“Come on! You’re not handing them to me fast enough,” Joey says. Under his breath I can faintly hear a string of muffled swear words. We are putting up the fake tree with the sparse spears of tinsel. We stick each thin branch onto the plastic trunk. It looks anorexic and patchy, like all of its hair had fallen out during chemo. We awkwardly string up lights to fill in the gaps.
Fuck, Nye” he screams. He just stepped on a ruby toned bulb I left on the floor. It shattered into pieces like a delicate bird’s egg, paper thin and vulnerable.
I unwrap the tissue paper covered in pictures of candy canes and snowmen. I pull out each ornament. Joey sits on the couch nursing his foot as I hang the Mexican tin stars up, careful not to step on the shattered bulb. The hangers are made of wrapping paper ribbon that that has become brittle and faded. My ex-husband and I bought those our first Christmas. The plastic lobster and the one eyed panda Ray and I bought during an abnormally warm winter. We hardly fought then. The goofy bride and groom smothered with yellow glitter we got right before he packed up his CD collection and cutlery set.
The years have piled up since the Mexican ornaments. My ex-husband and I sent out fifty-three holiday cards that year. We deliberated over what type of card to get, settling on something funny and traditional. We got even more cards in return, our apartment mail box stuffed with colored envelopes from well wishers. Ray and I picked up a generic box of cards from the drugstore and mailed them out a few days before Christmas. A dozen or so envelopes came addressed to us.
It is the night before Christmas. I didn’t send any cards out this year and only two came in the mail. One was from a realtor. The other from an old high school friend who writes letters from the perspective of her cats. Only my name was written on the front in cheery ink. I contemplate this as I put the last ornament on the tree: a pile of plastic grapes.
“Look Joey, the Tree of Failure. Each one tells the story of the demise of my previous relationships. Good thing we haven’t gotten any ornaments,” I say.
“You’re depressing, Nye. You can ruin just about anything,” he says as he goes upstairs to watch TV with a can of beer in his hand.
“Merry fucking Christmas to you, too!” I shout as I flip out all the lights. I stare at the brilliant bulbs as they dance and make shadows on the ceiling. In some ways it seems fitting to see all of my memories hanging from metal hooks.
In the morning, Joey acts like nothing happened. He has daytime amnesia, forgetting harsh words said during the night. He buys me coffee when his anger has eroded. He’s humming a festive holiday song.
“It snowed! I thought we’d have a brown, patchy Christmas. But look,” he sings as he points out the window. Big clumps of snow fall, making a sickly plopping sound on the sidewalk. The tree’s branches are heavy with the slushy mixture, their naked fingertips brushing the ground. He hands me a peppermint mocha and plants a kiss on my forehead, but all I can think about is what ornament I am going to buy in honor of him.
.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Friday, December 15, 2006
Burden of Sentiment
I printed off the proof of our correspondence on copper tinted parchment paper. I was making a book documenting the affair Kris and I had last spring. The pages stacked up quickly, eating all of the blackened ink in my printer. Page after page of desperate emails whose poetic, grandiose words clung to one another. I photocopied all of her poems and notes and lists she wrote in her stick figure style of handwriting. I copied the covers of pamphlets and liner notes from our favorite bands that she gave me. I neatly stacked everything that could be replicated from our past and spent all night putting them in order chronologically.
I wanted to re-read them, but the burden of sentiment felt smothering. So I pushed our emaciated romance onto slips of paper. I tied them all up with shiny, holiday ribbons and sent them to her instead.
I wanted to re-read them, but the burden of sentiment felt smothering. So I pushed our emaciated romance onto slips of paper. I tied them all up with shiny, holiday ribbons and sent them to her instead.
Monday, December 11, 2006
The Kindergarten Tour
Two women in their 30s are walking through the halls of elementary school. Susan is the parent volunteer hosting the tour, which is just now concluding. Pamela is a mother on the tour.
Susan: Did you have any other questions?
Pamela: I don’t think so. Thanks for taking the time to tell us about the school.
Susan: Actually, I’d like to just talk to you a second, because our girls would be going into kindergarten together.
Pamela: Sure.
Susan: My daughter was born in August and I’m so glad, if you’re looking at early admission for your daughter, that she won’t be the youngest in the class.
Pamela: Right. Mine was born in September – just two weeks after the cut-off.
Susan: I know. I’ve just been feeling, you know, like everyone thinks I’m pushing her or something.
Pamela: Yeah. I know, but kids are just ready for school at different times.
Susan: Oh, I know. I’m glad someone’s on the same page as I am.
Pamela: But your older daughter. She’s in first grade here and she really likes the program?
Susan: Oh, absolutely. And I always feel safe about her being here. Especially since, you know, I was really surprised to find out that fifty percent of the kids are in the free lunch program.
Pamela: Yeah?
Susan: I know. Isn’t that amazing? Fifty percent of the kids. And it’s so funny, because you look around and you can’t really tell which ones they are. Well, some of them stick out. Some of them, you know, I think that their parents aren’t speaking English around the house because they’re not giving them any help with their homework.
Pamela: Really.
Susan: Yeah. Fifty percent of the kids in poverty. It’s like, I hope they’re getting something to eat at home. I hope they have food to eat. And clothing. I mean, somebody should do something about that.
Pamela: Oh sure.
Susan: But you know, you just can’t tell with most of them. Aside from those few, you wouldn’t know which ones are living in poverty.
Pamela: Right. They blend right in. Just like the Jews.
Susan: Yeah -What?
Pamela: Oh, never mind. I’m so glad our girls look like they’re getting along. It’ll be so much fun for them to be friends next year.
Susan: Did you have any other questions?
Pamela: I don’t think so. Thanks for taking the time to tell us about the school.
Susan: Actually, I’d like to just talk to you a second, because our girls would be going into kindergarten together.
Pamela: Sure.
Susan: My daughter was born in August and I’m so glad, if you’re looking at early admission for your daughter, that she won’t be the youngest in the class.
Pamela: Right. Mine was born in September – just two weeks after the cut-off.
Susan: I know. I’ve just been feeling, you know, like everyone thinks I’m pushing her or something.
Pamela: Yeah. I know, but kids are just ready for school at different times.
Susan: Oh, I know. I’m glad someone’s on the same page as I am.
Pamela: But your older daughter. She’s in first grade here and she really likes the program?
Susan: Oh, absolutely. And I always feel safe about her being here. Especially since, you know, I was really surprised to find out that fifty percent of the kids are in the free lunch program.
Pamela: Yeah?
Susan: I know. Isn’t that amazing? Fifty percent of the kids. And it’s so funny, because you look around and you can’t really tell which ones they are. Well, some of them stick out. Some of them, you know, I think that their parents aren’t speaking English around the house because they’re not giving them any help with their homework.
Pamela: Really.
Susan: Yeah. Fifty percent of the kids in poverty. It’s like, I hope they’re getting something to eat at home. I hope they have food to eat. And clothing. I mean, somebody should do something about that.
Pamela: Oh sure.
Susan: But you know, you just can’t tell with most of them. Aside from those few, you wouldn’t know which ones are living in poverty.
Pamela: Right. They blend right in. Just like the Jews.
Susan: Yeah -What?
Pamela: Oh, never mind. I’m so glad our girls look like they’re getting along. It’ll be so much fun for them to be friends next year.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Confined
I’m jacked on espresso shots listening to the same song over and over again. It has been making me cry for over a week now. But the repeat button has been firmly pressed down by my heavy fingers. I’m thinking about putting masking tape over it. My hand is tired of holding it down.
I’m tired. I’ve been hunching again in that depressed way. My body is advertising to the world my dissatisfaction with life since the sun has slipped behind winter’s flat, gray veil. James is getting ready to go to the zoo with his son. I think the zoo is sad enough in the summer.
“I hate Z-O-O-S,” I spell so little Ian cannot understand what I am saying. He’s hopping around naked making monkey sounds.
“You hate everything,” James says.
Last night, we had to go to the Hollidazzle parade, a feast of blinking Christmas lights affixed to floats advertising local businesses. Mascots with twisted faces waved violently at the kids. I don’t know why they kept laughing and didn’t run away. The man behind me smoked a cigar the whole time and kept taking pictures with his digital camera while his son drooled in the stroller. I played with my cell phone like I had important phone calls to make. Volunteers in plush costumes acted out fairy tales. The Pied Piper lulled little kids dressed up in rat costumes. They held onto one another’s tails that looked like strips of bacon.
“Gross! They look like they’re squeezing slabs of meat,” I said. James turned, little Ian fastened tightly in his arms.
“You get freaked out by the weirdest things. They’re cute,” he scowled. I was ruining their fun father-son adventure. Standing in my fur coat and combat boots, I looked out of place in a crowd of parents and kids clapping and shouting wildly. I wondered where all these people lining the downtown sidewalks come from. They looked mass produced, all bundled up in fleece hats and ski mittens. Mass produced people producing more people who thought the Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t scary as she waved her sickly skinny fingers and rode an adult sized tricycle.
“How do they keep their instruments from freezing to their lips,” I said to James as the U of M Alumni Marching Band marched past. I felt like a little kid pulling on daddy’s jacket for attention as he turned and rolled his eyes.
They are finally gone to see the animals locked in cages. The safari animals are surely confined to some desert dome. I wonder if monkeys like the cold or where Sparky the Seal goes when his summer splashing shows are on hiatus. The only thing I liked about the Como Zoo was the crappy carnival rides with rusty bolts and tattooed carnies. I heard that they rehabbed the place since then with shiny new machines that take tokens instead. The toothless guys have been replaced with college kids and stay-at-home moms who don’t want to stay at home anymore.
I listen to the same song that retells the story of a relationship taking its final gasp of air. It reminds me of how when you die, you can still expel air from your lungs. James won’t listen to the song, doesn’t understand why I repetitively do if it makes me cry and curl up and go to sleep at 9:00.
This weekend was the first time he has had his son in over a year, and all I can do is cry. He doesn’t understand why I hate parades and zoos and tinker toys.
Either do I.
I’m tired. I’ve been hunching again in that depressed way. My body is advertising to the world my dissatisfaction with life since the sun has slipped behind winter’s flat, gray veil. James is getting ready to go to the zoo with his son. I think the zoo is sad enough in the summer.
“I hate Z-O-O-S,” I spell so little Ian cannot understand what I am saying. He’s hopping around naked making monkey sounds.
“You hate everything,” James says.
Last night, we had to go to the Hollidazzle parade, a feast of blinking Christmas lights affixed to floats advertising local businesses. Mascots with twisted faces waved violently at the kids. I don’t know why they kept laughing and didn’t run away. The man behind me smoked a cigar the whole time and kept taking pictures with his digital camera while his son drooled in the stroller. I played with my cell phone like I had important phone calls to make. Volunteers in plush costumes acted out fairy tales. The Pied Piper lulled little kids dressed up in rat costumes. They held onto one another’s tails that looked like strips of bacon.
“Gross! They look like they’re squeezing slabs of meat,” I said. James turned, little Ian fastened tightly in his arms.
“You get freaked out by the weirdest things. They’re cute,” he scowled. I was ruining their fun father-son adventure. Standing in my fur coat and combat boots, I looked out of place in a crowd of parents and kids clapping and shouting wildly. I wondered where all these people lining the downtown sidewalks come from. They looked mass produced, all bundled up in fleece hats and ski mittens. Mass produced people producing more people who thought the Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t scary as she waved her sickly skinny fingers and rode an adult sized tricycle.
“How do they keep their instruments from freezing to their lips,” I said to James as the U of M Alumni Marching Band marched past. I felt like a little kid pulling on daddy’s jacket for attention as he turned and rolled his eyes.
They are finally gone to see the animals locked in cages. The safari animals are surely confined to some desert dome. I wonder if monkeys like the cold or where Sparky the Seal goes when his summer splashing shows are on hiatus. The only thing I liked about the Como Zoo was the crappy carnival rides with rusty bolts and tattooed carnies. I heard that they rehabbed the place since then with shiny new machines that take tokens instead. The toothless guys have been replaced with college kids and stay-at-home moms who don’t want to stay at home anymore.
I listen to the same song that retells the story of a relationship taking its final gasp of air. It reminds me of how when you die, you can still expel air from your lungs. James won’t listen to the song, doesn’t understand why I repetitively do if it makes me cry and curl up and go to sleep at 9:00.
This weekend was the first time he has had his son in over a year, and all I can do is cry. He doesn’t understand why I hate parades and zoos and tinker toys.
Either do I.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Billy Goat Dilemma
Two mothers are waiting in the hallway to pick their kids up at pre-school.
Karen: I wanted to talk to you about the kids’ shareformance next week. I was talking to Megan and, since our three are going to be the three Billy goats, we were thinking of trying to coordinate costumes.
Margaret: Yeah?
Karen: Well, what we were thinking is that we didn’t want it to end up that, you know, that the kids would get upset if one of the other Billy goats had a fancy costume and they didn’t, you know.
Margaret: huh. Well, I’ve already made Sissy’s costume.
Karen: Well, we were just thinking of coordinating so that it didn’t get to be a big deal. I guess we just didn’t want there to be a difference, you know, in the quality of the costume. We didn’t want any of the kids to feel bad about it.
Margaret: Oh, sure. Well, no. Nobody should feel bad about their costumes. I made one for Sissy already, but it’s pretty simple.
Karen: Like what?
Margaret: I just took one of her old sweatshirts and sewed some ears onto the hood, put a little tail on it.
Karen: Well, we were sort of thinking that, since we’re not all equally good at stuff like that, that we would just do something like make ears out of a paper bag or something.
Margaret: uhuh. That would work. It’s just that I’ve already made the costume. It’s pretty simple. It didn’t take too long to do. I found a couple horns to put on the hood. It’s fairly low key.
Karen: well. It’s just..Oh, the kids are coming out here. Maybe I can call you and we can talk about it later. It’s just that it would be nice to coordinate costumes.
Margaret: uhuh
Karen: see, we were thinking that paper bags would be easy.
Margaret: uhuh.
Karen: and that way all the kids would be wearing the same things
Margaret: uhuh.
Karen: you know how kids are
Margaret: hmm. So, what you’re saying is that you want me to throw away the work that I put into this so that my daughter can wear a paper bag on her head?
Karen: Well, the idea was that the three Billy goats would all have matching costumes.
Margaret: So you’re saying that I should send my daughter the message that she should constantly compare what she’s wearing to what the other kids are wearing, and that her goal, as a girl, is to never stick out?
Karen: I mean, it’s just that the paper bags. That’s something we could all do.
Margaret: So you’re saying that I should forget about teaching my daughter to do her best in everything she puts her hand to, that she should tone down her abilities to match the abilities of the other kids in her classes?
Karen: No. No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just worried that the other girls will be upset if there’s a huge difference in their costumes.
Margaret: Well, I don’t know what to say.
Karen: Perhaps we could --
Margaret : -- I just know that when Sissy’s in third grade, I’m NOT going to ask her to throw the spelling test to make the kid behind her feel better about herself. When she’s in high school, I’m NOT going to ask her to date a dorky guy just because all her friends are dating similar kinds of dorky guys. And when she’s in college, I’m NOT going to ask her to be half-assed about writing her research papers just because all the other kids are doing half-assed papers. I’m sorry. I am NOT going to ask my daughter to wear a paper bag over her head just because you can’t get your shit together long enough to make your own kid a goddamn decent costume. I would suggest that you either take sewing lessons or teach your daughter to spend less time worrying about what everyone else is doing.
The classroom door opens and both mothers hasten to paste smiles on their faces. Sissy! What’d you learn today?
Karen: Hi there, cutie. Oh, Julie, what happened to your dress? Did you spill juice?
Margaret: ok Sissy, say goodbye to Julie. We’ve got places to go, things to do.
Karen: Well, I’ll call you later Margaret, and we can figure out what to do about costumes.
Blackout
Karen: I wanted to talk to you about the kids’ shareformance next week. I was talking to Megan and, since our three are going to be the three Billy goats, we were thinking of trying to coordinate costumes.
Margaret: Yeah?
Karen: Well, what we were thinking is that we didn’t want it to end up that, you know, that the kids would get upset if one of the other Billy goats had a fancy costume and they didn’t, you know.
Margaret: huh. Well, I’ve already made Sissy’s costume.
Karen: Well, we were just thinking of coordinating so that it didn’t get to be a big deal. I guess we just didn’t want there to be a difference, you know, in the quality of the costume. We didn’t want any of the kids to feel bad about it.
Margaret: Oh, sure. Well, no. Nobody should feel bad about their costumes. I made one for Sissy already, but it’s pretty simple.
Karen: Like what?
Margaret: I just took one of her old sweatshirts and sewed some ears onto the hood, put a little tail on it.
Karen: Well, we were sort of thinking that, since we’re not all equally good at stuff like that, that we would just do something like make ears out of a paper bag or something.
Margaret: uhuh. That would work. It’s just that I’ve already made the costume. It’s pretty simple. It didn’t take too long to do. I found a couple horns to put on the hood. It’s fairly low key.
Karen: well. It’s just..Oh, the kids are coming out here. Maybe I can call you and we can talk about it later. It’s just that it would be nice to coordinate costumes.
Margaret: uhuh
Karen: see, we were thinking that paper bags would be easy.
Margaret: uhuh.
Karen: and that way all the kids would be wearing the same things
Margaret: uhuh.
Karen: you know how kids are
Margaret: hmm. So, what you’re saying is that you want me to throw away the work that I put into this so that my daughter can wear a paper bag on her head?
Karen: Well, the idea was that the three Billy goats would all have matching costumes.
Margaret: So you’re saying that I should send my daughter the message that she should constantly compare what she’s wearing to what the other kids are wearing, and that her goal, as a girl, is to never stick out?
Karen: I mean, it’s just that the paper bags. That’s something we could all do.
Margaret: So you’re saying that I should forget about teaching my daughter to do her best in everything she puts her hand to, that she should tone down her abilities to match the abilities of the other kids in her classes?
Karen: No. No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just worried that the other girls will be upset if there’s a huge difference in their costumes.
Margaret: Well, I don’t know what to say.
Karen: Perhaps we could --
Margaret : -- I just know that when Sissy’s in third grade, I’m NOT going to ask her to throw the spelling test to make the kid behind her feel better about herself. When she’s in high school, I’m NOT going to ask her to date a dorky guy just because all her friends are dating similar kinds of dorky guys. And when she’s in college, I’m NOT going to ask her to be half-assed about writing her research papers just because all the other kids are doing half-assed papers. I’m sorry. I am NOT going to ask my daughter to wear a paper bag over her head just because you can’t get your shit together long enough to make your own kid a goddamn decent costume. I would suggest that you either take sewing lessons or teach your daughter to spend less time worrying about what everyone else is doing.
