seemed an easy price to pay. When we got back, my plan was to wait a few more weeks for the Viennese Ball, and then break up with him.
He was good at making a show of being a good boyfriend, bringing me roses and buying me little presents all the time. But he lashed out when I returned his phone calls too slowly, or spent an evening out with friends. Our arguments were tiresome battles, and when I would try to leave, feeling exhausted and mentally bruised, he would refuse to let me go. He'd keep me hostage in his room until I broke down and lost my anger.
Earlier that day, after we checked into the hotel where we were staying, Carlos opend a bottle of wine. He sat on the edge of the bed holding a delicately wrapped box in his hands. It was a present for me. I untied the ribbon, letting it fall to the floor and slipped off the paper. A black lace teddy lay folded inside a cushion of red tissue paper. He wanted me to put it on.
I tried it on in the bathroom with the door locked. It was cheap and itchy, something I would have never bought for myself. The material gapped between my breasts and was loose where it should have been snug. I stood on the edge of the tub so I could see myself in the small mirror above the sink. I saw the reflection of another woman--the woman Carlos wished to see. A woman who adored him and would never leave him. A woman who made him respectable to his family. A woman who would walk out the door to make love to him. I lingered for a moment on the cold tile floor inhaling the smell of rusty water and Dial soap until Carlos knocked on the door.
Mamà and Carlos chatted in Spanish as she cleared the table. As her guests, we were not allowed to help. I watched her make after dinner coffee by placing grounds and water in a small, stove-top coffee pot and set it on the burner. A pan of milk warmed next to it. She took down bright yellow cups and saucers from the cupboard, poured in the milk, then the strong black coffee and set it before me. "Café con leche," she said.
It was rich, like drinking dessert. It was more milk than coffee, which seemed odd to me, my only experience being greasy cups of coffee and single serving creamers at Denny's. Normally, I wouldn't think to sip a hot drink on a warm night, but it seemed the perfect thing.
This world, with its good tomatoes and dark coffee was like a slightly brighter version of my own. It was a place of intimate families and neighbors, spicy language and strong women. Where men and women fought and loved with a greater intensity.
Mamà smiled at me and said something in Spanish I didn't fully understand. "She says you're pretty," said Carlos. I looked at him and he looked back expectantly. "Gracias," I whispered, and stared at the floor, embarrassed.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Friends and coffee
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off,
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze;
When your affairs come round, one way or t'other,
Go to the coffee-house, & take another.
- Byron, Don Juan
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze;
When your affairs come round, one way or t'other,
Go to the coffee-house, & take another.
- Byron, Don Juan
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Things that happen here
Firecrackers break the silence
Loose dogs roam without collars
Bees fly over the laurel hedge
Strangers walk down the back alley and kick up dust
The neighbor waters her lawn
The bus roars down Duke and passes me by
The medical marijuana card holder smokes his weed
The dandelions sprout from the dry grass
The for sale signs go up
The old woman washes her driveway with water from the hose
The earthworm is killed by the bus tire
The chicken sits atop the fence
The orange cat sleeps in the flower bed
The woodpecker shrieks at the dawn
The old woman goes to bed at nine
Four teenage boys with a pipe wrench chase after a man
The homeless search the recycling for pop cans
The ice cream truck haunts the streets
The roofs grow moss.
Loose dogs roam without collars
Bees fly over the laurel hedge
Strangers walk down the back alley and kick up dust
The neighbor waters her lawn
The bus roars down Duke and passes me by
The medical marijuana card holder smokes his weed
The dandelions sprout from the dry grass
The for sale signs go up
The old woman washes her driveway with water from the hose
The earthworm is killed by the bus tire
The chicken sits atop the fence
The orange cat sleeps in the flower bed
The woodpecker shrieks at the dawn
The old woman goes to bed at nine
Four teenage boys with a pipe wrench chase after a man
The homeless search the recycling for pop cans
The ice cream truck haunts the streets
The roofs grow moss.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Meriweather complete
You'll be pleased to know that I finished "For Meriweather" this morning. Check it out and tell me what you think. It was hard to decide on how to end it. I didn't want to be too obvious or too trite. Other possible endings could include:
1. She discovers he doesn't have a real package, but a pair of neuticals instead.
2. He's a she-male.
3. It's a set-up! He's a undercover cop trained to ferret out genital-grabbing freaks like her!
1. She discovers he doesn't have a real package, but a pair of neuticals instead.
2. He's a she-male.
3. It's a set-up! He's a undercover cop trained to ferret out genital-grabbing freaks like her!
Sunday, July 10, 2005
On and on and on and on...
I went to a former co-worker's bridal shower yesterday. She wore a pink dress and a tiara. We ate bad food (everything had meat in it! the salad had salami, the pasta had ground beef...so I ate a few celery stalks and a piece of bread...no one ever thinks of the gd vegetarians), we played stupid games (bridal bingo), and watched her open her HUUUGE stack of gifts (registry: Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, aka. nice, expensive stuff).
Ah, it sucked. It made me depressed and self-loathing, because I had to be there for three hours with all these people I didn't know, pretending to have fun and be interested. I hate it when I can't act like myself.
