This is the first pages to a chapter of my memoirs I am working on. My memoir's angle goes something like this, (Caspar, I'm quoting you):
I am a tall beautiful blond California chick, with a sunny temperament, a ready wit and a love of sex. So why is it that I have, on the latest count, two dozen failed relationships with some of the most pointless men in the world...
This chapter relates my last and most fatal "pointless man" relationship.
I met Gershom on eHarmony. Red warning lights already are flashing, no? In the box, “Describe one thing about yourself that only your best friends know,” he said “I am the catch of the century.” His profile’s photo was far from appealing: bottle-bottom thick glasses; spandex bike shorts; buckteeth and receding hairline. What did I see? He looked clean. He looked like he might have a sense of humor -the saving grace of many an unattractive man. He looked safe. Hard to remember now. . . really quite challenging to remember what exactly drew me to him…. perhaps I saw a damaged person I thought I could help heal? A person locked away in a cage of their own construction, and, liking a challenge, I wanted to release him? A nerd who would pose no dangerous threat to my daughter or me? (Nerds were inherently good, right?) Did I want to be the savior of this geek? Or did I want a savior…someone to look after me, to protect me and save me from myself ?
Standing there in the parking lot next to his white mini-van, clutching the three dozen long-stems he had bought for our first date, he looked fat and scared. He looked terrified of my headlights as I guided my car in next to his, already I was too much for him…too bright, literally too bright. He took me to the most expensive restaurant in my little town, wanting to hammer home one of his main attractions…he had bucks. During dinner, he stared at my hands so intently; I was unnerved, kept getting the serial killer vibe. Did he want to chop them off and eat them with lima beans? Of course not, he was a vegetarian. And yet I ignored my creep alert siren. I’ve had some luck that I never actually encountered a serial killer because I would have obviously ignored all the warning signs and ended up gracing his refrigerator with my presence. I am the girl in the slasher movie that blithely goes down into the basement when all the lights in the house have gone off mysteriously and you, the audience know, that this is the last place anyone should be going.
Our first face-to-face conversation featured first-date-hot-topics such as what restaurants he had most enjoyed in the last few months, what particular food items he had enjoyed at those restaurants, and dropping as many names (of authors, potential big-wig-friends, musicians) as he could cram into three courses and dessert. He was cultured, could talk the talk about literature and films, a far cry from the unwashed hippies I had been dating in Sebastopol, but there was this surface quality to all of it. He knew the right things and the right people to talk about because one must. Some people go through their lives pantomiming what they think living is supposed to be about, but not actually living it or being it. Gershom was a shadow puppet of a “New York intellectual turned yogi” and his accent was an approximation of that -not quite New York, more Nasal-Gay-Snob than anything. In fact, during our first few conversations on the phone, I found his gay-infused vocabulary and intonations somehow comforting, reaching into my heart-of-a-former-fag-hag. I could banter with him about the nothing that composed our conversations and know how to do it, know how to banter in that catty-tear-that-bitch-apart way. It is fun with a truly witty and dirty-mouthed queen, but was never that fun with Gershom…he didn’t have enough heart to make it real and all that was there was the stylized packaging of a witty conversation.
Gershom suffered from a type of eye disability that rendered him nearly blind, and so had zero night vision, which accounted for him stumbling and almost falling over the parking barrier outside the restaurant. You can’t laugh when it’s pathetic and when the perpetrator is taking himself too seriously to guffaw at a mistake. I actually felt bad for him, as one would. I mean he obviously suffered a great deal due to his disability, and it is hard to see any human being suffering, no matter how creepy they are. Though he was loaded and seemed to take quite good care of himself physically, (yoga daily, organic food, weekly massages, etc), his glasses looked to be at least twenty years old. The frames were too small for his face and the lenses were yellowed with age, amplifying their thickness. A source of continual martydom from which to draw, his vision problems paid high dividends in the pity party that was Gershom’s “in” into society and with sucker-for-a-broken-man women like me.