The classroom door opens and both mothers hasten to paste smiles on their faces. Sissy! What’d you learn today?
Karen: Hi there, cutie. Oh, Julie, what happened to your dress? Did you spill juice?
Margaret: ok Sissy, say goodbye to Julie. We’ve got places to go, things to do.
Karen: Well, I’ll call you later Margaret, and we can figure out what to do about costumes.
Blackout
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Talk To Don
About three months ago, a friend of mine threw a party at her house. Although I usually don’t like to go to these kinds of things, I went out of a sense of obligation, determined to stay for at least a beer and a courtesy chat. It was one of those awkward kinds of gatherings, where the host worries whether enough people will show to make it “an event,” where those in attendance cling desperately to the first person they recognize, and where the chatter is directed mainly by the posturing of a few individuals who have decided to make the night theirs.
As I stood in the crowded entryway, sipping somewhat too frequently from my plastic cup, I happened to mention to someone that I was applying to the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Minnesota. “You are?” she exclaimed, and with a magical twist of her arm, drew towards her a lumpy looking fellow from out of the corner, “well then you HAVE to talk to Don, here. He’s our resident writer.” She disappeared, leaving him to shuffle and look embarrassed. Grudgingly, he said, “Not published, yet. I’ve got three completed manuscripts and a stack of rejection letters.”
I told him a little bit about my struggle with writing the personal statement and how challenging I found the whole process of defining the desire to write. “If it were you applying,” I asked, “what do you think you’d say?”
He thought for a moment, “Well, why do you want to write? I mean, do you want to be a writer because you like to write, or because you have something to say?”
Fair enough. The question made me pause.
See, I like to write. There is something inherently pleasurable in the process of recording and refining thoughts, organizing them first in one way, then another. There is something interesting in the challenge of translating experience into a clinking chain of words that readers can use to grasp onto. But that in itself is not sufficient reason to become a writer. That is what things like journals and letters are for.
I do have things to say as well. I have in my small life managed to construct for myself a rather complicated code of ethics and explanations. Behind every small act lies the shadow of a much larger significance. Everything means something, and it all fits together into a complex jigsaw of motivations and cogitative movements. A fair amount of my time is spent looking for that threshold moment of an idea, exploring the relationships between things and people and why happenings play out in the way that they do. Of course, that in itself is also not a sufficient reason to become a writer, though it is a perfectly good reason to become an analyst, a social scientist, or an historian.
Don was still waiting there with his either/or question lingering in the air. I panicked and blurted out, “I guess I have lots of things to say. I mean, not like a burning social issue or anything concrete like that, but, you know…”
I stopped and made myself return the question, “Why do you write?”
Don swept a suddenly indifferent glance over me and replied, “Because that’s the only time I get to talk to myself.” Then he walked away and I understood that I had been dismissed.
As I stood in the crowded entryway, sipping somewhat too frequently from my plastic cup, I happened to mention to someone that I was applying to the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Minnesota. “You are?” she exclaimed, and with a magical twist of her arm, drew towards her a lumpy looking fellow from out of the corner, “well then you HAVE to talk to Don, here. He’s our resident writer.” She disappeared, leaving him to shuffle and look embarrassed. Grudgingly, he said, “Not published, yet. I’ve got three completed manuscripts and a stack of rejection letters.”
I told him a little bit about my struggle with writing the personal statement and how challenging I found the whole process of defining the desire to write. “If it were you applying,” I asked, “what do you think you’d say?”
He thought for a moment, “Well, why do you want to write? I mean, do you want to be a writer because you like to write, or because you have something to say?”
Fair enough. The question made me pause.
See, I like to write. There is something inherently pleasurable in the process of recording and refining thoughts, organizing them first in one way, then another. There is something interesting in the challenge of translating experience into a clinking chain of words that readers can use to grasp onto. But that in itself is not sufficient reason to become a writer. That is what things like journals and letters are for.
I do have things to say as well. I have in my small life managed to construct for myself a rather complicated code of ethics and explanations. Behind every small act lies the shadow of a much larger significance. Everything means something, and it all fits together into a complex jigsaw of motivations and cogitative movements. A fair amount of my time is spent looking for that threshold moment of an idea, exploring the relationships between things and people and why happenings play out in the way that they do. Of course, that in itself is also not a sufficient reason to become a writer, though it is a perfectly good reason to become an analyst, a social scientist, or an historian.
Don was still waiting there with his either/or question lingering in the air. I panicked and blurted out, “I guess I have lots of things to say. I mean, not like a burning social issue or anything concrete like that, but, you know…”
I stopped and made myself return the question, “Why do you write?”
Don swept a suddenly indifferent glance over me and replied, “Because that’s the only time I get to talk to myself.” Then he walked away and I understood that I had been dismissed.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Intensive Care
I went to the hospital today to visit my Dad. I’m not exactly sure why I went, what that movement was motivated by. In part, curiosity, in part obligation. Perhaps more than a little desire to see him prone in bed or weak or to see some sort of imagined deathbed confessional. Perhaps a little out of the desire to see how my stepmother, Trish, would be in that situation.
In any case, I went down there and found him in the intensive care unit. The staff seemed a little apprehensive about me being there and only allotted me a small amount of time with him. They had to verify that I was his daughter. At first, I thought something bad had happened, but they reassured me that things had gone well.
I visited briefly with my sleeping father, touched his hand and counted the tubes in him. He startled at one point and opened his eyes to look at me. I asked him how he felt and he just closed his eyes and shook his head wearily. Not good, apparently. That’s when they kicked me out so that they could do work on him. I left two magazines and a Get Well card for him.
I asked the nurse if I could come back again in the afternoon. She hesitated and said perhaps I ought to talk to his wife about visiting arrangements. I asked if she was around and the nurse said I could look for her in the cafeteria.
I went down to the cafeteria and bought a coffee, then found Trish at a table in the corner. I slid around the table and sat down with her. Trish looked agitated.
Trish explained that the surgery had gone fine, but they had had to use the bypass machine on him, meaning that his blood was being mechanically pumped around in there. She said that sometimes patients like that have a hard time recovering their full mental acuity. Other than that, things were going well.
Except for one thing.
Enter Audrey.
Audrey, according to Trish, first appeared as a rosette form. Or rather, one day Trish had found a rosette form in the kitchen and asked Dad where it had come from. Dad said Audrey had dropped it off one day for him. Audrey, Dad told Trish, was an old friend from school.
Audrey, Trish assured me, was very homely, with fat rolls, and big coke bottle glasses. She was a widow with a gambling problem and would stop by the house on weekdays on her way to or from Mystic Lake casino. She only drops by when Trish is at work.
Last Thanksgiving, there was a knock at the door. Trish was preparing a small meal for just the two of them, and was therefore surprised that anyone would stop over. She opened the door and there was this fat, homely, coke-bottle glasses kind of person who introduced herself as Audrey.
She welcomed Audrey in and sent her down to the basement where Dad was working on his computer. When Audrey came up to leave, Trish asked her to wait a moment and ran downstairs to ask Dad if it was ok if she invited her to dinner at five. Dad agreed and so Audrey went to Mystic Lake and then returned a few hours later.
As they chatted over dinner, Audrey talked a great deal about this grocery store clerk named Charlie, who as Trish put it, sounded like a real loser. “He sounds like a real loser,” Trish said to her, “why don’t you join a social group and meet someone who’s actually worthwhile?” Audrey giggled and said that’s what Dad was always telling her too.
At this point, I interrupted Trish and asked her if she believed Audrey was having an affair with Dad. She said that she liked to tease him about it, called Audrey his “girlfriend” and stuff and that it was highly possible, since it was odd she only came over while Trish was at work.
But, Trish added, Audrey was quite homely. And anyways, she wasn’t really worried about what two seventy-year olds would be getting up to in the middle of the day at her house. And anyways, Audrey hadn’t seen her all made up and in high draconian gear. If she saw her like that, she’d know better than to mess with the likes of her.
Even so, Trish said, maybe I’d better go talk to the nurses about restricting visitor privileges.
In any case, I went down there and found him in the intensive care unit. The staff seemed a little apprehensive about me being there and only allotted me a small amount of time with him. They had to verify that I was his daughter. At first, I thought something bad had happened, but they reassured me that things had gone well.
I visited briefly with my sleeping father, touched his hand and counted the tubes in him. He startled at one point and opened his eyes to look at me. I asked him how he felt and he just closed his eyes and shook his head wearily. Not good, apparently. That’s when they kicked me out so that they could do work on him. I left two magazines and a Get Well card for him.
I asked the nurse if I could come back again in the afternoon. She hesitated and said perhaps I ought to talk to his wife about visiting arrangements. I asked if she was around and the nurse said I could look for her in the cafeteria.
I went down to the cafeteria and bought a coffee, then found Trish at a table in the corner. I slid around the table and sat down with her. Trish looked agitated.
Trish explained that the surgery had gone fine, but they had had to use the bypass machine on him, meaning that his blood was being mechanically pumped around in there. She said that sometimes patients like that have a hard time recovering their full mental acuity. Other than that, things were going well.
Except for one thing.
Enter Audrey.
Audrey, according to Trish, first appeared as a rosette form. Or rather, one day Trish had found a rosette form in the kitchen and asked Dad where it had come from. Dad said Audrey had dropped it off one day for him. Audrey, Dad told Trish, was an old friend from school.
Audrey, Trish assured me, was very homely, with fat rolls, and big coke bottle glasses. She was a widow with a gambling problem and would stop by the house on weekdays on her way to or from Mystic Lake casino. She only drops by when Trish is at work.
Last Thanksgiving, there was a knock at the door. Trish was preparing a small meal for just the two of them, and was therefore surprised that anyone would stop over. She opened the door and there was this fat, homely, coke-bottle glasses kind of person who introduced herself as Audrey.
She welcomed Audrey in and sent her down to the basement where Dad was working on his computer. When Audrey came up to leave, Trish asked her to wait a moment and ran downstairs to ask Dad if it was ok if she invited her to dinner at five. Dad agreed and so Audrey went to Mystic Lake and then returned a few hours later.
As they chatted over dinner, Audrey talked a great deal about this grocery store clerk named Charlie, who as Trish put it, sounded like a real loser. “He sounds like a real loser,” Trish said to her, “why don’t you join a social group and meet someone who’s actually worthwhile?” Audrey giggled and said that’s what Dad was always telling her too.
At this point, I interrupted Trish and asked her if she believed Audrey was having an affair with Dad. She said that she liked to tease him about it, called Audrey his “girlfriend” and stuff and that it was highly possible, since it was odd she only came over while Trish was at work.
But, Trish added, Audrey was quite homely. And anyways, she wasn’t really worried about what two seventy-year olds would be getting up to in the middle of the day at her house. And anyways, Audrey hadn’t seen her all made up and in high draconian gear. If she saw her like that, she’d know better than to mess with the likes of her.
Even so, Trish said, maybe I’d better go talk to the nurses about restricting visitor privileges.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
a hug
A gentle knock at the door interrupted the comfortable stillness of my uptown studio. I wasn’t expecting visitors, though my visitors rarely announced their intended arrival. I gave it a moment; I was in no mood to deal with another aspiring novelist or disgruntled student from my writing classes at the city college. I had my own problems. The knock came again, this time more persistent. There was urgency in this knock, it had the character hardly befitting a timid student. I was suddenly intrigued by this knock that shattered the comfortable silence of a humid Sunday evening.
“Hang on, I’m coming,” I directed toward the knock at the door. A quick glance in the mirror told me what I already knew; I wasn’t getting any younger. An aspiring writer, quickly approaching thirty, but my eyes were decades older after abuse from the perpetual party scene. Those days were behind me, and all I had to show for it was a couple of rotten stories picked up by obscure, independent lit mags and my writing classes at the city college. My dreams had faded, as had most of my friendships, let alone my relationships. It was romantic to be a writer with a dream in your early 20s, it was pathetic not to have anything significant published ten years later with the dream nearly erased. I was alone in every sense of the word.
I opened the door, and my heart stopped. It was her. I remember the exact moment I watched her leave for the last time at Los Angeles’s Union Station. I remember the way we held each other, promising safe trips, and frequent calls, holding each other so tightly, never intending to let go. I remember the sadness I felt in watching her turn to get on a train that would take her to San Diego. I remember the emptiness consuming my entire being when I got on the plane to go home to Minneapolis. I remember the pain in knowing that it would be months before I could hold her again. I remember the shock, the anger, the heartbreak when she told me a week later that I was too far away to be a practical love interest, and besides, she had met someone else. This was eight years ago, we hadn’t spoken since.
“Sean…” she spoke my name softly. She was still striking, looking much younger than I, though only a couple years between us, and my cute, charming girl next door whom I had fallen ridiculously in love with had grown into a confident, beautiful woman. And she was standing in my door.
“Why are you here?” I asked, feeling cheated. At the time I was absolutely convinced that there is one perfect match for everyone in this world, and I had known it in my soul that she was the match made for me. It had taken me years to get over her, to forget how beautiful, how wonderful she was. How special she made me feel about myself. To forget that last weekend we spent together in LA. I had successfully buried her in the depths of my subconscious, I had placed her on a corner shelf in a dark closet located on the outer most edge of my being. And suddenly she was at my door.
Her face had a determined look on it. It was obvious she had rehearsed what was about to come next, but her eyes told me she was struggling with the words.
“Sean, I’m getting married next month. I needed to do so with a clean heart. I needed to see you again.” Her voice was trembling now, I wondered what she was afraid of. She was the one who’d broken things off with me, I was completely in love, I was completely blindsided.
“I had to see you again,” she repeated, a little stronger this time “to make sure the feeling was gone, that I made the right decision.” This sounded very scripted, her eyes were seconds away from tears. She was so beautiful. It had taken me so long to forget her. I wondered if she had any idea of the pain she’d caused me. Of those sleepless nights when I replayed every conversation, every interaction, every emotion that I felt for her, that I had assumed we felt for each other. I wondered if she knew at all of the endless hours I put in on my bike, driving myself onward, aimlessly around the city, my legs burning in hopes that my heart would stop hurting, never succeeding.
Suddenly she burst forward into my little studio and threw her arms around me, pulling me close, holding me tightly.
“God, I’ve missed you” she whispered. My arms remained at my sides, neither embracing her, nor rejecting her embrace.
I got lost in her hug, her small yet powerful arms holding me, just as she had years before. The smell of her hair was the same, the feeling was the same, and then I was back in LA. I remember how that entire weekend she had hugged me without notice, holding me tightly as I returned her embrace with equal force and passion.
We’d lived so far apart and our times together were so occasional that we made our affection as tangible and as frequent as possible. We’d held each other so tightly back then, as if by not letting go we could escape reality. That she’d never go back to San Diego, that I would never leave for Minneapolis.
To me, her hugs had been an affirmation of her love for me. I was fully and whole heartedly in love with this girl, and to hold her close meant that everything was right in the world. I could get lost in her hugs, consumed by her passion. To her, I could only guess that her hugs had been a way of saying goodbye. Of giving me a little piece of herself to remember her by when she would inevitably break my heart. Which she inevitably did, one week later.
“You have to go,” I said, with more conviction than I could possibly feel. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“But…” she started to protest.
“No, leave.” I snapped, quietly but firmly. She looked up at me with those adorable eyes that I will forever be in love with. I could feel the sadness, I knew it all too well, it was the sadness of rejection that comes from being told that the passion you share for another person won’t be returned. Her sadness was my own, eight years ago. She turned and headed down the stairway of my building, pausing, she took one last look at me and without a word she was gone.
The greatest thing that had ever happened in my life had just left me for the second time.
“Hang on, I’m coming,” I directed toward the knock at the door. A quick glance in the mirror told me what I already knew; I wasn’t getting any younger. An aspiring writer, quickly approaching thirty, but my eyes were decades older after abuse from the perpetual party scene. Those days were behind me, and all I had to show for it was a couple of rotten stories picked up by obscure, independent lit mags and my writing classes at the city college. My dreams had faded, as had most of my friendships, let alone my relationships. It was romantic to be a writer with a dream in your early 20s, it was pathetic not to have anything significant published ten years later with the dream nearly erased. I was alone in every sense of the word.
I opened the door, and my heart stopped. It was her. I remember the exact moment I watched her leave for the last time at Los Angeles’s Union Station. I remember the way we held each other, promising safe trips, and frequent calls, holding each other so tightly, never intending to let go. I remember the sadness I felt in watching her turn to get on a train that would take her to San Diego. I remember the emptiness consuming my entire being when I got on the plane to go home to Minneapolis. I remember the pain in knowing that it would be months before I could hold her again. I remember the shock, the anger, the heartbreak when she told me a week later that I was too far away to be a practical love interest, and besides, she had met someone else. This was eight years ago, we hadn’t spoken since.
“Sean…” she spoke my name softly. She was still striking, looking much younger than I, though only a couple years between us, and my cute, charming girl next door whom I had fallen ridiculously in love with had grown into a confident, beautiful woman. And she was standing in my door.
“Why are you here?” I asked, feeling cheated. At the time I was absolutely convinced that there is one perfect match for everyone in this world, and I had known it in my soul that she was the match made for me. It had taken me years to get over her, to forget how beautiful, how wonderful she was. How special she made me feel about myself. To forget that last weekend we spent together in LA. I had successfully buried her in the depths of my subconscious, I had placed her on a corner shelf in a dark closet located on the outer most edge of my being. And suddenly she was at my door.
Her face had a determined look on it. It was obvious she had rehearsed what was about to come next, but her eyes told me she was struggling with the words.
“Sean, I’m getting married next month. I needed to do so with a clean heart. I needed to see you again.” Her voice was trembling now, I wondered what she was afraid of. She was the one who’d broken things off with me, I was completely in love, I was completely blindsided.
“I had to see you again,” she repeated, a little stronger this time “to make sure the feeling was gone, that I made the right decision.” This sounded very scripted, her eyes were seconds away from tears. She was so beautiful. It had taken me so long to forget her. I wondered if she had any idea of the pain she’d caused me. Of those sleepless nights when I replayed every conversation, every interaction, every emotion that I felt for her, that I had assumed we felt for each other. I wondered if she knew at all of the endless hours I put in on my bike, driving myself onward, aimlessly around the city, my legs burning in hopes that my heart would stop hurting, never succeeding.
Suddenly she burst forward into my little studio and threw her arms around me, pulling me close, holding me tightly.
“God, I’ve missed you” she whispered. My arms remained at my sides, neither embracing her, nor rejecting her embrace.
