Revelations
In the fourth grade a new boy moved to town. To the rest, he came from somewhere exotic. Kansas. He was taller than the rest of us and wore very short shorts, white and almost obscene.
I was told to show him the ropes. Our fourth grade teacher had too much to do. Mrs. Eichenger wore oversized glasses, bifocals, the plastic kind that came in impossible colors like periwinkle, rose and sunflower. She had a gamey smile and oversized front teeth. Her hair was short, but not "Let's Get Physical," fashionable. She was a butchy broad back when lesbians were mysterious manly misfits, all fish and no bicycle, before the Portias invaded intent on showing the world they still knew how to ride.
She knew I would show him what was expected, or at least what I did, the strange self-starter with schoolwork that I was; if he did even half of what I showed him, she would have one less headache. That morning I showed him the laminated reading comprehension cards we worked on for an hour a day, at our own pace. They were grouped in clusters of 30, and color coated. The only reward for progression, was the exploration of colors more impossible than our teacher's dyke eye-ware.
If you read fast, like the only Asian in the entire school and I did, you were moved through a bewildering array of hues beyond the reach of our pre-catalogue imagination, strangers to even Crayola. Fuck brown sienna and tangerine.
Tanya the Asian and I were onto bigger frontiers, leek and santa nella blue. Kansas boy and his tight white shorts would never break ahead of the pack, but six inches of height and a Mormon smile made up for all that, and he was a Catholic.
As recess approached Kansas sidled up to our teacher and asked if he could spend recess in the basketball courts and shoot hoops alone, instead of playing a conscripted game of kick ball with the rest of us.
Our Recess activities were assigned on a weekly basis and participation was coerced by the threat of "the book." "The book" was a clipboard passed from classroom to classroom after recess. Anyone that was bad or broke a rule had their name put int he book. "The book," was meant to sound ominous, but it was never made clear what happened to you if you your name was put in the book, or where it went at the end of the day.
The book was not about substance or procedure, it was about public humiliation, the Catholic School equivalent of the scarlet letter. The sisters and our lesbian teacher read the names of our classmates whose names appeared in the book. My classmates had their moral failure proclaimed in some twisted Romper Room exercise.
My name appeared in the book once. One of the wealthier kids brought pomegranates to school in his lunch and we got into a pomegranate fight, covering ourselves and the restroom walls in red when we should have been playing kickball. I was responsible for having the ridiculous fruit banned from school altogether. I watched Sister Alice scrawl my name in the book with gnarled rheumatoid claws, threatening to break the pencil she used, scrawling my name in disappointed rage. I was altar boy "a" and was not supposed to be in the book, a disgrace.
To my surprise, the boy in the tight shorts managed to secure the accommodation, his cleft chin and dimples casting a spell not even a woman who only wore pants could resist. When he came back to me and my fancy colored laminated cards, he asked if I wanted to join him. I doubted any such thing would be allowed, but did not protest since he volunteered to ask, to push it with the new teacher on his first day.
He waited for the bell to ring and the class to empty before asking her if I could go. The three of us were the only people left in the classroom.
Then, With the stupid naiveté of a nine year old, he said, "Eric wants to know if he can play with me."
I was used to the idiocies of my classmates and their absolute ignorance of anything sexual, of innuendo, or of the pervasive adult hysteria surrounding children and sexual knowledge.
"He wants to what?"
Her fact contorted under the plexiglass shield and she looked up in my direction in accusatory belief. Not only did not she see tight pants as the nimrod he was, but the story was immediately plausible. Me, her lilac level reader, was out to fondle these innocent farm raised balls.
In disgust I broke rank, belied my knowledge of the adult world.
"No, not like, to play horse, the game with the basketball."
Her face winced with embarrassed and disgust.
"Oh, ok," was all that she could muster.
But she reviled me for catching her in the act, wallowing in a soup of inappropriate assumptions. I knew that my classmates were not the only one's that considered me a faggot. She never forgave me for my transgression, and ignored me like some pomegranate eating Eve, some unnatural pervert who relished forbidden knowledge and pink cock.
Later, and for the sheer hell of it, I scribbled her name in the book when no one was looking, having discovered it on Father Riley's desk one Friday while preparing for mass. How her name got there became an unexplainable mystery and scandal among the faculty, proof that the devil was somehow among them.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Friday, August 13, 2010
Mantis In A Basket: Part I Sinful Wafer
Sinful Wafers
In the dust and the haze of a Sonoran summer, in the dead of the afternoon, in that hour when the heat flattened the horizon into a receding slick, Eugenio walked from his shed in the field into the back yard, sat on the middle of three kitchen steps and blew his brains clean out the back of his out with a shotgun he had shoved firmly into what soon used to be, his open mouth. The noise cracked for a second before the heat and pace of that insufferable siesta muffled his farewell salute. That morning he had gone to church. He took communion without confession, content to have taken the wafer at all. Afterwards he had played with Carmenia, his eldest daughter and five years old. He spent an entire hour lifting her up by the under arms and swinging her about wildly, until her laughter crescendoed C-sharp, then broken giggles, until finally, the pay-off, "Te amo Papa!" She still wore the blue trimmed white dress, knee highs and black baby doll shoes that she wore every Sunday and had worn the prior six months. Eugenio then drank tequila by himself, the inescapable feeling that he was done was his only company, done there and then, for good, that afternoon. He was employed, married and had three children, two daughters and a son. He spent no time with his other children or his sweet wife. They would get over it and move on. Carmenia, however, was another matter. Born with a regal air, and ephemeral aspirations, she would be devastated at the perceived slight. She was all dreams and no practicality; the spoon in her mouth the only silver the family owned, Carmenia would marry money. Margarita, Eugenio's other daughter, was a plebe by nature, as grounded and unassuming as the dirt that grew their food. Where Carmenia laughed out loud at everything like Eugenio assumed a Spanish princess might at the antics of the constumed dwarves enslaved to her care, Margerita, more dwarf than princess, gave only an ever suspicious stare. She taught second grade for forty years before retiring to thirty yeas of tequila mixed with Squirt from the United States, pension from the Republic of Mexico, and cigars from Havana. Eugenio, his son and namesake, was a gentle soul, a deaf mute standing six two and one hundred pounds overweight. Junior was not built for the outdoors, but a lad, all mumbles and nods, at home in the parlors and kitchens of older women. Eugenio's only gripe in life was that he was the only person who tended to anything outdoors, often accompanied by his salty youngest daughter, dress rolled up, no shoes, swinging a basket full of bugs, rocks, dead mice, dead birds and whatever else she happened to find. And Margerita found everything. And, at last, Eugenio loved his wife, which he confirmed in secret, her voice the last thing he thought of as the powder cracked under two accelerating hammers. He had no reason to do it. And so he did it. And just like a man, in plain view and carelessly in front of the open kitchen door, giving his wife one last chore on his account, one last mess. Margerita would find bits of skull for weeks, placing the fragments alongside two gold teeth in her basket, just next to a dried praying mantis.
In the dust and the haze of a Sonoran summer, in the dead of the afternoon, in that hour when the heat flattened the horizon into a receding slick, Eugenio walked from his shed in the field into the back yard, sat on the middle of three kitchen steps and blew his brains clean out the back of his out with a shotgun he had shoved firmly into what soon used to be, his open mouth. The noise cracked for a second before the heat and pace of that insufferable siesta muffled his farewell salute. That morning he had gone to church. He took communion without confession, content to have taken the wafer at all. Afterwards he had played with Carmenia, his eldest daughter and five years old. He spent an entire hour lifting her up by the under arms and swinging her about wildly, until her laughter crescendoed C-sharp, then broken giggles, until finally, the pay-off, "Te amo Papa!" She still wore the blue trimmed white dress, knee highs and black baby doll shoes that she wore every Sunday and had worn the prior six months. Eugenio then drank tequila by himself, the inescapable feeling that he was done was his only company, done there and then, for good, that afternoon. He was employed, married and had three children, two daughters and a son. He spent no time with his other children or his sweet wife. They would get over it and move on. Carmenia, however, was another matter. Born with a regal air, and ephemeral aspirations, she would be devastated at the perceived slight. She was all dreams and no practicality; the spoon in her mouth the only silver the family owned, Carmenia would marry money. Margarita, Eugenio's other daughter, was a plebe by nature, as grounded and unassuming as the dirt that grew their food. Where Carmenia laughed out loud at everything like Eugenio assumed a Spanish princess might at the antics of the constumed dwarves enslaved to her care, Margerita, more dwarf than princess, gave only an ever suspicious stare. She taught second grade for forty years before retiring to thirty yeas of tequila mixed with Squirt from the United States, pension from the Republic of Mexico, and cigars from Havana. Eugenio, his son and namesake, was a gentle soul, a deaf mute standing six two and one hundred pounds overweight. Junior was not built for the outdoors, but a lad, all mumbles and nods, at home in the parlors and kitchens of older women. Eugenio's only gripe in life was that he was the only person who tended to anything outdoors, often accompanied by his salty youngest daughter, dress rolled up, no shoes, swinging a basket full of bugs, rocks, dead mice, dead birds and whatever else she happened to find. And Margerita found everything. And, at last, Eugenio loved his wife, which he confirmed in secret, her voice the last thing he thought of as the powder cracked under two accelerating hammers. He had no reason to do it. And so he did it. And just like a man, in plain view and carelessly in front of the open kitchen door, giving his wife one last chore on his account, one last mess. Margerita would find bits of skull for weeks, placing the fragments alongside two gold teeth in her basket, just next to a dried praying mantis.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Eulogy: Steven Arredondo aka Sandy December 20, 1951-January 18, 2008
Given by me January 28, 2008.