Mom was babysitting that night and when we got back to my place, (I know, how did I ever think of going beyond dinner with this boring weirdo?), she was in my bedroom with the door closed watching a movie. I invited the dork in and we sat on my orange velvet couch and kissed. He quickly moved from kissing me to begging to have just a taste…which I allowed him to do. I am seriously nauseous writing this down. I should have sought professional help right then and there. Yes, I was a lonely single mom, yes, it was nice to be touched after so long of being alone, but this was beyond desperation. This was sick. Maybe it was a huge blessing in disguise that the guy turned out to be completely frigid and hung-up in bed…not hung…hung-up.
A week or so after our first date, he came and picked me up, greeting me with a gift basket he had assembled at L’Occitaine ($150), and took me to an upscale bed and breakfast resort on the Russian River ($350 a night), were we had a four course dinner with a nice bottle of pinot ($250), and side-by-side massages ($200) by masseuses that heard about how he had Rolfing done once a week and did yoga for two hours a day. We had sex for the first time that weekend and I remember very vividly thinking during the act, “So this is what stockbroker sex is like.” Meat and potatoes with no seasoning. Very June and Ward Cleaver. And yet I persisted and continued to see him. I could probably teach him to be a bit more free and fun in bed, right? Obviously, I had gotten over my initial revulsion to the guy and was now working on selling myself to him. For the price of a weekend getaway and a hidden prize behind curtain number three, I was willing to ignore my gut instinct to get away from this guy and instead applied myself to marketing to him what a great catch he had found in me. I can hear what you are thinking, “What a terribly low-self-esteem she must have had to believe she had to sell-herself to someone she is repulsed by!” I can see that now myself. But at the time, what was I thinking? I was thinking meal-ticket. I was thinking stability. I was thinking happy home. My desire for those things was so strong that it picket-fence-white-washed over the reality of the situation. From a more negative viewpoint you could see me as base, as a hooker in disguise. Perhaps all the years of living as a single-mom on Welfare and hand-to-mouth even when I worked full-time and beyond, always being afraid that I would not have enough money to buy dinner or pay the rent, the countless times at the grocery store I had to count out the pennies at the bottom of my purse to make it, had all this hardship lent me a crack-whore mentality? Buy me some groceries for my baby and I’ll give you a blow-job. Again, it’s a question of self-esteem. I was the catch of the century, but I never believed it.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Llano House (A Work in Progress)
Llano. “Lano,” sounds like “Lame-O” as some friends of the three call it. Not “Yano,” no connection to the Spanish word meaning a large plain spreading out to the horizon, a place to graze your horses. No, instead, “Lano,” with all the beauty of the word taken out by the mispronunciation, by the connection to that hill on which crumbling farm-hand-quarters hunker, and the fact that no one cares what a Llano is or was or why the house is even called that.
The house did once look out upon lush, green plains on which dairy cows grazed. The bottom of this little valley where the house stands upon a slight rise must have been idyllic at one time. Before they situated the sewer-treatment plant behind the rise, before the plain became pockmarked by ranch houses, thrown up with no aesthetics to house the families of the dairy farmers. Flat facades with no faces, rooflines that had no relationship to the gnarled ancient oaks that predated the cows, sewer plant, even the name llano.
It was a perfect spot for the three to settle, but left me asking the question, did the location form the boy’s current state, or were they drawn there because they felt in their ball-sacks the zing of a connection? Did they feel an affinity to the landscape? Where they moved by the countless old oaks, the views from the rise, and the dilapidated state of the outbuildings? Did the ruts in the long dirt driveway up the rise jostle into them a sense of the old-frontier? When first viewing the place, did they imagine themselves as rough and tumble ranch-hands?
The property was vast. Twenty-two acres of prime real estate on the outskirts of a very desirable small town. One of those small towns that has enough big town qualities to make it a place where people want to raise their families, to become involved in the community and do their civic duty, to march in the harvest parade, celebrating the fruits of what was and what is. Twenty-two acres of defunct dairy farmland, with giant old rusting barns and feed silos, piles of discarded building material for the boom that never came, four ranch-hand-quarters where the boys lived, that now command full-market-value for their rental, and a deserted single-family home, circa 1890 which no one wants to renovate. The rot could be torn out and replaced, the termite’s destiny put to a stop, the solid wood floors could be sanded and refinished, the massive attic turned into a cozy play-room for a child, or a quiet study for a writer, but none of this will happen. Not until people have forgotten about the tree next to the kitchen door. Or cut it down and burned it. Would burning “smudge” away the gloom and foreboding that clings to that tree’s bows?