I got lost in her hug, her small yet powerful arms holding me, just as she had years before. The smell of her hair was the same, the feeling was the same, and then I was back in LA. I remember how that entire weekend she had hugged me without notice, holding me tightly as I returned her embrace with equal force and passion.
We’d lived so far apart and our times together were so occasional that we made our affection as tangible and as frequent as possible. We’d held each other so tightly back then, as if by not letting go we could escape reality. That she’d never go back to San Diego, that I would never leave for Minneapolis.
To me, her hugs had been an affirmation of her love for me. I was fully and whole heartedly in love with this girl, and to hold her close meant that everything was right in the world. I could get lost in her hugs, consumed by her passion. To her, I could only guess that her hugs had been a way of saying goodbye. Of giving me a little piece of herself to remember her by when she would inevitably break my heart. Which she inevitably did, one week later.
“You have to go,” I said, with more conviction than I could possibly feel. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“But…” she started to protest.
“No, leave.” I snapped, quietly but firmly. She looked up at me with those adorable eyes that I will forever be in love with. I could feel the sadness, I knew it all too well, it was the sadness of rejection that comes from being told that the passion you share for another person won’t be returned. Her sadness was my own, eight years ago. She turned and headed down the stairway of my building, pausing, she took one last look at me and without a word she was gone.
The greatest thing that had ever happened in my life had just left me for the second time.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Alignment with the Columnar Spine of the Universe
When I was younger, I used to drop acid because I enjoyed the fruity bursts of reflection that would bombard my consciousness as if they were so many cherry bombs in the hands of idle schoolboys. As an exercise, I tried to keep notes on cigarette foils and the backs of notebooks, but thoughts flooded past me like the rush of interplanetary travel and I never could keep up. At peak time, I could get lost in the bathroom for hours, watching the contrasting patterns of bathroom tiles and hand towel ribbing reveal to me profound momentary truths about the universe.
I recall my first time dropping acid. It was with a guy I didn’t know so well, but he was dating a girl I knew who used to be a next door neighbor of that little boy that got kidnapped up in the northern suburbs. You know, the one they never found, but there was always talk that the parents were involved in some kind of secret cult and the kid got offered up in some kind of ceremony. Anyway, this guy and I, we planted ourselves underneath a bridge that spanned two adjoining lakes: Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. There was car traffic on top, then a small path underneath where joggers and bikers were kept separate from one another by a thin white line that ran along the pavement.
We dropped at almost midnight, then curled up together at a side of the tunnel, watching the world go by as if we were reliving a more passive enactment of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The intensity of the dose made my body tense into a coil. I don’t believe I could have stood up, even if I’d had the inclination to. I was a marionette, strings contracted into a tangle.
Like a flight to Europe, the peak and subsequent easing took about seven hours, which we spent entirely under this bridge. What was remarkable, from our position dead center, was that dawn and dusk were frozen at opposite ends of the tunnel, as if they had been pasted on at the mouths if each stony arch. Looking left, I saw the rosy nostalgia of evening settling down with a dark blush. To the right was the hopeful eye of the morning peeking shyly at us.
Each time I shifted position, I could feel the hefty stirrings of my circadian rhythms as they tried to accommodate the time change. If I alternated head positions quickly - left-right, left-right, left-right – I felt woozy, felt as though radical philosophical displacements were happening in the very liquids of my inner ear. Felt as though I were a sliver in the hand of god, a hair caught in the eye of the whirring of the universe. Here I was, an auxiliary verb at best – no – like a minor dialectical inflection of an auxiliary verb - between the mighty posturing of the two substantial nouns that begin and end the day – dawn and dusk. Dusk and dawn. Left and right and my thoughts tumbling over into the secret of this tunnel, where startled joggers were even then glancing at us over their shoulders as they mended this broken seam in time with their wagging legs.
I recall my first time dropping acid. It was with a guy I didn’t know so well, but he was dating a girl I knew who used to be a next door neighbor of that little boy that got kidnapped up in the northern suburbs. You know, the one they never found, but there was always talk that the parents were involved in some kind of secret cult and the kid got offered up in some kind of ceremony. Anyway, this guy and I, we planted ourselves underneath a bridge that spanned two adjoining lakes: Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. There was car traffic on top, then a small path underneath where joggers and bikers were kept separate from one another by a thin white line that ran along the pavement.
We dropped at almost midnight, then curled up together at a side of the tunnel, watching the world go by as if we were reliving a more passive enactment of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The intensity of the dose made my body tense into a coil. I don’t believe I could have stood up, even if I’d had the inclination to. I was a marionette, strings contracted into a tangle.
Like a flight to Europe, the peak and subsequent easing took about seven hours, which we spent entirely under this bridge. What was remarkable, from our position dead center, was that dawn and dusk were frozen at opposite ends of the tunnel, as if they had been pasted on at the mouths if each stony arch. Looking left, I saw the rosy nostalgia of evening settling down with a dark blush. To the right was the hopeful eye of the morning peeking shyly at us.
Each time I shifted position, I could feel the hefty stirrings of my circadian rhythms as they tried to accommodate the time change. If I alternated head positions quickly - left-right, left-right, left-right – I felt woozy, felt as though radical philosophical displacements were happening in the very liquids of my inner ear. Felt as though I were a sliver in the hand of god, a hair caught in the eye of the whirring of the universe. Here I was, an auxiliary verb at best – no – like a minor dialectical inflection of an auxiliary verb - between the mighty posturing of the two substantial nouns that begin and end the day – dawn and dusk. Dusk and dawn. Left and right and my thoughts tumbling over into the secret of this tunnel, where startled joggers were even then glancing at us over their shoulders as they mended this broken seam in time with their wagging legs.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Falling Down
I ask mom to send me Oxycontins through the mail when I get my nose done. I’m afraid to ask the doctors for too much pain meds. Afraid they’ll think I am some sort of addict. But I really hate pain. I am a total wimp about it.
For a month now, all I can think about is that crazy doc in his sterile lab coats. I think he has a big mustache like a push broom, all stiff and wiry and brown. I pray he’ll cover it with one of those white paper masks so I can’t see it. I’m afraid it will have crumbs on it from a muffin or something. I can see it all now: First, a fat nurse will pump in anesthesia through my right arm, the one with the biggest vein. Then the mustached doc will crack my nose. I hear I’ll get black eyes and finger marks on my face from his latex gloved hands pressing into my jaw. Then, he’ll pack my nose with gauze for a week so their handiwork won’t collapse. I don’t want to look like Michael Jackson.
I’m gonna call them before the surgery and act real scared. We’ll I don’t need to act, cuz I am. I want to talk to them about pain management. Might as well get the best drugs I can, right? When I broke my foot doing a cartwheel in high heels near the Target Center this summer, I went in to the clinic and stood my ground.
“Let’s discuss pain management,” I said in a cool, collected voice. My hands didn’t shake even though my heart pounded. It didn’t pound nearly as much as my foot with the streaky olive green and purple bruises that pushed greedily towards my toes. It looked like raw steak, really. I learned that cartwheels in high heels aren’t a good idea, and that bruises take on a life of their own. And that general practitioners give out stronger pain meds than specialists. Specialists are fucking judgmental and controlling, doling out enough Percocet for the weekend like the gatekeeper or something.
“So, I have to have this nose surgery. I need some pain pills,” I tell my mom. I’m fishing a little, dropping my line with confidence and control.
“As long as they’re doing your nose, tell ‘em to make it cute,” she laughs.
“Well, it’s gonna suck. I hear it’s horrible as an adult. I’ll be laid up for a week or more and they won’t give me anything. I’m sure of it.”
She babbles on about her new friend, a claustrophobic guy who hoards magazines and licks the bottom of cardboard Chinese boxes clean. He doesn’t want to waste anything. She dated him thirty years ago before his motorcycle accident. She says he was strange even before his skull smashed onto the pavement, before his brain swelled up like a silver dirigible, before the docs wrapped his head in white cotton.
She keeps on, chatting quickly like a racecar heading for a new record down a smooth strip of a racetrack. Her frantic rhythm lulls me, makes me start thinking about the “Jack and Jill” nursery rhyme. There’s a part where Jack fixes his head with vinegar and paper. Boy, he was stupid to fall down a hill in the first place. He deserves a broken head. So does my mom’s friend.
“I gotta go, mom. I’ll talk to you later,” I say, sleepy from the rhythm of her pressured speech, and the rhyming last words I recite in my head as Jack tumbles down from the well.
“Three. I’ll send you three,” she says with a matter of fact tone.
“Promise? Don’t forget,” I say, somewhat excited.
She assures me that she won’t. But she’s forgotten my own birthday before despite the fact she bitches about how awful it was the day I was born. Maybe they’ll get here before the surgery, like a belated birthday present wrapped up in pink tissue paper. Maybe I’ll take them right away, just in case. Just to calm my nerves.
For a month now, all I can think about is that crazy doc in his sterile lab coats. I think he has a big mustache like a push broom, all stiff and wiry and brown. I pray he’ll cover it with one of those white paper masks so I can’t see it. I’m afraid it will have crumbs on it from a muffin or something. I can see it all now: First, a fat nurse will pump in anesthesia through my right arm, the one with the biggest vein. Then the mustached doc will crack my nose. I hear I’ll get black eyes and finger marks on my face from his latex gloved hands pressing into my jaw. Then, he’ll pack my nose with gauze for a week so their handiwork won’t collapse. I don’t want to look like Michael Jackson.
I’m gonna call them before the surgery and act real scared. We’ll I don’t need to act, cuz I am. I want to talk to them about pain management. Might as well get the best drugs I can, right? When I broke my foot doing a cartwheel in high heels near the Target Center this summer, I went in to the clinic and stood my ground.
“Let’s discuss pain management,” I said in a cool, collected voice. My hands didn’t shake even though my heart pounded. It didn’t pound nearly as much as my foot with the streaky olive green and purple bruises that pushed greedily towards my toes. It looked like raw steak, really. I learned that cartwheels in high heels aren’t a good idea, and that bruises take on a life of their own. And that general practitioners give out stronger pain meds than specialists. Specialists are fucking judgmental and controlling, doling out enough Percocet for the weekend like the gatekeeper or something.
“So, I have to have this nose surgery. I need some pain pills,” I tell my mom. I’m fishing a little, dropping my line with confidence and control.
“As long as they’re doing your nose, tell ‘em to make it cute,” she laughs.
“Well, it’s gonna suck. I hear it’s horrible as an adult. I’ll be laid up for a week or more and they won’t give me anything. I’m sure of it.”
She babbles on about her new friend, a claustrophobic guy who hoards magazines and licks the bottom of cardboard Chinese boxes clean. He doesn’t want to waste anything. She dated him thirty years ago before his motorcycle accident. She says he was strange even before his skull smashed onto the pavement, before his brain swelled up like a silver dirigible, before the docs wrapped his head in white cotton.
She keeps on, chatting quickly like a racecar heading for a new record down a smooth strip of a racetrack. Her frantic rhythm lulls me, makes me start thinking about the “Jack and Jill” nursery rhyme. There’s a part where Jack fixes his head with vinegar and paper. Boy, he was stupid to fall down a hill in the first place. He deserves a broken head. So does my mom’s friend.
“I gotta go, mom. I’ll talk to you later,” I say, sleepy from the rhythm of her pressured speech, and the rhyming last words I recite in my head as Jack tumbles down from the well.
“Three. I’ll send you three,” she says with a matter of fact tone.
“Promise? Don’t forget,” I say, somewhat excited.
She assures me that she won’t. But she’s forgotten my own birthday before despite the fact she bitches about how awful it was the day I was born. Maybe they’ll get here before the surgery, like a belated birthday present wrapped up in pink tissue paper. Maybe I’ll take them right away, just in case. Just to calm my nerves.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
This overnight shift is killing me. Slowly, at an almost imperceptible pace, my mind is eroding and my back is breaking. Fourteen hours on the line, seven days a week for nineteen straight days. My fingers are worn to the bone from the assembly line, and I've grown hard to the touch of those I used to love. My eyes are bloodshot from endless hours of florescent lighting and lack of sleep. My nostrils burn from acidic vapors left over by chemicals we use to clean the floors, and also from the speed I inhale to stay awake on double shifts. And while I haven't yet confirmed it, I suspect my teeth are rotting from endless cups of coffee I drain to combat the headaches I get when I try to quit drinking coffee. It's a vicious cycle, but somehow it seems fitting. I am twenty-four years old, my doctor says that if I keep this life up, I won't live to see thirty. I'm shooting for twenty-seven, an age good enough for Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. If it was good enough for them, I don't see any reason it isn't good enough for me.
None of that matters as the whistle blows, eleven am, quitting time, and for the first time in nearly three weeks, I have tomorrow off. Nevermind that I've been up for nearly twenty hours, I'm going out for a drink. In fact, I'm going out for drinks, plural. I'm going to drink until I can't drink anymore, and then I'm going to have one more for the road. After that, I'm going to stumble back to my crappy little apartment off Lyndale, and I'm going to sleep for fifteen or so hours straight.
As I go through the turnstiles and out to the Union parking lot, my mouth waters, and I start to get a bit of energy from some hidden reserve. Fucking eh, I'm going to have a drink. Lots of drinks. And then tomorrow off, fucking eh right.
The drive home passes in usual fashion. I am too tired to notice anything on the road and probably shouldn't be driving in the first place, but I make it, I always do. 55 to 62 to 35W, get off on Lake and over to Lyndale. No problem. The CC Club stands out like an oasis in the desert, a beacon of hope, the Promised Land. Fucking eh, Beauty, Perfection in the form of a dive bar in South Minneapolis.
The inside is dark and on the cool side of things. Not a soul in the place save a few hip businessmen hiding out from the corporate monster, and a couple of old men that frequent all dive bars during all hours of operation. Old men posing as professional drinkers, old men with yellow livers, living off disability checks, paying their rent and staying as drunk as possible. Barflys. Ignoring them all, I get a stool dead in the middle of the taps, let there be no mistake, I am on a mission. I am going to get fucked up.
"Hey Keep, how about some whiskey, Canadian stuff, and a Premo to chase," I say, and it feels good. Real good. At this point I feel almost human. Two glasses appear on the heavy oak bar in front of me, a small one of dark amber fire, and a pint sized one of a honey colored extinguisher. I smile because it's been awhile, and because I need this. I need this drink more than I need food or sleep, more than companionship, more than oxygen. I need this drink to forget about my crappy life, and my crappy job, and my god-awful apartment. I need this drink to forget that I haven't been to church in a year and haven't talked to my family in months. I need it to forget about that beautiful girl, the one I was scared to commit to, to one who loved me way more than I've ever loved myself. I need this drink to forget about going back to school, to forget my dreams of writing, to forget that I've pretty much already forgotten what it feels like to be happy.
I raise the small glass of fire and look to the ceiling, I nod, because I always do, and slam the fire down my throat and the glass onto the bar. It makes a satisfying thud, the startled businessmen look up briefly; the Barflys never move, they've heard my sound a million times before. Twenty-four down, three to go.
None of that matters as the whistle blows, eleven am, quitting time, and for the first time in nearly three weeks, I have tomorrow off. Nevermind that I've been up for nearly twenty hours, I'm going out for a drink. In fact, I'm going out for drinks, plural. I'm going to drink until I can't drink anymore, and then I'm going to have one more for the road. After that, I'm going to stumble back to my crappy little apartment off Lyndale, and I'm going to sleep for fifteen or so hours straight.
As I go through the turnstiles and out to the Union parking lot, my mouth waters, and I start to get a bit of energy from some hidden reserve. Fucking eh, I'm going to have a drink. Lots of drinks. And then tomorrow off, fucking eh right.
The drive home passes in usual fashion. I am too tired to notice anything on the road and probably shouldn't be driving in the first place, but I make it, I always do. 55 to 62 to 35W, get off on Lake and over to Lyndale. No problem. The CC Club stands out like an oasis in the desert, a beacon of hope, the Promised Land. Fucking eh, Beauty, Perfection in the form of a dive bar in South Minneapolis.
The inside is dark and on the cool side of things. Not a soul in the place save a few hip businessmen hiding out from the corporate monster, and a couple of old men that frequent all dive bars during all hours of operation. Old men posing as professional drinkers, old men with yellow livers, living off disability checks, paying their rent and staying as drunk as possible. Barflys. Ignoring them all, I get a stool dead in the middle of the taps, let there be no mistake, I am on a mission. I am going to get fucked up.
"Hey Keep, how about some whiskey, Canadian stuff, and a Premo to chase," I say, and it feels good. Real good. At this point I feel almost human. Two glasses appear on the heavy oak bar in front of me, a small one of dark amber fire, and a pint sized one of a honey colored extinguisher. I smile because it's been awhile, and because I need this. I need this drink more than I need food or sleep, more than companionship, more than oxygen. I need this drink to forget about my crappy life, and my crappy job, and my god-awful apartment. I need this drink to forget that I haven't been to church in a year and haven't talked to my family in months. I need it to forget about that beautiful girl, the one I was scared to commit to, to one who loved me way more than I've ever loved myself. I need this drink to forget about going back to school, to forget my dreams of writing, to forget that I've pretty much already forgotten what it feels like to be happy.
I raise the small glass of fire and look to the ceiling, I nod, because I always do, and slam the fire down my throat and the glass onto the bar. It makes a satisfying thud, the startled businessmen look up briefly; the Barflys never move, they've heard my sound a million times before. Twenty-four down, three to go.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Emily's First Portrait
Although I was not technically covered by insurance, when I was about five months along, Rick was able to hook me up with an obstetrician at the woman’s prison, some miles down the road from where he worked. They weighed me and prodded at me and pushed down so hard on my stomach that for a second I worried that the pressure would squeeze Emily right out of me. Then they put on these rubber gloves and reached up inside of me – much further than you’d think they’d be able to go - to see if they could feel her head and they rubbed gook on my stomach so that I could listen to the heartbeat. It was cool, but all that pushing and reaching around in there like I was some kind of animal hurt dreadfully. It was sort of humiliating, actually. But finally, they did an ultrasound and gave me a few copies to keep of the picture.
It was Emily’s first portrait – black and white, the baby herself contained in a sort of conical shape - a far cry from the weekday specials at JC Pennys, but it was my first real look at her. You could make out her two little hands, her mouth, nose, even two little black slits where you could presume her eyes to be. The picture was more conceptual than anything – there was a grainy, streaky quality to the image that left much wanting in terms of detail.