Illness was a part of my Uncle’s life ever since he was first diagnosed with lymphoma as a teenager. Everyone here knows that history to some extent or another.
Steve’s life wasn’t about illness or tragedy or victimhood; more than anyone I ever met, Steve’s life was about living and cherishing and sometimes railing against the wind and fighting against the grain because he understood that it was meaningless to play along for the sake of playing, to waste time crouched and tense, afraid that the worse might be around any corner.
Steve was a teacher in living. He was a pro at it.
Difficulty in life was a non-event, a big “duh” that wasn’t to be tripped up on.
Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” Steven Arredondo was strong in the broken places, stronger than most of us are in those that life has left whole.
For one, despite it all, He loved people unconditionally. To wash someone I think is the greatest act of kindness a person can bestow on another human being. We rarely do it in this culture. It is improper to show up at someone’s door dirty and no one would ever invite a filthy guest to their home. Steve had no such compunction. Whenever he saw a homeless person in SilverLake near his home he would say “sweetie come to my place and take a shower and I’ll give you a haircut and clean clothes.” I don’t know who was more bewildered by the event, the neighbors watching him park a bag lady's shopping cart in front of his place or the veteran whose hair he cut and nails he clipped, whose humanity he cared for and loved.
Most of us at best fold a dollar when feeling generous, and fold it so that we don’t have to touch when we place it in a filthy hand. To Steve, who understood that life was full of dirt, it didn’t make sense to spend your life avoiding it.
Steve never blamed, never thought why me? He understood that to say why me was to insult yourself, because you are what are, and he lived his life without afterthought or apology for who he was but he balanced that not with dismissive selfishness but compassion. In that way, Steve took responsibility for his own mess. Whenever he and I were out, one of us would inevitably drop our drink on the floor—Steve dropped his leaping to dance to his favorite song, me because the glass slipped from my drunken hands. The bus boy would come to pick up our mess, as he certainly did a hundred times any given evening, without thanks or notice. Steve would always give the busboy, consistently Latino, five dollars and taught me to do the same saying, “mijo, no matter where you go in life or how successful you are, never forget that they are your people and never forget that no one gets paid to pick up your mess and if you spill, that mess you made is extra.”
Steve could see beauty. He would find a chair, a piece of a mannequin, a bust, or a pile of rocks on the street and create magic with paint and glue. He made me a cleo gold fish once of rocks carefully placed and glued--he found a delicate sculpture in a pile of gravel--he could make anything beautiful. Humbly, the only awkward drawings he made were of himself, bald and big eared. At the same time he wouldn’t waste his time being down on himself. He taught me that anywhere you go there is probably someone, somewhere, saying something about you that is not so nice. To Steve that was a good thing, because it meant you didn’t have to waste your time on it. Every social situation came with it’s own ready made staff.
He was so proud of his mother and his sister. Really the role models for Sandy. His mother’s style, moxie and charm he loved. His sister “chueli’s” humility in the face of what he considered to be drop dead looks struck him in the heart, he’d say to me “you mother, she doesn’t act like it Eric, but when she was younger she was gorgeous. She still looks good but oh, her long hair she was younger.” He must have told me that a thousand times and I don’t think it was forgetfulness, I think he loved talking about the two women he loved in his life, and in his sister’s case giving voice to the “I’m beautiful dammit,” that she would never say. And then, just as often, he’d tell me that my mother and I were such nerds, frowning our foreheads, working all the time and would say how he admired that we had what he didn’t. Whether he meant frown lines, nerdiness or worker bee masochism I never knew, although he’d be happy to know we’ve both gotten a lot lazier.
Finally he was wise and astute. There used to be a coffee house on Beverly Blvd. called Red. It predated Starbucks, Coffee Bean and was in the first wave of pay 5.00 for a big cup of coffee joints. Every time we drove passed Red at around 7 p.m. on a Friday evening it was crowded and he’d start to giggle. Then he’d say, “I’m sorry but all those people paying 5 dollars for some cafe because they are too big shot to get their 50 cent café at Winchell’s, like it makes them important.” And he’d laugh some more. Fifteen years later, just weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article saying that suddenly, out of nowhere, Starbucks was hurting financially because of the rise of it’s biggest two competitors. The 50 cent café and Mcdonald’s and 7-11.
Two things are true in this world, you can’t argue with inevitability and you cant argue with Steven Arredondo. May his lessons live on within all of us and enrich our lives forever. I love you Uncle Steve.
Te amo tia Sandy.
Illness was a part of my Uncle’s life ever since he was first diagnosed with lymphoma as a teenager. Everyone here knows that history to some extent or another.
Steve’s life wasn’t about illness or tragedy or victimhood; more than anyone I ever met, Steve’s life was about living and cherishing and sometimes railing against the wind and fighting against the grain because he understood that it was meaningless to play along for the sake of playing, to waste time crouched and tense, afraid that the worse might be around any corner.
Steve was a teacher in living. He was a pro at it.
Difficulty in life was a non-event, a big “duh” that wasn’t to be tripped up on.
Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” Steven Arredondo was strong in the broken places, stronger than most of us are in those that life has left whole.
For one, despite it all, He loved people unconditionally. To wash someone I think is the greatest act of kindness a person can bestow on another human being. We rarely do it in this culture. It is improper to show up at someone’s door dirty and no one would ever invite a filthy guest to their home. Steve had no such compunction. Whenever he saw a homeless person in SilverLake near his home he would say “sweetie come to my place and take a shower and I’ll give you a haircut and clean clothes.” I don’t know who was more bewildered by the event, the neighbors watching him park a bag lady's shopping cart in front of his place or the veteran whose hair he cut and nails he clipped, whose humanity he cared for and loved.
Most of us at best fold a dollar when feeling generous, and fold it so that we don’t have to touch when we place it in a filthy hand. To Steve, who understood that life was full of dirt, it didn’t make sense to spend your life avoiding it.
Steve never blamed, never thought why me? He understood that to say why me was to insult yourself, because you are what are, and he lived his life without afterthought or apology for who he was but he balanced that not with dismissive selfishness but compassion. In that way, Steve took responsibility for his own mess. Whenever he and I were out, one of us would inevitably drop our drink on the floor—Steve dropped his leaping to dance to his favorite song, me because the glass slipped from my drunken hands. The bus boy would come to pick up our mess, as he certainly did a hundred times any given evening, without thanks or notice. Steve would always give the busboy, consistently Latino, five dollars and taught me to do the same saying, “mijo, no matter where you go in life or how successful you are, never forget that they are your people and never forget that no one gets paid to pick up your mess and if you spill, that mess you made is extra.”
Steve could see beauty. He would find a chair, a piece of a mannequin, a bust, or a pile of rocks on the street and create magic with paint and glue. He made me a cleo gold fish once of rocks carefully placed and glued--he found a delicate sculpture in a pile of gravel--he could make anything beautiful. Humbly, the only awkward drawings he made were of himself, bald and big eared. At the same time he wouldn’t waste his time being down on himself. He taught me that anywhere you go there is probably someone, somewhere, saying something about you that is not so nice. To Steve that was a good thing, because it meant you didn’t have to waste your time on it. Every social situation came with it’s own ready made staff.