It also made me sad that my mom didn't offer to throw me a shower.
I have to admit, the one really sweet thing was watching her with all her aunties and her family friends. Many of the older women there had obviously watched her grow up. Of course the shower was stupid to me; I've only known her for a short time. But to all the other women there, the crappy salad and the silly games had meaning. Behind the gooing and gahing over dishware is a powerful ritual of a girl growing up and becoming an adult, becoming one of the clan.
I resist ceremony. I know I do. It's my own fault. And then I long for it at the most inappropriate time. It would have been nice to have my mom and some of her friends that have known me all my life, all together. It's continuity, it's relatedness, and that's a good thing. When I break with the past by choosing to do things in non-traditional ways, I shoot myself in the foot, in a way. Because,
Non-tradtional=individual=an invitation for isolation.
Traditional=groupthink=accepting the will of the pack.
I can't say that'd I'd do it all differently were I to do it all again, because I've never been so keen on herd mentality. I think I'd rather chew my own leg off than be chained to the group. But observing the way other women choose to live their lives does make me question my decisions, wonder about their impact down the road.
Oh yeah...and speaking of impact...I hope that I never gave my former co-worker the link to this blog.
Ah, it sucked. It made me depressed and self-loathing, because I had to be there for three hours with all these people I didn't know, pretending to have fun and be interested. I hate it when I can't act like myself.
It also made me sad that my mom didn't offer to throw me a shower.
I have to admit, the one really sweet thing was watching her with all her aunties and her family friends. Many of the older women there had obviously watched her grow up. Of course the shower was stupid to me; I've only known her for a short time. But to all the other women there, the crappy salad and the silly games had meaning. Behind the gooing and gahing over dishware is a powerful ritual of a girl growing up and becoming an adult, becoming one of the clan.
I resist ceremony. I know I do. It's my own fault. And then I long for it at the most inappropriate time. It would have been nice to have my mom and some of her friends that have known me all my life, all together. It's continuity, it's relatedness, and that's a good thing. When I break with the past by choosing to do things in non-traditional ways, I shoot myself in the foot, in a way. Because,
Non-tradtional=individual=an invitation for isolation.
Traditional=groupthink=accepting the will of the pack.
I can't say that'd I'd do it all differently were I to do it all again, because I've never been so keen on herd mentality. I think I'd rather chew my own leg off than be chained to the group. But observing the way other women choose to live their lives does make me question my decisions, wonder about their impact down the road.
Oh yeah...and speaking of impact...I hope that I never gave my former co-worker the link to this blog.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Supernanny meets psycho beast child
Many readers of this blog will have heard me rant about my recent theory regarding the rash of horror films that feature kids gone bad. Really bad. Like channeling-the-devil bad. For example:
The Ring
Hide and Seek
Both of these films feature a supernatural kid bent on murder. There are others where children just plain scary:
Dark Water
The Others
The Sixth Sense
My theory is that there's a surge of these films because the modern cult of childhood has caused adults to fear their children. Kids have too much power. The idea that "we should do it for the children," or that we must "protect the children," and all of that kind of rhetoric that gets tossed around has led to a climate where we are afraid to do anything even close to the kind of discipline that was common even 20 years ago. Parents have become permissive to the extreme, for fear that they might otherwise damage their little one's confidence. And without any sense of boundaries, the kids are going insane. That fear is coming out in the films of recent: "Oh my god! My kid isn't just a brat, he's Satan incarnate!"
As E. pointed out, these film are different than films like "The Exorcist" or "Poltergeist" which also featured creepy kids. In those films, it wasn't the kids themselves that were bad, but some evil, outside force that had taken advantage of the child's innocence. In "The Exorcist," they don't kill Regan, they just punish the devil that's inhabiting her body. But in "The Ring," it's definately that little stringy-haired chick who needs some ass-whoopin'.
It's no accident that television shows like "Super Nanny" have emerged at the same time. I've caught an episode where a tiny British woman rolls up in a VW beetle to a house swarming with screaming, reckless kids. The parents are besides themselves. They can't figure out why their two year old won't take a bath! The five year old won't stop hitting the dog! Their teenage daughter has dyed her hair pink and stays out all night. Super Nanny spends a few days coaching mom and dad to get a backbone and all is put right.
I suppose it wouldn't be as exciting if when, in "The Ring," Naiomi Watts makes a copy of the evil video to save her son, instead, Super Nanny arrives and gives the creepy girl a time-out. But I sure would have enjoyed it. And I suppose it would have prevented the making of "The Ring 2."
Both of these films feature a supernatural kid bent on murder. There are others where children just plain scary:
My theory is that there's a surge of these films because the modern cult of childhood has caused adults to fear their children. Kids have too much power. The idea that "we should do it for the children," or that we must "protect the children," and all of that kind of rhetoric that gets tossed around has led to a climate where we are afraid to do anything even close to the kind of discipline that was common even 20 years ago. Parents have become permissive to the extreme, for fear that they might otherwise damage their little one's confidence. And without any sense of boundaries, the kids are going insane. That fear is coming out in the films of recent: "Oh my god! My kid isn't just a brat, he's Satan incarnate!"
