The Destruction

In my dream I hear the unmistakable sound of fighter jets. Outside Diane's small shack of a one room house and down her few rickety wooden stairs I watch, both fearful and excited, as one then another emerges from the horizon over the city, flying low enough to graze the ground.

The pilots are singular and robotic. On a mission, focused. They fly toward the ocean with such strange ferocity, I know something unimaginable and terrible is occurring.

Another sound, smaller but just as unsettling. A boater, civilian probably, blasts past us headed in the same direction.

Then the people start coming, yelling and panicked. No one will stop to tell us what's wrong. I think of turning on the TV, but imagining an alien invasion, I don't hold much faith in them telling me anything. Besides, there is no time, judging by the frantic exodus before us.

Finally someone yells, "There's a 100 foot wall of water coming. Nothing can stop it, we're all dead!" Nonetheless, he runs for safety.

Diane and I run up the stairs into the house to pack a few essentials. With less than 55 minutes until it hits, we are stuck trying to figure out what to pack.

"Take plastic bags, water bottles, food and a book!"

We search the shelf for the right book, the last one we may ever read, the one we may read over and over endlessly if we survive.

The Daily Write: The cashier (November 15, 2012)

"I don't understand it myself," she said, tapping her fingers on the worn wooden tabletop just like her father had done when she was a child.

"Mona, it's obviously latent father stuff, I mean, seriously." Rachelle was in no mood to dick around with Mona's pseudo confusion. She knew that Mona knew exactly what was going on.

The restaurant was loud with a buzz like yellow light through a glass of Prosecco, effervescent and warm. Tables of two mostly, with a four-top in each of the three corners in the main dining room. Mona's back was to the dark red velvet curtain which separated the foyer from the bar on one side and dining room on the other.

Mona swilled her wine like a trucker, pushed her course brown hair behind her ears with her pudgy fingers and looked at Rachelle drunkenly. "Look Rachy, I realize you wanted to fuck your father, or wait, maybe he wanted to fuck your best friend. Whatever." She looked around the room as if she were in a swirling fishbowl. "But I have no desire for daddy sex, okay?"

Rachelle rolled her eyes and folded the paper from her straw in half lengthwise. "Honey, I know this is hard for you to believe, but no one in their right mind would want to fuck their 69-year-old crabby-ass neighbor unless they were dealing with some ancient childhood shit."

"Oh for the love of..." Mona picked up her glass and took another drink. "God, I really like this Gewurztraminer. I mean, who knew right? A wine I can actually remember. It's a first." She paused, inebriated. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time I did something really bad."

Rachelle looked at her friend with satisfaction. She was sick of all the talk and no action.

"But Rachelle? I've never even been with a man. I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

Rachelle put her palms flat on the table in front of her and lifted her head until she was looking eye-to-eye with her best friend.

"Just go over there with a bottle of wine Mona, and then start asking him questions about his life."

The Daily Write: I'm all alone out here! (November 14, 2012)

Rose dropped Frank off at the gas station. "Dropped off" being the polite term. She eighty-sixed his ass. Once they crossed the state line, it became abundantly apparent that not only was he lousy company, he also had a worse sense of direction than her ex husband. She figured that meant he'd be useless on the playa too. A man who couldn't conversate and couldn't find his way around on a flat-as-hell desert road sure wasn't going to be able to erect a shade structure or lug water.

She didn't spend all the last three months of her quickly shortening life to end up taking care of an old man who couldn't fend for himself.

"Damn, where's that Grizzly Adams when you need him?" she muttered to herself as she exited the last civilization she expected to see for quite some time,  shifted into high gear and opened her up.

Two hours later she found herself tired. Not wanting to get hypnotized by the road, she pulled over, turned on the CB to listen the truckers and reached up to the sun vizor grab a joint. She needed to relax before the excitement of getting where she was going, where she had been going, she figured, almost all her adult life without realizing it.

The Daily Write: Photo #4 (November 12, 2012)

In the pre-dusk daylight, the ancient streets were warm and appealing. Small hills covered in cobblestone, saffron buildings on either side. A very different experience from my first time in Madrid when the rain soaked through my water resistant zebra striped jacket, into my shirt and even bra. I had been determined to visit Chueca to see the gay nightlife, not realizing how lost I would become in the tiny dark streets, nor how confusing the choices would be. Was every tapas bar gay? Were there safe places to visit and those I should avoid? I couldn't make sense of it with the dark dripping water making my hair stick to the side of my face as I tired, in vain, to see over the tops of my foggy glasses. Nor was I expecting it when a dark-haired man peeled himself away from a wall where he had been hidden like a chameleon.

He spoke to me in Spanish, and when I replied in English, switched languages. He wanted to know where I was going, if I was married, if I needed company. I said no a few times, walked away, brushed him off and kept looking for somewhere to eat. The best bars were probably the ones that I couldn't see inside with dark heavy doors and tiny brick lined windows. I wasn't feeling quite that adventurous, especially without command of Spanish, so I finally slipped into a black and red restaurant, dripping puddles onto the floor and the glass table top as I sat down, drying my head awkwardly on a paper napkin.





The menu was familiar but bizarre, Asian/Italian fusion. So against type being served among the tiny tight streets of the ancient Spanish city. I was glad. I had already eaten too much jamón , too many heavy egg tortillas and red, near raw meats, over salted and bloody. Noodles and a mixed drink in the yellow light of a small restaurant were warming, familiar, almost comforting.

Oddly, another woman was dining alone next to me, and speaking heavy Irish-accented English. I introduced myself, glad for the company in this strange netherworld. Her tale was as odd as she - a filmmaker and former lawyer who had recently finished a piece she was marketing to film festivals. She was in Madrid for a huge technology conference being held at some big sports pavilion where there were tents set up in rows for the attendees. She was one of very few woman, there on her last Euros, hoping for a check to arrive soon that would get her back to Ireland. We talked over our meals - about her film, about queer life in the US and Ireland, my family, her girlfriend. Not quite what I expected out of my first trip to Chueca, but an interesting travel experience nonetheless.

I left after dessert, having promised to watch her film clip and send it on to a friend who was a programmer for Frameline, SF's queer film festival. I was relieved to be going back to a hotel and not to a row of precision erected tents and techies.

The next day when I barely got out of Europe due to the Icelandic volcano, I thought about my new Irish acquaintance a lot. She had barely enough money to get from the restaurant back to the conference. I couldn't imagine she'd have found a way out of Spain and back home. She might have been stranded for weeks without money or a place to stay while I was safely tucked into a long coach class flight home next to a member of The Church of Latter Day Saints, who offered me a copy of his Book of Mormon mid-flight.

The Daily Write: I am determined (November 11, 2012)

She wasn't sure what went wrong or how it happened. Probably on account of being white. Being white had so much to do with so many things. And nothing felt more white than when her Black daycare provider admonished her for lax parenting.

"You have to be consistent, no matter what," she said, shaking her head as if the breech had already happened, as if it were a lost cause trying to get the white woman with overly good intentions to get it together and be a good parent.

Of course, such admonishment was deeply embarrassing, so she denied being inconsistent. Comical really. Like denying she was middle class. Or pretending not to be a do-gooder white lady social liberal with a parenting style that leaned toward "whatever is easiest in the moment."

For instance, those parents whose children always stayed in their own beds. Hard asses. They not only must've had endless energy to reinforce the ground rules at 3 am, they must've been the types who could handle delayed gratification. The same ones who, as children, succeeded in the experiment which would later help researchers hypothesize about who would make it far in the business world and who would not. It was all based on their ability to withstand the temptation of sweet treats as observed in a psychological experiment. Although she had not been one of the subjects, she was sure, without a doubt, that she would not have been able to resist.

Now her own child was a pre-teen, wily as he had ever been, easily set off, ungrateful when hungry, unhappy, bored and prone to insisting he get his own way. In moments when he was sweet, nothing could be better. The rest of the time she wondered what her lax white parenting had wrought. Too late to go back in time; she prayed he turned out well anyway.

The Daily Write: My Brother (November 9, 2012)

I've been wondering lately if they have good sex in communist countries. Does giving yourself to the State equal the end of erotic desire? How does it fit in with the rhetoric of The Party? And what of totalitarian regimes? Is sex the only good thing left when everything else is controlled, bloody, gray and you are half starved?

These are the kinds of things that go through my mind as I stand in the backyard of the 69-year-old across the street drinking white wine from a pink plastic cup while he smokes American Spirits and talks about what his house was like when he bought it, how it feels to be leaving after 22 years, and every now and then mentions Bob Avakian, Chairman of The Revolutionary Communist Party. It's not that I'm all that interested in his beliefs, but there is an erotic charge to talking to a man driven by passion for his politics and for righting the wrongs of the world.

Frank is short, gray haired and loose-eyed the way someone who drinks too much tends to be. He doesn't remember my name but he likes to talk. He's a grumbler and a mumbler so I can't always understand what he's saying. When he invited me over to tour his house I couldn't tell for sure if he wanted me to come in, and then he got annoyed that I hesitated before entering. Then standing in his bathroom admiring his tile work seemed so intimate, with the bedroom beyond.

I like that we are developing this friendship across generations, genders and the street. Only, he's about to move and I have no business, as a married woman with two kids, flirting with a man who can't see straight and is 22 years my senior.