He was so proud of his mother and his sister. Really the role models for Sandy. His mother’s style, moxie and charm he loved. His sister “chueli’s” humility in the face of what he considered to be drop dead looks struck him in the heart, he’d say to me “you mother, she doesn’t act like it Eric, but when she was younger she was gorgeous. She still looks good but oh, her long hair she was younger.” He must have told me that a thousand times and I don’t think it was forgetfulness, I think he loved talking about the two women he loved in his life, and in his sister’s case giving voice to the “I’m beautiful dammit,” that she would never say. And then, just as often, he’d tell me that my mother and I were such nerds, frowning our foreheads, working all the time and would say how he admired that we had what he didn’t. Whether he meant frown lines, nerdiness or worker bee masochism I never knew, although he’d be happy to know we’ve both gotten a lot lazier.
Finally he was wise and astute. There used to be a coffee house on Beverly Blvd. called Red. It predated Starbucks, Coffee Bean and was in the first wave of pay 5.00 for a big cup of coffee joints. Every time we drove passed Red at around 7 p.m. on a Friday evening it was crowded and he’d start to giggle. Then he’d say, “I’m sorry but all those people paying 5 dollars for some cafe because they are too big shot to get their 50 cent café at Winchell’s, like it makes them important.” And he’d laugh some more. Fifteen years later, just weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article saying that suddenly, out of nowhere, Starbucks was hurting financially because of the rise of it’s biggest two competitors. The 50 cent café and Mcdonald’s and 7-11.
Two things are true in this world, you can’t argue with inevitability and you cant argue with Steven Arredondo. May his lessons live on within all of us and enrich our lives forever. I love you Uncle Steve.
Te amo tia Sandy.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Barbarella on Tilt v. 3 (work in progress)
Y si quieren saber de mi pasado,
Es preciso decir otra mentira,
Les diré que llegué de un mundo raro,
Que no sé del dolor
Que triunfé en el amor
Y que nunca he llorrado -José Alfredo Jiménez
"I could rape you," he said the night before.
"That impossible, I want you inside me."
I moved to San Francisco to start a life.
"You couldn't stop me."
I moved to San Francisco to find a career.
"I don't want you to stop."
I went to Frisco to find me some love.
"Do you want me to rape you?"
"I want you to shut up and fuck me is what I want."
And he did, we did it together. But in Frisco even the impossible is possible; in Frisco, anything can happen, anything. The next morning, I wake up spooning, my body forming the inside of the arc. I stretch, smiling flirtatiously even though he can't see my face. Instantly, he moves his leg so it is on top of the two mine. He holds me tighter and grumbles. I kiss his linked hands and close my eyes for a few minutes longer. He is warm, outside the rain has stopped but it is cold. I hold kiss his hands and, "I hate that I have to go to work, but I have to go." I try and get up. His arms and leg will not budge. I smile and roll my eyes at once. I try again and am irritated by having to do it a third.
“Dude, stop, I have to get to work.” He moans sheepishly and holds me tighter.
“I’m not kidding, you are going to make me late.” I fail again.
“Dude, I’m not kidding.” I can barely whisper "please" as his arms constrict, muscles flaring, the same ones the night before I had asked him to flex, the ones I had challenged to armwrestle. I grimace as they constrict harder, but obviously no where their limit. I hold still. I show him who is boss. He releases a bit. With a sheepish, sleepy laugh he numbs my mind and stabs my heart, rolling me on my back and himself over and on top. "That's...you planned this shit?" He looks into my eyes for a second or two, holds us still. In the morning light, it is clear that he might be handsome, but I have the upper hand. I feel him thicken as his left hand stretches both my arms up over my head, my two wrists in a single grip. I close my eyes and look away and look; he rubs his mouth on my upturned chin, rasping it with his teeth. He feels my next struggle, and I'm not sure I did more than think about struggling, and lunges at my neck, not kissing, not biting, just rubbing his mouth hard, breathing heavy and licking my face and neck--ravenous for meat. I recognize that I am in danger, and it isn't his hunger that tips me off; it's that he had sworn off the stuff until now.
I remember he covered my mouth and nose with a single hand. I remember barely being able to breathe. I remember knowing it would hurt less if I just let him do it. I remember clenching as hard as I possibly could as he forced his dick, deep, deep, into my ass; and I remember the cold weight of a single, viscous tear, that fell from the corner of my eye when he finished. And I remember how he rolled off me unceremoniously. Rolled like he had done me a favor. Like pumping me full of his excitement, his vitriol, had been a chore. I got up quickly. I felt like I was overreacting. Even now, I remember it as overreacting. He lay there with his mouth partially open, and his lids heavy. I looked at him in disbelief when he snored, trapping what remained of me. I panicked, I rushed and I fumbled. I left my ring and my sweater. The part of me that could run, left the rest. "Leave her! She's too slow!" I scrambled out into the morning, and the fog--hippocampus off kilter, me, a cyborg manifesto on the skids. Later that day, walking through Deboce Park, on my way to lunch, I saw him sunbathing on a towel in the early spring sun. Sunbathing. I put my head down. I walked by quickly. He and his tan, took their time.
I meet my first boyfriend at a bar. The relationship lasts six weeks. He is a Mexican gym boy and a bottom. We don't have sex, because he doesn't want to have sex with me. He doesn't say say that to me, but I know. I'm not six foot two, muscled and white. I don't drive a jeep, or own the dog du jur. No Beauty. No Britney. No Butch. I'm not straight acting. Every time we get back to his place after going on a date, Jaimie undresses and dives into bed, and under the covers, fast. It's the end of July, and he keeps the apartment cold.
"Jesus, remind me to bring a sweater."
"I'll keep you warm under the covers."
"I prefer my chances with a parka."
I do not accuse him of not wanting to touch me, of his hang ups, and how he hangs them all up on me. Complain about the lack of sex--I cannot say enough about that to him, about the need to go at it like rabbits if he expects me to stay.
"I don't mind if you jack off." Jaime stares at me expectantly. We had never really kissed since we started dating. The first night at the Rage, sure, slobbered. Since then, pecked, maybe, his lips always preemptively shut.
Masturbating for a man I was dating who wouldn't even slop me some tongue. What does that even mean? I wasn't sure what to do. No adult ever pulled me aside at the appropriate time and told me there would come a time when a man you haven't even kissed will have the nerve to ask you to pleasure yourself in front of him. I put my hand down my pants, but then stop, pull my hand out, not because I'm prudish, but because I always win.
"You don't think it's sexy to have me watch?"
"Not unless you're telekinetic." I slip into bed.
"What?"
Sigh. "You wouldn't touch me either way." I keep my shirt on and spare myself the agony of feeling his warm smooth skin all night. I spare myself the all night erection.
****
I meet my rapist at a bar. "My". He's my rapist. Just like someone could be my murderer. My kidnapper. My Priest. My lover.
“Where are you from?"
“Idaho.”
“Boise?”
“No. North.”
“I drove through it once, it was pretty.”
“I grew up on a farm. You've probably never been on one."
"Only once, my grandfather's farm in Arkansas."
We kiss in-between sentences. We kiss a lot, and for hours, Adolescents at a drive in, our conversation is interstitial, between the lines.
"I won two ribbons at the county fair for wrestling a pig.”
"I saw three cholas beat down some bitches with socks filled with quarters at the L.A. County Fair."
“They're are hard to wrestle."
"Cholas?"
"Pigs!"
"No one has ever told me they wrestled pigs before."
He looks me up and down, smiles and brings his face close to mine, “you could never do it. City boy!”
His breath smells like fruit, bubblegum. He kisses me softly, sticky, and sweet with sugar. He pauses, and looks into my eyes, which I keep open the entire time. He smiles a bit, just a hint, then pulls me close to him with both arms, in a grand, staid hug. I hug him back and I can hear his heart beating; my ear resting on his chest. He makes the sort of noise you make when you don't want to let someone go, the same noise you make when you hug someone who doesn't yet know you are guilty. He squeezes me tightest when the noise is at its peak. I don't know what it means in this context. I know I want it to mean that he likes me. Really. Really. Likes me. We continue to kiss all night. Sometimes gentle, sometimes hard and deep. We don't dance much. He can't keep up and gets uncomfortable when I dumb it down for him. So we kiss. We are the only one's left in the bar. I sit up on a railing that surrounds the dance floor. It erases the height difference. My ring slips off, the cold of the night and iced drinks having made my knuckle get small.
"Shit, hold up, my ring." I slide off the rail and start groping for the ring, trying to use the disco lights to my advantage. The floor is black, uneven, and unfinished, like tar.
"Hurry up....did you lose your tiara too?"
I flick on my lighter.
"Got it." I stand up and put my ring back on. Teetering back a step, "sarcasm is so not sexy." I can't keep myself from smiling. I grin big.
He reaches fast and pulls me towards him by my wrists. He tilts his head on the approach, "God, you are so fucking cute." Another kiss.
"Now, that's the shit that will get you anywhere."
And outside, it begins to pour.