The three lived in the center quarters. A house that began at the kitchen and added on from there. First a bedroom right off the kitchen, then a living room, then three more bedrooms, each smaller and more half-fast then the last. The living room was paneled in pine, that rustic-cabin look must have been charming in a way when the original occupants sat around in their cotton flannel shirts after a long day coaxing stubborn cows into their milking slots. Now the pine had a layer of posters and other bachelor memorabilia over it. Joe Montana. A cheerleading squad standing in formation, boobs jutting. An old color photo of Travis, age seven, taped to the wall, holding a whisky bottle and smiling for the camera.
The main furnishings in the house were the sofa, TV, coffee table, and lazy-boy recliner in the living room. Coffee table always loaded to capacity with filled ashtrays, empty beer bottles, plates with dried catsup and grease. TV perpetually on, showing a zombie-killing video game or a DVD Travis brought home from work. The entire Fall season of CSI that the three would watch into the morning hours. There was no bone structure left to the couch, just a sagging pile of orange and brown organic matter, the grease stains, and other spots one felt repelled to identify, having more substance than the actual frame and foam now. Sitting on the couch for one not initiated into the deep groove of funky filth of Llano house took courage. You sat straight and prim on the edge of the sloping rot of upholstery, trying to make as little contact with it as possible. The smell of the house was a constant blend of pack after pack of cigarettes masterfully mixed with fried meat; bacon and ground beef being the main component of any meal consumed off half washed slippery plates. Windows and doors remained tightly shut to protect the inhabitants from any fresh breeze that might disturb the gray clouds that hung over the rooms like a spectre.
On this day, the one named Tyson was lying on his bed staring at the flatness of the ceiling as he dragged on his second cigarette of the day. The soothing smooth whiteness of the ceiling fastened his eyes to it like fishing line. After a while, he let his eyes drift over the two feet or so to the corners of his room. In one corner a daddy long legs was hanging out in a newly-made web. Tyson wondered what made the spider choose that corner and not one of the others. Was there a breeze somehow? A source for little gnats or whatever long legs live on? He loved ruminating on things, turning them over in his mind, puzzling them out. As long as they were puzzles that had no connection to his life. That’s one of the reasons he loved reading so much. He would chow through a book in a day. He went through cycles, reading everything a writer had published, the Sherlock Holmes series had been a train he’d ridden on for a month or so, and then it was Stephen King, Tolstoy, Harry Potter, C.S. Lewis. The bigger the book, or the longer the series the better, the longer the escape. Escape is what it came down to. What could best keep him from hearing the murmur of his non-existence, the muffled voices somewhere deep inside of him that screamed and chortled and ridiculed him into shutting them out and drowning them in beer and TV and books. He heaved his body out of bed and shuffled in his boxers to the kitchen and the cold supply of beer. Popping the lid of what would be his first of many that morning, he landed himself on the sofa and lit another cigarette. The sky was visible through the blinds and it looked like a gray one. The room felt quiet and empty, hungry. He flicked on the TV and instantly felt the buzz of the screen calming his nerves. No one else was awake yet. He got up earlier than the other two for work. He had to get to the winery before they opened, to sweep out the visitors center and entrance way, empty the trash cans, recycle all the bottles used up in yesterday’s wine tastings. The smell of stale wine was always in his nostrils it seemed, even on his days off.
There was an hour before he had to be at work. Enough time for a game of “Ghouls”.
Travis found him sunk into the sofa, beer in hand, fighting off the living dead with his joy stick.
“Mornin”
“Hey, why you up so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep again.”
“Nightmares?”
“Yeah. Same ones.”
Travis was still deeply religious. He had been in training as a minister in college and then decided being a video-store clerk was just fine for him. At 29, he held a job most high school students would consider, and that was fine for him. He was busy. His time at home was spent between watching every movie ever made and dominating the world in a simulated conquest video game. His religious beliefs forbade him from having pre-marital sex with the girl he had been dating for four years. The ban on pre-marital sex led to sodomy instead of intercourse and did not hinder his drinking, which he did in excess - though not quite as much as Tyson.