As E. pointed out, these film are different than films like "The Exorcist" or "Poltergeist" which also featured creepy kids. In those films, it wasn't the kids themselves that were bad, but some evil, outside force that had taken advantage of the child's innocence. In "The Exorcist," they don't kill Regan, they just punish the devil that's inhabiting her body. But in "The Ring," it's definately that little stringy-haired chick who needs some ass-whoopin'.
It's no accident that television shows like "Super Nanny" have emerged at the same time. I've caught an episode where a tiny British woman rolls up in a VW beetle to a house swarming with screaming, reckless kids. The parents are besides themselves. They can't figure out why their two year old won't take a bath! The five year old won't stop hitting the dog! Their teenage daughter has dyed her hair pink and stays out all night. Super Nanny spends a few days coaching mom and dad to get a backbone and all is put right.
I suppose it wouldn't be as exciting if when, in "The Ring," Naiomi Watts makes a copy of the evil video to save her son, instead, Super Nanny arrives and gives the creepy girl a time-out. But I sure would have enjoyed it. And I suppose it would have prevented the making of "The Ring 2."
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
F-U-double-nizzy
Okay...here's something for the pure entertainment value of it (thanks to A&E). Here's my previous post, "The bee-hive having," translated into gangsta-speak, courtesy of Gizoogle. It's some funny shiznit.
The bee-hive doggy stylin'
I love this letta fizzy our Pusha.
Pam n Tony,
On thursday, I tizzy tha whole hive apart again. I couldn't find tha queen but there was lots of brood n I'm sure she is in there lost in tha piles of bees that is present. I did makes killa split, so I unloaded a few more of those bees n brought them over ta mah place ta requeen like old skool shit.
My gangsta attempt ta requeen tha fiznirst split failed. The queen was releazed but killed yaba daba dizzle. Don't ask me why but I placed her in tha hizzy too soon n tha bees were still stressed while in transport n relocizzles. At $14.00 a queen, I'd say its sum-m sum-m I need ta git shot calla at . Drop it like its hot.
Yo hizzle shows no signs of want'n ta swarm. It is an extremely strong hive tizzle is ready fo` tha honey flow ta start. My next move will be ta add a honey snoopa in `bout 10 days. I have bootylicious expectations as everyth'n is primed n any swizzay tendancy has ended n shit.
A couple of guard bees slipped out of tha split hizzy that I was mobbin' ta load into tha ride n a bee nailed me in mah left pusha eyelid . Slap your mutha fuckin self. When I wizzy up this AM, it felt n looked like I had been in a barroom fizzay . Keep'n it gangsta dogg. My left side of mah fizzle was really swollen now pass the glock Anotha dogg house production.. T-H-to-tha-izzat happened at `bout 4 o'clock, n I hoped thiznat you weren't return'n soon. You M-to-tha-izzust have noticed sum-m sum-m was up . Snoop dogg is in this bitch.
I left tha feeda in tha entrance but they dizzay need ta be fed fo' rizeal. At least, not in any time soon hittin that booty. Talk ta you playa. Give me a cizzay if there is any questizzles
The bee-hive doggy stylin'
I love this letta fizzy our Pusha.
Pam n Tony,
On thursday, I tizzy tha whole hive apart again. I couldn't find tha queen but there was lots of brood n I'm sure she is in there lost in tha piles of bees that is present. I did makes killa split, so I unloaded a few more of those bees n brought them over ta mah place ta requeen like old skool shit.
My gangsta attempt ta requeen tha fiznirst split failed. The queen was releazed but killed yaba daba dizzle. Don't ask me why but I placed her in tha hizzy too soon n tha bees were still stressed while in transport n relocizzles. At $14.00 a queen, I'd say its sum-m sum-m I need ta git shot calla at . Drop it like its hot.
Yo hizzle shows no signs of want'n ta swarm. It is an extremely strong hive tizzle is ready fo` tha honey flow ta start. My next move will be ta add a honey snoopa in `bout 10 days. I have bootylicious expectations as everyth'n is primed n any swizzay tendancy has ended n shit.
A couple of guard bees slipped out of tha split hizzy that I was mobbin' ta load into tha ride n a bee nailed me in mah left pusha eyelid . Slap your mutha fuckin self. When I wizzy up this AM, it felt n looked like I had been in a barroom fizzay . Keep'n it gangsta dogg. My left side of mah fizzle was really swollen now pass the glock Anotha dogg house production.. T-H-to-tha-izzat happened at `bout 4 o'clock, n I hoped thiznat you weren't return'n soon. You M-to-tha-izzust have noticed sum-m sum-m was up . Snoop dogg is in this bitch.
I left tha feeda in tha entrance but they dizzay need ta be fed fo' rizeal. At least, not in any time soon hittin that booty. Talk ta you playa. Give me a cizzay if there is any questizzles
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
I am from
My friend E. sent me this wonderful poem exercise, which is essentially a form of mad-lib style poem making. I had to stop everything so I could write my version right away. If you want to see the template so you can write your own, go here
Here is my poem:
I am from Fry Daddy, from powder puffs wafting silvery talc powder and Prell shampoo.