The interesting thing about it was that, if you held the picture up sideways, a scene suddenly formed. The narrow end of the cone (or the upper end of my womb), from which much light projected, suddenly became a window glowing with warmth. The baby herself in profile took on a sad, ghoulish appearance, with one arm raised as if to knock against the window while she herself hovered slightly above in the darkness, looking down. She seemed so alone in there, seemed to long for whatever it was she saw on the other side. Her lips were parted slightly, and I could tell from the distribution of shadow that her eyes were set deep back into her skull. Beautiful and unearthly; a child who was already a ghost.
It was Emily’s first portrait – black and white, the baby herself contained in a sort of conical shape - a far cry from the weekday specials at JC Pennys, but it was my first real look at her. You could make out her two little hands, her mouth, nose, even two little black slits where you could presume her eyes to be. The picture was more conceptual than anything – there was a grainy, streaky quality to the image that left much wanting in terms of detail.
The interesting thing about it was that, if you held the picture up sideways, a scene suddenly formed. The narrow end of the cone (or the upper end of my womb), from which much light projected, suddenly became a window glowing with warmth. The baby herself in profile took on a sad, ghoulish appearance, with one arm raised as if to knock against the window while she herself hovered slightly above in the darkness, looking down. She seemed so alone in there, seemed to long for whatever it was she saw on the other side. Her lips were parted slightly, and I could tell from the distribution of shadow that her eyes were set deep back into her skull. Beautiful and unearthly; a child who was already a ghost.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Aborted
Karli had been aborting his child for months. It was the result of T shaped surgical steel wrapped in copper like a piece of jewelry found at yuppie art fairs. The IUD prevented carrying a fetus, but not getting pregnant. An abortion once a month.
Andy spent the weekend playing a video game. It had a fleet of cartoon army men– like the dime store, plastic kind she used to have as a kid. The hard, grenade colored ones her father used to step on barefoot and swear, “Fuck! Fucking kids!” She didn’t understand why Andy didn’t buy the real ones. Instead, he lived in an animated backyard with neon green leaves and phony ant hills and tree trunks straight out of a “Winnie the Pooh” book. Manufactured men with machine guns that shot pixilated bullets. They groaned distorted groans like a dying alley cat whose head was shoved into a tin can by some neighborhood toughs. She was aborting his child and all he could do was play video games.
Or watch sports. Smoke pot. Anything but talk to her. “I get sick of talking. It’s not even in my top 100 things to do. We talk enough, really,” he said when she tried to communicate with him. He kept frantically pushing his fingers onto the candy colored buttons of the controller instead.
Years ago, Karli took a Greyhound bus precisely to avoid silence. She left Indiana with the brown, paper bag landscape and water towers she never could climb. She shoved some clothes into a duffle bag of her father’s along with stationary, good pens with smooth, rolling ink, and an address book full of everyone she’d ever met in her young life. Names of people she may or may not write, whose addresses no longer existed, whose phone numbers might be long disconnected. She collected their names written in colored ink like butterflies pinned to felt by their thorax or yellowed stamps carefully pasted in soft covered books.
The people might not even remember her blowing through town, changing high school after high school, changing her hair from brown to jet black to purple. She couldn’t believe how often she moved, how many school desks she sat in when there was only a handful of schools in the Elkhart. But she still fantasized sending one or two of them letters about her travels, how the bus smelled of the Scotchgard they used to huff in junior high, how a boy on leave from the army tried to feel her up in the back seat near Chicago. She’d leave the return address blank just to add a little mystery to their boring, small town life full of crushed beer cans and joints and dead end jobs.
She came to Minneapolis full of the naivety of a small town girl, with a wide eyed glow that reflected off the mirrored sky scrapers towering above the dusty, bum infested bus station. Carcasses of smoked cigarettes lined the sidewalks, flanked tiny, decorative fruit trees intended to spruce up the declining downtown. Instead of long stretches of toll roads and county roads, she saw snaking freeway ramps crowded with commuters.
But her cosmopolitan dream of smoke filled coffee shops with crappy, dumpster couches and forgotten table lamps came crashing down quickly. The icy stillness of Minnesotans stagnated her mind, her hopes of late night literary discussions gave way to staring out coffee shop windows at people bustling around in their boxed in worlds. She discovered the concept of personal space, distance, stand back at least five feet when talking. Smile, nod, but don’t ever show your teeth. She stared out windows just like she used to back home, only with a different landscape.
She left to avoid men in flannels and work boots, swollen bellies and snot nosed kids with nothing to do but huff glue behind the wood shed, boys and girls exploring each others bodies long before puberty waved its wand void of magic. But now she sat in her apartment watching Andy violently tap away on the plastic keypad, tethered to the TV by a plastic umbilical cord, his cigarette butts stamped out in a soap dish instead of an ashtray.
“I am slowly aborting your child again,” she said, this time to herself.
Andy spent the weekend playing a video game. It had a fleet of cartoon army men– like the dime store, plastic kind she used to have as a kid. The hard, grenade colored ones her father used to step on barefoot and swear, “Fuck! Fucking kids!” She didn’t understand why Andy didn’t buy the real ones. Instead, he lived in an animated backyard with neon green leaves and phony ant hills and tree trunks straight out of a “Winnie the Pooh” book. Manufactured men with machine guns that shot pixilated bullets. They groaned distorted groans like a dying alley cat whose head was shoved into a tin can by some neighborhood toughs. She was aborting his child and all he could do was play video games.
Or watch sports. Smoke pot. Anything but talk to her. “I get sick of talking. It’s not even in my top 100 things to do. We talk enough, really,” he said when she tried to communicate with him. He kept frantically pushing his fingers onto the candy colored buttons of the controller instead.
Years ago, Karli took a Greyhound bus precisely to avoid silence. She left Indiana with the brown, paper bag landscape and water towers she never could climb. She shoved some clothes into a duffle bag of her father’s along with stationary, good pens with smooth, rolling ink, and an address book full of everyone she’d ever met in her young life. Names of people she may or may not write, whose addresses no longer existed, whose phone numbers might be long disconnected. She collected their names written in colored ink like butterflies pinned to felt by their thorax or yellowed stamps carefully pasted in soft covered books.
The people might not even remember her blowing through town, changing high school after high school, changing her hair from brown to jet black to purple. She couldn’t believe how often she moved, how many school desks she sat in when there was only a handful of schools in the Elkhart. But she still fantasized sending one or two of them letters about her travels, how the bus smelled of the Scotchgard they used to huff in junior high, how a boy on leave from the army tried to feel her up in the back seat near Chicago. She’d leave the return address blank just to add a little mystery to their boring, small town life full of crushed beer cans and joints and dead end jobs.
She came to Minneapolis full of the naivety of a small town girl, with a wide eyed glow that reflected off the mirrored sky scrapers towering above the dusty, bum infested bus station. Carcasses of smoked cigarettes lined the sidewalks, flanked tiny, decorative fruit trees intended to spruce up the declining downtown. Instead of long stretches of toll roads and county roads, she saw snaking freeway ramps crowded with commuters.
But her cosmopolitan dream of smoke filled coffee shops with crappy, dumpster couches and forgotten table lamps came crashing down quickly. The icy stillness of Minnesotans stagnated her mind, her hopes of late night literary discussions gave way to staring out coffee shop windows at people bustling around in their boxed in worlds. She discovered the concept of personal space, distance, stand back at least five feet when talking. Smile, nod, but don’t ever show your teeth. She stared out windows just like she used to back home, only with a different landscape.
She left to avoid men in flannels and work boots, swollen bellies and snot nosed kids with nothing to do but huff glue behind the wood shed, boys and girls exploring each others bodies long before puberty waved its wand void of magic. But now she sat in her apartment watching Andy violently tap away on the plastic keypad, tethered to the TV by a plastic umbilical cord, his cigarette butts stamped out in a soap dish instead of an ashtray.
“I am slowly aborting your child again,” she said, this time to herself.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
The Back Seat
I named my daughter after my dead grandmother. It bothered people, because it hadn’t been so long since she died and it made people feel uncomfortable to say her name like that, so soon after she died.
This morning I picked up an old friend of hers who needed a ride to the store. Mrs. Solberg’s a proper lady, with a heavy European accent. She’s eighty years old and wears a corset. She dyes her hair platinum blond. From a distance, she looks like Marilyn Monroe, but up close you can tell she’s old.
Mrs. Solberg climbed into my car and looked at me with watery eyes before she turned to address my daughter, strapped into a child-seat in the back. She hesitated before she said, “Hello Augusta.”
I don’t think she knew she hesitated, but I could hear the silence smacking between her lips, along with all those old memories of petty quarrels and attempts at one-upmanship. I knew she hesitated because she was thinking about my grandmother and how she was dead.
Last year they drank coffee together and raised their eyebrows in unison. And that made her think of her own daughter who was also dead, but not yet commemorated by a wide-eyed three year old in the backseat of someone’s car.
I didn’t ask Mrs. Solberg to use the seatbelt, but she buckled herself in anyway before we left the driveway.
This morning I picked up an old friend of hers who needed a ride to the store. Mrs. Solberg’s a proper lady, with a heavy European accent. She’s eighty years old and wears a corset. She dyes her hair platinum blond. From a distance, she looks like Marilyn Monroe, but up close you can tell she’s old.
Mrs. Solberg climbed into my car and looked at me with watery eyes before she turned to address my daughter, strapped into a child-seat in the back. She hesitated before she said, “Hello Augusta.”
I don’t think she knew she hesitated, but I could hear the silence smacking between her lips, along with all those old memories of petty quarrels and attempts at one-upmanship. I knew she hesitated because she was thinking about my grandmother and how she was dead.
Last year they drank coffee together and raised their eyebrows in unison. And that made her think of her own daughter who was also dead, but not yet commemorated by a wide-eyed three year old in the backseat of someone’s car.
I didn’t ask Mrs. Solberg to use the seatbelt, but she buckled herself in anyway before we left the driveway.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Negatives
It is the picture of the bride and groom in black and white that holds Juliet’s attention. She stares at it in the art museum, her eyes wandering over the scene again and again. She chooses it over the pictures of the Tattooed Lady, the Human Pincushion, the shirtless midget smoking in his bed with a half bottle of brandy on the bed stand. The groom in his wool suit presses the bride in her fluffy, white gown against the hotel lobby wall. The wallpaper is cheap. The doorjambs are chipped and broken. The groom presses the bride in this narrow, cheap hallway, his lips jamming against the side of her face. Her eyes are wide, pure white like the tulle veil that attaches to her stylish black hair. Her eyes are made up with perfectly lacquered eyelashes and kohl eyeliner.
The portrait reminds Juliet of the cardboard box left behind the dumpster near her brownstone apartment on Franklin Avenue. It had a company’s logo on the side – something about freshness and fruit written in cheery, orange ink. She didn’t think it had been there too long because the sides weren’t rain soaked from the drizzly, gray rain of autumn. Sitting on her radiator, she spied the box from her third story window that looked over the alley, and the metal dumpster filled with her neighbor’s trash. She knew their trash but never their names.
The box looked out of place. It wasn’t the first or the last of the month. She couldn’t see the familiar torn armchairs or broken television sets left behind by renters escaping to another part of the city. The urge to look inside forced her to run barefoot down three flights of stairs lined in cheap apartment carpet that scratched the soles of her feet. She stood on the damp disorder of the alley without fear of broken glass or sharp stones. Juliet thumbed through stacks of magazines neatly placed in the fruit box – Popular Mechanics, Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle. She pulled each one out and laid them out in the center of the alley like a quilt. All the address labels had been torn off. Underneath a National Geographic from the 1970s, she saw a magazine with a black and white cover. It looked like a Russian Futurist painting with a large black square lined in white. It was untitled.
She pulled back the cover. The spine was weak, suffering from the spidery lines and creases of wear. Pictures were lined up like film from the old photo booths at the mall - a succession of black and white snapshots, one on top of another. She saw a van, some men, a street not unlike the one she lived on with parking meters and paper bags balled up into the gutter. She thumbed through the pages, watching the strips come to life like a film or the flip animation books she used to play with as a kid. Men. A conversion van. Meters. Bricks. A woman. A woman being grabbed by the men. A struggle. An empty warehouse. A naked woman tied with ropes that hung from a rafter. A naked woman with burns on her wrists from struggling to break free. Suspended above the dusty floor, her weight pressed down towards the ground like an exclamation mark. Her mouth was covered in thick slices of duct tape that reflected the heavy, overhead shop lights. It was the bound woman’s eyes that burned their image onto Juliet’s memory. Her eyes that looked to the left, towards the steel barred door. Her eyes wide and stark white, but colored with fear.
Standing in the museum, Juliet sees the black and white photos perfectly framed and hung at eye level. Little squares lined up just like in a photo booth. And at the end of the strip, hung up in corner, is the bride in white whose eyes mirror the anonymous girl staring at the coldness of a barred, metal door.
The portrait reminds Juliet of the cardboard box left behind the dumpster near her brownstone apartment on Franklin Avenue. It had a company’s logo on the side – something about freshness and fruit written in cheery, orange ink. She didn’t think it had been there too long because the sides weren’t rain soaked from the drizzly, gray rain of autumn. Sitting on her radiator, she spied the box from her third story window that looked over the alley, and the metal dumpster filled with her neighbor’s trash. She knew their trash but never their names.
The box looked out of place. It wasn’t the first or the last of the month. She couldn’t see the familiar torn armchairs or broken television sets left behind by renters escaping to another part of the city. The urge to look inside forced her to run barefoot down three flights of stairs lined in cheap apartment carpet that scratched the soles of her feet. She stood on the damp disorder of the alley without fear of broken glass or sharp stones. Juliet thumbed through stacks of magazines neatly placed in the fruit box – Popular Mechanics, Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle. She pulled each one out and laid them out in the center of the alley like a quilt. All the address labels had been torn off. Underneath a National Geographic from the 1970s, she saw a magazine with a black and white cover. It looked like a Russian Futurist painting with a large black square lined in white. It was untitled.
She pulled back the cover. The spine was weak, suffering from the spidery lines and creases of wear. Pictures were lined up like film from the old photo booths at the mall - a succession of black and white snapshots, one on top of another. She saw a van, some men, a street not unlike the one she lived on with parking meters and paper bags balled up into the gutter. She thumbed through the pages, watching the strips come to life like a film or the flip animation books she used to play with as a kid. Men. A conversion van. Meters. Bricks. A woman. A woman being grabbed by the men. A struggle. An empty warehouse. A naked woman tied with ropes that hung from a rafter. A naked woman with burns on her wrists from struggling to break free. Suspended above the dusty floor, her weight pressed down towards the ground like an exclamation mark. Her mouth was covered in thick slices of duct tape that reflected the heavy, overhead shop lights. It was the bound woman’s eyes that burned their image onto Juliet’s memory. Her eyes that looked to the left, towards the steel barred door. Her eyes wide and stark white, but colored with fear.
Standing in the museum, Juliet sees the black and white photos perfectly framed and hung at eye level. Little squares lined up just like in a photo booth. And at the end of the strip, hung up in corner, is the bride in white whose eyes mirror the anonymous girl staring at the coldness of a barred, metal door.
five year plans
"Don't you want anything out of life?"
Out of life? What was she talking about? Why this, why now?
"I want Cosetta's for breakfast. I want a giant slice of pepperoni and one of those chocolate milk things, I think they're Nesquik, but I suppose any chocolate milk would do."
The look she shot across the double bed was exaggerated, designed to make sure I understood this conversation was of greater significance than mid day meal plans. She wanted more five-year plans, more motivation; this wasn't the first time she had attempted to get me to think about the grand scheme of things. On previous encounters, I had been more or less successful in changing the subject, ducking to the bar for another drink, or complimenting her new shoes. This time though, she had outmaneuvered me. We had just finished a lazy Sunday morning lovemaking session, nowhere to be, no hurry, my favorite. As far as I was concerned, nothing existed outside that small double bed in that small apartment in St. Paul. As far as wanting anything out of life, I was already content.
Now she had me trapped in that small content world. We both knew this. She was however, nothing if not subtle, and so she changed tactics on me. She shifted so that she could rest her chin on my chest and gaze up at me with those beautiful dark eyes,
"Tell me your dreams baby." A little softer this time, but the insinuation was the same, maybe I could bluff her.
"My dream is to someday live on a beach, a beautiful, unspoiled beach. Miles away from anything except sand and water and you, and I want to write. I want to write like Kerouac and Bukowski and Hemmingway. I want to listen to good music at full volume and I want to learn how to cook for you. I want a little dog, a mutt. And someday, just maybe, I want a little boy and a little girl. I want to teach them to surf and to write and to listen to good music and to just appreciate the beauty in life."
Her eyes closed slightly, a playful smile across her face. I just might get out of this after all, so I continued.
"We'll walk the beach every morning holding hands, watching our mutt chase seagulls. We'll lead our own lives during the day, but I'll think of you constantly. I'll make you fresh seafood for dinner, afterwards we'll gaze at the stars, snuggled close on our hammock as the waves crash onto the shore…"
* * * * * * * * *
In the next room, a roommate lays on her bed listening through thin walls as a boy describes his beautiful dreams to his dozing girlfriend. Though their love making earlier sounded enjoyable, the roommate stares sadly at the ceiling thinking of the naïve boy, the dreamer. The dreamer who has no idea his girlfriend is also sleeping with her old high school boyfriend, a successful investment banker with a nice car and a solid five-year plan. The roommate sighs and goes back to being the girl on the other side of the wall.
Out of life? What was she talking about? Why this, why now?
"I want Cosetta's for breakfast. I want a giant slice of pepperoni and one of those chocolate milk things, I think they're Nesquik, but I suppose any chocolate milk would do."
The look she shot across the double bed was exaggerated, designed to make sure I understood this conversation was of greater significance than mid day meal plans. She wanted more five-year plans, more motivation; this wasn't the first time she had attempted to get me to think about the grand scheme of things. On previous encounters, I had been more or less successful in changing the subject, ducking to the bar for another drink, or complimenting her new shoes. This time though, she had outmaneuvered me. We had just finished a lazy Sunday morning lovemaking session, nowhere to be, no hurry, my favorite. As far as I was concerned, nothing existed outside that small double bed in that small apartment in St. Paul. As far as wanting anything out of life, I was already content.
Now she had me trapped in that small content world. We both knew this. She was however, nothing if not subtle, and so she changed tactics on me. She shifted so that she could rest her chin on my chest and gaze up at me with those beautiful dark eyes,
"Tell me your dreams baby." A little softer this time, but the insinuation was the same, maybe I could bluff her.