The nightmares that plagued Travis always featured the same sad looking dog walking down the side of a road. In the dream, Travis would come rolling down the road in his pick-up truck, and would catch sight of the animal just in time to see his hang-dog expression as he walked into the path of the truck. Travis would wake up in a sweat, his breathe cut short by the thud of the dog under his tires. As many times as he’d had the dream, he was never able to swerve and miss the dog, or turn a corner and go down a different road, or slam on the brakes. It got to the point where he dreaded going to sleep. And he dreaded driving to work. What if he saw a dead dog on the side of the road? The roads around Llano house were constantly littered with road kill. Possums were the most common victims, but rabbits, cats, turkey vultures, who had become too involved in eating the latest flattened winner of a ticket to the dump and succumbed to the same fate. Their wings would flap as you drove by, the wind re-animating their soaring screech.
Sometimes a deer would grace the edge. One day when Travis was a young boy, he stumbled upon a deer that had been dead a week or so. He had first noticed the heavy-sweet smell of decomposition from quite a ways away, but was too young to know what it was till he was standing over the quivering, wiggling corpse of the deer being devoured by maggots. He didn’t want to see any dogs in that same state, he didn’t want to see any dogs with that haunted, accusing look in their eye like the one in his dream.
It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the video store was next to a pet store in the upscale shopping center where all the happy families of the small town came to pay too much money for the privilege of buying their groceries from one of the shi-shi stores in town. The one with a real butcher counter and real live sushi chef. The one you were lucky to get out of for under seventy-five bucks. The shopping center also had a gift store, an espresso cart, a mediocre Chinese restaurant, and an overpriced hardware store, all of which Travis never stepped foot inside. He did his shopping elsewhere.
Travis spent his afternoons in the video store, minding the front counter, helping customers choose which film to entertain them for the night, and avoiding looking out the huge glass windows that made up the front of the store. He didn’t want to see any dogs. A glimpse of tail would give him the shivers. It was ridiculous. He knew it. He had been told to go to a shrink by his girlfriend, even his roommates had joked that he should get some help until they saw that their suggestion caused him more pain than the nightmares did. He relied on prayer. If he could believe deeply enough in his heart that Jesus would help him, heal him, then it would be okay. It would be just fine. Meanwhile, he had taken to drinking cough medicine before bed, hoping the deep, drug-induced sleep would block out the dreams. It hadn’t worked.
Tyson and Travis heard the mumbling of voices from Chip’s room, then the steady squeak of the bed. Chip’s girl was over again. Tyson rolled his eyes at Travis and tilted back his head to get the last drops out of the can.
“Can’t they ever go to her house?”
“She’s got a kid and a crazy ex, remember? But I know what you mean, I’m sick of waiting for an hour to get in the john. What does she do in there?”
“I’m gonna jump in there now before he cums and she gets up to wash it off.”
“Watch it, Tys”
“What? It’s true. . .happens every morning.”
“I’m going to make some coffee. Want some?”
“Is it the good stuff?”
“No, its that cheap shit from Costco.”
“Yeah, okay.”
The bathroom was small, solidly mildewed, and had the heavy grunge of three guy’s bodily functions lurking in it like some phantom from a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Yellow dribbles around the toilet calcifying into a sticky-pure haze of odor. Even the Mr.T sticker placed strategically on the lid of the toilet wasn’t enough to scare away the crud of that room. How anybody could go in there and come out clean was pure miracle out of scripture. Maybe Travis’s prayers were being answered, just in a tweaked-out way.
Tyson came out, ruddy cheeked, wrapped in a towel, and made his way back to the frig to grab another beer.
“Breakfast of champions again there Tys?” Travis was sitting on the front porch, coffee and cigarette making up his breakfast of choice. “These damn strays are driving me crazy. Why don’t you stop feeding them so they’ll go away? There has to be like fifty of ‘em now.”
“They need me. They’re used to getting food. If I cut them off, they’ll starve.”
Tys didn’t see Travis kick a stray when it got too close to him. He was in his room getting dressed for work. The pile of books by his bed had stopped growing recently. He’d gotten hooked on all the TV series Travis had been bringing home. TV was better, noisier, more effective at blocking out the whining in his head.
Travis sat cursing the cats and drinking his coffee. His butt was numb from the prickliness of the astro-turf on the front porch and the coldness of the cement beneath. Getting up, he noticed how stiff he was. “I gotta join a gym,” he thought to himself. “Just have to find the time.”