*******
Jaime asks me for a massage. Again. He sucks at giving massages, and so I don't want them. He lays flat on his stomach. I straddle him and start to knead his back.
"Do I look like a masseuse?"
"Don't be a bitch."
"I is, what I is."
"Why would you admit you're a bitch?"
Because then you cannot tell me to stop acting like one. He won't get it, so I say nothing.
"But no one likes a bitch."
I pull my ring off and set it on the nightstand, "shut up, already."
I knead Jaimie's hard back, until my hands hurt. He starts to snore. I stop, sitting on top of him while he sleeps, staring at my ring, and then at myself in the mirror above his bed. I lose that ring the morning I am raped. That ring and a mustard yellow Dolce Gabbana mohair wool cardigan; it has two silver dollar size plastic yellow buttons and is cut short, just above my waist. It is my first Dolce Gabbana anything. I find the cardigan at Last Call, marked down to eighty bucks from six hundred. The color catches my eye from the bottom of a heap on a clearance table; it calls out to me from underneath a Miranda Priestly "pile of stuff."
For five years, I am that cardigan and that ring. Everyone knows they are mine; in that yellow, everyone sees me coming. It is the ring and the cardigan that my best and closest female friends put on whenever we hang out, the ultimate female gesture--wearing your best friend's clothes. I, in turn, borrow their wedges, if they are misfortunate enough to have big enough feet. That morning I forget them. I scramble for shoes. I leave the socks. I manage my keys and my wallet, but only because they are already in my jeans. I do not put on underwear, but hold them in my hand. A pair of boxer briefs. Black. I knock over a glass of water as I rush and he yells, "Goddammit!" I wipe up the water with my underwear and run out the door. Like a good little bitch.
A couple of weeks later, I ring what I think is his gate buzzer. A friend brings me, a female. My male friends, and my mother, have never been much inclined to talk about any of this. They listen and recite platitudes from the surface, and the boys and my mother can't dive into the mire. So a woman brings me to get my things. I ring the buzzer one or two or three times. No one answers. I look up at the brick facade and wonder if he is in there, if he is looking. I wonder if he even knows what he has done. Strike that, I didn't even know what he had done. It isn't until I was telling my friend, Tammy, one night at the Cafe about the weird end to my date, when she grabbed my wrist, just grabbed it, right there in front of the Barbarella pin ball machine, and said it. She just said it.
"Eric, you were raped."
She lets go. I take a long drag.
"Yeah, huh?"
Huh. Did he keep my ring and sweater? Did he wear them? Did he give them away or did he throw them in the trash, like he would have gotten rid of a body? Barbarella starts to buzz. Tammy and I turn and face a lit up, flashing, celluloid Ms. Fonda, all hair, gold sheer fabric, and knee high boots. Her belt blinks, "tilt." Tammy throws her arms around me and gives me a huge, firm, fat person's hug, despite her small frame. In that embrace, I feel still, for one merciful second.
Es preciso decir otra mentira,
Les diré que llegué de un mundo raro,
Que no sé del dolor
Que triunfé en el amor
Y que nunca he llorrado -José Alfredo Jiménez
"I could rape you," he said the night before.
"That impossible, I want you inside me."
I moved to San Francisco to start a life.
"You couldn't stop me."
I moved to San Francisco to find a career.
"I don't want you to stop."
I went to Frisco to find me some love.
"Do you want me to rape you?"
"I want you to shut up and fuck me is what I want."
And he did, we did it together. But in Frisco even the impossible is possible; in Frisco, anything can happen, anything. The next morning, I wake up spooning, my body forming the inside of the arc. I stretch, smiling flirtatiously even though he can't see my face. Instantly, he moves his leg so it is on top of the two mine. He holds me tighter and grumbles. I kiss his linked hands and close my eyes for a few minutes longer. He is warm, outside the rain has stopped but it is cold. I hold kiss his hands and, "I hate that I have to go to work, but I have to go." I try and get up. His arms and leg will not budge. I smile and roll my eyes at once. I try again and am irritated by having to do it a third.
“Dude, stop, I have to get to work.” He moans sheepishly and holds me tighter.
“I’m not kidding, you are going to make me late.” I fail again.
“Dude, I’m not kidding.” I can barely whisper "please" as his arms constrict, muscles flaring, the same ones the night before I had asked him to flex, the ones I had challenged to armwrestle. I grimace as they constrict harder, but obviously no where their limit. I hold still. I show him who is boss. He releases a bit. With a sheepish, sleepy laugh he numbs my mind and stabs my heart, rolling me on my back and himself over and on top. "That's...you planned this shit?" He looks into my eyes for a second or two, holds us still. In the morning light, it is clear that he might be handsome, but I have the upper hand. I feel him thicken as his left hand stretches both my arms up over my head, my two wrists in a single grip. I close my eyes and look away and look; he rubs his mouth on my upturned chin, rasping it with his teeth. He feels my next struggle, and I'm not sure I did more than think about struggling, and lunges at my neck, not kissing, not biting, just rubbing his mouth hard, breathing heavy and licking my face and neck--ravenous for meat. I recognize that I am in danger, and it isn't his hunger that tips me off; it's that he had sworn off the stuff until now.
I remember he covered my mouth and nose with a single hand. I remember barely being able to breathe. I remember knowing it would hurt less if I just let him do it. I remember clenching as hard as I possibly could as he forced his dick, deep, deep, into my ass; and I remember the cold weight of a single, viscous tear, that fell from the corner of my eye when he finished. And I remember how he rolled off me unceremoniously. Rolled like he had done me a favor. Like pumping me full of his excitement, his vitriol, had been a chore. I got up quickly. I felt like I was overreacting. Even now, I remember it as overreacting. He lay there with his mouth partially open, and his lids heavy. I looked at him in disbelief when he snored, trapping what remained of me. I panicked, I rushed and I fumbled. I left my ring and my sweater. The part of me that could run, left the rest. "Leave her! She's too slow!" I scrambled out into the morning, and the fog--hippocampus off kilter, me, a cyborg manifesto on the skids. Later that day, walking through Deboce Park, on my way to lunch, I saw him sunbathing on a towel in the early spring sun. Sunbathing. I put my head down. I walked by quickly. He and his tan, took their time.
I meet my first boyfriend at a bar. The relationship lasts six weeks. He is a Mexican gym boy and a bottom. We don't have sex, because he doesn't want to have sex with me. He doesn't say say that to me, but I know. I'm not six foot two, muscled and white. I don't drive a jeep, or own the dog du jur. No Beauty. No Britney. No Butch. I'm not straight acting. Every time we get back to his place after going on a date, Jaimie undresses and dives into bed, and under the covers, fast. It's the end of July, and he keeps the apartment cold.
"Jesus, remind me to bring a sweater."
"I'll keep you warm under the covers."
"I prefer my chances with a parka."
I do not accuse him of not wanting to touch me, of his hang ups, and how he hangs them all up on me. Complain about the lack of sex--I cannot say enough about that to him, about the need to go at it like rabbits if he expects me to stay.
"I don't mind if you jack off." Jaime stares at me expectantly. We had never really kissed since we started dating. The first night at the Rage, sure, slobbered. Since then, pecked, maybe, his lips always preemptively shut.
Masturbating for a man I was dating who wouldn't even slop me some tongue. What does that even mean? I wasn't sure what to do. No adult ever pulled me aside at the appropriate time and told me there would come a time when a man you haven't even kissed will have the nerve to ask you to pleasure yourself in front of him. I put my hand down my pants, but then stop, pull my hand out, not because I'm prudish, but because I always win.
"You don't think it's sexy to have me watch?"
"Not unless you're telekinetic." I slip into bed.
"What?"
Sigh. "You wouldn't touch me either way." I keep my shirt on and spare myself the agony of feeling his warm smooth skin all night. I spare myself the all night erection.
****
I meet my rapist at a bar. "My". He's my rapist. Just like someone could be my murderer. My kidnapper. My Priest. My lover.
“Where are you from?"
“Idaho.”
“Boise?”
“No. North.”
“I drove through it once, it was pretty.”
“I grew up on a farm. You've probably never been on one."
"Only once, my grandfather's farm in Arkansas."
We kiss in-between sentences. We kiss a lot, and for hours, Adolescents at a drive in, our conversation is interstitial, between the lines.
"I won two ribbons at the county fair for wrestling a pig.”
"I saw three cholas beat down some bitches with socks filled with quarters at the L.A. County Fair."
“They're are hard to wrestle."
"Cholas?"
"Pigs!"
"No one has ever told me they wrestled pigs before."
He looks me up and down, smiles and brings his face close to mine, “you could never do it. City boy!”