I am from the doll’s house, with its pink, push-button stove and counters, laundry chutes, sloped ceilings plastered with Duran Duran posters where I wrote the names of my crushes on the bottom of my desk chair.
I am from the Sycamore, the Linden, and the Elmwood, from Cazenovia creek, that wound its way past the cemetery toward Burger King, stinking like a sewer, from Sinking Ponds and four-leaf clovers.
I am from Amazing Grace in the kitchen, and maple spread, from Ruthie and Lois and Floyd. Audrey and Bud. Always an auntie, never an aunt.
From “practice makes perfect,” as I trudged toward ice skating or swim practice, and “you have to call them, even if they don’t call you,” when my heart was broken and lonely.
I am from speaking tongues in an evangelical church, kicked out of catholic school for wearing sideburns, asking the Sunday school teacher to define a virgin, and being stoned to death while spreading the message of Christ.
I’m from Motown and Staten Island, from Sweden and Deutschland. Pickled pig’s feet and liverwurst with mustard, Foosh soup, and little chicken, little salad.
From the stubborn toddler pouring a beer in her mother’s shoe to get attention, the ambitious girl who sold homemade potholders for change, the young woman who escaped her younger siblings by going to church.
I am from refrigerator door, dry sink, battered shoebox.
Here is my poem:
I am from Fry Daddy, from powder puffs wafting silvery talc powder and Prell shampoo.
I am from the doll’s house, with its pink, push-button stove and counters, laundry chutes, sloped ceilings plastered with Duran Duran posters where I wrote the names of my crushes on the bottom of my desk chair.
I am from the Sycamore, the Linden, and the Elmwood, from Cazenovia creek, that wound its way past the cemetery toward Burger King, stinking like a sewer, from Sinking Ponds and four-leaf clovers.
I am from Amazing Grace in the kitchen, and maple spread, from Ruthie and Lois and Floyd. Audrey and Bud. Always an auntie, never an aunt.
From “practice makes perfect,” as I trudged toward ice skating or swim practice, and “you have to call them, even if they don’t call you,” when my heart was broken and lonely.
I am from speaking tongues in an evangelical church, kicked out of catholic school for wearing sideburns, asking the Sunday school teacher to define a virgin, and being stoned to death while spreading the message of Christ.
I’m from Motown and Staten Island, from Sweden and Deutschland. Pickled pig’s feet and liverwurst with mustard, Foosh soup, and little chicken, little salad.
From the stubborn toddler pouring a beer in her mother’s shoe to get attention, the ambitious girl who sold homemade potholders for change, the young woman who escaped her younger siblings by going to church.
I am from refrigerator door, dry sink, battered shoebox.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Saturday, June 04, 2005
More Meriweather
I've updated "Meriweather." (See below.) It's such fun to write. I'm still thinking about how to end it though.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
For Meriweather
She just pretends to be clumsy, so she can grab mens' packages as she falls. She's done it twice today already, once at the coffee shop, where she fondled a young, brainy bike messenger type. The second time she was entering the elevator where she worked as a receptionist in a law firm. She spotted on the of senior partners in front of her and sprinted to catch him. The opportunity was too good to pass up. She often used speed as a guise--she was running too fast and slipped over the threshold, or she was flailing to catch the bus and bumped into some obstacle, usually a trash bin or potted plant.
The surprising thing was how differently each man would react. For example, the lawyer pretended not to notice. Or maybe he really didn't notice, his package shrivelled with disuse from too many long nights curled up with a law journal instad of his wife. Married men--she could tell by a quick glance at their left hand--seemed to enjoy it. They would always yell out something like, "Hey! Watch the goods!" with a wink and a snicker.
It was the men her own age who got mad. They'd shrink from her touch and scowl harshly yelling "Watch out!" or "What the hell?"
"The technique" as she had come to call it, was a method of quickly achieving a very intimate knowledge of a man. Whether one side was bigger than the other, or one side had been removed, or there were piercings--she knew something about that man that few others knew. It was a kind of power, because they didn't know she knew it. They would adjust themselves and walk off, never guessing that a complete stranger had peered into the depths of thier lives, like a ten year-old peers into a hampster cage, observing the way the hampster nibbles on pellets or runs on the wheel.
She considered trying the technique on women, but it seemed that groping a breast or pubic area wouldn't return the same kind of information. Maybe she was less objective, being a woman herself. Or maybe women were just less puzzling in general. You could already read so much about a woman from her handbag, her hairstyle, or the way she glanced (or didn't) at her reflection in a shop window. Men hid their secrets better. It was only after giving one a full, body-checking grab that he revealed himself.
There was one man, however, that she hadn't been able to get a read on. She'd see him frequently as she would walk to her bus stop after work. He must have worked downtown too, or perhaps lived nearby. He would always be wearing khakis and a non-descript, plaid button-down. It was the male uniform--what men wore when they really didn't care about clothes, but still believed what their mothers had taught them about looking decent in public. These were the same sort of men who happily stripped down to their boxer shorts at home. She see him everyday at just about the same spot. She would be walking past the newsstand, and he would be coming in the opposite direction.