But then thing is, I've never been with a man. I'm curious. And I like the ones that have experience, and who pay attention to me but don't, all in one breath. I find his cranky demeanor a turn on. And plus, there is that notion of conquest. Like, could I get under his skin enough to make him forget the politics? Or maybe he would grunt sweet Avakianisms into my ear in a moment of passion. On the the other hand, he may be spent at this point in his life. In which case, I'd still like to get drunk with him and hang out.

Perhaps I am a Commie after all.

The Daily Write: Larger (November 8, 2012)

"Do you remember that feeling of being carried up the stairs in your daddy's arms?" Lynette asked me with her lazy summer voice.

She was twirling the bottom of her braid and wagging her legs out over the edge of the porch of the big old family farm house. The light had left the sky an hour earlier and the stars and lightening bugs were just starting to twinkle.

Besides Lynette's voice, the next best sound in the world to me was the night bugs. Sometimes she and I tried to stalk them, but getting to the root of the sound is like trying to catch a butterfly. Rare.

"I remember it Joe Joe," she said to me, turning for just a whisp of a moment so that she was looking right into me. "It made me feel wiggly, like I was a whooshing tree in an autumn wind."

I smiled to myself at the thought of my big sister as a leaning tall tree. Suited her right. She was like that, with deep roots in the place so far down nothing could ever budge her, but so adventurous and pretty, she could reach up to the tip of the sky anytime she wanted to.

But then she got all still like she does sometimes. And I knew she was going to cry.

"Lynnie, don't cry. He's gonna come back someday." I scooted behind her and pushed my toes into her back, pretending to walk up it like a big spider. Our funny game.

She wasn't the kind to let sadness get her down for too long and I knew she was gonna start talking about something else soon. She was the strongest girl I ever met.

Way across the darkness of what we knew was the corn field were two tiny lights driving down the road to town.

Lynette laughed out loud like she just heard the preacher on Sunday say a curse word by accident. "Looks like old Sam forgot to bring home the sugar again!" She said, slapping her knee.

I was so relieved she was laughing I laid right down there on the rough grey wood of our porch and looked up at the rafters above me and laughed right along with her.

"Come on old young Joe Joe, let's go get us some ice cream," she said, standing up and stretching out like she was a wolf about to howl at the moon. She turned around fast, grabbed me by the waist and pulled me in through the screen door.

The Daily Write: Moving Forward (November 6, 2012)

We had the same last name, but he was one of those almost arrogant short Jewish men you see in movies. Not that good looking, but so confident it didn't matter. Not particularly interesting, but full of political fervor. Definitely not part of the swirling "in" crowd. He invited me to his apartment with other friends to watch the election returns come in. I had voted in my first presidential election,so naively hopeful that it would be better than '72, when I cried watching my father watch his black and white TV as McGovern conceded.

It was a short walk between his ground floor apartment and mine, which was good, because when Reagan started speaking, I was bereft, and in no mood to fake it around those I perceived to be my intellectual superiors.

Today I took my eleven-year-old son with me to vote. He filled in a couple arrows on the paper ballot for me and we discussed all the choices in depth and with careful and kind consideration. I don't take these teaching moments lightly. They matter. Will the look of the white sides of the small booth loom large in his memories some day? Honestly, I hope so. I hope he talks about understanding the importance of our liberal and humanity-oriented values with his children. I hope he carries the torch of pride with him that he was part of it. He's lucky. We won tonight. A rare and beautiful thing.

Now the real trick - to recognize that we are all far more like his favorite color, purple, than the binary reds and blues shown on two-dimensional maps. All of us have a stake in finding common ground and mutual respect.

The Daily Write: Photo #3 (November 5, 2012)

"Impossible tiny doorways." Stephanie muttered under her breath, but loud enough for her travel companions to hear.

"It's really odd." Georgine replied, bending down like a giraffe to get a look into the bakery.

Cobblestones and white washed buildings built tight and low next to each other. It felt like the creepy Enchanted Hills play land Stephanie had gone to as a child, with demented cement figures meant to be cute and endearing but instead risque and tired.

"I think we should knock," Stephanie giggled as if she had just played a dare. She reached back behind her head and nervously twisted her wavy sun lightened brown hair into a ponytail, pulling a rubber band off her wrist to keep the hair in place.

Ginger had quietly backed away until she was across the tiny street. She pulled out a town map to try to orient herself while she prayed that no one made her go through with it. There were few things in life she could stand more than humiliating situations. But it was all the worse in a foreign country. All she could imagine was being chased away by some old man with a long pinky nail and a short hunched woman with a bale of straw on her back. Although now that she thought about it, probably a bag of flour was more likely.

Suddenly, the tiny door creaked open and Ginger stood there staring, the proverbial deer in the headlights. Stephanie smiled at the doorway, ready for whomever popped out. And Georgine, unbelievably was doing a headstand yoga pose against the house next door.

Lucky for all of them, it was little Hera, as they came to learn, that opened the door. A sweeter face none had seen since they started their overseas adventure. She had a long dark braid going down her back and she looked at all of them with a kind of happy curiosity.

Then she started speaking very fast Greek and gesturing for the big girls to come inside.

The Daily Write: Write about giving (November 4, 2012)

I didn't even like pepperoni, so it was preposterous that this was the nickname I bequeathed on myself. Pepper for short. I tried Fir but my dad told me, in an embarrassed under-his-breath moment, that "Fir" was what some people called pubic hair. Maybe in 1953 in the army, but not in the mid-70s in a California suburb. Still, that disclosure was so uncomfortable, I quickly abandoned the notion.

For a while some of my friends actually did call me Pepper. But it always felt fake. Just like me. See, I never fit in with them. I never fit in anywhere. I was one half in California without a mom, and one half in Oregon without a dad. Back then, most kids had two parents. If they didn't it wasn't because of divorce. The fact that my folks split up when I was two-and-a-half was one of the many things that made me inferior. No self-imposed nickname was going to change that.

I did stupid things to exacerbate my differences - like sign up for German in 6th grade when all the cool kids were taking French and the not-cool but not completely ostracized were studying Spanish. As much as I wanted to conform, some part of me resisted. I thought German would get me closer to my roots as a Jew. But then when I pronounced things with a Yiddish intonation and the teacher mocked me, well, let's just say my status as a dorky outsider was reinforced.

There was no meeting of my identities. In Oregon I hung out with independent and strong minded hippie kids: Freddie who told me that someday there would be a war when the people rose up against the pigs, and that the people would be victorious, Karen who dropped acid and tried to hitchhike to Egypt while I was left behind trying to bum a ride home in a town I didn't know my way around. In California, I hung out with nerdy smart kids who came from stable homes, ate from buffets on the kitchen counter every night, and whose parents didn't yell.

I lived with a loud, bearded single father in a shitty house with no decor of which to speak. Our lawn was yellow and full of weeds and he was a counsellor. Not a mail man like my best friend's dad, or a business man like the popular kids' fathers.

The Daily Write: Trying again (November 3, 2012)

What would it be like to be a "noted intellectual" she wondered as she drank coffee on the 14 year old couch, the sound of the bird pecking for seed at the bottom of her cage, a loud but distant plane in the sky, cars, kids, a neighbor's barking dog, and the electric hum of the house all creating the background music of the morning.

As a teenager inferiority and envy might have been her yin/yang. Or desire and disdain. Two sides of her coin. She had wanted to be very smart, the kind of smart that would get her into Harvard. And she wanted to be very beautiful, the kind of beautiful whose thighs don't touch, the kind of beautiful that gets invited to all the best parties, the kind of beautiful that has a popular boyfriend.

As a grown woman in her late 40s with a job at a Silicon Valley company, she had found at least some measure of success, which came about through smarts, creativity and tenacity. And finally, at this point in her life she felt beautiful, even with her non-conforming body. In fact, all those things that made her so self-conscious in high school helped created her strength as an adult.

Yet still, when she watched the MIT send up video of Gangnam Style, she felt like she was looking through teen eyes: look at all those brilliantly smart rich kids. Or if not rich, so smart they got paid to go to school. What would it be like to be that brilliant? And then, the cameo by Noam Chomsky. Him she would never be, gender and age differences aside. She was smart but not like the theorists, the cultural critics, and the philosophers. And sometimes that still pained her.

The Daily Write: In the dark (November 1, 2012)

The psychedelic scene exploded in my 8-year-old eyes: the teenager getting ironed by the crazy woman. He was screaming or singing, or I don't even know. I was watching through my butter-greased fingers, trying not to cry. We ate popcorn out of a brown paper bag popped at home. Coke snuck it in under his coat and I was worried we were going to get caught. I was always worried about going to jail. It almost seemed inevitable.

I hated everything about that movie - there wasn't any real talking, there were mean freaky parents and awful wasted villains. The colors were all wrong and the lights were coming at me too bright. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to take all the kids to the movie with them, maybe it was the only way the adults could go. It's not like anyone would babysit our rag tag neighborhood bunch with honey stuck on our lips from the sandwiches earlier in the day, and in my case, hair so tangled it could not be discerned from a spider's nest.

Although I was far less disturbed, I felt equally distant from Reds when I went to see it with my Grandfather. He was so into it that I could hardly stand to disappoint him, but all I felt was tired, bored and cold watching that never ending film.

Gandhi, on the other hand, which was also long, was riveting. I went to see that with my aunt, the one I smoked and drank with as she told me all about her guru from The Punjab. I felt that I was a lost soul, reincarnated from some better, more mystical existence. Gandhi spoke to me. Not that I'm the type to go on a hunger strike. It certainly lodged the hatred of Colonialism deep in my psyche.