"My dream is to someday live on a beach, a beautiful, unspoiled beach. Miles away from anything except sand and water and you, and I want to write. I want to write like Kerouac and Bukowski and Hemmingway. I want to listen to good music at full volume and I want to learn how to cook for you. I want a little dog, a mutt. And someday, just maybe, I want a little boy and a little girl. I want to teach them to surf and to write and to listen to good music and to just appreciate the beauty in life."
Her eyes closed slightly, a playful smile across her face. I just might get out of this after all, so I continued.
"We'll walk the beach every morning holding hands, watching our mutt chase seagulls. We'll lead our own lives during the day, but I'll think of you constantly. I'll make you fresh seafood for dinner, afterwards we'll gaze at the stars, snuggled close on our hammock as the waves crash onto the shore…"
* * * * * * * * *
In the next room, a roommate lays on her bed listening through thin walls as a boy describes his beautiful dreams to his dozing girlfriend. Though their love making earlier sounded enjoyable, the roommate stares sadly at the ceiling thinking of the naïve boy, the dreamer. The dreamer who has no idea his girlfriend is also sleeping with her old high school boyfriend, a successful investment banker with a nice car and a solid five-year plan. The roommate sighs and goes back to being the girl on the other side of the wall.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Disappointment
Let me start this story by telling you precisely why Marsha was disappointed. If I simply stated the plain facts as they were born, you might come to the rather straightforward conclusion that she was jealous. Indeed, most people find themselves in such a position when confronted with infidelity; most people writhe in pain when the face of betrayal plants itself within their notice. Most people would advertise themselves as wronged lovers, faithful recipients of a tragic romance, brokenhearted angels with rapscallion husbands.
But not Marsha.
In the first place, she was too sophisticated to be married. She had politely declined Alan’s offer in their second year of courtship and had instead proposed that they initiate a contract of cohabitation, made official before the landlord when their nine-month lease was signed and dated at a point in time which was, in fact, a total of nine years ago. Marsha felt that marriage was not only an impractical, bourgeois ideal, but also a rather thin pretense for the ownership of sexual and domestic labor. Alan went along with her plan, not because he felt strongly about the principle, but because he found it easier than the amount of thought objecting to it would require.
In the second place, Marsha was too sophisticated to be jealous. Jealousy, she felt, was one of the baser human emotions that had its roots in cooperative farming. In the context of industrialized society, there was no place for jealousy. She felt with great certainty that jealousy had become a cultural phenomenon entirely propagated by fundamentalist groups interested in maintaining classical divisions of labor and a highly stratified social order. To feel the heat and anger of jealousy, she truly believed, would be to accept one’s designated place in the social order. Jealousy was a device for making people cry to have their chains put back on.
And so, when Marsha did encounter evidence of Alan’s infidelity, she had only a split second to decide upon and label that sensation which seemed to sink into her gut.
“Disappointment,” she called it.
By then, Marsha and Alan had had a child together. In the interests of keeping her son out of the public schools (which would ultimately try to brainwash him), Marsha had quit her job as an editor with the local communist paper and had been homeschooling the child for the past three years. The sinking in her gut, called “disappointment,” accompanied her sudden and thorough realization that she and her child were quite dependent on Alan for survival.
Had she been less tired or perhaps in more of a secure position, Marsha would have taken the time to think through her dilemma. However, as she began pouring through the instant messenger transcripts she had accidentally pulled up on her home computer, a generalized panic seemed to overtake the sinking feeling. “Thinking about you…” she read, “wish you were here.”
And so, that afternoon, she made two telephone calls.
The first call, emitted in one harsh and menacing breath, included the simple statement, “You keep away from him, bitch!”
The second call required less thought, read softly as it was from the transcript lying in front of her, “Just thinking about you…wish you were here. Let’s do something special tonight...I’ll put on something silky….”
And then Marsha hung up the phone, reflecting silently on the historical significance of silks in class bondage and female objectification. She spat once onto the floor and stared glumly ahead of her. Her son was still napping in the next room. The theme song for the Maury Povitch Show was playing on TV. Beneath that was the hum of construction off Lake Street.
Marsha was disappointed.
But not Marsha.
In the first place, she was too sophisticated to be married. She had politely declined Alan’s offer in their second year of courtship and had instead proposed that they initiate a contract of cohabitation, made official before the landlord when their nine-month lease was signed and dated at a point in time which was, in fact, a total of nine years ago. Marsha felt that marriage was not only an impractical, bourgeois ideal, but also a rather thin pretense for the ownership of sexual and domestic labor. Alan went along with her plan, not because he felt strongly about the principle, but because he found it easier than the amount of thought objecting to it would require.
In the second place, Marsha was too sophisticated to be jealous. Jealousy, she felt, was one of the baser human emotions that had its roots in cooperative farming. In the context of industrialized society, there was no place for jealousy. She felt with great certainty that jealousy had become a cultural phenomenon entirely propagated by fundamentalist groups interested in maintaining classical divisions of labor and a highly stratified social order. To feel the heat and anger of jealousy, she truly believed, would be to accept one’s designated place in the social order. Jealousy was a device for making people cry to have their chains put back on.
And so, when Marsha did encounter evidence of Alan’s infidelity, she had only a split second to decide upon and label that sensation which seemed to sink into her gut.
“Disappointment,” she called it.
By then, Marsha and Alan had had a child together. In the interests of keeping her son out of the public schools (which would ultimately try to brainwash him), Marsha had quit her job as an editor with the local communist paper and had been homeschooling the child for the past three years. The sinking in her gut, called “disappointment,” accompanied her sudden and thorough realization that she and her child were quite dependent on Alan for survival.
Had she been less tired or perhaps in more of a secure position, Marsha would have taken the time to think through her dilemma. However, as she began pouring through the instant messenger transcripts she had accidentally pulled up on her home computer, a generalized panic seemed to overtake the sinking feeling. “Thinking about you…” she read, “wish you were here.”
And so, that afternoon, she made two telephone calls.
The first call, emitted in one harsh and menacing breath, included the simple statement, “You keep away from him, bitch!”
The second call required less thought, read softly as it was from the transcript lying in front of her, “Just thinking about you…wish you were here. Let’s do something special tonight...I’ll put on something silky….”
And then Marsha hung up the phone, reflecting silently on the historical significance of silks in class bondage and female objectification. She spat once onto the floor and stared glumly ahead of her. Her son was still napping in the next room. The theme song for the Maury Povitch Show was playing on TV. Beneath that was the hum of construction off Lake Street.
Marsha was disappointed.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Nina's
She comes to the coffee shop to flirt. She comes to see and be seen, all indirect and discrete. Twenty laptops for eighteen people aged nineteen to twenty eight, and the other two look a lot like grandparents. Count those two out, they’re not part of the game. Thirty six eyes pretend to be working, pretend to be deeply engrossed in their classes, their presentations, their excel sheets, their own lives. Thirty six eyes dart towards the heavy oak door every single time it creaks as it swings open. Thirty six eyes very easily distracted from eighteen very important tasks.
That heavy door creaks and she walks in, sashays in is a more accurate description. She sashays with a hint of strut into a world of coffee and computers and wandering eyes. She walks as if she were in a nightclub and she knows all of the eyes are on her. She scans the room quickly, because she knows it just won’t do to stare. Not on the first pass. She pretends to be looking for a seat, but she’s actually looking for that cute boy with dark hair and sad eyes. She has him pegged for a college student, a lover of wine and alternative pop. She has this feeling that he’s into the Strokes, her favorite band. She doesn’t see him, and so she looks for a seat. The corners are key, optimum viewing with maximum discretion. Second choice are the small tables along the wall, preferably with a view of the front door. Heaven help the poor soul who gets stuck at one of those tables in the middle. That shop over on Selby and Western, by the Cathedral, is her favorite as it has a very small upper balcony with one table high above the crowd. It’s very similar to VIP seating at her favorite club downtown. Above the crowd, removed, it allows her to see everyone and almost no one to see her.
Everyone is dressed up tonight, it’s a Wednesday, and it’s peak night at the coffee houses. The night where the respectable people of the world are definitely not at the bars, but still feeling social in a reserved sort of way. There is very little obvious outward flirting, but on this night, this shop is full of young people searching for someone to hold onto.
Tonight she is lucky, she found an oversized chair in the back. She can curl up feline, the height of indifference, while maintaining direct eye contact with the front door. She can pretend to be bored, read her Kundera, and wait for him to show. Maybe tonight is the night they’ll get past their stolen glances and quick smiles to actual words. She is not optimistic, as there are rules to coffee shop flirting, and the verbal threshold is seldom crossed. There is a strong chance he won’t show at all.
But it is Wednesday night, and she’s always been one of the lucky ones. Thirty-eight eyes dart toward to the heavy oak door as it creaks open, and a youngish student type with dark hair and sad eyes comes in from the autumn night. He scans the room quickly as if looking for a seat, she smiles into her book.
That heavy door creaks and she walks in, sashays in is a more accurate description. She sashays with a hint of strut into a world of coffee and computers and wandering eyes. She walks as if she were in a nightclub and she knows all of the eyes are on her. She scans the room quickly, because she knows it just won’t do to stare. Not on the first pass. She pretends to be looking for a seat, but she’s actually looking for that cute boy with dark hair and sad eyes. She has him pegged for a college student, a lover of wine and alternative pop. She has this feeling that he’s into the Strokes, her favorite band. She doesn’t see him, and so she looks for a seat. The corners are key, optimum viewing with maximum discretion. Second choice are the small tables along the wall, preferably with a view of the front door. Heaven help the poor soul who gets stuck at one of those tables in the middle. That shop over on Selby and Western, by the Cathedral, is her favorite as it has a very small upper balcony with one table high above the crowd. It’s very similar to VIP seating at her favorite club downtown. Above the crowd, removed, it allows her to see everyone and almost no one to see her.
Everyone is dressed up tonight, it’s a Wednesday, and it’s peak night at the coffee houses. The night where the respectable people of the world are definitely not at the bars, but still feeling social in a reserved sort of way. There is very little obvious outward flirting, but on this night, this shop is full of young people searching for someone to hold onto.
Tonight she is lucky, she found an oversized chair in the back. She can curl up feline, the height of indifference, while maintaining direct eye contact with the front door. She can pretend to be bored, read her Kundera, and wait for him to show. Maybe tonight is the night they’ll get past their stolen glances and quick smiles to actual words. She is not optimistic, as there are rules to coffee shop flirting, and the verbal threshold is seldom crossed. There is a strong chance he won’t show at all.
But it is Wednesday night, and she’s always been one of the lucky ones. Thirty-eight eyes dart toward to the heavy oak door as it creaks open, and a youngish student type with dark hair and sad eyes comes in from the autumn night. He scans the room quickly as if looking for a seat, she smiles into her book.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Single Construction
She finds Frankie’s dirty, white socks balled up near the bathtub that drips rust tinted water. Claire knows she’s getting laid by the number of white socks she discovers around the house. All the men she knows wear white socks – Dean, Shane, Billy, and now Frankie. The more time Claire spends with a man trapped beneath the weight of her ratty quilt, the more linty, strips of cotton she discovers scattered around the floor, underneath her double bed, bunched up behind the headboard. Even when the men start leaving their shit over at some other woman’s house, she finds the leftover remnants from their affair in the form of a lone sock without a match. She keeps them in an empty paint bucket under the stairs. Claire swears she’ll make an art project out of them someday, construct a shadow box or large scale montage highlighting the number of failed attempts at relationships by hanging single, dirty socks of men whose lips and limbs she used to feel.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
How the Middle Class Grows (One Corner at a Time)
Tom, in his mid forties, is scruffy looking in a t-shirt and jeans. Tom would be described as “a little slow. He’s wearing sunglasses and listening to music on his headphones. There’s a bottle of water at his feet and he’s holding a cardboard sign that reads: Homeless, Please HELP! I lost my job and fell behind on mortgage payments. Please help me.
Annette is a well-kempt woman in her thirties or forties. Her hair looks professionally done and she’s wearing frosted lipstick and professional clothing. She looks like a cosmetics representative.
Tom is standing on a street corner off the highway. Annette crosses the street and approaches him daintily.
ANNETTE: Excuse me sir, but you wouldn’t happen to have change for a dollar, would you? I need something for the parking meter.
TOM (lifts headphones away from ears): Huh?
ANNETTE: Change for the parking meter? If you could just give me change for this dollar?
TOM (brings a fistful of bills and coins from his pockets): Sure
ANNETTE: Thank you (turns to go).
TOM: Ma’am? Spare any change? I’ve got no place to stay.
ANNETTE: Well, that’s a silly question, isn’t it? I just asked you for change.
TOM: Oh.
ANNETTE (turns to go, then rethinks): You know, you’re not going to have much luck just standing there like that.
TOM: What’dya mean?
ANNETTE: You’re a mess, but you don’t really inspire sympathy. I wouldn’t give you anything if I were driving by. I’d say to myself, “There’s a lazy man who can’t think of anything better to do today than raise money for the bars tonight.”
TOM (miffed): Well ma’am, I guess I’m lucky there are people around who don’t think that way.
ANNETTE: Now you’re angry with me. Don’t be angry with me – it’s just an observation. I do this for a living. I’m an image consultant. It’s my job to know what people look like as opposed to how people are supposed to look. It’s all about visualizing what you want and how you need to look to get there.
TOM: Oh. You can’t very well expect me to go out and buy myself a suit, can you, lady? I’m barely scraping by, day-to-day.
ANNETTE: How much do you pull in on a daily basis?
TOM: It varies.
ANNETTE: Well, give me a range here.
TOM: On a good day, twenty, thirty dollars maybe. If it’s raining or really hot out, I’m lucky if I can clear five bucks.
ANNETTE: What would you say if I told you that you could clear three times that if you tweaked your image just a little bit? Imagine, ninety bucks on a good day!
TOM: Is that so? How would I pull that off?
ANNETTE: Well, you’d change a few things about your appearance, your posture, and so on. You make yourself in the right image and people will practically be begging to give you money.
TOM: Like what? What should I change?
ANNETTE: Sorry. You understand, I do this for a living. If I made a policy of giving my tips out for free, well, then I’d be in the same place you’re in, wouldn’t I? I’m a generous person, sir, but I’m also a businesswoman (turns to leave). Well, best of luck to you…hear it’s going to rain tomorrow, so keep dry while you can.
TOM (thinking): Wait. Hold on. How much does a person like you charge?
ANNETTE: Oh, nothing you could afford. I’ve been featured on Oprah, you know. Image consultants that are just starting out charge around thirty dollars an hour, but with my experience, my advice is priced a little higher than that. Sixty dollars an hour – more, if the job is complicated and requires research.
TOM: Oprah, huh. Harpo Studios.
ANNETTE: Let me tell you, she’s quite a lady. There’s someone who really appreciates what an image consultant is worth. She’s certainly come a long way – beautiful woman, now, don’t you think? And all that money. She knows what she’s doing (turns to go again).
TOM: Wait. Ok, I can’t afford an hour of your time, but what if I was to ask you for five minutes? We’ve already been talking that long anyways. That’d be five dollars, right?
ANNETTE: heh. I don’t think so. I’ve already spent five minutes too many on this street corner, but thanks.
TOM: Wait. What if I pay you for ten minutes – the five we’ve already spent, plus five more? Ten dollars.
ANNETTE: That’s very sweet, really, but the level of focus required for a five-minute evaluation would be enough to give me a headache for the rest of the day. It’s simply not worth it.
TOM: OK, twenty dollars. For ten minutes. No pressure.
ANNETTE (thinking): Make it twenty-five and it’s a deal. I don’t want this to be a total loss.
TOM (slowly counts out money to verify that he has enough): Deal. It’s about all I’ve got, but if the advice you give me is what you say it’s worth, I’ll make it back soon enough, right?
ANNETTE: Double (counts out the money, before depositing it in her purse).
TOM: Ok.
ANNETTE: All right, let me take a step back here, just to size you up and get a feel for your body type.
Tom steps back as well, looking self-conscious.
ANNETTE: First of all, you need to get rid of those headphones. They are not working for you – nobody wants to subsidize your music appreciation. As soon as someone lays eyes on that contraption, they know that the price of batteries alone would be the equivalent of a meal at Taco Bell.
TOM (removes headphones): ok
ANNETTE: The sunglasses have to go too. People can’t see your eyes; they don’t want to give you money. They want to see that you’re not on drugs and trying to hide your pupils. Besides that, if you want to hook them, you’ve got to be able to make eye contact. You’ve got to show them that you’re human, connect with them. They’re already trying to avoid eye contact with you – why make it easier for them by wearing sunglasses?
Tom removes his sunglasses and tosses his hair uncomfortably to the side. He looks down at the ground.
ANNETTE: That’s another thing. Keep your eyes up. You need to really make that human connection. If they can’t feel you reaching out to them, they’re not going to make that effort to reach out to you.
Bottled water has to go. Hide it in the bushes if you need to, but people still associate bottled water with the French, with elitism.
Do you have any other shirts beside that black one?
Tom nods and pulls a few out of his duffel bag.
ANNETTE: No…ok, that pinkish one will work. What you want is a color that really brings out your vulnerability, especially with your skin tone. You don’t want them to be afraid of you; you want them to want to protect you. This one will work for now, but if you get a chance, pick up a couple of t-shirts in lighter tones – salmon, pale greens and beige, pale yellows. Nothing militaristic or biker-like and definitely no blacks or grays.
TOM: All right. What else?
ANNETTE: Your hair is way too long. You look like a hippie or a derelict-by-choice. Greasy is fine – people don’t expect that you’re taking showers everyday, but your hair needs to say, “I’m a decent, respectable man who has fallen upon hard times.”
Now, have you got any extra cardboard?
TOM: Yeah. I’ve got a few pieces here in my bag.
ANNETTE: Great. The first thing you need is a new sign. The one you have right now is too wordy – people don’t have time to read anymore. And I bet half the people who drive by here don’t even know what a mortgage is. You’ve got to be able to grab their attention with just a few powerful words, something they can relate to, coupled with a call to action. Here..
Annette writes on the sign: HUNGRY. PLEASE HELP!
ANNETTE: After I’m done here, you can work on darkening those letters a bit. They should be big and bold, so that someone can read it from a distance instead of having to guess at what you want.
TOM: Yeah, ok, that makes sense.
ANNETTE: Then, with the rest of the cardboard, we’ll just create something that’s suggestive of homelessness. A little lean-to back here against the bushes. Nowadays, people really need something visual to glom onto. You don’t need to get complicated with it, but a few details here and there can have a powerful effect. Here, give me those extra shirts…I’ll just drape them a little here…There. Tell me what you think – like a little makeshift home, don’t you think?
TOM: Yeah, but, I can’t sleep out here. I’d get picked up by the cops. Usually I crash on a friend’s couch, this guy I know from….