One day, she saw him approaching and purposely lingered to look at the headlines. He was three steps away from her when she turned and caught her foot just-so under the newspaper rack. She made a wild gesture of swinging her arms wide to the side as if she were trying to catch her balance, but her oversized handbag swung out just enough to pull her over, depositing lipsticks and old receipts onto the sidewalk at the same moment she extended her arm and cupped her hand.
And then she had done it, but felt nothing. No spark of intuition, no glimpse of soul. Just spongy flesh that yielded to the side. He was silent, and looked straight ahead in a blind manner. He didn't even seem to notice she was there.
She scrambled up and made her standard apologies while collecting her purse. "Oh...I'm so sorry...two left feet..." and moved down the block. On the bus she closed her eyes and tried to get a sense of him. There was nothing. "Maybe he's an alien...a zombie...a pod-person," she wondered.
And so today, she decided she was going to do something she had never done before. She was going to try the technique for a second time on the same man. She knew she risked revealing herself because the clumsy act would only work once. But she couldn't free herself from thinking about him until she was certain there was something there, or he really was as blank as she first sensed him to be.
All day, she obsessed about how and when she would do it. She needed to position herself in a way that would produce the optimum read. It needed to be something that would give her the maximum amount of contact time and allow for the greatest surface area to be covered. Halfway through the day, she noticed she had been doodling penis shapes on the "While You Were Out" notepads she used to give phone messages to the lawyers. And then it came to her: she was going in from behind.
After work, she waited at the newstand once again nervously fingering El Pais and the New York Times, and looking for him out of the corner of her eye. When finally he passed, she counted to five and then took off after him, carefully keeping far enough behind him that she wouldn't be too obvious. He was wearing a grey t-shirt and shorts today, which seemed out of character for him. He was looking ruffled, a little grungy even. His pace was brisk, and she found herself taking two steps for every one of his.
They walked two blocks and then he started to slow down. His hand entered his pocket and he pulled out a ring of keys. She saw him sifting through for one and knew her moment had arrived. This was where he lived. In just a moment he would unlock the door to this squat, brick apartment building and dissapear. Her chance would be gone. So she sprinted and lept head-first, like a baseball player diving for a fly-ball, both arms outstretched, palms exposed and fingers wide. She grabbed hold of his crotch, closed her eyes tight, and clenched her grip.
And she felt nothing, except the scraping of her own elbow against the pavement and her ribs making a heavy thud as she hit the ground. She realized he was screaming in pain and writhing on the ground in front of her. Her hand was still between his legs. He kicked her in the head and she let go. She felt no pain, just blind confusion. Nothing. Still nothing.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he screamed. She could feel people staring at her as they walked by. She had just outed herself to the world, all for nothing.
She sat up, and looked at him. He was breathing hard and his shirt was stained near his shoulder where he had hit the concrete. He struggled to sit up, and faced her. He loomed in and she braced herself for a slap or punch. She deserved it. But all she felt was a wet touch on the lips.
He had kissed her? She opened her eyes and looked at him. And then she saw it, the thing she had been waiting for, the feeling she had been waiting to feel, a tiny object placed on the horizon, so small it was hardly there, and just a movement away from vanishing altogether. She found she was staring at herself. Like standing between two mirrors, where the reflections were endless, she had felt nothing because he had been thinking of her. He pulled away and looked hopefully at her.
"Ya'll are fuckin' crazy!" she heard someone say. They both turned and saw a grizzled man with a plastic bag full of empty soda cans watching them, one hand still searching the garbage can. She couldn't help but laugh, and was happy to see that though he was still holding himself, he was laughing too.
The surprising thing was how differently each man would react. For example, the lawyer pretended not to notice. Or maybe he really didn't notice, his package shrivelled with disuse from too many long nights curled up with a law journal instad of his wife. Married men--she could tell by a quick glance at their left hand--seemed to enjoy it. They would always yell out something like, "Hey! Watch the goods!" with a wink and a snicker.
It was the men her own age who got mad. They'd shrink from her touch and scowl harshly yelling "Watch out!" or "What the hell?"
"The technique" as she had come to call it, was a method of quickly achieving a very intimate knowledge of a man. Whether one side was bigger than the other, or one side had been removed, or there were piercings--she knew something about that man that few others knew. It was a kind of power, because they didn't know she knew it. They would adjust themselves and walk off, never guessing that a complete stranger had peered into the depths of thier lives, like a ten year-old peers into a hampster cage, observing the way the hampster nibbles on pellets or runs on the wheel.
She considered trying the technique on women, but it seemed that groping a breast or pubic area wouldn't return the same kind of information. Maybe she was less objective, being a woman herself. Or maybe women were just less puzzling in general. You could already read so much about a woman from her handbag, her hairstyle, or the way she glanced (or didn't) at her reflection in a shop window. Men hid their secrets better. It was only after giving one a full, body-checking grab that he revealed himself.