I don't go to movies I don't want too see anymore. Even the "kid" ones I hoist onto my partner. She has a far higher tolerance for a non-riveting story. Me, I like romantic comedies most of all. I guess that makes me a little ditsy and cliche, but I'll take that over an ironing board any day.

The Daily Write: Winging It (October 31, 2012)

A painter. Abstract Expressionist. Although if you ask his daughter, she'll say he was "derivative" like it's a dirty word. Perhaps that's why there are hundred left in the rafters of the desert house, and many on our walls. Still, when people come over, they are wowed, especially by the Diebenkorn-esque painting. I guess that proves her point.

He was gone by the time I came around. Probably good in the end, because he was not exactly accepting. Although, I like to think I have a certain charming ability to warm up grumpy old men. If history is any proof, I've got a 60/40 success rate. He grew up in the South but left for the West after getting kicked out of Westpoint. Talking back in military school is probably not the world's soundest behavior.

I don't know much about when he started painting, or what his folks thought about his talents. Talented he was. I love the work I've seen. And prolific. He left New Mexico for Nevada to paint and teach alongside his wife, an English Professor on the tenure track. She got a job, he followed and they worked at the university together.

He had all the usual conditions you'd expect from a mid-century artist- and got the treatments that went along with the times, to greater and lesser degrees of success. His "issues" showed up in funny ways at home where he insisted on a neutral color pallet and lined the magazines up on the coffee table in perfect order. My partner, his daughter, was never allowed to draw in coloring books because he felt they stifled creativity.

And so, it was only last night that she finished the homemade costumes for our kids. Every year we go through the stress of figuring out what to make and how to make it. Neither of us is particularly crafty and both of us procrastinate. I used to ask more pointedly why we couldn't just buy them off the shelf, but after so many years, I know the answer and besides, as much as it stresses us both out, the end result is always worth it. Not perfect, not particularly well done - but full of character and homemade realness.

My daughter, who is 6, is a bat this year. Her wings made from the split halves of a black umbrella with the ribbing still in. My son, Binary Bard, a character from a popular online game. He looks like a purple and yellow jester with a robotic red eye. They are adorable, she is spent but satisfied, and I'm doing this instead of facing the mess my house became in the process.

The Daily Write: Skin (October 30, 2012)

She had two fur coats, two soft Himalayan kittens and bottles of lotion and shampoo from every hotel in which she had ever been a guest. Not to mention the white guest robes tied neatly together at the waist and the multiple pairs of first class slippers from her many flights between SeaTac and JFK. Not only was she a first class flight attendant, she had married a much older man who had grown children and a fancy law degree. An unlikely couple it seemed to me. But then, I was the poor kid who had just come from living in a mobile home behind a giant chain link fence with people who vowed to kill anyone who trespassed on their property.

When they were gone, I liked to open the closet to touch the coats - so luxurious and unfathomable. So dead. So elegant.

The same can't be said for the kittens. They were annoying, only had eyes for their owner, and suffered through bath time in the sink of the utility bathroom. Cats don't like getting wet. They certainly don't like being blow dried. I don't know what she was thinking. Perhaps, in her mind ,she had mixed up fancy Hollywood mini-dogs with cats.

I moved in when I was 18, having left my country nanny job for one I thought would be more tolerable and sophisticated. The house was three times as big, not including the downstairs play room with a built in stage and professional ballet bar. There was a pool. And his and her bathrooms. Her's even had a bidet.I was in my own wing with their daughter, who inhabited a room of white, pink and giant stuffed animals. She had a closet across one entire wall with two tiers to hold all her clothes.

My room was less glamorous, at the back by the side entrance. I had a TV and a phone. And by the time I moved all of my stuff in, not much room to move. Not that it mattered, I was hardly ever in there. I worked six days a week, often from morning until hours after dinner. My wage? $300 a month, plus room and board. They told me they'd give me an extra $100 a month if I lasted a year. Little did I know I was one in a long string of nannies.

I should talk about their little girl. Golden white blond, cute smile. Loved to watch Frosty the Snowman (over and over and over) while she ate breakfast. Mostly I didn't know how to keep her entertained and her parents didn't know how to pay her any real attention. I was the utility caregiver - they were there for occassional encouragement and presents.

I never did get that extra $100 a month. Couldn't make it past two months there before I realized I was being taken advantage of. After that I was unemployed for too long before landing a job delivering pizza. I would do that 100 times over again rather than live with the nouveau riche and all their furry pretensions.

The Daily Write: Photo #2 (October 29, 2012)

Buddy hated bowling. Couldn't stand the way people looked all gangly and awkward on that slippery wooden floor, couldn't stand the smell of the old carpets which looked like they'd been pulled off the floors of Studio 54 after 20 years of use, and absolutely hated the cheap diner next to the equally cheap and tawdry bar. He was so vehemently opposed to the notion that bowling was a sport that if you asked him about it, he would practically start screaming.

"Don't bring up bowling. You know I hate it! Stupid."

Jeanie couldn't exactly understand what was stupid about bowling. Not that she loved it, but her young son had decided to join a "league" (more like a gathering of tired kids on the too-early Saturday mornings and weekend dads with hangovers and unkempt beards), so she found herself trying to be positive about the game far more often than she could have ever imagined.

"But my son likes it!" She would say, innocently, emphatically, and not without wry enjoyment of Buddy's escalating pulse.

"Let's just talk about something else." Buddy grabbed a pack of smokes off his desk and high tailed it outside to the smoking section by the old Hydrangea bush. Jeanie hated the way the smokers took over all the beautifully outdoor space. It was bad when people smoked indoors, but at least you know you could escape to fresh air. Now the smokers took all that too.

"Okay, okay, fine." Jeanie replied. "Remember that scene in the first Indiana Jones where the boulder almost hits him in the tomb?" She snickered to herself and waved the smoke out of her face.

The Daily Write: What a deal! (October 28, 2012)

I walked into the girl's room at the end of the hall by drama and music. Shawna, LaTonya and some chick I didn't know where in there, smoking and laughing. I fucking hated it when people were in the rest room. I just wanted to pee, but instead, I felt like I was walking the gauntlet. I had to make small talk, pee while hoping they would talk and not listen to the tinkling, and get out of there without having some bad shit go down.

Bathrooms and junior highs are a bad combination. Unsupervised tough chicks worse. They did that stupid thing where they suddenly got all quiet while I was trying to finish., shushing each other and laughing and then going totally silent. I should have told them to fucking knock it off, but I wasn't quite one of them and that would have been idiotic, especially with my pants down.

They were all staring at me when I got out, mean. Like they were about to beat the shit out of me. I thought they might - Shannon was known for going off on people and LaTonya you did not fuck around with. But they busted up and told me to come over.

Shannon was holding a skinny joint wrapped in red, white and blue smoke paper. She told me I should take a toke. I didn't want to in the bathroom at school. Being high at school made it worse than it already was - the Rah Rahs and their evil boyfriends, the slamming lockers, the clicking of the school secretary's heels on the scuffed linoleum floors.

I tried to get out of it, but then LaTonya got in my face, smiled big and told me it was laced with Angel Dust. My heart started beating too loud and fast, I thought they were gonna realize what a pussy I was. I remembered the black and white movie we saw in health about PCP. A women smoked it and then turned into a lunatic before she tried to cut up someone and then jump out the window of a mental hospital.

Shannon was watching my face. I thought she could hear me breathe. That other bitch was by the door, guarding it. LaTonya was breathing in my scared air, the light behind her making her hazy. Or maybe that was my nerves.

I wanted to run out but there was no way. If I did that, they'd either catch me before I got to the door and beat the shit out of me, or they'd tell everyone and I would have to leave school. So, I did it. Took the joint, sucked a toke and wondered why it was so light - no taste except burning paper. Then they started laughing at me again while they walked out the door.

"That shit ain't no PCP Strauss. That's just a paper."

I turned red, felt tingling down my arms and was so goddamn relieved.

The Daily Write: Up close (October 27, 2012)

Up close

It has a new name now. Daynight Donuts. They sell a lot of different foods and there are signs all over the windows. It's not clean and simple with clean glass that lets you see through to the curved counter. There's no more cigarette machine under the window to the fryer where I used to stand watching my accidental friends drop rounds of batter into simmering oil.

The smokes were .55 cents a pack, two quarters and a nickle. I usually had enough to buy one pack and one cup of coffee. When it was just Shari and Beth, they would let me stay there all night, refilling my coffee while I smoked, they worked, and we talked between customers. I liked to watch Shari refill the coffee while Beth made more donuts. Sometimes I had enough money to buy an old-fashioned glazed, my favorite.

At night on the corner where the four lane street split into two, one going toward downtown and one going toward the freeway, I sat under the buzzing bright florescents in the corner closest to the back wall and the glassed in edge of the counter. From there I could see what was going on in the service area while I talked to my friends, and watch outside, looking to see who was pulling in, who was walking by and who was coming in the double doors.

I could hide if I wanted, play with the paper from a sugar pack while watching the end of my cigarette as it sizzled with my inhales. Or I could look up at whomever came in, trying to get noticed, or get a free donut. Mostly, I waited while the girls worked. When they couldn't talk to me and no one interesting walked in, I sat there and thought about what might be coming next, always ready for that thing I knew I was missing, the reason I didn't sleep at night. I couldn't bare the thought that I might miss out on the action. And I kept hoping I'd meet a man, someone who would understand me, take care of me and finally make me feel beautiful. I wanted to be rescued.