ANNETTE: Doesn’t matter where you sleep. It should be the first thing you set up in the morning and the last thing you take down at night. It’s all about the power of suggestion and visualization. If you tell yourself that you’re not really homeless, that you don’t really need or deserve what you’re asking for, then you’ll never get it. People will read it all over you.
TOM (nods thoughtfully): I need the money. I deserve the money. I’m human too. I deserve to have what other people have.
ANNETTE: Hold it. You don’t want to go too far down that road. A false sense of righteousness can get you in a whole lot of trouble and it won’t do you much good on this corner. Truth is, you don’t deserve to have what other people have. You don’t deserve their homes, their cars, their clothes, their groceries. You don’t deserve any of that. You don’t deserve anything besides their eye contact – that single instant in which they recognize that you are human too, just like them.
Anything beyond that should be treated with gratitude. They give you five dollars, you say, “Thank you.” They give you two pennies, you say, “Thank you” and say it with the same enthusiasm you gave for those five dollars. Treat every single one of them as a valuable customer and you will be rewarded. They will keep coming back to you, and if you’re lucky, they’ll tell their friends about you as well.
TOM: Really? You think it will work?
ANNETTE: 100% of the time. If you treat them right, they’ll remember it and treat you right. You’ve got to remember that these people have it tough too – they’re coming to you right after they get yelled at by the boss, right after their kids throw a tantrum or they found phone-sex charges on the telephone bill. If you can turn that around for them, make them feel good about helping you, then you’ll have done your job.
TOM: I guess I never really thought about it that way. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense to me.
ANNETTE: One last thing and then I’m done. You’ve got to work on that posture. Quit slumping – people will think you’re either drunk or lazy. Stand straight up so they take notice of you. Keep your shoulders back, your chin up. You don’t want to look cocky, but you want to show that you’re a man who’s doing what he has to do in order to survive. Never sit down or lean against a wall while you’re on this corner. The minute you do that, word’ll get out that you’re no-good. Right now, there should be nothing more precious to you than your image. Got that?
TOM: Yeah. My image. It’s all I’ve got right now. I’ll do it. From here on out, nobody’ll ever accuse me of being lazy or drunk. No more, “Get a job, dickhead.” No more comments about blowing it all at the liquor store. God, you don’t know how much those comments get to me. I’m a man, dammit, I’m tired of all those things people say about me that just aren’t true. I’m tired of having to defend myself all the time. I’m tired of being taken advantage of. From now on, people are going to say, “There’s a man – a human being – to take notice of. A human being deserving of our attention.”
ANNETTE: Very good. And now, our five minutes are up.
TOM: Thank you.
ANNETTE: Thank you, sir, and have a nice day.
Lights fade out on Tom as Annette walks away. Once Tom is safely out of sight, we see Annette taking off her suit jacket and skirt to reveal a stained t-shirt and shorts underneath. Carefully, she folds her clothing and places it in a duffel bag that has been hidden in the bushes. She reaches up to remove her wig, revealing a head of greasy, unkempt hair. Sitting on a street corner, she removes a Styrofoam head from the pag and places the wig on it. She lights up the butt of a cigarette picked up off the street, sighs, and then begins to comb the wig. Then the duffel bag is zipped and arranged to form a pillow as Annette lies down to sleep.
BLACKOUT.
Annette is a well-kempt woman in her thirties or forties. Her hair looks professionally done and she’s wearing frosted lipstick and professional clothing. She looks like a cosmetics representative.
Tom is standing on a street corner off the highway. Annette crosses the street and approaches him daintily.
ANNETTE: Excuse me sir, but you wouldn’t happen to have change for a dollar, would you? I need something for the parking meter.
TOM (lifts headphones away from ears): Huh?
ANNETTE: Change for the parking meter? If you could just give me change for this dollar?
TOM (brings a fistful of bills and coins from his pockets): Sure
ANNETTE: Thank you (turns to go).
TOM: Ma’am? Spare any change? I’ve got no place to stay.
ANNETTE: Well, that’s a silly question, isn’t it? I just asked you for change.
TOM: Oh.
ANNETTE (turns to go, then rethinks): You know, you’re not going to have much luck just standing there like that.
TOM: What’dya mean?
ANNETTE: You’re a mess, but you don’t really inspire sympathy. I wouldn’t give you anything if I were driving by. I’d say to myself, “There’s a lazy man who can’t think of anything better to do today than raise money for the bars tonight.”
TOM (miffed): Well ma’am, I guess I’m lucky there are people around who don’t think that way.
ANNETTE: Now you’re angry with me. Don’t be angry with me – it’s just an observation. I do this for a living. I’m an image consultant. It’s my job to know what people look like as opposed to how people are supposed to look. It’s all about visualizing what you want and how you need to look to get there.
TOM: Oh. You can’t very well expect me to go out and buy myself a suit, can you, lady? I’m barely scraping by, day-to-day.
ANNETTE: How much do you pull in on a daily basis?
TOM: It varies.
ANNETTE: Well, give me a range here.
TOM: On a good day, twenty, thirty dollars maybe. If it’s raining or really hot out, I’m lucky if I can clear five bucks.
ANNETTE: What would you say if I told you that you could clear three times that if you tweaked your image just a little bit? Imagine, ninety bucks on a good day!
TOM: Is that so? How would I pull that off?
ANNETTE: Well, you’d change a few things about your appearance, your posture, and so on. You make yourself in the right image and people will practically be begging to give you money.
TOM: Like what? What should I change?
ANNETTE: Sorry. You understand, I do this for a living. If I made a policy of giving my tips out for free, well, then I’d be in the same place you’re in, wouldn’t I? I’m a generous person, sir, but I’m also a businesswoman (turns to leave). Well, best of luck to you…hear it’s going to rain tomorrow, so keep dry while you can.
TOM (thinking): Wait. Hold on. How much does a person like you charge?
ANNETTE: Oh, nothing you could afford. I’ve been featured on Oprah, you know. Image consultants that are just starting out charge around thirty dollars an hour, but with my experience, my advice is priced a little higher than that. Sixty dollars an hour – more, if the job is complicated and requires research.
TOM: Oprah, huh. Harpo Studios.
ANNETTE: Let me tell you, she’s quite a lady. There’s someone who really appreciates what an image consultant is worth. She’s certainly come a long way – beautiful woman, now, don’t you think? And all that money. She knows what she’s doing (turns to go again).
TOM: Wait. Ok, I can’t afford an hour of your time, but what if I was to ask you for five minutes? We’ve already been talking that long anyways. That’d be five dollars, right?
ANNETTE: heh. I don’t think so. I’ve already spent five minutes too many on this street corner, but thanks.
TOM: Wait. What if I pay you for ten minutes – the five we’ve already spent, plus five more? Ten dollars.
ANNETTE: That’s very sweet, really, but the level of focus required for a five-minute evaluation would be enough to give me a headache for the rest of the day. It’s simply not worth it.
TOM: OK, twenty dollars. For ten minutes. No pressure.
ANNETTE (thinking): Make it twenty-five and it’s a deal. I don’t want this to be a total loss.
TOM (slowly counts out money to verify that he has enough): Deal. It’s about all I’ve got, but if the advice you give me is what you say it’s worth, I’ll make it back soon enough, right?
ANNETTE: Double (counts out the money, before depositing it in her purse).
TOM: Ok.
ANNETTE: All right, let me take a step back here, just to size you up and get a feel for your body type.
Tom steps back as well, looking self-conscious.
ANNETTE: First of all, you need to get rid of those headphones. They are not working for you – nobody wants to subsidize your music appreciation. As soon as someone lays eyes on that contraption, they know that the price of batteries alone would be the equivalent of a meal at Taco Bell.
TOM (removes headphones): ok
ANNETTE: The sunglasses have to go too. People can’t see your eyes; they don’t want to give you money. They want to see that you’re not on drugs and trying to hide your pupils. Besides that, if you want to hook them, you’ve got to be able to make eye contact. You’ve got to show them that you’re human, connect with them. They’re already trying to avoid eye contact with you – why make it easier for them by wearing sunglasses?
Tom removes his sunglasses and tosses his hair uncomfortably to the side. He looks down at the ground.
ANNETTE: That’s another thing. Keep your eyes up. You need to really make that human connection. If they can’t feel you reaching out to them, they’re not going to make that effort to reach out to you.
Bottled water has to go. Hide it in the bushes if you need to, but people still associate bottled water with the French, with elitism.
Do you have any other shirts beside that black one?
Tom nods and pulls a few out of his duffel bag.
ANNETTE: No…ok, that pinkish one will work. What you want is a color that really brings out your vulnerability, especially with your skin tone. You don’t want them to be afraid of you; you want them to want to protect you. This one will work for now, but if you get a chance, pick up a couple of t-shirts in lighter tones – salmon, pale greens and beige, pale yellows. Nothing militaristic or biker-like and definitely no blacks or grays.
TOM: All right. What else?
ANNETTE: Your hair is way too long. You look like a hippie or a derelict-by-choice. Greasy is fine – people don’t expect that you’re taking showers everyday, but your hair needs to say, “I’m a decent, respectable man who has fallen upon hard times.”
Now, have you got any extra cardboard?
TOM: Yeah. I’ve got a few pieces here in my bag.
ANNETTE: Great. The first thing you need is a new sign. The one you have right now is too wordy – people don’t have time to read anymore. And I bet half the people who drive by here don’t even know what a mortgage is. You’ve got to be able to grab their attention with just a few powerful words, something they can relate to, coupled with a call to action. Here..
Annette writes on the sign: HUNGRY. PLEASE HELP!
ANNETTE: After I’m done here, you can work on darkening those letters a bit. They should be big and bold, so that someone can read it from a distance instead of having to guess at what you want.
TOM: Yeah, ok, that makes sense.
ANNETTE: Then, with the rest of the cardboard, we’ll just create something that’s suggestive of homelessness. A little lean-to back here against the bushes. Nowadays, people really need something visual to glom onto. You don’t need to get complicated with it, but a few details here and there can have a powerful effect. Here, give me those extra shirts…I’ll just drape them a little here…There. Tell me what you think – like a little makeshift home, don’t you think?
TOM: Yeah, but, I can’t sleep out here. I’d get picked up by the cops. Usually I crash on a friend’s couch, this guy I know from….
ANNETTE: Doesn’t matter where you sleep. It should be the first thing you set up in the morning and the last thing you take down at night. It’s all about the power of suggestion and visualization. If you tell yourself that you’re not really homeless, that you don’t really need or deserve what you’re asking for, then you’ll never get it. People will read it all over you.
TOM (nods thoughtfully): I need the money. I deserve the money. I’m human too. I deserve to have what other people have.
ANNETTE: Hold it. You don’t want to go too far down that road. A false sense of righteousness can get you in a whole lot of trouble and it won’t do you much good on this corner. Truth is, you don’t deserve to have what other people have. You don’t deserve their homes, their cars, their clothes, their groceries. You don’t deserve any of that. You don’t deserve anything besides their eye contact – that single instant in which they recognize that you are human too, just like them.
Anything beyond that should be treated with gratitude. They give you five dollars, you say, “Thank you.” They give you two pennies, you say, “Thank you” and say it with the same enthusiasm you gave for those five dollars. Treat every single one of them as a valuable customer and you will be rewarded. They will keep coming back to you, and if you’re lucky, they’ll tell their friends about you as well.
TOM: Really? You think it will work?
ANNETTE: 100% of the time. If you treat them right, they’ll remember it and treat you right. You’ve got to remember that these people have it tough too – they’re coming to you right after they get yelled at by the boss, right after their kids throw a tantrum or they found phone-sex charges on the telephone bill. If you can turn that around for them, make them feel good about helping you, then you’ll have done your job.
TOM: I guess I never really thought about it that way. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense to me.
ANNETTE: One last thing and then I’m done. You’ve got to work on that posture. Quit slumping – people will think you’re either drunk or lazy. Stand straight up so they take notice of you. Keep your shoulders back, your chin up. You don’t want to look cocky, but you want to show that you’re a man who’s doing what he has to do in order to survive. Never sit down or lean against a wall while you’re on this corner. The minute you do that, word’ll get out that you’re no-good. Right now, there should be nothing more precious to you than your image. Got that?
TOM: Yeah. My image. It’s all I’ve got right now. I’ll do it. From here on out, nobody’ll ever accuse me of being lazy or drunk. No more, “Get a job, dickhead.” No more comments about blowing it all at the liquor store. God, you don’t know how much those comments get to me. I’m a man, dammit, I’m tired of all those things people say about me that just aren’t true. I’m tired of having to defend myself all the time. I’m tired of being taken advantage of. From now on, people are going to say, “There’s a man – a human being – to take notice of. A human being deserving of our attention.”
ANNETTE: Very good. And now, our five minutes are up.
TOM: Thank you.
ANNETTE: Thank you, sir, and have a nice day.
Lights fade out on Tom as Annette walks away. Once Tom is safely out of sight, we see Annette taking off her suit jacket and skirt to reveal a stained t-shirt and shorts underneath. Carefully, she folds her clothing and places it in a duffel bag that has been hidden in the bushes. She reaches up to remove her wig, revealing a head of greasy, unkempt hair. Sitting on a street corner, she removes a Styrofoam head from the pag and places the wig on it. She lights up the butt of a cigarette picked up off the street, sighs, and then begins to comb the wig. Then the duffel bag is zipped and arranged to form a pillow as Annette lies down to sleep.
BLACKOUT.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Hungover Again
Uhhhhhh. Fuck.
Consciousness again. I was more than happy, closer to ecstatic in my previous state of dreamless sleep induced by a night of strong, cheap gin. Lots of gin. Maybe some port wine? Things got a little hazy there towards the end, I remember leaving Nye's with that cute little brunette art student…Sara? Suzanne? Samantha?
Not important. My head hurts. And fuck, my legs are sore. For an Irish kid I must have been one hell of a polka dancer last night. Whirling, spinning, clapping…I think I recognized the house band's drummer from that VH1 special. And then I saw her. She was a dark ball of energy, with a smile. Mischievous and alluring. A smile that made me want to hold puppies and kiss babies, or maybe it was make babies …Svetlana? Christ, what was her name?
No. Still not that important. Important is a glass of water, maybe two, and a double dose of aspirin. A few more hours of sleep definitely required; a trip to the bathroom paramount to my existence. Consciousness now includes the cool puddle of drool underneath my left cheek, and a glare coming through my bedroom window. Gross. Bright. Way too bright. Maybe if I just open one eye first…baby steps.
Ready right eye? Go. Definitely too bright still, but the scene outside my window slowly comes into focus. It appears to be a beautiful day outside, the sun shinning, birds chirping, it is a fucking Disney movie out there. Look at that beautiful little girl all decked out in her Sunday best, tiny white gloved hands outstretched into those of her proud parents as they ascend the steps towards St. Edwards…shit.
There should be no St. Edwards Church outside my bedroom window.
Consciousness is painful now, the headache in full effect. Where the fuck am I? Two dry eyes scan the room. Definitely a college house with band posters, political slogans, and crappy art adorning nearly every inch of dilapidated dry-wall. I wonder if…
A soft snore, more a gentle inhale comes softly from behind me cutting off my wondering. Oh shit, oh shit. There’s someone in my bed, no, this isn’t even my bed!
The art student? Please let it be that beautiful art student! Who else could it be? Fuck, a new pain, this one more psychological than physical hits the back of my head, really more towards the top of my spine. That spot that tingles when you look the wrong way and almost get blindsided by a city bus or a suicidal cyclist. That spot is on fire now.
Now her name is extremely important. Steph? Simone? Salena? This is very bad. My eyes, more alert, dart around the room for any clue as to her name. Any paper, note, mail, any wall adornment, any scrap…anything.
A soft feminine rustle, a shifting of weight in the small double bed and my heart skips a beat. Desperation turns into resignation. For some absurd reason, a prayer materializes in my panicking brain…
Oh Lord, if you are truly up there, do not let this beautiful, wonderful, magical girl wake up with me not knowing her name. Lord, I've always done my best to be a decent human, and if you allow this to happen…well Lord, you're going have me on your hands.
"mmmmm," such a delicate morning noise comes from behind me.
Now what? Do I feign sleep, let her make the first move? Do I bolt for the stairs, hoping to grab my clothes on the run? Do I stay here and stare out the window towards St. Edwards while this girl sleeps between me and the door?
Suddenly, the door creaks open.
“hey Laine, can I borrow your stencil? I left mine in the studio,” comes a young female voice, and then pauses. “Oh…I didn’t know you had company…sorry.” The voice giggles and shuts the door slowly, firmly.
I breathe.
Laine. I smile to myself and snuggle in.
Consciousness again. I was more than happy, closer to ecstatic in my previous state of dreamless sleep induced by a night of strong, cheap gin. Lots of gin. Maybe some port wine? Things got a little hazy there towards the end, I remember leaving Nye's with that cute little brunette art student…Sara? Suzanne? Samantha?
Not important. My head hurts. And fuck, my legs are sore. For an Irish kid I must have been one hell of a polka dancer last night. Whirling, spinning, clapping…I think I recognized the house band's drummer from that VH1 special. And then I saw her. She was a dark ball of energy, with a smile. Mischievous and alluring. A smile that made me want to hold puppies and kiss babies, or maybe it was make babies …Svetlana? Christ, what was her name?
No. Still not that important. Important is a glass of water, maybe two, and a double dose of aspirin. A few more hours of sleep definitely required; a trip to the bathroom paramount to my existence. Consciousness now includes the cool puddle of drool underneath my left cheek, and a glare coming through my bedroom window. Gross. Bright. Way too bright. Maybe if I just open one eye first…baby steps.
Ready right eye? Go. Definitely too bright still, but the scene outside my window slowly comes into focus. It appears to be a beautiful day outside, the sun shinning, birds chirping, it is a fucking Disney movie out there. Look at that beautiful little girl all decked out in her Sunday best, tiny white gloved hands outstretched into those of her proud parents as they ascend the steps towards St. Edwards…shit.
There should be no St. Edwards Church outside my bedroom window.
Consciousness is painful now, the headache in full effect. Where the fuck am I? Two dry eyes scan the room. Definitely a college house with band posters, political slogans, and crappy art adorning nearly every inch of dilapidated dry-wall. I wonder if…
A soft snore, more a gentle inhale comes softly from behind me cutting off my wondering. Oh shit, oh shit. There’s someone in my bed, no, this isn’t even my bed!
The art student? Please let it be that beautiful art student! Who else could it be? Fuck, a new pain, this one more psychological than physical hits the back of my head, really more towards the top of my spine. That spot that tingles when you look the wrong way and almost get blindsided by a city bus or a suicidal cyclist. That spot is on fire now.