His breath smells like fruit, bubblegum. He kisses me softly, sticky, and sweet with sugar. He pauses, and looks into my eyes, which I keep open the entire time. He smiles a bit, just a hint, then pulls me close to him with both arms, in a grand, staid hug. I hug him back and I can hear his heart beating; my ear resting on his chest. He makes the sort of noise you make when you don't want to let someone go, the same noise you make when you hug someone who doesn't yet know you are guilty. He squeezes me tightest when the noise is at its peak. I don't know what it means in this context. I know I want it to mean that he likes me. Really. Really. Likes me. We continue to kiss all night. Sometimes gentle, sometimes hard and deep. We don't dance much. He can't keep up and gets uncomfortable when I dumb it down for him. So we kiss. We are the only one's left in the bar. I sit up on a railing that surrounds the dance floor. It erases the height difference. My ring slips off, the cold of the night and iced drinks having made my knuckle get small.
"Shit, hold up, my ring." I slide off the rail and start groping for the ring, trying to use the disco lights to my advantage. The floor is black, uneven, and unfinished, like tar.
"Hurry up....did you lose your tiara too?"
I flick on my lighter.
"Got it." I stand up and put my ring back on. Teetering back a step, "sarcasm is so not sexy." I can't keep myself from smiling. I grin big.
He reaches fast and pulls me towards him by my wrists. He tilts his head on the approach, "God, you are so fucking cute." Another kiss.
"Now, that's the shit that will get you anywhere."
And outside, it begins to pour.
*******
Jaime asks me for a massage. Again. He sucks at giving massages, and so I don't want them. He lays flat on his stomach. I straddle him and start to knead his back.
"Do I look like a masseuse?"
"Don't be a bitch."
"I is, what I is."
"Why would you admit you're a bitch?"
Because then you cannot tell me to stop acting like one. He won't get it, so I say nothing.
"But no one likes a bitch."
I pull my ring off and set it on the nightstand, "shut up, already."
I knead Jaimie's hard back, until my hands hurt. He starts to snore. I stop, sitting on top of him while he sleeps, staring at my ring, and then at myself in the mirror above his bed. I lose that ring the morning I am raped. That ring and a mustard yellow Dolce Gabbana mohair wool cardigan; it has two silver dollar size plastic yellow buttons and is cut short, just above my waist. It is my first Dolce Gabbana anything. I find the cardigan at Last Call, marked down to eighty bucks from six hundred. The color catches my eye from the bottom of a heap on a clearance table; it calls out to me from underneath a Miranda Priestly "pile of stuff."
For five years, I am that cardigan and that ring. Everyone knows they are mine; in that yellow, everyone sees me coming. It is the ring and the cardigan that my best and closest female friends put on whenever we hang out, the ultimate female gesture--wearing your best friend's clothes. I, in turn, borrow their wedges, if they are misfortunate enough to have big enough feet. That morning I forget them. I scramble for shoes. I leave the socks. I manage my keys and my wallet, but only because they are already in my jeans. I do not put on underwear, but hold them in my hand. A pair of boxer briefs. Black. I knock over a glass of water as I rush and he yells, "Goddammit!" I wipe up the water with my underwear and run out the door. Like a good little bitch.
A couple of weeks later, I ring what I think is his gate buzzer. A friend brings me, a female. My male friends, and my mother, have never been much inclined to talk about any of this. They listen and recite platitudes from the surface, and the boys and my mother can't dive into the mire. So a woman brings me to get my things. I ring the buzzer one or two or three times. No one answers. I look up at the brick facade and wonder if he is in there, if he is looking. I wonder if he even knows what he has done. Strike that, I didn't even know what he had done. It isn't until I was telling my friend, Tammy, one night at the Cafe about the weird end to my date, when she grabbed my wrist, just grabbed it, right there in front of the Barbarella pin ball machine, and said it. She just said it.
"Eric, you were raped."
She lets go. I take a long drag.
"Yeah, huh?"
Huh. Did he keep my ring and sweater? Did he wear them? Did he give them away or did he throw them in the trash, like he would have gotten rid of a body? Barbarella starts to buzz. Tammy and I turn and face a lit up, flashing, celluloid Ms. Fonda, all hair, gold sheer fabric, and knee high boots. Her belt blinks, "tilt." Tammy throws her arms around me and gives me a huge, firm, fat person's hug, despite her small frame. In that embrace, I feel still, for one merciful second.
Friday, April 2, 2010
The Other Woman
The Other Woman
1. Jenny
My mother buys a BMW when I am in kindergarten. She picks a rust colored exterior, with a beige upholstered interior. You can see my mom’s head over the steering wheel when she drives, my grandmother’s entire face is visible above the dashboard.
On the way home from school, we stop at Sears so they can buy music. They are quick, they don’t want to keep me waiting long. Before we pull out of the lot, they unwrap the six cassette tapes the cassette tapes they purchased between them. The car comes with a cassette player, and they own only vinyl and 8-track. My grandmother points out with interest that the cassettes come with an insert containing the lyrics to each song. They make identical music purchases, two of each title, three cassettes for each of them, six in total. My mother carefully puts a tape into her new tape deck as if care would keep it from eating tapes right and left a few years later. Repetitive jobs make for disgruntled employees. No amount of care will change the end result.
My mother turns up the volume and says, “I love this song.”
I know she is smiling by the sound of her voice.
They already know all the lyrics, to songs I will never forget. It is fact that in the time it took Neil to stop brining flowers and Barbara to stop fighting the feeling that the feeling was gone, my mother would water all her houseplants. In my memory she wears Jordasche Jeans and an off-the-shoulder top. Her hair is curly like Sandy’s in Grease, after the beauty school drop-out made her into the vixen in shiny skintight black pants who brought Danny Zucco to his knees. My mother is always dressed up in my memories of this time. She squeezes water from a plastic bottle and through a plastic anteater’s snout that reached up into her massive heart-leaf philodendrons.
Vicki Carr sings a song about divorce, speaking in song to an estranged spouse, making references to a daughter named Jenny. Divorce is the new phenomenon. Divorce will win an Oscar.
I watch the road from the back, stretching my neck so I can see in between the seats. I am not in a car seat. It’s the seventies, and child safety still meant watching your kids, not strapping them in. I overhear adults talking about the new BMW and learn what it means. Whenever I sit in the front seat, I play a game inspired by Star Wars. The car is a fighter jet. I am the pilot. The task is to shoot other cars and work the force shields. Because I fly a BMW, I am guaranteed a victory over most other cars. When needed, my superior pilot skills get us out of close calls with Mercedes Benz’s, Volvos, and the dreaded Porsche. I do not use or consider the force when I play. I am all secular skill. I work the Autobahn, no speed limits, and German engineering into any conversation I can. I play my game until we move to Palm Springs and there no longer is a clear advantage in our favor. Relying on superior skills against like opponents means I have to work in losing into the equation, otherwise the game made no sense.
My grandmother removes a butterscotch candy from her mouth, wraps it in the orange cellophane wrapper and drops it in the space between her seat and the passenger door. My mother and I do not see her do this, but we will know the wrappers are hers.
Looking at me through the rearview mirror, my mom says to me, “Your grandpa always says I look like Vicki Carr.” I know she means her father, Oscar. My grandmother is now two husbands removed from Oscar but still holds a grudge. Even though it is my grandmother that left Oscar when he was bedridden with a congenital illness. He didn’t tell her he was sick, she didn’t have all the facts when she said “until death do us part.” The words “in sickness and in health” mean something else when your husband has failed to tell you that he is chronically ill. Her family shunned her as something malign and wrong after the divorce. How could she. That is why she holds a grudge. Lied to her heading to the alter and garnered all the sympathy as she walked out the door.
“He doesn’t know anything.” My grandmother’s voice is mocking and derisive. She swats the empty air between her and my mother with her left hand and clutches her blouse at the collar with the right, as if clutching a cross, even though there is never anything to clutch. Her blouses are much too colorful and garish to accessorize with necklaces. She wouldn’t be caught dead wearing pearls--too stuffy old white woman.
“You are prettier than Vicki Carr, Oscar doesn’t know what he is talking about.” It is less a compliment of my mother, than an indictment of Oscar. He will never get the last word, even when he is absent.
Oscar is the best friend of by grandmother’s brother. A best friend marries a little sister--a match made in Mexico, if not exactly heaven. One evening Oscar and four of my grandmother’s brother’s sit drinking. Each brothers makes a toast in honor of his wife, in honor of being lucky, and to give thanks that God gave him a wife willing to put up with him. When it is his turn, Oscar takes a swig of beer, pauses, and says, “God, I married a bitch.” The men laugh and they drink to Oscar, to their younger and gorgeous sister, and to the undeniable truth that Oscar, did in fact, marry a bitch.