I liked dark men, men with muscles and long hair, men with tattoos and rugged faces. I liked big men. Men who were tall and tough, but had a gleaming warmness in their eyes. Men who only cared about me. I liked men who were handsome and protective and kind, but hard. These are not the kind of men that came through the doors of Dunkin' Donuts. So, not wanting to turn down the only attention I could get, I went home with a skinny blond guy about 7 years older than me to look at his photos.

As hard edged as I tried to make myself appear, I was soft, naive, and actually thought that I'd be viewing his photos while we got high in his living room in the nondescript box of an apartment. Not much in the way of decorations. White walls. It wasn't dirty and I wasn't really looking. I thought I was supposed to be showing interest in his images. That was the right thing to do. That's what I agreed to do. So when he invited me into his bedroom at 3 am while he turned on the stereo, I was confused. When he had me sit on his bed and didn't pull out a stack of photographs for me to look at, I was not sure how to act. When he leaned in and put his tongue in my mouth, I went with it. I was high, he was a port in the storm, and I liked being touched, even if his hair was too light and too stringy, and his body was too small.

At 14, I wore widely flared jeans that drug on the ground and got holes in them. Or worse, ripped when my rubber wedge Famolare sandals were caught in the denim while I tried not to trip. I often wore a blue t-shirt with cut outs around the neck and I tried to feather my frizzy brown hair, clipping in a silk flower on one side, just like my mom. On my neck was a cloisonne unicorn necklace, one of the many unicorns I collected. I wore liquid beige foundation from my neck up, blue eyeshadow on the top of my lids and under my bottom lashes, and lipstick that smeared on my buck teeth. I wasn't exactly ugly, but I never thought of myself as cute either.

I don't know exactly what that skinny white boy saw in me. Someone vulnerable. Easy. When I tried to, at his urging, suck him off, I scraped his dick with my teeth and he moved my head away, telling me I could stop. I was relieved. I had never seen a penis up close and didn't like the look of it. I read a lot of porn back then, Penthouse Forum stories. I knew the words, but not the mechanics. And I really wasn't ready. So I left.

I was always leaving before things got bad. Sometimes I ran. Sometimes I hid. Sometimes I prayed that the car I was in would stop so I could get out before I was trapped. But this time I just walked out, disheveled and down to my last smoke, and walked a long way in the dawn light down the street, past the graveyard, to my house.

I was a reject who had done something wrong. I felt sick about having gone home with someone whose intentions I had so badly misinterpreted. I was ugly. I was stupid. And I was so relieved. Of course, now I can add another word: Lucky. Anything could have happened, and it didn't. I survived that experience and countless others.

The same can't be said for Shari and Beth from the donut shop. All those nights hanging out until dawn talking to them about the monotony of our lives while I drank coffee, smoked and waited. All those nights looking at beautiful dark skinned Beth, wishing I had some of her good looks. And admiring Shari's perfectly feathered hair. I had no idea what was coming. No one could.

By the time they were cleaning the office building at night, when the intruder broke in and hog tied them, I was up the street, having moved from all night donuts to a 24-hour Carrows Restaurant. By the time they were shot in the head, one by one, I was taking rides with Danny and Lori in his van, the Sundowner, the orange words painted in script across a desert scene with a cow skull and tumbleweed. That same orange lined the floor and platform inside the van behind the bucket seats, shag carpet.

I had moved on to another tedious situation where I smoked, drank coffee and shared extra crispy french fries with barbecue sauce with my friends while Shari and Beth had been terrorized by a notorious serial killer. One lived and one died.

There's some things in life you just don't get over, even when they didn't happen to you.

The Daily Write: Why am I here? (October 26, 2012)

My friend, Claudine and I, with whom I always got into trouble and never felt safe anyway, were somehow convinced to get into the big old hot rod of Bruce, the older kid from down the street who had a mean younger brother named Brian that tried to rip my clothes off in the park one night. Bruce was popular as a bad boy with his big blue car and propensity for having the pot we all wanted. He didn't pay much attention to the younger girls like us; he only ever noticed me to laugh in my face and make me feel as ugly as I thought I was.
So, when he asked us to go for a ride to pick up something outside of town, we went, excited to have been noticed. I probably slipped out of the house without telling my mom. Not that it would have mattered much; she had no control of me and I didn't listen for shit. Which sucked actually. If she had and I did, then I might have avoided feeling as if I were so often on the verge of danger: rape, murder, accidents, fights.

We got into the back seat of Bruce's car with its jacked up back tires, some chick I didn't know in front, him laughing, passing us a bottle to drink from, a joint to toke. We went all the way out of town on Commercial Street, to I-5. He wouldn't tell us what was up - where we were going, exactly what we were picking up. I got scared when the town dropped away behind us and we were out by Enchanted Forest and the Turner exit on the freeway. That's where he turned off. Nothing much there - an abandoned gas station, a hill with a rough rode. The freeway on the left, dark night shadows on the right. And then he pulled over at the gas station and told us to get out and wait. Said he'd be back as he and blond girl in the front laughed and screeched off up the hill.

There were no cell phones back then, not even a phone booth. There wasn't an open store or people driving by except on the freeway. Night. Isolated. We didn't understand why he dropped us off. We didn't know when he'd be back. Down to our last two smokes we waited. And waited. But Bruce never came back. Which we figured was why he was laughing when he dropped us off. Stupid, inconsequential girls. Gullible wannabes.

We had to get down to the freeway from the exit overpass and stand on the side with our thumbs out, finally getting picked up by some old man whose eyes were a little too bright. Lucky for us he said he was an off-duty cop and he actually took us back to my house. Lucky.

The Daily Write: Something silly (October 24, 2012)

Something silly

"So it really doesn't exist?" She asked, somewhat rhetorically, while hoping for an answer that would not destroy her long held fantasies.

"Not that I've found," Monica replied while pretended not to eat the cake by only picking off little bites at a time, as if being non-committed would somehow mean that she wasn't actually mainlining the chocolate decadence.

Jonesy liked this "absentee eating," pattern of her friend. She found it endearing. But then, Jonesy's tactic in life was to find things about others, and herself, endearing so that she would be less annoyed.

They were sitting at a table near, but not in the window seats with warm golden light from the caramel colored ceiling lamps warming up the orange wood of the floor. Outside a light drizzle in the dim gray light made everything feel a little more quiet, a little more contained, safe even.

Monica wiped her fingers absentmindedly on the cloth napkin and started fidgeting with the tea cup, golden white contrasted with the oily mahogany of the small but heavy table.

"You know, I've been thinking...." Jonesy sighed slightly and looked out the window as she talked. "Maybe I've been limiting myself too much with marriage."

Without moving her head or changing the position of her mouth, Monica lifted her eyes to look right at Jonesy with that "you've got to be kidding me," look Jonesy knew she'd get.

"What? I mean come on, you've been dating for a year now and you're getting it more than you ever did with old Mack. And look at you, never been more radiant, or self confident."

Monica shook her head, "You've got it all wrong Jonesy! I do the best I can in my circumstances. And yeah, sometimes it's fun. But come on, do I have to remind you about Stalker Steve? Or Pouting Tom?" She tapped one finger against the edge of the saucer holding her nearly empty cup. "Give me a break!"

Jonesy laughed. "Okay, I know I know. But geezus aitch Monica, I just don't get it enough."

"That, my friend, is the fate of all women - starting with puberty, then pregnancy, and finally peri-menopause. We're at the whim of our chemicals." And with that she dug back into the cake while laughing ruefully.

The Daily Write: What's in the bowl (October 21, 2012)

What's in the bowl

At Gavilan Ranch far up in the New Mexico mountains with red clay roads and long eared bunnies that loped ahead of me on the path, there was a geodesic dome. Buckminster Fuller designed them. I knew his name and face at the exact moment I knew his structure. You don't utter "geodesic dome" without also mentioning the man. I'm not sure why. It's not like we do that with the Empire State Building. Or pyramids. Well, that's not fair. Pyramids were a group effort.

The dome, white and otherworldly, sat at the back of the lower camp, next to a rustic rock and wood labyrinth (Naturally. I mean, who would consider erecting a dome without also putting in a meditation maze?). The same property contained a yurt big enough for encounter groups, a pool and a hot tub which I floating in, naked and blissful, during a summer thunderstorm and downpour, having no idea of the danger.

Not to digress, but that's the thing about life. Anticipation is a bitch. It kills spontaneity. It overcomes good times with fear. Anticipation, my friends, is a buzz kill.

But, since I didn't make the old Ben Franklin connection, I had no idea that I was in danger. Therefore, I relished the feeling of warm bubbly water against my cold wet skin as I got drenched from above and watch the clouds erupt with shocks of light, fingers of electricity.

On this same trip I set up my tent all by myself (I am not mechanically nor manual labor inclined), but having arrived late and not knowing a thing about just how much rain could fall in the desert, I ended up drenched on a shifting but uncomfortable surface. And so, like so many other times in my life...I slept on the couch. This one was in the common room between the porch and the dining hall. Not much privacy, but that was a secondary concern.

The Daily Write: It didn't work (October 19, 2012)

It didn't work

I poured over Bon Appetit every month as I sat on my single father's rag-tag couch in a too hot living room in an ugly house on a wreck of a street in an otherwise opulent town. The afternoon light was the worst, when the dust bunnies rose in the air, filthy reminders of what I didn't have.

I dreamed, in equal measure, of sinking my feet into lush wall-to-wall carpet in a home with a foyer and pool, and of eating Boeuf Wellington, the rich mushroom Duxelle coating my mouth in luxurious salt and dark, loamy sauce.