There was one man, however, that she hadn't been able to get a read on. She'd see him frequently as she would walk to her bus stop after work. He must have worked downtown too, or perhaps lived nearby. He would always be wearing khakis and a non-descript, plaid button-down. It was the male uniform--what men wore when they really didn't care about clothes, but still believed what their mothers had taught them about looking decent in public. These were the same sort of men who happily stripped down to their boxer shorts at home. She see him everyday at just about the same spot. She would be walking past the newsstand, and he would be coming in the opposite direction.
One day, she saw him approaching and purposely lingered to look at the headlines. He was three steps away from her when she turned and caught her foot just-so under the newspaper rack. She made a wild gesture of swinging her arms wide to the side as if she were trying to catch her balance, but her oversized handbag swung out just enough to pull her over, depositing lipsticks and old receipts onto the sidewalk at the same moment she extended her arm and cupped her hand.
And then she had done it, but felt nothing. No spark of intuition, no glimpse of soul. Just spongy flesh that yielded to the side. He was silent, and looked straight ahead in a blind manner. He didn't even seem to notice she was there.
She scrambled up and made her standard apologies while collecting her purse. "Oh...I'm so sorry...two left feet..." and moved down the block. On the bus she closed her eyes and tried to get a sense of him. There was nothing. "Maybe he's an alien...a zombie...a pod-person," she wondered.
And so today, she decided she was going to do something she had never done before. She was going to try the technique for a second time on the same man. She knew she risked revealing herself because the clumsy act would only work once. But she couldn't free herself from thinking about him until she was certain there was something there, or he really was as blank as she first sensed him to be.
All day, she obsessed about how and when she would do it. She needed to position herself in a way that would produce the optimum read. It needed to be something that would give her the maximum amount of contact time and allow for the greatest surface area to be covered. Halfway through the day, she noticed she had been doodling penis shapes on the "While You Were Out" notepads she used to give phone messages to the lawyers. And then it came to her: she was going in from behind.
After work, she waited at the newstand once again nervously fingering El Pais and the New York Times, and looking for him out of the corner of her eye. When finally he passed, she counted to five and then took off after him, carefully keeping far enough behind him that she wouldn't be too obvious. He was wearing a grey t-shirt and shorts today, which seemed out of character for him. He was looking ruffled, a little grungy even. His pace was brisk, and she found herself taking two steps for every one of his.
They walked two blocks and then he started to slow down. His hand entered his pocket and he pulled out a ring of keys. She saw him sifting through for one and knew her moment had arrived. This was where he lived. In just a moment he would unlock the door to this squat, brick apartment building and dissapear. Her chance would be gone. So she sprinted and lept head-first, like a baseball player diving for a fly-ball, both arms outstretched, palms exposed and fingers wide. She grabbed hold of his crotch, closed her eyes tight, and clenched her grip.
And she felt nothing, except the scraping of her own elbow against the pavement and her ribs making a heavy thud as she hit the ground. She realized he was screaming in pain and writhing on the ground in front of her. Her hand was still between his legs. He kicked her in the head and she let go. She felt no pain, just blind confusion. Nothing. Still nothing.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he screamed. She could feel people staring at her as they walked by. She had just outed herself to the world, all for nothing.
She sat up, and looked at him. He was breathing hard and his shirt was stained near his shoulder where he had hit the concrete. He struggled to sit up, and faced her. He loomed in and she braced herself for a slap or punch. She deserved it. But all she felt was a wet touch on the lips.
He had kissed her? She opened her eyes and looked at him. And then she saw it, the thing she had been waiting for, the feeling she had been waiting to feel, a tiny object placed on the horizon, so small it was hardly there, and just a movement away from vanishing altogether. She found she was staring at herself. Like standing between two mirrors, where the reflections were endless, she had felt nothing because he had been thinking of her. He pulled away and looked hopefully at her.
"Ya'll are fuckin' crazy!" she heard someone say. They both turned and saw a grizzled man with a plastic bag full of empty soda cans watching them, one hand still searching the garbage can. She couldn't help but laugh, and was happy to see that though he was still holding himself, he was laughing too.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
A meditation on Louis Armstrong
I
Louis would have felt awfully awkward at dinner with my family. Mom would have put spaghetti on the table--the kind with the big chunks of stewed tomatoes in the sauce--and his grin would have gone away. His mouth would no longer be like an ear of corn with big, juicy white kernels, but pursed lips like a pert lemon.
Maybe he would have liked mom's pork chops and apple sauce better. But if spaghetti was what we were having, then he better eat it. And on top of all that he'd have to make small talk with my dad, and try not to smack me across the table for staring at him--his big gold ring, his jaunty checked cap, cushy merino argyle socks so proudly ending in a pair of fine leather shoes.
"How nice, how nice..." he'd politely say in response to my dad's bad jokes, or my mom's attempts to make him eat more greasy garlic bread.
II
You are what you eat. As if teeth are corn kernels, and eyes are lemon leaves. I could eat myself outside in. Begin with my licorice hair and saffron eyelashes. Nibble off my potato chip fingernails and feast on my pudgy little vienna sausage fingers.
It's not an attractive fantasy. I'd rather my doorknobs become chocolate-covered almonds and my stairway transform into slabs of peanut brittle.