The drive home continues as Vicki Carr sings about a phone, a prayer, and the fact that it is never, ever him.
My mother sings along, wearing red sunglasses shaped like hearts.
Part 2: Ostensible Diagnosis
“I was calling to see if you had the results to my MRI.”
“Name?”
“Compere.”
“Oh, yeah, they came in.” The nurse offers nothing else.
“Well, can you tell me what they are?”
“Sure, please hold a moment and I’ll go get them.”
She is nervous and draws an eyeball on the back of an envelope. She always draws eyes.
Her late brother had a thing for lips and noses. Nora had it for the eyes. She has time to shade in the iris, pupil and give texture to the brow while she waits.
“Oh, the doctor says she’ll call you as soon as she’s done with her patient.”
Shit. The doctor has to tell me. She ‘s scribbles over the eyeball rapidly with her pen. Doctors never go out of their way to give out the good news. They are too busy, can’t be bothered. At any rate, they have people. It’s the bad news they care about; it’s the bad news that makes them seem like god; he never bothers with the good news either. Loaded, maybe. Good, never. She lets the phone go to the third ring before answering. She smiles into the receiver as she says hello. “It’s a wonderful day at Macy’s. How can I provide you with outstanding service?” Some consultant in a bob wearing in horn rimmed glasses--most likely in some off putting color like magenta--put those words into her mouth and every other mouth that answers a phone at Macy’s. Today, exaggeration is not welcome. You must be matter of fact with physicians if you want them to hear you. Same is true of Germans. And the Chinese, though for different reasons. They Chinese will take you at your word. An infomercial for the Hoover Damn got them to damn the Yangste River for chrissake. And she hadn’t even been to the hoover damn. Was it even on the list of things to do should you have no time left? Not hers. But for someone, somewhere it was. Probably someone from China. So today she simply said, hello.” Her tone is not flat, but not also not expectant. Her tone is what you’d expect Hal to sound like when he was getting ready for bad news from a doctor. And he did get bad news from a doctor. Dished it out too. Atta boy. So she sounds like a robot on the verge of a psychotic break when she says hello, the broken down end of a cyborg manifesto on the skids. She greets the potential news, whatever it is, like a boy you know is calling to ask you out to prom. It’s a tone fit for small talk. A tone you maintain while at a ladies lunch--one with no wine and women you don’t like. A tone you take at a funeral when you talk to relatives you haven’t seen since you caught them stealing your son’s toys that time they came to visit for Easter. Jesus gets nailed to a cross for our sins and your nephew tries to steal away with not just the portable Pacman, but the half dozen feather chick birds (in the assorted three colors of Easter) your sensitive son thinks are the bees knees.
“Well, we have your test results.”
Well. So. If you must. Pray tell. Or just pray. Either way, it’s all about the stalling.
“And?”
“Good news first.”
She thought it was her choice, her decision whether the good news came first or not. Not that anything but the bad news mattered whenever news was categorized into the good and the bad.
“You don’t have a pinched nerve.”
The entire purpose of the MRI was to diagnose the bilateral pain she had been experiencing in her arms for the past six months. The good news was that they still didn’t know what was causing the pain.
No news, was the good news, the soft touch of a grasp at straws. She braced for the blow.
“You have what look like tumors growing on your thyroid.”
Diagnosis by smoke and mirrors. You have a simulacra of tumorous growths. You have tumors. Are the tumors ostensible or real? There is a difference.
“Look like tumors? Is it cancer?”
“I don’t know yet, let’s wait until the biopsy.”
“Does it look like cancer? You can tell me that at least.”
“It’s too soon to tell.”
“You just told me it looks like I have tumors. You can at least tell me if it looks like I have cancer, can’t you?”
“I’d rather not say.”
She just did. Doctors, perennial bearers of bad news, are never very good at navigating around negative pregnant.
“Never a lawyer around when you need one,” she mumbled.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, don’t worry. I mean I wasn’t talking about lawyers in the I-am-going-to-sue-you-way, just in the they-have-a-way-with-words-way.”
“I don’t follow?”
“No, doctors always think they can lead, don’t they? So, I have what look like tumors, but what you would rather not say that they look like cancer.”
“No, I didn’t say I was avoiding saying they looked like cancer.”
“You had to be saying that, unless you are telling me that you wouldn’t say, ‘it doesn’t look like cancer,’ if you could. That would be absurd.”
“I...”
“Can’t say that, it’s ok.”
“Well your pituitary is clear.”
Which is another way of saying, it is good news that the old tumors have not returned. Bring on the new. At least those tumors were benign. At least. Benign. Crushing headaches, breasts spewing milk years after menopause, blurred vision, and, of course, brain surgery. Something easily dealt with, handled without suffering, or detriment. Benign may not equal cancer, but it sure is a drag.
“Ok. So these are new apparent tumors, not an apparent return of an old one.”
“Yes. The results also show signs of brain atrophy.”
Fighting words. A skirmish in a war no one with brain shrinkage will remember.
“Dementia?”
“Oh, no.”
Sigh.
“Does it look like Alzheimer's?”
“No, no. It’s normal shrinkage for a woman your age,” oblivious to the patronization.
For a woman in her sixties. For low bone density, you take a pill once a month. After you take it, you have to sit up for forty five minutes. She doesn’t know what for, although she had been told by other people, with no actual idea either, that it was so it could take affect, seep into the bones, presumably. Ostensibly? Who cares. Word choice is diminishing returns when dealing with a doctor.
“Do crossword puzzles.”
“What?”
“We tell people your age to do crossword puzzles. It helps.”
“With the tumors?”
“No, with the atrophy.”
“Word choice matters.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m old and senile, shrinking brain with ostensible tumors.”
“No, it’s..”
“A normal level of senility for a woman my age. Do I have to sit up when I do them?”
“What?”
“The puzzles, do I sit up while doing them?”
“I don’t understand, no, you don’t have to sit up.”
“Unless, I’ve just taken my Boniva.”
“Oh, you are a clever one.”
“Ostensibly?”
“Actually.”
Flattery, had done her in, her entire life.
“You also have a mucous ball in your left sinus that has congealed, but we’ll worry about that later.”
“But, we'll talk about it now.”
“I know you must be anxious.”
“Maybe, I’m just a fucking bitch, ostensibly?”
“Actually.” The doctor smiles to herself as she turns away, taking her stethoscope off in a grand, familiar gesture.
No one likes a doctor who just swallowed a canary, but this she will keep to herself. It will drive her crazy when she can't remember what she was keeping, though that is an improvement over her mother, who would have forgotten where she was keeping it--only the latter lends itself to accusing people of stealing.
No, if given a choice, she would stick to forgetting.
1. Jenny
My mother buys a BMW when I am in kindergarten. She picks a rust colored exterior, with a beige upholstered interior. You can see my mom’s head over the steering wheel when she drives, my grandmother’s entire face is visible above the dashboard.
On the way home from school, we stop at Sears so they can buy music. They are quick, they don’t want to keep me waiting long. Before we pull out of the lot, they unwrap the six cassette tapes the cassette tapes they purchased between them. The car comes with a cassette player, and they own only vinyl and 8-track. My grandmother points out with interest that the cassettes come with an insert containing the lyrics to each song. They make identical music purchases, two of each title, three cassettes for each of them, six in total. My mother carefully puts a tape into her new tape deck as if care would keep it from eating tapes right and left a few years later. Repetitive jobs make for disgruntled employees. No amount of care will change the end result.
My mother turns up the volume and says, “I love this song.”
I know she is smiling by the sound of her voice.
They already know all the lyrics, to songs I will never forget. It is fact that in the time it took Neil to stop brining flowers and Barbara to stop fighting the feeling that the feeling was gone, my mother would water all her houseplants. In my memory she wears Jordasche Jeans and an off-the-shoulder top. Her hair is curly like Sandy’s in Grease, after the beauty school drop-out made her into the vixen in shiny skintight black pants who brought Danny Zucco to his knees. My mother is always dressed up in my memories of this time. She squeezes water from a plastic bottle and through a plastic anteater’s snout that reached up into her massive heart-leaf philodendrons.
Vicki Carr sings a song about divorce, speaking in song to an estranged spouse, making references to a daughter named Jenny. Divorce is the new phenomenon. Divorce will win an Oscar.