While I turned the pages, willing myself into an imagined state of culinary pleasure, I tried to close the fingers of my right hand around my left wrist. That has always been my test. Weight gain, can't wrap. Weight loss, I can touch my finger tips together.

Only 3:30 in the afternoon. Not time for "dinner" and no snacks except another pack of sugarless gum. I had already exceeded my 5 piece quotient for the day. I ached for something more. Nourishment. A big house. Dinner.

I regretted my last meal. I wanted something fancy and memorable, a memory to sustain me through the months of impending starvation. I wanted sophistication like the kind I imagined was happening at the formal dining room tables of all those lucky rich kids. I wanted to make it myself, to prove just how good I was. Unfortunately, I chose ostentatious and deeply greasy Chicken Kiev as my pièce de résistance. No matter how bloated my stomach got from lack of food, no matter how dry my mouth or scaly my scalp, no matter the fact that the enamel on my teeth was coming off in future months, the thought of that last meal always made me queasy. Still does.

Nothing prepares you for starvation. And nothing makes being poor seem palatable when you are hungry for more.

The Daily Write: Shoes (October 18, 2012)

Shoes

Achmed walked all over campus barefoot. Amusing in spring. Interesting in fall. Crazy in winter, especially in the year of the big snow storm. Night time, campus street lights shining down into Red Square covered with frozen crystals. A winter of magic. Thanksgiving break. Me still on campus in the dorms, nowhere particular to go. A few of us still around, building giant snow people, the kind you start rolling on the road above the lower courtyard and then push down the hill until the ball is as big as a truck and your boots get stuck in the snow when you try to push it to make it even bigger.

Achmed - a flabby white boy with a blond Afro. Jewish probably. But with a Muslim name. He was one of those self-contained guys with a Mona Lisa smile. Not self conscious. Not trying to prove anything to anyone. Smart. Self directed.

And barefoot.

I remember watching him walk up the icy frozen cement stairs by the College Activities Building toward Red Square and the library clock tower. I was cold in ill fitting boots and whatever layers I could pull together. The Ecuadoran wool sweater in greens and blues that smelled like the hay the sheep must've eaten. A shawl on my head. Baggy jeans. And Achmed with those big, meaty feet.

Did he do it for religious reasons? Was it some sort of survival test? Did he simply hate to be shod? I hope I never find him on Facebook so I can never ask him. Sometimes satisfying ones curiosity isn't worth ruining the embedded memories.

When I think of snow and winter and the Northwest of the 80's, Achmed, I think of you.

The Daily Write: In the corner (October 17, 2012)

In the corner

I think all 5-year-olds are obsessed with their own butts. It's just natural. They are very regular, but somehow slightly naughty. And you can shake them. Plus, that's where the poop comes out. But still, he shouldn't have hit me.

 

In fact, he should have appreciated the fact that I was developmentally right on target. And it was his daughter who egged me on anyway. She wanted to flash her tush at the boys as they ran by the bathroom door. I thought that sounded fun. I mean, I was scared, but excited. So I did it.

 

And guess who walked by? Yep. Him. The dad.

 

I was only five so I don't remember much. I get him confused with a man I helped die once, long after he had grown old and I had grown up. A father of my  best childhood friend. A man who intimidated and ignored me when I was the hungry little fat kid who hung out at his house every day after school hoping to eat something from his wife's special dinner buffet. At my house, we usually had frozen mixed vegetables with Hamburger Helper and iceberg lettuce salad. Or pop up TV dinners. Or Burger King. Once in a while my dad would grill a steak, but only when it wasn't too hot or too cold.

 

I thought everyone "normal" ate at buffets every night like my best friend's family. I wished I lived with them instead of with my stern and scary dad and my brother. Can you imagine being motherless in a wealthy bedroom community in the early 70s? Without a mansion?

 

But when I was 5 I hadn't yet met them. I was with another friend. A girl whose name I will likely never remember. Her mom was named Bee. I know that cause she was mean and fat with a bulldog haircut and a stern face. She looked so old to me in her mumu. Her hair seemed salt and pepper black shorn on top of her head. I don't even know how she let a wild hippie child like me in her house. And her husband. I don't know if he ever did talk to us kids. He wore white sleeveless t-shirts under button ups. He probably liked country music. Like Dawn's father. Like Wendy's dad. All those crotchety redneck white men. We never did get along much.

 

I guess he felt like it was okay to spank me. He did it to his daughter. It was our bare butts together that got us in trouble when we stuck them out into the hallway. My mom was not happy about it. But how old was she by then? Maybe 27. Struggling. Next to no money. She needed neighbors who would look after the kids. She probably told him it wasn't okay, but in some passive 1960s voice that didn't really get noticed.

 

My daughter is 6. She loves to shake her booty. She stands in front of the mirror admiring her own rear. I laugh. I don't tell her what happened to me.  Butt shame is not worth passing down.

The Daily Write: The surprise (October 16, 2012)

The Surprise

A nighttime bike ride at the age of 47. At least 100 pounds heavier than I was when I was 14 and thought myself so fat. A helmet, we didn't wear those in the 1970s. Bike lights. Those didn't exist either. At least, not on the 10-speeds of any of the other teens I knew. No smokes. It's been longer than you can imagine.

But here's what I did notice: the way you can tell something about a neighborhood from its smells. Even at 9:30 pm, I went by a house of fried chicken. Three times. And down a dark neighborhood street where I told myself all the places I could stop or scream someone's name if I got jumped, the smell of cigarette smoke. As if the ghost of a person had just exhaled. No sign of a human, but a lingering scent of vice. I felt watched in the dark tooling by on my Electra Cruiser with a pink silk flower on one handlebar and a squeaky wicker basket on the front.

Ride by a car full of people chatting by a well lit park during a ballgame once, they look with some interest but continue their car/sidewalk conversation. Go around the park and ride by again, they stop talking for a second. The third time, you and they look each other in the eye. It's the polite thing to do. They notice that you are a middle-aged pudgy joy-rider. You notice that they parked their white SUV at an odd angle as if to say, "I own this here part of the street and I'll make it mine."

I read someone's comment on a blog or an article or maybe Facebook recently amounting to the declaration that biking is shitty exercise. That was deflating. I hope it's not true. I felt my heart rate rise tonight in the coolness of an autumn summer breeze. I was even sweating a little when I got home, talking through the window to  my barking dogs. "It's me guys. It's me."

The Daily Write: All over the place (September 7, 2012)

All over the place

One step in and her exposed shins were covered with fleas. Not one or two, which would have been bad enough, but so many that she had patches of moving black dots all over. But the worst was the basement laundry of the 19th century apartment building on the lake. Swarms of them.

"It's not like we can just up and move, Cindi," her girlfriend argued with both sympathy and anger in her voice. A perpetual victim, she was always under attack from forces outside her control. And in this case, no amount of toxic and smelly flea-bombs would do the trick, not when the horrible itch-causing bugs were hopping in from the dingy carpet in the hallway.

Mariel turned away to scratch her leg and looked at their combined piles of crap. Cluttered, unorganized, crowded. They didn't have enough money between them to buy any decent furniture. Cindi was a college student and Mariel a low paid Office Manager working for a non-profit in San Francisco. And when they finally found an apartment that they could get without a credit report or references, it wasn't like they could turn it down. Plus, it had great art deco details.

It wasn't until after they moved in that they realized the building was infested. At first Mariel thought it was their cats who had brought the fleas in. Her third trip to the laundry changed that.

"Let's just leave and go to a motel for a couple of days," she pleaded, watching the welts grow on her legs and spread to her arms. But Cindi shook her head, "Hon, you know we don't have the money for that, and besides, they all want credit cards. And what would we do with the cats?"

"Fuck it then. I'm just going to live in the shower!" Mariel felt herself going somewhere bad; she couldn't help it. "I hope you're going shopping soon, we don't have any god damn groceries!" She swiped a clean towel off the pile on the now out-of-style four poster bed with decorative iron bars and slammed the door. Looking at herself in the mirror she felt disgusted: distorted face, blotchy skin and a curled lip like an angry dog.

She turned around, slid open the shower door and started the water which took five minutes to get warm, then turned back to herself in the mirror and got undressed, cursing at her own stupidity.

The Daily Write: Paradoxical (September 6, 2012)

Paradoxical

He wrote about my "perspicuous" transitions. I was impressed, although I had to look it up. Actually, I still do. I never remember what it means, but I always remember how it makes me feel. He was a tough teacher, Alan. He would hold the door closed if a student was late so they couldn't get in, and during lectures, pace around our small table breathing into the space over our heads and at our backs.

I once got up and paced along with him, never being the kind to accept power for its own sake.

The class was 1/2 Marxist Economics and 1/2 Method Acting. Really. And both were hard. For the former, we read tomes and wrote papers I'd have a hard time explaining now. Not without looking up words and concepts. I used Jaggar's Feminist Politics and Human Nature as my primary text and felt smart for doing so. I kept the book for years afterwards to marvel at my own notes in pink and blue on almost every page, in the margins, underlines, across the top. And the latter, we rehearsed, hard. He critiqued, forced that fourth wall up so we couldn't see through it, and demonstrated his own prowess by having us all come up to Ft. Lewis to watch him perform a lead in Death Trap.

Alan wasn't a particular funny man, and he was hard pressed to laugh at himself, which made him more difficult. His seriousness permeated everything he did and he expected the same from all of his students. But, we were a special group, drawn to this odd combination of theory and practice, and we kept up.