I'm such an American. A consumer. The world is more attractive as a place for me to gorge my appetites. Perhaps as an Iraqi suicide bomber, the idea of my lips as a sour lemon feels like a better idea. A bright, shiny fruit for God alone.
III
juicy fruit is gonna move ya
chews so soft it gets right through ya
juicy fruit the taste the taste the taste is gonna move ya
Louis would have felt awfully awkward at dinner with my family. Mom would have put spaghetti on the table--the kind with the big chunks of stewed tomatoes in the sauce--and his grin would have gone away. His mouth would no longer be like an ear of corn with big, juicy white kernels, but pursed lips like a pert lemon.
Maybe he would have liked mom's pork chops and apple sauce better. But if spaghetti was what we were having, then he better eat it. And on top of all that he'd have to make small talk with my dad, and try not to smack me across the table for staring at him--his big gold ring, his jaunty checked cap, cushy merino argyle socks so proudly ending in a pair of fine leather shoes.
"How nice, how nice..." he'd politely say in response to my dad's bad jokes, or my mom's attempts to make him eat more greasy garlic bread.
II
You are what you eat. As if teeth are corn kernels, and eyes are lemon leaves. I could eat myself outside in. Begin with my licorice hair and saffron eyelashes. Nibble off my potato chip fingernails and feast on my pudgy little vienna sausage fingers.
It's not an attractive fantasy. I'd rather my doorknobs become chocolate-covered almonds and my stairway transform into slabs of peanut brittle.
I'm such an American. A consumer. The world is more attractive as a place for me to gorge my appetites. Perhaps as an Iraqi suicide bomber, the idea of my lips as a sour lemon feels like a better idea. A bright, shiny fruit for God alone.
III
juicy fruit is gonna move ya
chews so soft it gets right through ya
juicy fruit the taste the taste the taste is gonna move ya
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The worst of me
40+ hours a week and I arrive home with only the worst parts of me intact. The food hoarder, beer guzzler, bitch, sloth, whiney parts. The better parts get spent uselessly on clients and co-workers, coffee runs, and e-mails.
I walk in the door and my priorities are drink, shit, eat, sleep, leave me alone. Leave me the fuck alone.
I thought this job would be better. It is. But I'm still exhausted. I'm still unable to cope, addicted to caffine and alcohol, craving space from telephones, friends, and family.
It's not them. It's me. I've sold my brain to someone else for the past 10 hours and I just got it back! I want to keep it to myself before I have to consider their thirst, hunger, exhaustion, sickness, whatever it is they want to me to take care of. And there are animals, and mail, and unanswered phone calls, and oh yeah, better exercise so I don't get fat (I'm getting fatter every day, fat ass).
I spend time with friends and I barely hear what they say because I'm thinking I only have two hours and then need to go back to laundry, groceries, oil change, cat food, drain cleaner, garbage. I eat food and forget I'm chewing. My mouth is full and I taste nothing. The only time I am truely happy is tucked in bed, the lights still on and slightly drowsy, I have seven blissful hours of nothing in front of me with space from my life, my fat body, my dissapointment.
I walk in the door and my priorities are drink, shit, eat, sleep, leave me alone. Leave me the fuck alone.
I thought this job would be better. It is. But I'm still exhausted. I'm still unable to cope, addicted to caffine and alcohol, craving space from telephones, friends, and family.
It's not them. It's me. I've sold my brain to someone else for the past 10 hours and I just got it back! I want to keep it to myself before I have to consider their thirst, hunger, exhaustion, sickness, whatever it is they want to me to take care of. And there are animals, and mail, and unanswered phone calls, and oh yeah, better exercise so I don't get fat (I'm getting fatter every day, fat ass).
I spend time with friends and I barely hear what they say because I'm thinking I only have two hours and then need to go back to laundry, groceries, oil change, cat food, drain cleaner, garbage. I eat food and forget I'm chewing. My mouth is full and I taste nothing. The only time I am truely happy is tucked in bed, the lights still on and slightly drowsy, I have seven blissful hours of nothing in front of me with space from my life, my fat body, my dissapointment.
Monday, May 23, 2005
The bee-hive having
I love this letter from our "bee-keeper"...
Pam and Tony,
On thursday, I took the whole hive apart again. I couldn't find the queen but there was lots of brood and I'm sure she is in there lost in the piles of bees that are present. I did make another split, so I unloaded a few more of those bees and brought them over to my place to requeen.
My earlier attempt to requeen the first split failed. The queen was released but killed. Don't ask me why but I placed her in the hive too soon and the bees were still stressed while in transport and relocation. At $14.00 a queen, I'd say its something I need to get better at.
Your hive shows no signs of wanting to swarm. It is an extremely strong hive that is ready for the honey flow to start. My next move will be to add a honey super in about 10 days. I have great expectations as everything is primed and any swarm tendancy has ended.
A couple of guard bees slipped out of the split hive that I was trying to load into the car and a bee nailed me in my left lower eyelid. When I woke up this AM, it felt and looked like I had been in a barroom fight. My left side of my face was really swollen. That happened at about 4 o'clock, and I hoped that you weren't returning soon. You must have noticed something was up.