I watch the road from the back, stretching my neck so I can see in between the seats. I am not in a car seat. It’s the seventies, and child safety still meant watching your kids, not strapping them in. I overhear adults talking about the new BMW and learn what it means. Whenever I sit in the front seat, I play a game inspired by Star Wars. The car is a fighter jet. I am the pilot. The task is to shoot other cars and work the force shields. Because I fly a BMW, I am guaranteed a victory over most other cars. When needed, my superior pilot skills get us out of close calls with Mercedes Benz’s, Volvos, and the dreaded Porsche. I do not use or consider the force when I play. I am all secular skill. I work the Autobahn, no speed limits, and German engineering into any conversation I can. I play my game until we move to Palm Springs and there no longer is a clear advantage in our favor. Relying on superior skills against like opponents means I have to work in losing into the equation, otherwise the game made no sense.
My grandmother removes a butterscotch candy from her mouth, wraps it in the orange cellophane wrapper and drops it in the space between her seat and the passenger door. My mother and I do not see her do this, but we will know the wrappers are hers.
Looking at me through the rearview mirror, my mom says to me, “Your grandpa always says I look like Vicki Carr.” I know she means her father, Oscar. My grandmother is now two husbands removed from Oscar but still holds a grudge. Even though it is my grandmother that left Oscar when he was bedridden with a congenital illness. He didn’t tell her he was sick, she didn’t have all the facts when she said “until death do us part.” The words “in sickness and in health” mean something else when your husband has failed to tell you that he is chronically ill. Her family shunned her as something malign and wrong after the divorce. How could she. That is why she holds a grudge. Lied to her heading to the alter and garnered all the sympathy as she walked out the door.
“He doesn’t know anything.” My grandmother’s voice is mocking and derisive. She swats the empty air between her and my mother with her left hand and clutches her blouse at the collar with the right, as if clutching a cross, even though there is never anything to clutch. Her blouses are much too colorful and garish to accessorize with necklaces. She wouldn’t be caught dead wearing pearls--too stuffy old white woman.
“You are prettier than Vicki Carr, Oscar doesn’t know what he is talking about.” It is less a compliment of my mother, than an indictment of Oscar. He will never get the last word, even when he is absent.
Oscar is the best friend of by grandmother’s brother. A best friend marries a little sister--a match made in Mexico, if not exactly heaven. One evening Oscar and four of my grandmother’s brother’s sit drinking. Each brothers makes a toast in honor of his wife, in honor of being lucky, and to give thanks that God gave him a wife willing to put up with him. When it is his turn, Oscar takes a swig of beer, pauses, and says, “God, I married a bitch.” The men laugh and they drink to Oscar, to their younger and gorgeous sister, and to the undeniable truth that Oscar, did in fact, marry a bitch.
The drive home continues as Vicki Carr sings about a phone, a prayer, and the fact that it is never, ever him.
My mother sings along, wearing red sunglasses shaped like hearts.
Part 2: Ostensible Diagnosis
“I was calling to see if you had the results to my MRI.”
“Name?”
“Compere.”
“Oh, yeah, they came in.” The nurse offers nothing else.
“Well, can you tell me what they are?”
“Sure, please hold a moment and I’ll go get them.”
She is nervous and draws an eyeball on the back of an envelope. She always draws eyes.
Her late brother had a thing for lips and noses. Nora had it for the eyes. She has time to shade in the iris, pupil and give texture to the brow while she waits.
“Oh, the doctor says she’ll call you as soon as she’s done with her patient.”
Shit. The doctor has to tell me. She ‘s scribbles over the eyeball rapidly with her pen. Doctors never go out of their way to give out the good news. They are too busy, can’t be bothered. At any rate, they have people. It’s the bad news they care about; it’s the bad news that makes them seem like god; he never bothers with the good news either. Loaded, maybe. Good, never. She lets the phone go to the third ring before answering. She smiles into the receiver as she says hello. “It’s a wonderful day at Macy’s. How can I provide you with outstanding service?” Some consultant in a bob wearing in horn rimmed glasses--most likely in some off putting color like magenta--put those words into her mouth and every other mouth that answers a phone at Macy’s. Today, exaggeration is not welcome. You must be matter of fact with physicians if you want them to hear you. Same is true of Germans. And the Chinese, though for different reasons. They Chinese will take you at your word. An infomercial for the Hoover Damn got them to damn the Yangste River for chrissake. And she hadn’t even been to the hoover damn. Was it even on the list of things to do should you have no time left? Not hers. But for someone, somewhere it was. Probably someone from China. So today she simply said, hello.” Her tone is not flat, but not also not expectant. Her tone is what you’d expect Hal to sound like when he was getting ready for bad news from a doctor. And he did get bad news from a doctor. Dished it out too. Atta boy. So she sounds like a robot on the verge of a psychotic break when she says hello, the broken down end of a cyborg manifesto on the skids. She greets the potential news, whatever it is, like a boy you know is calling to ask you out to prom. It’s a tone fit for small talk. A tone you maintain while at a ladies lunch--one with no wine and women you don’t like. A tone you take at a funeral when you talk to relatives you haven’t seen since you caught them stealing your son’s toys that time they came to visit for Easter. Jesus gets nailed to a cross for our sins and your nephew tries to steal away with not just the portable Pacman, but the half dozen feather chick birds (in the assorted three colors of Easter) your sensitive son thinks are the bees knees.
“Well, we have your test results.”
Well. So. If you must. Pray tell. Or just pray. Either way, it’s all about the stalling.
“And?”
“Good news first.”
She thought it was her choice, her decision whether the good news came first or not. Not that anything but the bad news mattered whenever news was categorized into the good and the bad.
“You don’t have a pinched nerve.”
The entire purpose of the MRI was to diagnose the bilateral pain she had been experiencing in her arms for the past six months. The good news was that they still didn’t know what was causing the pain.
No news, was the good news, the soft touch of a grasp at straws. She braced for the blow.
“You have what look like tumors growing on your thyroid.”
Diagnosis by smoke and mirrors. You have a simulacra of tumorous growths. You have tumors. Are the tumors ostensible or real? There is a difference.
“Look like tumors? Is it cancer?”
“I don’t know yet, let’s wait until the biopsy.”
“Does it look like cancer? You can tell me that at least.”
“It’s too soon to tell.”
“You just told me it looks like I have tumors. You can at least tell me if it looks like I have cancer, can’t you?”
“I’d rather not say.”
She just did. Doctors, perennial bearers of bad news, are never very good at navigating around negative pregnant.
“Never a lawyer around when you need one,” she mumbled.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, don’t worry. I mean I wasn’t talking about lawyers in the I-am-going-to-sue-you-way, just in the they-have-a-way-with-words-way.”
“I don’t follow?”
“No, doctors always think they can lead, don’t they? So, I have what look like tumors, but what you would rather not say that they look like cancer.”
“No, I didn’t say I was avoiding saying they looked like cancer.”
“You had to be saying that, unless you are telling me that you wouldn’t say, ‘it doesn’t look like cancer,’ if you could. That would be absurd.”
“I...”
“Can’t say that, it’s ok.”
“Well your pituitary is clear.”
Which is another way of saying, it is good news that the old tumors have not returned. Bring on the new. At least those tumors were benign. At least. Benign. Crushing headaches, breasts spewing milk years after menopause, blurred vision, and, of course, brain surgery. Something easily dealt with, handled without suffering, or detriment. Benign may not equal cancer, but it sure is a drag.
“Ok. So these are new apparent tumors, not an apparent return of an old one.”
“Yes. The results also show signs of brain atrophy.”
Fighting words. A skirmish in a war no one with brain shrinkage will remember.
“Dementia?”
“Oh, no.”
Sigh.
“Does it look like Alzheimer's?”
“No, no. It’s normal shrinkage for a woman your age,” oblivious to the patronization.
For a woman in her sixties. For low bone density, you take a pill once a month. After you take it, you have to sit up for forty five minutes. She doesn’t know what for, although she had been told by other people, with no actual idea either, that it was so it could take affect, seep into the bones, presumably. Ostensibly? Who cares. Word choice is diminishing returns when dealing with a doctor.
“Do crossword puzzles.”
“What?”
“We tell people your age to do crossword puzzles. It helps.”
“With the tumors?”
“No, with the atrophy.”
“Word choice matters.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m old and senile, shrinking brain with ostensible tumors.”
“No, it’s..”
“A normal level of senility for a woman my age. Do I have to sit up when I do them?”
“What?”
“The puzzles, do I sit up while doing them?”
“I don’t understand, no, you don’t have to sit up.”
“Unless, I’ve just taken my Boniva.”
“Oh, you are a clever one.”
“Ostensibly?”
“Actually.”
Flattery, had done her in, her entire life.
“You also have a mucous ball in your left sinus that has congealed, but we’ll worry about that later.”