When I started college with only a G.E.D., I felt inferior. When I made it through Alan's class with a great evaluation and Marxist theory falling out of my mouth with ease, I felt smart and accomplished. He may have been an asshole, but he was a bad ass and I was better for it.

per·spic·u·ous/pərˈspikyo͞oəs/

Adjective:

(of an account or representation) Clearly expressed and easily understood; lucid. (of a person) Able to give an account or express an idea clearly.

The Daily Write: Explain your clothes (September 5, 2012)

Explain your clothes

The crossing guard had frizzy mouse-brown hair that came down to her shoulders. She was pudgy and short with wire frame glasses and a big smile, but not so big she'd let any of them kids get away with something. Not on her watch.

She acted like she owned that crosswalk at the intersection of a busy road that had old trucks and sedans driving to the left and fancy sports cars going straight ahead to the country club houses. Didn't matter to her where any of the kids lived. Except me. I think she took a liking to me more than most. It was on accounting of my unfortunate circumstances I heard her whisper once to Mr. Tuvvy's secretary. I was standing in the door to the office trying to get a whiff of the ditto machine ink one more time before I went to class. The popular girls, Martha and Vicky, got to work the machine around and around, cranking it to make flyers for the parents. I wished I could do that, but I didn't think to ask.

I'll admit, it made me a little sad when I heard them talking about me. The secretary was looking up from her cat's-eye glasses on a pretty chain at the crossing guard who was leaning in close over the secretary's desk. The worst part is when the secretary looked out of the corner of her all-knowing eye and saw me. She froze like a robot and that made me freeze and then I was so scared I wet my pants. Only I was wearing a dress and the pee dripped down right into the doorway.

I didn't have an extra panties at school and cause I was bigger than most all the other girls, no one had any extra clothes they could lend me. The crossing guard went to the janitor's supply closet and got out an easel that he must've been fixing cause it was wobbly on one side and she told me to sit down while she aired out my panties.

I should have been more embarrassed but I was so happy to be in the office listening to the clicking and zipping of the secretary's dark green typewriter. It had a funny ball on it with letters that moved in jolts while she put in the words she was reading from a steno pad. At least, that's what I think it was called.

The crossing guard said she had an idea and that she would be back before the end of school. First she gave me a shiny dark apple with only a couple of bruises right off of Mr. Tuvvy's desk! Then she got me a carton of milk from the lunch ladies and, when the secretary was putting a master onto the drum of the ditto machine, she slipped me a 100% authentic butterscotch candy. I giggled as quietly as I could and then only unwrapped it when the secretary was sharpening pencils and lining them up in her special desk drawer.

When Mr. Tuvvy came back he looked at me kinda strange-like, but then his secretary pinched her pretty lips together and shook her head at him and he just walked right into his office like I wasn't even there! Right before the first last bell rang, she even let me turn the drum myself onto pale green paper - it was a flyer about the school holiday arts and crafts fair. I felt so proud that I got to do it all by myself!

I did get kinda worried when it was almost time to go. I could tell because the big hand on the clock started freezing and jumping like a cricket being stalked in tall grass. But I shouldn't have thought twice about it because do you know that lovely crossing guard came back in with a pair of genuine purple polyester pants that she said were her granddaughter's outgrown? She even put on two heart patches, one on a knee place that got worn down, she said, and one on the backside just cause it was pretty.

The Daily Write: Mistakes were made (September 4, 2012)

Mistakes were made

Ignoring the signs and eschewing Western doctors for midwives was probably not the best idea in my case being that I was 35, fat, didn't exercise regularly and had PCOS. Of course, none of this was clear to me until years later - after the pain of a difficult birth, a baby in the NICU and that ultimate insult, the lack of breast milk. Nothing could have prepared me for that. Not in my wildest dreams.

It's not that I grew up a hippie. Not like on a commune. That was my little brothers, after I left my mom's home. It's not that we went to traditional healers instead of doctors, or that my mother birthed any of us on her own hearth. It's not that my life was a made-up TV version of free love and wild children. The love didn't seem to be all that free, the children were sometimes wild and happy and sometimes in trouble and often scared. Yes, we wore capes made out of cut up sheets and Indian tapestries. Yes, our friends had a huge Great Dane in their jam-packed house (stuff, people, drums, pots, beans, ganja). Yes, the men tended toward Afros or long hair and the women smelled like patchouli.

But it wasn't the way they show it in the movies -stupid, mindless people who have given it all up to live, love, fuck and be free. Our mothers struggled, raised kids, some went to school, some worked at jobs. Me and my mom cleaned a house once a week in the summer. They had a great surname and a perfectly neat house. Nothing really needed cleaning which made it all the more fun. I got to wash the windows.

Mom and I did yoga together with the Golden Temple yogurt yogis in their brilliant white turbans and simple cotton clothes. I hated it. Too easy to get contorted into a painful position while the adult women looked on in envy, wishing themselves to be young again. Me and mom also did an Om group, that was more fun - making the sound reverberate like a magnetic force, humming tones, zapping, high pitched electrical charges.

But summers always came to an end. My brother and I always had to get back on the train and leave to go south, one reality melting into another as the miles went by. Once we hit Dunsmuir, it was all over. One world gone, another begun. From warmth to utter coldness. From the smells of hot outdoor  festivals held on dirt roads covered with hay and teeming with barely clad people to the austerity of everything in its place in an upscale bedroom community.

Hard times and longing are what make me appreciate those relics of my childhood now. I appreciate them for what they were then and for what they gave me. But sometimes I try, based on a little nostalgia, a little fear, a lot of fantasy, to be something I'm not. It was like that with the birth. I don't know how I thought I would pull it off. It's not like I got together with goddessy women before hand and did a belly cast. It's not that being a woman with earth mother intentions could have prepared me for that terrible, ripping pain at the small of my back. Suffering is not noble. Pain doesn't come naturally. And neither did my baby.

I should have known it would be so. I spent my young life between worlds, not fully in them.

The Daily Write: A beautiful stillness (September 5, 2012)

A beautiful stillness

He stood in the crowded lobby all in black: boots, jeans, button down shirt, some kind of dark shawl, hair, sunglasses. The cane he leaned on, a Gothic black and silver, expensive. Women rushed to the restroom to freshen their million dollar faces and others swarmed around each other playing the game of who's the bigger celebrity.

Because he was so still and everyone else was so fast. Because he was quiet and they were loud. Because he seemed calm and almost careless with his fame. He was appealing in the same way a crucifix might be, or a statue of the Buddha. It's almost like he stopped time, or at least stopped me as I looked upon him with interest, wholly unseen with no danger of being found out.

Back in the auditorium after the commercial break the buzz was all around me, from the A-list sitting up in the spotlights at the front to the B-list in the rows immediately around me. That I was one row forward of Kathy Griffin seemed less significant than it does now that she has recreated her celebrity as someone who is never first choice.

Me, I got there for one reason only, money. Not mine, of course. The corporation's. I was representing a high profile sponsor, and although I, myself, was on the C-list on the company side, I had fun pretending to be somebody important. Not quite high enough on the food chain to avoid being kicked out of Madonna's closed rehearsal (we simply moved upstairs and slid into the dark balcony), but integral enough to the event to have earned a place at the wildly extravagant and globally televised private affair.

Everything about me, of course, was wrong - too eager, too fat, too poorly dressed, too self-conscious, too uncool, too unconnected. Still, it was fun to watch the buzzing and imagine for just a second that I was one of the bees.

The Daily Write: Photo #6 (September 1, 2012)

Photo #6

It was the last time I walked straight into a plate glass window, the last time I lived on the water and the last time I dug clams. I probably haven't fallen in love with my best friend again since, nor listened to Anita Baker crooning "You Bring Me Joy."

The house was an old oyster processing plant built over the tides on creosote soaked wooden pilings on the Puget Sound. Down a steep gravel and dirt driveway lined with evergreens, around a bend by a rambling red house and at the very bottom next to the beach, the house was nothing short of a miracle. L shaped, two separate places - one for me and my roommates, and one inhabited by my landlady, a painter, and her cranky old man. Our  house, the one I lived in with various roommates over a two year period, had two living rooms, two bathrooms, three bedrooms, two wood stoves (our only source of heat) and a small greenhouse I used as a bedroom my first year there. Lying under the glass during a Northwest downpour was like being in the middle of a storm on a ship, or so I imagined.

Things got bad sometimes there, the way they might for any college student struggling with schoolwork, friendships and unrequited love. But then there was the salt water tide coming in and out, sometimes gently and sometimes in a stormy cauldron of inlet waves. On a clear day, Mt. Rainer hung in the distance of the horizon over the edges of the trees. On a rainy day, one just knew it was there.

The beach was made not from sand or rocks, but millions of weather and water bleached oyster shells. In the sun they were almost too white to look at, on a dreary day, they reflected the dark clouds. And out on the dilapidated dock, no more than a few pilings and some boards, cormorants would pose still, wings spread, sunning themselves on warm days.

The second year we were there, my friend and roommate and I filled the old rowboat next to the deck with dirt and planted flowers with names like Fried Egg, Lobelia, Allysum. She taught me about flowers and I made her laugh. A golden time.

The Daily Write: A new way (August 31, 2012)

A new way

Squinting at the screen without my glasses, willing myself to see. Easier than getting up to clean the smudges. I don't have many wrinkles, but the ones I do seem to be related to the lifelong squint. Between my brows, in creases on either corner of my eyes.