Now her name is extremely important. Steph? Simone? Salena? This is very bad. My eyes, more alert, dart around the room for any clue as to her name. Any paper, note, mail, any wall adornment, any scrap…anything.
A soft feminine rustle, a shifting of weight in the small double bed and my heart skips a beat. Desperation turns into resignation. For some absurd reason, a prayer materializes in my panicking brain…
Oh Lord, if you are truly up there, do not let this beautiful, wonderful, magical girl wake up with me not knowing her name. Lord, I've always done my best to be a decent human, and if you allow this to happen…well Lord, you're going have me on your hands.
"mmmmm," such a delicate morning noise comes from behind me.
Now what? Do I feign sleep, let her make the first move? Do I bolt for the stairs, hoping to grab my clothes on the run? Do I stay here and stare out the window towards St. Edwards while this girl sleeps between me and the door?
Suddenly, the door creaks open.
“hey Laine, can I borrow your stencil? I left mine in the studio,” comes a young female voice, and then pauses. “Oh…I didn’t know you had company…sorry.” The voice giggles and shuts the door slowly, firmly.
I breathe.
Laine. I smile to myself and snuggle in.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
3100 Block
The scene opens with Beth (late thirties – early forties) sitting on top of John (in his thirties), a gun to his head. John is conscious, but has been pacified and is lying face down on the floor. Joan (in her early to mid thirties) is on stand-by, ready to come to Beth’s assistance. It’s 3 a.m. They are in the living room in a one-bedroom apartment on the 3100 Block of Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis. It’s a bachelor pad, with very little in the way of furnishing. A cheap couch is pushed up against the wall. Other furnishings include a coffee table, a CD rack, and a television. The coffee table is tipped over. There are a few framed vacation photos hanging on the walls, and a three-foot souvenir sword is prominent on a rack above the couch.
Beth: My god, Joan. I can’t believe we’re doing this!
Joan: I know!
Beth: You know what I’m gonna do? When I get home, I am going to sit down and just type. I’m not even going to think. I’m just going to write it all out. You know, screw work, screw actually planning out the narrative arc. I’m just going to write.
Joan: Oh, I can’t wait to read it. Is this something you’re thinking about workshopping next Sunday? Or did you have something else you were planning to bring? I know you said you had a story you were working on.
Beth: God, I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, who knows what could come of this? Maybe I’ll write a whole novel tonight. I feel like I could right now. I could write it straight through, with all this energy coursing through me. Isn’t this what they say menopause is supposed to feel like?
Joan: Beth, Beth. Watch it. He’s moving a little.
Beth (returns focus to John): Right.
Joan: Where do you want to start, then? An overview? Want me to look through all the rooms while you sit there? I could sort of summarize what’s in each room and we could go from there?
Beth: Umm..No..We should really just start in one room, see where that goes, and then move on to the next. It should follow some sort of logical sequence. I mean, you don’t just walk into someone’s house and peek into every single room before deciding where you want to sit and have coffee. People don’t do that. They just walk in and sit someplace.
Joan: Okay, well it’s up to you. I mean, under normal circumstances, you’re right. People don’t really do that. I just thought that a room-by-room summary might tell us a little bit about how it all fits together.
John (very softly): Please…
Beth (ignores John): Jesus, Joan. We’re here to rob the place, not critique it! It’s not like we’ve got all night to go through this.
Joan: Yeah, but if you don’t have a good structure, it doesn’t matter how well done the rest of it is.
John: My wallet’s in my back pocket…there’s a few things in the bedroom – electronics, mostly.
Beth: Joan, can you get the wallet?
Joan: Sure (with some difficulty, manages to wiggle wallet out).
Beth: Well?
John: There’s about fifty dollars in there, take it.
Joan: Okay, hold on. Here’s his driver’s license. John Eric Granger, born 1970.
Beth: Let me see the picture. (Joan holds license out for her). Blue eyes? Funny, I didn’t think they were. (To John) All right, listen to me. I’m going to stand up now and I’m going to keep this gun pointed at your head. What I need for you to do is roll over onto your back. Do you think you can do that?
John: Yeah. Just don’t shoot me.
Beth: Ok. I’m getting up and when I say ‘go,” you roll over and keep your arms flat against your body, ok? If you look like you’re making some kind of move, you’re going to get shot.
John: ok. I won’t. I’ll just roll over. I won’t do anything else.
Joan: Funny.
Beth: What’s funny?
Joan: Oh, it’s just that that’s exactly what your problem is. No offense – I’ve heard you say it too - your characters don’t really ever do anything.
Beth: (To John) Ok, Go. Roll over.
Both Beth and Joan are silent as John rolls over.
Beth: (To Joan) Even that last piece? The one about the Rastafarian?
Joan: Well, that one wasn’t too bad, but, well yeah – he did come off as a little passive sometimes.
Beth: hmm. (stares intently into John’s face) German or Scandinavian, maybe. Thirty-five, huh? Looks like he’s had a couple of tough years. Teeth..he’s a smoker. No ashtrays around here? Maybe quit a little while ago?
John: I..I quit about two months ago.
Joan: Good for you. I’m still trying.
Beth: Squareish jaw, veins in his neck pop out…good looking in kind of a run down way.
Joan: I think if you backed off a little bit on the description, you wouldn’t have as much of a problem.
Beth: Yeah? You think that’s it?
Joan: Sure, that’s what slows the pacing down.
Beth: Yeah.. I guess you’re right.
Joan: It’s good, though.
Beth: Well, let’s keep it moving. (Leans over John) How’re you doing down there?
John: I’m…are you going to..hurt me? What are you..?
Beth: Are you frightened? What are you feeling right now?
John: Scared. Confused. I don’t know…please.. just take anything you want. I don’t care. I’ve got two kids, coming over tomorrow. Please, just..
Beth: That’s it?
John, (more bravely): What are you here for? What are you going to do to me?
Beth, (deadpan): We’ve been sent here to kill you, John. The microchip. Where is the microchip?
John: What? Microchip?
Joan: Oh, quit teasing him, Beth. (Beth laughs, To John) Don’t take her seriously. (To Beth) Look at this sword. Don’t you think this would be interesting? There’s a lot of nice detail.
Beth: God, no. Cliché. Sword fighting warrior, on quest to save father/lover/brother/whatever. Been done a million times.
Joan takes the sword down from the wall and removes the sheath. She takes a playful stance, wielding the sword in her right hand as if poised to attack.
Joan: Come on, Beth. Play with me. (Affects a pose) My name eez Enigo Montoyo. You keeled my father. Preepare to die.
Joan lashes the sword around a few times, then deliberately brings the point to rest on Beth’s heart.
Beth: Joan. Quit. I’m trying to be serious here. Here, you take the gun and I’ll go get the stuff. I’ve got a better idea of what I want anyways.
Joan takes the gun, but continues to play with the sword. The gun is hanging almost limply in her hand. Beth stuffs the wallet into a tote bag that has been lying on the floor. She walks briskly around the apartment, inserting various items into the bag. The items are of no particular monetary value – merely things that catch her interest
Beth: Joan, I think this is really working for me. I think this is what’s going to get me out of this rut. Get the adrenaline going, the creativity.
God, an embalmed fish. I’ve got to include that. Picture of a girlfriend, sister maybe? Let’s look at the C.D.s… Paper Lace, Led Zeppelin, Phish….Whitney Houston? That’s outa left field. Ha… Joan did you..
John leaps up from the floor and manages to wrestle the gun out of Joan’s hand. Joan struggles with him, dropping the sword to the ground. Beth drops her bag and tries to get at John from behind. She bites his hand, causing the gun to fly underneath the couch. John breaks free of both of them, makes a grab for the sword and, elbowing Joan so that she falls heavily to the floor, takes hold of it. He begins to slash at the two horrified women.
Two of Beth’s fingers drop to the ground. They all pause to look. Beth screams.
Joan and Beth struggle to get away from his lashes and out the door. They are bleeding and frantic.
Beth (offstage): MY FINGERS! MY FINGERS! THEY’RE GONE! What am I going to DOOOOO? Joan, it's your goddamn lack of focus! You're all over the place.
John (hurries to lock door, slows to look at the fingers lying on the floor. Grins, suddenly): My God! The adrenaline! I’ve never felt so alive!
John twirls around and brandishes his sword in some classic, swashbuckling pose.
Black Out.
Beth: My god, Joan. I can’t believe we’re doing this!
Joan: I know!
Beth: You know what I’m gonna do? When I get home, I am going to sit down and just type. I’m not even going to think. I’m just going to write it all out. You know, screw work, screw actually planning out the narrative arc. I’m just going to write.
Joan: Oh, I can’t wait to read it. Is this something you’re thinking about workshopping next Sunday? Or did you have something else you were planning to bring? I know you said you had a story you were working on.
Beth: God, I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, who knows what could come of this? Maybe I’ll write a whole novel tonight. I feel like I could right now. I could write it straight through, with all this energy coursing through me. Isn’t this what they say menopause is supposed to feel like?
Joan: Beth, Beth. Watch it. He’s moving a little.
Beth (returns focus to John): Right.
Joan: Where do you want to start, then? An overview? Want me to look through all the rooms while you sit there? I could sort of summarize what’s in each room and we could go from there?
Beth: Umm..No..We should really just start in one room, see where that goes, and then move on to the next. It should follow some sort of logical sequence. I mean, you don’t just walk into someone’s house and peek into every single room before deciding where you want to sit and have coffee. People don’t do that. They just walk in and sit someplace.
Joan: Okay, well it’s up to you. I mean, under normal circumstances, you’re right. People don’t really do that. I just thought that a room-by-room summary might tell us a little bit about how it all fits together.
John (very softly): Please…
Beth (ignores John): Jesus, Joan. We’re here to rob the place, not critique it! It’s not like we’ve got all night to go through this.
Joan: Yeah, but if you don’t have a good structure, it doesn’t matter how well done the rest of it is.
John: My wallet’s in my back pocket…there’s a few things in the bedroom – electronics, mostly.
Beth: Joan, can you get the wallet?
Joan: Sure (with some difficulty, manages to wiggle wallet out).
Beth: Well?
John: There’s about fifty dollars in there, take it.
Joan: Okay, hold on. Here’s his driver’s license. John Eric Granger, born 1970.
Beth: Let me see the picture. (Joan holds license out for her). Blue eyes? Funny, I didn’t think they were. (To John) All right, listen to me. I’m going to stand up now and I’m going to keep this gun pointed at your head. What I need for you to do is roll over onto your back. Do you think you can do that?
John: Yeah. Just don’t shoot me.
Beth: Ok. I’m getting up and when I say ‘go,” you roll over and keep your arms flat against your body, ok? If you look like you’re making some kind of move, you’re going to get shot.
John: ok. I won’t. I’ll just roll over. I won’t do anything else.
Joan: Funny.
Beth: What’s funny?
Joan: Oh, it’s just that that’s exactly what your problem is. No offense – I’ve heard you say it too - your characters don’t really ever do anything.
Beth: (To John) Ok, Go. Roll over.
Both Beth and Joan are silent as John rolls over.
Beth: (To Joan) Even that last piece? The one about the Rastafarian?
Joan: Well, that one wasn’t too bad, but, well yeah – he did come off as a little passive sometimes.
Beth: hmm. (stares intently into John’s face) German or Scandinavian, maybe. Thirty-five, huh? Looks like he’s had a couple of tough years. Teeth..he’s a smoker. No ashtrays around here? Maybe quit a little while ago?
John: I..I quit about two months ago.
Joan: Good for you. I’m still trying.
Beth: Squareish jaw, veins in his neck pop out…good looking in kind of a run down way.
Joan: I think if you backed off a little bit on the description, you wouldn’t have as much of a problem.
Beth: Yeah? You think that’s it?
Joan: Sure, that’s what slows the pacing down.
Beth: Yeah.. I guess you’re right.
Joan: It’s good, though.
Beth: Well, let’s keep it moving. (Leans over John) How’re you doing down there?
John: I’m…are you going to..hurt me? What are you..?
Beth: Are you frightened? What are you feeling right now?
John: Scared. Confused. I don’t know…please.. just take anything you want. I don’t care. I’ve got two kids, coming over tomorrow. Please, just..
Beth: That’s it?
John, (more bravely): What are you here for? What are you going to do to me?
Beth, (deadpan): We’ve been sent here to kill you, John. The microchip. Where is the microchip?
John: What? Microchip?
Joan: Oh, quit teasing him, Beth. (Beth laughs, To John) Don’t take her seriously. (To Beth) Look at this sword. Don’t you think this would be interesting? There’s a lot of nice detail.
Beth: God, no. Cliché. Sword fighting warrior, on quest to save father/lover/brother/whatever. Been done a million times.
Joan takes the sword down from the wall and removes the sheath. She takes a playful stance, wielding the sword in her right hand as if poised to attack.
Joan: Come on, Beth. Play with me. (Affects a pose) My name eez Enigo Montoyo. You keeled my father. Preepare to die.
Joan lashes the sword around a few times, then deliberately brings the point to rest on Beth’s heart.
Beth: Joan. Quit. I’m trying to be serious here. Here, you take the gun and I’ll go get the stuff. I’ve got a better idea of what I want anyways.
Joan takes the gun, but continues to play with the sword. The gun is hanging almost limply in her hand. Beth stuffs the wallet into a tote bag that has been lying on the floor. She walks briskly around the apartment, inserting various items into the bag. The items are of no particular monetary value – merely things that catch her interest
Beth: Joan, I think this is really working for me. I think this is what’s going to get me out of this rut. Get the adrenaline going, the creativity.
God, an embalmed fish. I’ve got to include that. Picture of a girlfriend, sister maybe? Let’s look at the C.D.s… Paper Lace, Led Zeppelin, Phish….Whitney Houston? That’s outa left field. Ha… Joan did you..
John leaps up from the floor and manages to wrestle the gun out of Joan’s hand. Joan struggles with him, dropping the sword to the ground. Beth drops her bag and tries to get at John from behind. She bites his hand, causing the gun to fly underneath the couch. John breaks free of both of them, makes a grab for the sword and, elbowing Joan so that she falls heavily to the floor, takes hold of it. He begins to slash at the two horrified women.
Two of Beth’s fingers drop to the ground. They all pause to look. Beth screams.
Joan and Beth struggle to get away from his lashes and out the door. They are bleeding and frantic.
Beth (offstage): MY FINGERS! MY FINGERS! THEY’RE GONE! What am I going to DOOOOO? Joan, it's your goddamn lack of focus! You're all over the place.
John (hurries to lock door, slows to look at the fingers lying on the floor. Grins, suddenly): My God! The adrenaline! I’ve never felt so alive!
John twirls around and brandishes his sword in some classic, swashbuckling pose.
Black Out.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Harold, At Home
1. Suddenly we’re playing with a whole cast of imaginary characters, running around in our pajamas, and smearing flour paste all over our bodies. She works at slowly unhinging me, bringing me from premise to premise until I’m totally turned about and unsure of what kinds of boundaries we’re working with.
When Harold comes home from work, I can feel him do a visual scan of the apartment. He wonders why there’s flour paste on the floor, sees the basket of dinosaurs overturned in the middle of the room, the instruments stacked at awkward angles, the grid of masking tape on the walls, the punctured plastic cups in the sink.
He wonders what we’ve been doing all day. He doesn’t say anything when he comes in, just changes clothes and gets to work loading the dishwasher, scooping up dinosaurs, rinsing out whatever needs to be rinsed. The apartment is transformed in a matter of minutes and a hush falls over us.
2. She’s in a bathtub full of floating legos, so absorbed in her marine engineering that she does not question why we are hiding in here. Her hair parts itself in damp tendrils and her thin naked back is bent over the water. Her chin is folded down upon her chest in study.
She smiles to herself with satisfaction and raises a dripping tower in triumph. Primary colors, bold against the fizz of bubbles.The structure floats toward one side of the bathtub as she reaches for a couple of blocks and a plastic donkey she has brought in for company.
The radio plays harsh against earth tone tiles. It’s something between rockabilly and punk. She pays no attention, but the music seems to drive her into focus. She looks up from her plastic nest of blocks and says out of habit, “I need more toys in here.”
In the other room, Harold is getting ready for bed.
When Harold comes home from work, I can feel him do a visual scan of the apartment. He wonders why there’s flour paste on the floor, sees the basket of dinosaurs overturned in the middle of the room, the instruments stacked at awkward angles, the grid of masking tape on the walls, the punctured plastic cups in the sink.
He wonders what we’ve been doing all day. He doesn’t say anything when he comes in, just changes clothes and gets to work loading the dishwasher, scooping up dinosaurs, rinsing out whatever needs to be rinsed. The apartment is transformed in a matter of minutes and a hush falls over us.
2. She’s in a bathtub full of floating legos, so absorbed in her marine engineering that she does not question why we are hiding in here. Her hair parts itself in damp tendrils and her thin naked back is bent over the water. Her chin is folded down upon her chest in study.
She smiles to herself with satisfaction and raises a dripping tower in triumph. Primary colors, bold against the fizz of bubbles.The structure floats toward one side of the bathtub as she reaches for a couple of blocks and a plastic donkey she has brought in for company.
The radio plays harsh against earth tone tiles. It’s something between rockabilly and punk. She pays no attention, but the music seems to drive her into focus. She looks up from her plastic nest of blocks and says out of habit, “I need more toys in here.”
In the other room, Harold is getting ready for bed.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Haunted Melody
He sits on the toilet and begs her not to leave.
“Don’t go! Please…” Danny’s voice trails off as he leans forward, jeans pooling around his ankles, skinny legs exposed. His face is flushed and damp, his eyes are pleading, but he is harmless and vulnerable in this position. She can walk out the door.
Hillary doesn’t know when walking out the door became so easy for her, when she became able to forget his pathetic looks, his sorrowful moans, his child-like whining. Somewhere along the way, she forgot why she used to stay and argue until late into the night, early into the morning, hearing the birds chirp at dawn that always made her cry. They never resolved their battles, only fell onto the soft bed out of exhaustion when hysteria failed.
Hillary finally understands how love slips into hate, how hate mimics love, how anything in between only glues a couple together. She remembers to close the porch door behind her. The porch that they painted in magenta and purple, with sheer curtains piped in velvet surrounding chenille armchairs. This was their final project, their desperate attempt to create and distract themselves from the inevitable end. She wore a vintage slip and stood on a step ladder, scraping blue painting tape from the French window panes. It was campaign season, and Mayor R.T. Rybak came to drop off some flyers and a glossy yard sign. He saw Hillary high on the ladder, paint dripping down her arms, splattering dots of magenta on the edge of her slip. He commented nervously on the color. She told him it was called Haunted Melody.