“But, we'll talk about it now.”
“I know you must be anxious.”
“Maybe, I’m just a fucking bitch, ostensibly?”
“Actually.” The doctor smiles to herself as she turns away, taking her stethoscope off in a grand, familiar gesture.
No one likes a doctor who just swallowed a canary, but this she will keep to herself. It will drive her crazy when she can't remember what she was keeping, though that is an improvement over her mother, who would have forgotten where she was keeping it--only the latter lends itself to accusing people of stealing.
No, if given a choice, she would stick to forgetting.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Call Off The Birds
Having taken their time to diagnose the lymphoma, the doctors wasted no time making the terminal prognosis.
“You have six months to live.”
The news did not cause Steve to take stock or adjust his priorities. The news didn’t springboard him into acceptance or contemplative enlightenment. He wasn’t brave or afraid or angry. He did not spend time cherishing what little time he had left.
Instead, Steve reacted with a good old fashion, pre-psych lingo, nervous breakdown.
The breakdown brought with it total paranoia, but not of people. No conspiracies. No people out to get him. No people whispering behind his back.
If you aren't going to be paranoid about people, then paranoia will settle on the next best thing, birds. Ubiquitous, lizard-like, chattery, birds. Steve thought they were watching him, following him, dancing on the telephone wires in open mockery as he walked. And unlike secret agents, busy-body neighbors, employers, most voyeurs, and government, birds have balls. They have the audacity to go about their spying out in the open. Birds bring the madness of open espionage, the confirmation that you aren't being paranoid. “No, you aren’t crazy. Four crows, three pigeons, a hummingbird and a blue jay, actually have been following you for the last mile. Worse yet, they are enjoying themselves.”
As any citizen might, Steve took his problem to the cops. And He took it to them as Sandy, dressed in full drag. She white shirt dress with a thick black belt, hooker red nails and heels. He hair was long and black like Cher. Sandy's nails were always real, and, until the chemo took her hair, she never wore wigs. To a tranny, being able to grow your own nails and wear your own hair is the only justice you get.
“I know what you are doing, you tell those birds to stop following me,” Sandy said wagging a finger at the cops in vague judgment, red lacquered nail polish catching the light.
Call off the birds. Simple enough.
Unfortunately, the birds kept following. “Call off the birds,” along with such perennial favorites as “please stop my husband from beating the crap out of me,” or “catch that gay basher,” tops a shortlist of things cops actually can’t do for you.
And eventually, the complete meltdown.
Steve was driving east on the 134, when he just couldn't go any further. He hit the breaks and stopped his yellow VW bug in the fast lane. Not registering the traffic danger or the horns, Steve clutched his wheel white knuckled and stared up out his windshield at a dozen circling birds.
It was the early seventies and so it happened that a nice couple actually stopped to help Steve. Steve, the tranny spending his last six months on earth running from birds. Steve the Mexican teenager who was once called a nigger by a whit kid on the play ground in first grade by a white boy. He had watched mortified as his mother, after making Steve identify the brat, marched across the playground in her skin tight lemon yellow pants, cork wedges, white blouse, and Jackie O sunglasses. When she reached the kid, she yanked him off the swing by his collar and in front of the other parents and teachers. She shook him as she yelled in her accented voice, “Don’t ever call anyone that name ever again. Do you understand? If you do, I’ll come find you.” She had dropped him like a bag of trash and walked off rubbing her hands together like they were covered in dirt. Then she yelled at Steve for not punching the brat in the face in the first place.
The couple pulled their car over to the side of the freeway, and played a real time game of frogger across four lanes of traffic. All to bring a stranger and his car out of danger. Then, as risking life and limb for a stranger wasn't enough, they then drove him forty-five minutes to UCLA, where he was involuntarily committed to the mental ward and given medicine to make him stop thinking about the birds.
During his stay, he avoided the arboretum and all windows near trees or telephone poles.
A few days later, Steve decided he would rather be at home. So he walked out. As he left he somehow found a black wig (his hair had been shaved), some make up, and some mismatched heels, one black and one blue, and both different lengths; proving once and for all that “when a bitch has got to go, a bitch has got to go.”
He rode the number 2 bus down Sunset Blvd. that morning wearing a backless hospital gown, matching patient ID bracelets, lipstick, eye shadow, black wig, and mismatched heels. He arrived without incident.
However, there were multiple unconfirmed reports that morning to the Hollywood police department, of a bus on Sunset that morning that was being chased by hundreds of birds.
“You have six months to live.”
The news did not cause Steve to take stock or adjust his priorities. The news didn’t springboard him into acceptance or contemplative enlightenment. He wasn’t brave or afraid or angry. He did not spend time cherishing what little time he had left.
Instead, Steve reacted with a good old fashion, pre-psych lingo, nervous breakdown.
The breakdown brought with it total paranoia, but not of people. No conspiracies. No people out to get him. No people whispering behind his back.
If you aren't going to be paranoid about people, then paranoia will settle on the next best thing, birds. Ubiquitous, lizard-like, chattery, birds. Steve thought they were watching him, following him, dancing on the telephone wires in open mockery as he walked. And unlike secret agents, busy-body neighbors, employers, most voyeurs, and government, birds have balls. They have the audacity to go about their spying out in the open. Birds bring the madness of open espionage, the confirmation that you aren't being paranoid. “No, you aren’t crazy. Four crows, three pigeons, a hummingbird and a blue jay, actually have been following you for the last mile. Worse yet, they are enjoying themselves.”
As any citizen might, Steve took his problem to the cops. And He took it to them as Sandy, dressed in full drag. She white shirt dress with a thick black belt, hooker red nails and heels. He hair was long and black like Cher. Sandy's nails were always real, and, until the chemo took her hair, she never wore wigs. To a tranny, being able to grow your own nails and wear your own hair is the only justice you get.
“I know what you are doing, you tell those birds to stop following me,” Sandy said wagging a finger at the cops in vague judgment, red lacquered nail polish catching the light.
Call off the birds. Simple enough.
Unfortunately, the birds kept following. “Call off the birds,” along with such perennial favorites as “please stop my husband from beating the crap out of me,” or “catch that gay basher,” tops a shortlist of things cops actually can’t do for you.
And eventually, the complete meltdown.
Steve was driving east on the 134, when he just couldn't go any further. He hit the breaks and stopped his yellow VW bug in the fast lane. Not registering the traffic danger or the horns, Steve clutched his wheel white knuckled and stared up out his windshield at a dozen circling birds.
It was the early seventies and so it happened that a nice couple actually stopped to help Steve. Steve, the tranny spending his last six months on earth running from birds. Steve the Mexican teenager who was once called a nigger by a whit kid on the play ground in first grade by a white boy. He had watched mortified as his mother, after making Steve identify the brat, marched across the playground in her skin tight lemon yellow pants, cork wedges, white blouse, and Jackie O sunglasses. When she reached the kid, she yanked him off the swing by his collar and in front of the other parents and teachers. She shook him as she yelled in her accented voice, “Don’t ever call anyone that name ever again. Do you understand? If you do, I’ll come find you.” She had dropped him like a bag of trash and walked off rubbing her hands together like they were covered in dirt. Then she yelled at Steve for not punching the brat in the face in the first place.
The couple pulled their car over to the side of the freeway, and played a real time game of frogger across four lanes of traffic. All to bring a stranger and his car out of danger. Then, as risking life and limb for a stranger wasn't enough, they then drove him forty-five minutes to UCLA, where he was involuntarily committed to the mental ward and given medicine to make him stop thinking about the birds.
During his stay, he avoided the arboretum and all windows near trees or telephone poles.
A few days later, Steve decided he would rather be at home. So he walked out. As he left he somehow found a black wig (his hair had been shaved), some make up, and some mismatched heels, one black and one blue, and both different lengths; proving once and for all that “when a bitch has got to go, a bitch has got to go.”
He rode the number 2 bus down Sunset Blvd. that morning wearing a backless hospital gown, matching patient ID bracelets, lipstick, eye shadow, black wig, and mismatched heels. He arrived without incident.
However, there were multiple unconfirmed reports that morning to the Hollywood police department, of a bus on Sunset that morning that was being chased by hundreds of birds.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Jellybeans
Hugo did not eat Jellybeans because he liked them. He ate jellybeans because they bought notoriety, an eccentric quirk of character; it was the decision to be known as a jellybean eater. Ever since, Hugo received jellybeans for birthdays, anniversaries, christenings, Easter, Christmas, and Halloween. He would later be buried with a jellybean tin; one housing the expensive ones that tasted like hot fudge sundaes, root beer floats, piña coladas, and Pepsi.
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