I also have a perpetually raised eyebrow. I think it makes me look incredulous. It certainly doesn't allow me to blend in. Hard to hide the arched look, even with huge face-obscuring sunglasses.

These things are unlikely to change. But telling myself I'm going to make today the day I start exercising again, and then getting all the way through the long day without having broken a sweat - well, yeah. Nothing new there. I'm not one for New Year's Day declarations. I do like making an audacious commitment. Easier when I've got something to prove. Less easy to do day in and day out without the big goal.

You'd think living a long and healthy life would be enough, but that's not as immediate as raising money for the SF AIDS Foundation, or the Women's Cancer Resource Center. Problem is, these days, everybody and their mother is participating in a charity event, and every third person has a Kickstarter campaign. We've become inured to requests for sponsorship, and accepted that this is the only way to fund urgent causes. But too many, too much - especially in an election year when every other email is a strangely casual call for $13 for Obama, which naturally I give, out of fear for what happens otherwise, all the while bitter that money is the be all and end all.

I find it ironic that I'm exhausted by doing nothing except viewing and responding to, or ignoring pleas for action. Everything these days seems to be between the finger tips and the squinting eyes. The body is almost immaterial.

The Daily Write Archives: Something you have put together (November 26, 2009)

Something you have put together

Although I'm not a worshiper of petroleum, the great dinosaur legacy - burned out, mushed up, between layers, underground - the modern letting of ancient blood, earth's core, black magma; there is a certain delight in the stacks of brightly colored plastic blocks that lay strewn around my house like a story. With each new set, a vision, a promise. My son starts by following the directions. At eight he is a professional. Although an accomplished reader, they require no words. Spacial intelligence, yes. Linguistic, no. For me, the tiny drawings, arrows and sequential steps brings about a desire to type, or clean or cook. For him, a world opens up. As he stacks the tiny pieces, one on top of the other, they become bigger, constructed, recognizable, and he becomes smaller, shrinking down until he is inside them.

Children, I'm convinced, don't simply put Legos together, they inhabit the Lego world. This becomes all the more apparent when the first mishap occurs. Inevitably, and usually within a matter of hours, or now that he is older, days, a wing falls off, a base comes undone, some core component of the imitated object disintegrates. And that is when the magic begins. Legos, like life, follow their own patterns. Once the mastered object is no longer what it was, he is free to take it apart, mix it up with the other long ago wrecked creations, and create something entirely new.

In my house there are Legos strewn about, little people with mismatched heads hanging from petroleum based chains. Weapons made from what were once headlights; jails and gardens and improbable wars between strange counterparts. I am often asked to guess, "Which one is the good guy, Mama? Who do you think is the bad guy?" and it's never as clear as one might think. My son creates elaborate worlds, sounds and scenes, all of which I'm convinced he is a part, shrunken down to their size, inside the tiny compartments, walking under the layered alien gardens of plastic.

The Daily Write Archives: In the middle of the night (February 10, 2010)

In the middle of the night

The sheets, crumpled underneath you with crumbs, flakes of dry skin, hair. You will lay there, still, staring at the moonlight, wishing for a breeze. Your sweet sour skin, your moist flesh, your calm breaths, a country song.

A bug will skitter up the thin white curtain; you will not flinch. You will hold onto this moment as long as possible, hoping the dream does not dissipate.

Just hours before he pressed his body against yours. The air was still and dense. You listened to a train in the distance, mournfully wailing, and to your heart, beating inside you until you thought it might jump through and touch his rib cage.

"I heard a lullaby," he said, with a rich loamy voice like soil, like the inside of an abandoned mine. "It reminded me of you."

"Tell me again," you turned toward him, heat on heat. "Tell me what you heard."

Every fleck of color in his iris, every whisker, every pore you memorized. His voice reverberated into you, touch on touch.

"I heard a song," he said quietly. "It reminded me of you."

The Daily Write: Finally (August 30, 2012)

Finally

The kids were asleep. It took forever. Just getting the older one to brush his teeth and the younger one to stop chattering about anything that flew into her mind was an arduous task. Not to mention the jammie wars.

She felt utterly exhausted and bitter. The nights Imelda took off were the worst. She went from being a kind and loving mother to a crocodile ready to chomp down, hard. Yes, there was a tiny little piece of guilt lodged at the back of her head, but she couldn't help it if she weren't cut out for full time motherhood. It simply did not come naturally to her. And who could blame her?

She filled her imported Italian mosaic sink (all blues and soft greens, like a fountain) with cool but not freezing water, wrapped her head in a super thick Egyptian cotton towel and leaned over to lightly splash her face. She cupped her delicate hands together and pulled the water up quietly, face close to the basin, and listened to the soothing trickle that dripped from her palms back down into the sink. She did this every night, but some nights it meant more than others.

Her husband was gone on a business trip, thank god. Full time mothering certainly left nothing else for her to give. She couldn't stand to take care of his needs on top of theirs. Not to mention the kittens. Who on earth thought it was okay to give her household staff a night off once a week? Oh right, she did. A moment of weakness.

She slipped her feet into her Chanel slippers and padded past her elegant bed with the custom sized mattress (King plus) and silk comforter and walked down the long breezeway that separated the master suite from the rest of the house. During the day the huge plate glass windows that created the long walkway were lovely and architecturally stunning. At night she felt like a mouse in a maze, trapped and watched. She picked up her pace until she landed in the kitchen, in front of her custom cobalt triple wide refrigerator. Although the shelves were almost austere in their emptiness, she reached in behind the lemons and found what she sought - a fresh carton or organic heavy cream, produced by grass fed cows from New Zealand.

The Daily Write: My friend (August 29, 2012)

My friend

I'm stumped. The prompt I wanted this to be is: "The horrible truth." But then I'd have to write to that prompt and that would be bad too. I mean, I know I could choose to do that right this very minute. Nothing at all is stopping me, except I can't write down the horrible truth for fear of it coming true. Or me being considered over an edge (there are so many in life, don't you think?)

Another prompt I could write to: The way it works. In that one I would admit to my habitual pattern of imagining the worst thing possible (see "The horrible truth" above) in order to keep it from actually happening. Extra points for saying it out loud in front of the goys. It's not for the shock value that I say things like, "see you tomorrow, if I don't die on the way home." It's more like an anxious Jewish incantation. I'm casting reverse psychology on myself. Or so I hope.

But now I need a prompt called, "The problem is," because, clearly, as you no doubt are aware, I've just spilled the proverbial beans. I'm no longer safe if I tell you how I do it. My magic isn't that strong. Or so I fear.

Which brings me to Shalom. Not the greeting. Not a kindness. No, I'm talking about an author. Shalom Auslander. He is the book version of a very edgy Woody Allen. Or, uh, any self-conscious, utterly fucked up, superstitious, tortured by god, Jew. And that is why I love him so. He wrote an entire book about his potential future baby's foreskin for christ's sake. Who does that?

I might. But like Shalom, I have a hard time writing down the full, real, cold, freaky, scary truth. I mean, I can attempt to write it, but I usually just hit backspace and erase what I said. It's a problem, but some things are just too hard to put down. I fear that by saying them out loud (on a screen, or paper if we're being colloquial) that I am bringing them to life. A kind of golem reanimation.

Golem. That would be a good prompt.

The Daily Write: And the tension mounts (August 28, 2012)

And the tension mounts

A wall of metal coming down like a guillotine between the very back inside of your forehead and your eyes. It slices, then gets lodged there, a thick piece of Japanese cast fine metal, the kind that would be forged into a knife if it weren't stuck in your frontal cortex.

It's best to pick the descriptors ahead of time, feel them out - understand the weight and heft of each item. Metals are preferable to plastic. Steel and iron are better than aluminum. Precious metals need not apply, you've got no time for their fussiness and they can't stand to be used in any but the most spectacular of ways.

When you think of all the ways the metals can come down (fast and heavy, or worse, slow and light) you will want to hold onto that space between your eyes. Not the third eye. Not the eyeball. The more you try to ascertain just where that space is, the less likely you are to find it.

It's best if the pain and discomfort is in more than one place at a time. For instance, you are now acutely aware that you have a heavy gauge nail jammed into your heel and the thickest part of that over calloused appendage called the foot. And because you are the type to pick scabs, you are pressing on the most excruciating spot with your other foot. You are trying to see just how bad it is, while feeling frightened about what it means. The diabetes, is it getting worse? Do you have an under-skin MRSA?

Your throat, meanwhile, is coated with sticky and impossible to clear mucous. You clear your throat, when only your children and the dogs are listening, sounding like a machine grating against sand, and yet the viscous thickness will not come out. You swallow, clear, cough, hack and it's still there, a lump of wet cotton sealed into your inside neck with rubber cement. Perhaps it's an adhesion.

You had better get that checked.

The Daily Write: Fallen from the sky (August 26, 2012)

Fallen from the sky

When you have no control over what they think. When a crazy person decides to destroy you. Your stomach lurches splattering vomit on the sidewalk. You stand up, scream bile and grab either side of your own head, pulling the gray hair until your scalp bleeds. You drag your splintered body up a rocky hillside, cutting your flesh and ripping your clothes as one shoe falls away, then the other. Your soft inner arms are scraped with dirt, pebbles, sweat and blood. You pull yourself up from loose strangled roots, slick milkweed, abandoned creosote covered train ties.

You spit up bile again, watch it mix with the dirt, and try to stop breathing, to go unconscious, to make it stop.