I left the feeder in the entrance but they don't need to be fed. At least, not in any time soon. Talk to you later. Give me a call if there are any questions......Thomas
Pam and Tony,
On thursday, I took the whole hive apart again. I couldn't find the queen but there was lots of brood and I'm sure she is in there lost in the piles of bees that are present. I did make another split, so I unloaded a few more of those bees and brought them over to my place to requeen.
My earlier attempt to requeen the first split failed. The queen was released but killed. Don't ask me why but I placed her in the hive too soon and the bees were still stressed while in transport and relocation. At $14.00 a queen, I'd say its something I need to get better at.
Your hive shows no signs of wanting to swarm. It is an extremely strong hive that is ready for the honey flow to start. My next move will be to add a honey super in about 10 days. I have great expectations as everything is primed and any swarm tendancy has ended.
A couple of guard bees slipped out of the split hive that I was trying to load into the car and a bee nailed me in my left lower eyelid. When I woke up this AM, it felt and looked like I had been in a barroom fight. My left side of my face was really swollen. That happened at about 4 o'clock, and I hoped that you weren't returning soon. You must have noticed something was up.
I left the feeder in the entrance but they don't need to be fed. At least, not in any time soon. Talk to you later. Give me a call if there are any questions......Thomas
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Sense of place
As long as we stayed outside, we could live in our own world. Inside, the adults made the rules and we became the kids we were instead of the people we wanted to be.
We didn’t have any money anyway, so the Globe Hotel with its fish fry and cigarette smoke aroma was off limits to us. Hanging out behind the Aurora Theater was as much a thing to do as seeing the movie inside. There were always packs of skate rats, hair hanging over one eye, doing ollies and grinding their boards across the cement of the theater parking lot. That was usually where things got started. Rumors of parties floated like pollen. But mostly there was nothing, and we’d stay until the adults rolled out of the theater and drifted through the parking lot to their cars.
Other kids would go to the Boys Club at night. Kids whose parents would likely pick them up in a minivan promptly at 10 p.m. I went there a few times. Its gym and the game room didn’t appeal to me. There weren’t any dark corners where my secret life could be led. It provided a choice between basketball or foosball, but what I wanted was to make up my own rules.
We’d move in a huddle, down Main to South Grove. Hamlin Park was there for us, with its canopy of trees and the swings that beckoned like our own version of a living room. Sometimes it was the train tracks. Sometimes the corner of Sycamore and Linden. Going home wasn’t an option—even though for all of my fantasies of a game of Mexican hide and seek—nothing ever happened. It was important to be there in case Sarah did go off with Jason, or Pete’s parents did go away and that meant that he and Amy would go to second base. Or in case, that night, he did notice me.
We didn’t have any money anyway, so the Globe Hotel with its fish fry and cigarette smoke aroma was off limits to us. Hanging out behind the Aurora Theater was as much a thing to do as seeing the movie inside. There were always packs of skate rats, hair hanging over one eye, doing ollies and grinding their boards across the cement of the theater parking lot. That was usually where things got started. Rumors of parties floated like pollen. But mostly there was nothing, and we’d stay until the adults rolled out of the theater and drifted through the parking lot to their cars.
Other kids would go to the Boys Club at night. Kids whose parents would likely pick them up in a minivan promptly at 10 p.m. I went there a few times. Its gym and the game room didn’t appeal to me. There weren’t any dark corners where my secret life could be led. It provided a choice between basketball or foosball, but what I wanted was to make up my own rules.
We’d move in a huddle, down Main to South Grove. Hamlin Park was there for us, with its canopy of trees and the swings that beckoned like our own version of a living room. Sometimes it was the train tracks. Sometimes the corner of Sycamore and Linden. Going home wasn’t an option—even though for all of my fantasies of a game of Mexican hide and seek—nothing ever happened. It was important to be there in case Sarah did go off with Jason, or Pete’s parents did go away and that meant that he and Amy would go to second base. Or in case, that night, he did notice me.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Found Poem
The meadow sweet, the beehive cluster,
a nebula of blooms in sequence.
One, two, three cherry blossoms
in an ancient orchard,
so reddened and subdued.
Wear thick eyeglasses,
for red flower
robin's egg
bright forsythia
is risky to the eye,
like a red hot penny in the hand.
A wide angle lens will try to tell you,
"North is up."
But there's merely an edge
moving to swallow midnight into day,
a volcanic surge, a rising planet,
a gathering glow eclipsed in dull red
as dawn approaches.
Be sure to squint, or you might fall in love.
a nebula of blooms in sequence.
One, two, three cherry blossoms
in an ancient orchard,
so reddened and subdued.
Wear thick eyeglasses,
for red flower
robin's egg
bright forsythia
is risky to the eye,
like a red hot penny in the hand.
A wide angle lens will try to tell you,
"North is up."
But there's merely an edge
moving to swallow midnight into day,
a volcanic surge, a rising planet,
a gathering glow eclipsed in dull red
as dawn approaches.
Be sure to squint, or you might fall in love.
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