Danny soon abandoned the project for prescription pill bottles. He left her on the porch with all the windows to edge, a sorry plastic tape deck, and new paint brushes. She swears her heart is trapped on the porch, smothered in the paint that violently adhered to the stucco walls, the walls she painted over and over again until the color became thick and dark enough, leaving no traces of the brillant white the previous owners had painted. The white that grew shadowy and nicotine stained under the strain of their care. It was an attempt to hide their history; A history that still echoes in the room.
“Don’t go! Please…” Danny’s voice trails off as he leans forward, jeans pooling around his ankles, skinny legs exposed. His face is flushed and damp, his eyes are pleading, but he is harmless and vulnerable in this position. She can walk out the door.
Hillary doesn’t know when walking out the door became so easy for her, when she became able to forget his pathetic looks, his sorrowful moans, his child-like whining. Somewhere along the way, she forgot why she used to stay and argue until late into the night, early into the morning, hearing the birds chirp at dawn that always made her cry. They never resolved their battles, only fell onto the soft bed out of exhaustion when hysteria failed.
Hillary finally understands how love slips into hate, how hate mimics love, how anything in between only glues a couple together. She remembers to close the porch door behind her. The porch that they painted in magenta and purple, with sheer curtains piped in velvet surrounding chenille armchairs. This was their final project, their desperate attempt to create and distract themselves from the inevitable end. She wore a vintage slip and stood on a step ladder, scraping blue painting tape from the French window panes. It was campaign season, and Mayor R.T. Rybak came to drop off some flyers and a glossy yard sign. He saw Hillary high on the ladder, paint dripping down her arms, splattering dots of magenta on the edge of her slip. He commented nervously on the color. She told him it was called Haunted Melody.
Danny soon abandoned the project for prescription pill bottles. He left her on the porch with all the windows to edge, a sorry plastic tape deck, and new paint brushes. She swears her heart is trapped on the porch, smothered in the paint that violently adhered to the stucco walls, the walls she painted over and over again until the color became thick and dark enough, leaving no traces of the brillant white the previous owners had painted. The white that grew shadowy and nicotine stained under the strain of their care. It was an attempt to hide their history; A history that still echoes in the room.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Mill Ruins Ondine
“My earring,” she said, leaning forward into the rectangular slot of earth before us. The old woman straightened out with some difficulty and the wrinkles in her face deepened with the effort. The soil was dry and our trowels made a grating noise as we scraped an outcropping of stone. Her skin was dry too, despite the blazing afternoon sun above us.
“So, you are…were an archaeologist then?” I asked.
“No, no,” said the woman, “I volunteer with the park board sometimes. An old woman needs something to do with her time – my son’s grown, doesn’t want me around anymore. I’ve got to do something with my time. I’m Ondine, by the way.”
“Like the play?”
“Hmm? That’s right. Like the play.”
“Sarah.”
Ondine held the dustpan for me while I swept loosened pieces of limestone and dirt out of the corners. She transferred the debris into the empty bucket next to her.
A mother with two young children approached and nodded silently. She looked tired. “See what they’re doing?” she said to her children, “Wanna do some digging? Or do you want to do the art project instead?” The children responded with a dumb stare.
“The art project?” prompted the mother. She shrugged her shoulders in our direction and said, “Family Days” as if it explained everything. Then she prodded the children back towards the entryway, where flickering flags had been strung to draw attention to the open-dig day.
“What about you?” Ondine asked, “How did you hear about this?”
“Oh. I saw an ad in the paper and thought it would be fun. When I was a kid, I wanted to study archaeology, I guess. But you know, I got married right out of high school, had kids of my own, and it just didn’t work out that way.”
Just then, my trowel scraped across something metal. Ondine slid her legs painfully over into the hole, bowing the single strand of twine that demarcated the area. Her ankles were swollen and dotted with liver spots. With a hand-held whisk, she brushed my arm away and plucked what looked like an old timepiece out of the dirt.
I leaned forward to see, but Ondine quickly pocketed the object and said, “Looks like garbage. We’ve been finding a lot of garbage. We’re not that far down yet.”
“Uh..I don’t think you’re supposed to keep anything that you find, though.” I said uneasily, “I mean, shouldn’t we put anything man-made that we find in that bag? The Level 4 bag. See it?”
Ondine looked at me blankly. She seemed confused and put her hands down on the cracked ground to steady herself.
“You ok?” I asked.
She shook her head, seemed stunned. I moved across the hole to sit beside her and her body leaned heavily into mine. She was older than I had initially thought. I could see patches of scalp beneath her stiff thinning hair.
“You ok?” I asked again, “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”
She jerked her head upwards to face mine. Her eyes weren’t focusing correctly, I could see. “No, no.. just help me down there, into the shade.”
Her hand waved faintly at a square of excavated earth nearby. It had been dug about three feet down, and a metal shaft protruded from one corner. It was rusted through and a sign posted next to it indicated that it had been the chute through which the eight or so mills on site had shared water at the turn of the century.
We rose with great difficulty, my arm supporting her corseted waist, and stumbled toward the hole together. I managed to lower her down onto the ground, and together we slid inside. It was cooler in there, and mostly shaded from the sun.
We sat there for a while. I listened to her shortened breaths and groped in my bag for a water bottle. She took a shallow sip from me and leaned the side of her face against the cool earthen wall.
“My son,” she said, “This is where his father died. Lawrence. It was his watch.”
“Do you want me to call your son and have him come pick you up? I think you really need to go home and lie down for a while.”
“The earring wasn’t mine, though. My ears aren’t even pierced, see?” She pulled back her hair. “Mama wouldn’t let me pierce my ears.”
“What’s your son’s number? I’ll call him and tell him to come pick you up.”
“Lawrence fell asleep one night. Had been carrying on with one of the mill girls. I never even found out what her name was.”
“Ma’am? Ondine? Your son..?”
“Everyone thought it was the flour, you know - Miller’s Lung. He couldn’t sleep and he was so tired and he tried so to keep his eyes open. Then Lawrence just closed his eyes and fell asleep. And stopped breathing.”
Ondine’s own breathing had slowed, but her eyes remained closed. “It broke my heart, the way he carried on with that girl, but there was nothing else I could do. By then, it was too late for me to go back to Mama. It was getting late. I was getting old. My son…”
“Mama?” A man’s voice called out sharply, “Mama?” A shadow crossed the lit portion of the hole and I looked up to see an old man at the ridge.
“For God’s sake, Mama. Miss, would you be so kind as to help me get her up out of there? Mama, let’s take you back now.”
Ondine’s son must have been in his eighties, but his grip on her was surprisingly strong.
“She hasn’t been quite right since Daddy died,” he said, “’Ondine’s Curse’ is what they call it at the center. They give her too much freedom there. Mama, you can’t just wander off like that anymore.”
“So, you are…were an archaeologist then?” I asked.
“No, no,” said the woman, “I volunteer with the park board sometimes. An old woman needs something to do with her time – my son’s grown, doesn’t want me around anymore. I’ve got to do something with my time. I’m Ondine, by the way.”
“Like the play?”
“Hmm? That’s right. Like the play.”
“Sarah.”
Ondine held the dustpan for me while I swept loosened pieces of limestone and dirt out of the corners. She transferred the debris into the empty bucket next to her.
A mother with two young children approached and nodded silently. She looked tired. “See what they’re doing?” she said to her children, “Wanna do some digging? Or do you want to do the art project instead?” The children responded with a dumb stare.
“The art project?” prompted the mother. She shrugged her shoulders in our direction and said, “Family Days” as if it explained everything. Then she prodded the children back towards the entryway, where flickering flags had been strung to draw attention to the open-dig day.
“What about you?” Ondine asked, “How did you hear about this?”
“Oh. I saw an ad in the paper and thought it would be fun. When I was a kid, I wanted to study archaeology, I guess. But you know, I got married right out of high school, had kids of my own, and it just didn’t work out that way.”
Just then, my trowel scraped across something metal. Ondine slid her legs painfully over into the hole, bowing the single strand of twine that demarcated the area. Her ankles were swollen and dotted with liver spots. With a hand-held whisk, she brushed my arm away and plucked what looked like an old timepiece out of the dirt.
I leaned forward to see, but Ondine quickly pocketed the object and said, “Looks like garbage. We’ve been finding a lot of garbage. We’re not that far down yet.”
“Uh..I don’t think you’re supposed to keep anything that you find, though.” I said uneasily, “I mean, shouldn’t we put anything man-made that we find in that bag? The Level 4 bag. See it?”
Ondine looked at me blankly. She seemed confused and put her hands down on the cracked ground to steady herself.
“You ok?” I asked.
She shook her head, seemed stunned. I moved across the hole to sit beside her and her body leaned heavily into mine. She was older than I had initially thought. I could see patches of scalp beneath her stiff thinning hair.
“You ok?” I asked again, “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”
She jerked her head upwards to face mine. Her eyes weren’t focusing correctly, I could see. “No, no.. just help me down there, into the shade.”
Her hand waved faintly at a square of excavated earth nearby. It had been dug about three feet down, and a metal shaft protruded from one corner. It was rusted through and a sign posted next to it indicated that it had been the chute through which the eight or so mills on site had shared water at the turn of the century.
We rose with great difficulty, my arm supporting her corseted waist, and stumbled toward the hole together. I managed to lower her down onto the ground, and together we slid inside. It was cooler in there, and mostly shaded from the sun.
We sat there for a while. I listened to her shortened breaths and groped in my bag for a water bottle. She took a shallow sip from me and leaned the side of her face against the cool earthen wall.
“My son,” she said, “This is where his father died. Lawrence. It was his watch.”
“Do you want me to call your son and have him come pick you up? I think you really need to go home and lie down for a while.”
“The earring wasn’t mine, though. My ears aren’t even pierced, see?” She pulled back her hair. “Mama wouldn’t let me pierce my ears.”
“What’s your son’s number? I’ll call him and tell him to come pick you up.”
“Lawrence fell asleep one night. Had been carrying on with one of the mill girls. I never even found out what her name was.”
“Ma’am? Ondine? Your son..?”
“Everyone thought it was the flour, you know - Miller’s Lung. He couldn’t sleep and he was so tired and he tried so to keep his eyes open. Then Lawrence just closed his eyes and fell asleep. And stopped breathing.”
Ondine’s own breathing had slowed, but her eyes remained closed. “It broke my heart, the way he carried on with that girl, but there was nothing else I could do. By then, it was too late for me to go back to Mama. It was getting late. I was getting old. My son…”
“Mama?” A man’s voice called out sharply, “Mama?” A shadow crossed the lit portion of the hole and I looked up to see an old man at the ridge.
“For God’s sake, Mama. Miss, would you be so kind as to help me get her up out of there? Mama, let’s take you back now.”
Ondine’s son must have been in his eighties, but his grip on her was surprisingly strong.
“She hasn’t been quite right since Daddy died,” he said, “’Ondine’s Curse’ is what they call it at the center. They give her too much freedom there. Mama, you can’t just wander off like that anymore.”
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Spider Legs and Glass Shards
Derek hands her a cup of coffee on the corner of University and 4th. “Happy Birthday…it’s all I could afford,” he says as he kicks a chunk of broken sidewalk. His hands are bloated and shaking more than usual.
“But I made you this,” he says as he point to a hunk of cardboard pushed up against the wheel of his bicycle. It’s a rectangle scrap smeared in oil crayons. It looks like a doomsday depiction of the end of the world with swirling fireballs and abstract melted flowers. It reminds her of a picture she saw in the Watchtower that a Witness dropped by the week before. The front of the booklet dripped with smeary, fiery lines of color, thousands of asteroids falling from the sky. People clutched their heads, their cartoon faces contorted from fear. The last page proved the glory of redemption. Blonde girls skipped around in stiff, sky blue dresses and virgin white knee socks. Blissful men and women swam in a sea of chalk white daisies, arms spread upward to the great beyond, their faces contorted with happiness like the manicky red painted smiles found on clowns in toy cars and checkered pants. She always thought the end of the world looked more inviting.
They stand for a few moments, the same pained clown smiles stretched on their faces. Derek’s hair hasn’t been cut since they broke up last fall. It hangs in his face, greasy locks thinned out with age. He pushes it to the left, to cover his eye, the one that a beebee gun ripped into when he was twelve. She loves his eye, all lazy with a permanently fixed pupil encased in glass.
“I can’t sing in Caragan House. I can't sing with all of those people around,” he sighs. He turns his entire head so he can use his good eye. He faces the downtrodden, one story building that houses 30 men. Three rusty coffee cans line the cement steps, overflowing with yellowed cigarette butts. The butts of 30 men who are ordered to make their beds by 7:00 in the morning, who aren’t allowed back into their rooms until late afternoon, who have to pee in plastic coated cups as staff people watch.
“Shit, there’s these guys who are old…I mean really old. I look in their eyes and don’t feel like there’s hope. They’re like 40 or 50 and still living in some halfway house that tells you when to brush your teeth. I might as well be homeless,” he says.
His eye suddenly brightens with light bulb brilliance. “Yeah, homeless! I can get one of those “need money” signs and turn over my social security check to you, ya know, to help with the bills.”
“I don’t want your money,” she says and sips her coffee. He’s the only one who knows how she likes her coffee. He used to make it for her every morning before she woke up. He must have had some scientific formula, some odd water to coffee ratio or a secret grinding technique. Since they parted, the coffee she makes always tastes like shit.
She tells him about the garden. “Only one poppy made it, but the George Vancouver rose is doing well. I moved the burgundy clematis by the gate where it gets more sun.” She tells him this softly, sliding each syllable, trying to make each word extend forever. She feels like she’s having phone sex as she retells every single step, every new hole dug, every single variegated leaf and blossom accounted for. Tears slip down his cheeks, but she knows he’s watching her lips move.
Before they met, she never knew a glass eye could cry. But now she’s used to the tears pooling, streaming down from his real eye, spilling out from his fake eye. When she watches him cry she likes to pretend his tears are shards of glass.
The traffic lights keeps flipping, flashing colors that are almost too dull to see in the late afternoon light. They stand on the corner as bicyclists and couples with squirmy and sleepy children move around them. Everyone is heading down to the river with blankets and water bottles. They’re waiting for dusk, for popping fireworks to spill on the city sky, to watch the skinny spider legs of fire fall. She wants to avoid the crowds of people breathing one another’s bug spray, the over tired kids jacked up on cotton candy, the man who used to be her partner that is moments away from becoming a bum pushing a shopping cart full of rags and bird seed.
“I’m sick of being a retard. They won’t even let me near the stove. Everything they feed us comes in a fucking bucket. They shove all of these bratwursts, burnt hamburgers and Tuna Helper crap in gallon buckets and serve them to us. Buckets of fucking meat!” He laughs. “But really, I cannot sing in that house.”
She turns to walk away. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he never sang in the first place.
“But I made you this,” he says as he point to a hunk of cardboard pushed up against the wheel of his bicycle. It’s a rectangle scrap smeared in oil crayons. It looks like a doomsday depiction of the end of the world with swirling fireballs and abstract melted flowers. It reminds her of a picture she saw in the Watchtower that a Witness dropped by the week before. The front of the booklet dripped with smeary, fiery lines of color, thousands of asteroids falling from the sky. People clutched their heads, their cartoon faces contorted from fear. The last page proved the glory of redemption. Blonde girls skipped around in stiff, sky blue dresses and virgin white knee socks. Blissful men and women swam in a sea of chalk white daisies, arms spread upward to the great beyond, their faces contorted with happiness like the manicky red painted smiles found on clowns in toy cars and checkered pants. She always thought the end of the world looked more inviting.
They stand for a few moments, the same pained clown smiles stretched on their faces. Derek’s hair hasn’t been cut since they broke up last fall. It hangs in his face, greasy locks thinned out with age. He pushes it to the left, to cover his eye, the one that a beebee gun ripped into when he was twelve. She loves his eye, all lazy with a permanently fixed pupil encased in glass.
“I can’t sing in Caragan House. I can't sing with all of those people around,” he sighs. He turns his entire head so he can use his good eye. He faces the downtrodden, one story building that houses 30 men. Three rusty coffee cans line the cement steps, overflowing with yellowed cigarette butts. The butts of 30 men who are ordered to make their beds by 7:00 in the morning, who aren’t allowed back into their rooms until late afternoon, who have to pee in plastic coated cups as staff people watch.
“Shit, there’s these guys who are old…I mean really old. I look in their eyes and don’t feel like there’s hope. They’re like 40 or 50 and still living in some halfway house that tells you when to brush your teeth. I might as well be homeless,” he says.
His eye suddenly brightens with light bulb brilliance. “Yeah, homeless! I can get one of those “need money” signs and turn over my social security check to you, ya know, to help with the bills.”
“I don’t want your money,” she says and sips her coffee. He’s the only one who knows how she likes her coffee. He used to make it for her every morning before she woke up. He must have had some scientific formula, some odd water to coffee ratio or a secret grinding technique. Since they parted, the coffee she makes always tastes like shit.
She tells him about the garden. “Only one poppy made it, but the George Vancouver rose is doing well. I moved the burgundy clematis by the gate where it gets more sun.” She tells him this softly, sliding each syllable, trying to make each word extend forever. She feels like she’s having phone sex as she retells every single step, every new hole dug, every single variegated leaf and blossom accounted for. Tears slip down his cheeks, but she knows he’s watching her lips move.
Before they met, she never knew a glass eye could cry. But now she’s used to the tears pooling, streaming down from his real eye, spilling out from his fake eye. When she watches him cry she likes to pretend his tears are shards of glass.
The traffic lights keeps flipping, flashing colors that are almost too dull to see in the late afternoon light. They stand on the corner as bicyclists and couples with squirmy and sleepy children move around them. Everyone is heading down to the river with blankets and water bottles. They’re waiting for dusk, for popping fireworks to spill on the city sky, to watch the skinny spider legs of fire fall. She wants to avoid the crowds of people breathing one another’s bug spray, the over tired kids jacked up on cotton candy, the man who used to be her partner that is moments away from becoming a bum pushing a shopping cart full of rags and bird seed.
“I’m sick of being a retard. They won’t even let me near the stove. Everything they feed us comes in a fucking bucket. They shove all of these bratwursts, burnt hamburgers and Tuna Helper crap in gallon buckets and serve them to us. Buckets of fucking meat!” He laughs. “But really, I cannot sing in that house.”
She turns to walk away. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he never sang in the first place.
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