A leaf idles down on a breeze far too gentle to be part of your nightmare and you wonder at its two tone green, shiny on one side, matte on the other. It does not notice the mess below. It does not need a violent wind to fall down. It dances while you crack. The leaf does not care about what's been done wrong. Does not care.

The Daily Write: Photo #5 (August 25, 2012)

Photo #5

1. From under the earth came the creatures, frozen in time. They were as they had always been. Beastly. Giant. Famished.

2. Across the lawn he saw a bovine tread. Naturally, the sheriff assumed he had too much whiskey. But one thing does not invalidate the other, does it?

3. She heard that he barreled down the street with a butcher knife, trying to stab her mother. Only they used the word kill.

4. Once I babysat for a reporter. She stayed out all night when Mike Wallace came to town. Her kitchen was filthy.

5. There was a woman named Corrine who was married to a man named Terry. Their son, Jason, lived under the same roof. She was a belly dancer with snakes. All of us liked to listen to Pink Floyd.

6. Bruce had special needs. Only we just called him slow. He smashed a grey kitten by folding it up in the sleep away. It was an accident.

7. Django got his head smashed in by a car. We buried him in front of the shed we called a garage with cat toys and food. Almost Egyptian.

8. The twins had hair so curly it looked fake. Everyone asked me about it always.

9. The sound of rain is comforting. The sound of wind and rain is exciting. The sound of thunder along with wind and rain is frightening.

10. The creatures don't recognize the world which moved on without them. It is hard. Unnatural. The sound of heels clicking on the gravelly sidewalk confuses them.

11. I never learned to tap dance.

12. A perfectly centered spider waits in the arched entry way between two rooms.

13. In some circumstances mud can be inviting - clam digging on the Puget Sound, for instance. The sucking down of ones boot is hilarious. Other times, it's a reminder of disaster, dirty and foreboding.

14. I am waiting for my parents to die, one after the other. I imagine how I will feel when this happens.

15. Because they are used to illusions of all kinds, the people in the city don't notice the monsters; this is mistake.

16. One hopes that the earth will decompose and recompose herself someday.

17. He never saw a cow on the lawn again, much to the chagrin of his children.

The Daily Write: Under my skin (August 24, 2012)

Under my skin

The rashes covered her body in patches. There was the festering patch above her ancient gall bladder surgery scar - the one that looked like she got into a knife fight, before they started doing the surgery through three holes. The bumpy red skin itched so badly that she made herself bleed nightly scratching for relief. The doctor didn't like that the rash and scabs were on the scar. She couldn't understand why. She'd had the surgery in the early 80s. It wasn't like there was a danger of the wound opening back up.

Then there were the rashes at her crotch, huge patches of grey red dry skin streaked by fingernail inflicted wounds. The itching was so intense when she removed her clothes that she might stand in the hallway at home just itching it, jaw slack, eyes focusing on nothing ahead of her. The scratching then felt as good as sex, but the high was mixed with pain, a stinging burn that rubbed raw and hurt. But nothing stopped the itching.

There was an article online, she remembered, about a woman who scratched her head so much and so hard that she dug a hole into her brain. Light green liquid leaked out. She imagined it looked like the goo from a spent glow stick, viscous and otherworldly. She imagined that while she scratched herself as quietly as possible in the bathroom stall at work, working at her rash vigorously whenever someone flushed or turned on the water, so they couldn't hear. She could only guess what they thought otherwise, listening to her dig into her flesh as she sat on the toilet, skirt falling to the floor around her legs.

And, because she was raised by New Age Hippies, she wondered as she scratched herself bloody, what wounds of the flesh meant. The skin, they say, is the biggest organ. What terrible karma made her have an organ so damaged and uncomfortable? What would the acupuncturist say? Or the psychic on the corner of Telegraph and Durant who stared at her when she walked by as if he was reading her mind. Did he know he made her feel as if she couldn't escape? Was that part of his ploy for making money? Or was he like Whoopie Goldberg's character in Ghost as she spoke to Demi Moore with her perfectly smooth skin and the ability to throw on a man's shirt and look sexy?

Aging is not for the meek, she thought as she pulled her hand up away from her raw, red belly. Thank god no one had to see her like this.

The Daily Write: I'm in trouble now (August 23, 2012)

I'm in trouble now

I never did officially lose my virginity. The one time that one guy tried to poke it in, and it hurt, it also made me have to pee so bad that I ran to the toilet. That was the end of that awful adventure. I had fallen and hit my head so hard on the cement in a tunnel under a street earlier in the night that I could hear it echo. That was after probably 8 beers and some sloe gin; disgusting stuff, sweet and cloying like cough syrup but with a burning alcohol aftertaste in the back of the throat.

We met the guys at the pool hall down the street from the state capitol building. How something so seedy could be in the same neighborhood as something so nice mystified me. Or would have if I had stopped to think about it. But I didn't because I didn't care. I just wanted a hot guy to like me, some money for smokes, and a night without violence or fear. You could usually get two out of three, but not all of them, and I took my chances every time I left the house.

I preferred menthol lights and switched brands frequently, never being a purist. I was currently on Virginia Slims, soft packs, which meant I needed a big enough purse to carry them and my loose change around.

We met them bumming for change. Back when a few loose coins meant something. Now it's all binary code - no real money, invisible value. Back then it was a pack, maybe a side of extra crispy french fries with barbecue sauce, Ranch Dressing had not yet been invented, and a cup of coffee. If you found somewhere good, you could sit there all night getting refills without ever paying again.

After the drinking and the fall the four of us went down into the dark basement room. I was on a bed, my friend was on a couch and, although we didn't know it at the time, the guy I was with had a younger brother who was sleeping down there too, listening and watching while we made out and he felt me up.

The Daily Write: A little good news (August 22, 2012)

A little good news

I was thinking about snails the other day. What strange creatures. Slimy, trail tagging beings with shells. I realized I don't know much about them really. Like, do they live in one shell all their snaily lives or do they find new shells? If they go on a hunt, wouldn't it make sense simply to go to the escargot aisles and pick up a tube of them? There could be snail trades,

"I've got a tube of 10 gauge shells, trade you for a few eight gauges."

It's far more fun for me to anthropomorphize creatures than deal with them sans any human qualities. I mean, really, wouldn't you rather read this imagining an endearingly squeaky and high little tiny snail voice than accidentally step on one on your way to the car while avoiding the dog shit someone didn't pick up on your median strip (right by the passenger door where the kids get in).

The good news is that snails are rather inconsequential. The bad news is that they will eat up all your beautiful purple kohlrabi and decimate your cabbage.

Also, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the Mars rover has landed. It sent back some pictures of earth the other day - you know what stood out most? Glowing snail trails. Millions of them.

Let me just put it to you this way: It's not aliens we have to worry about.

The Daily Write: In the mood (August 21, 2012)

In the mood

"If the mood strikes, I'll be at the bar at 10:30," Jackie said to Rhonda, who looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"I know, I know," said Jackie, responding to Rhonda's very clear message. They had known each other for 25 years and not much passed between them that wasn't immediately understood by the other. This made Rhonda feel claustrophobic and Jackie feel secure.

Rhonda at 5'9" was a stunner. Auburn hair, dramatically arched eyebrows, legs as long as the state of Florida.

Jackie was tall too, but about twice as heavy as lithe Rhonda, and her hair was a shorn mess. At least, as she often consoled herself, she had a lovely egg-shaped head, slightly higher at the crown than at her forehead. Any more dramatic and she would have been mistaken for an alien. But then, what would be so bad about that?

Jackie waved goodbye to Rhonda at the door with her goofy face on - squinting eyes, a little smile and silent jazz fingers waving as she shut the door, almost tripping on a cord when she turned around to get to the bathroom, fast. It's not that she didn't want to go to the bar. It wasn't that she was of monstrous proportions compared to her friend. It was that she had and unpredictable and urgent need to use the toilet which ruined almost every social occasion. Rhonda knew and understood, so although she often missed Jackie, she cut her best friend a lot of slack.

Jackie couldn't tell other people, so she lived with the fear of The Pain and tried to plot her life so as never to be too far from a private, or semi-private bathroom. If she had a big job interview or important meeting, she avoided food until after it was over, trying to stave off that horrible chemical reaction in which her tongue seemed to trigger her intestines.

The Daily Write: It's spreading (August 20, 2012)

It's spreading

The apartment is very clean. Not much color. Big glass doors that slide in front of one another to open at the back. Doesn't matter how blah everything is inside because outside of those doors is a pool that shimmers like a handful of precious tourmaline in the changing light from early dawn until past sunset.

The sides of the pool are like rough white sand, a newly cleaned floor, a delicate egg shell or the shockingly bright white of a house on a cliff in Greece. Anything that reminds her of Greece is good. She is better in that olive-rich climate of hot bright and two thousand blues. Sky. Sea. Windows. Flowers. His eyes.

Languid. Liquid. Luminescent.

They bumped into each other at a tourist stop. One of the million little stores carrying Flokati rugs, postcards, the two headed labyris and shot glasses. She was looking at the bottom of one such glass up close, having forgotten about the glasses hanging around her neck. He was, apparently, focused on a postcard scene from Santorini.

Startled, she gasped gently and he grunted (a perfect metaphor for what would come), and they turned to see who was on the other end of the annoyance. That's when she remembered her glasses. She reached down to her chest without looking to find the chain and pull them onto her nose, and he stood there, proverbially frozen.

Later luscious lips locked.

But that was a long time ago and now she stands on the other side of the glass, looking at the clean, clear ripples on the artificial ocean outside her apartment feeling totally alone.