“See ya, Travis.” Tyson grabbed a cup of coffee to go from the kitchen and headed out. “Another day, another dollar.” His SUV was waiting, shining through the gray morning. Nice of his parents to buy it for him. Nice car. Would be good for trips up to the snow if he ever thought of it. Maybe he would get the guys to go with him next weekend. They could buy a few six packs and head up for the day. Do some snowboarding. Yeah, that would be cool.
Travis settled into the furrow of the couch, resting his head on the back, closing his eyes. It was his day off. Maybe a sleep on the couch would be safe. . .a different location, a different dream? He drifted into a light sleep, only to be awakened by the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut He chuckled to himself. “Tys was right.”
What would he do today? He had taken the last clean coffee mug off the shelf, the other dozen or so were in different states of muck on the kitchen counters. Tys would be back later, he would handle that, he always did. Chip and Travis never did the dishes, or any cleaning for that matter around the quarters. Why bother? Tyson did it all. Before the fourth, Moses, had moved out, Moses and Tys had kept the place looking pretty good, vacuuming, garbage out every week, dishes back in the cupboards. But now that it was just the three of them, it all fell on Tyson and he seemed to only have the stamina to clean when every last fork, plate, and cup had been used. A couple of weeks ago, someone had offered them a box of glasses and mixed-matched plates. Chip and Travis were all for it, but Tys knew it would just lengthen the amount of time between clean-ups and make more work for him.
Chip and Travis had no guilt in letting Tys do all the cleaning. He was their little bitch, though none of them would say it out-loud. They were the men of the house, he was the passive mouse. “Wonder what happened to Tys? Why does he never leave the house except for work?” It never got beyond that question. Maybe because they didn’t want to ruin their good thing of having a bitch to do all the work, or maybe because they were afraid, afraid to know the truth. Everyone that knew the three and knew the dynamics of Llano house asked that question, but no one ever went beyond the asking. No one ever talked to Tyson about it. Denial, an essential skill.
From all outer appearances, Tyson had lived a totally normal childhood. His parents were well-off, run-of-the-mill ‘burb types, dad accountant, mom elementary school teacher. They bought Tyson a shiny sports car in high school and that helped Tyson to be a bit of a playboy and hot-shot during his teens. Then he moved to the city and descended into a deep depression, though that was never what it was called by anyone. He became so deeply affected that he wouldn’t leave his apartment, after a while, he wouldn’t leave his armchair. Even when his friends would bang on the door and yell at him to open up, let them in, he wouldn’t stir. He didn’t have to work, so he didn’t have to leave his apartment. His parents supported him. Finally, seeing their son was doing “nothing was his life,” his parents cut-him-off and he moved back to the ‘burbs and into Llano house and got the job. That was three years ago.
Travis wasn’t thinking about all this, he wasn’t thinking about what kind of demons Tyson must’ve been wrestling with. He wasn’t even thinking about his own demons, dog-headed demons that blamed him. Blamed him for what? No. He was thinking about his girlfriend who was now down at UCLA getting her B.A. and probably screwing every frat boy in sight to make up for all the years of vaginal celibacy she had wasted with him. She said she was being true to him, but how could she? He remembered her begging him to have sex, asking why they had to wait? Why he could only sneak in the back door. He would launch into some deep philosophical conversation, steering their passion away from their bodies and into their cortexes. They both loved debate and hours could go by while they talked about the environment or the sins of eating red meat, (he lived on beef, she was a vegetarian).
Travis’s lower guts grumbled. Oh lord, another attack. Was Chip’s girl out of the toilet yet? Travis couldn’t hold it back once his gut started moaning. He got up, took five brisk steps towards the bathroom and pounded on the door, “I need to get in there. Now!”
“Okay!” her annoyance audible in the way the “ay” came out as three syllables.
Thirty-seconds went by. “NOW!” Travis was almost doubled over with the effort to keep himself from soiling his pj bottoms.
The door swung open and out came Tamara, smelling like mall-bought body spray, her hair wrapped in a towel. “Jesus, Travis! What’s the fuckin’ emergency?”
Travis didn’t answer. He slammed the door in her face and sank down to the toilet in grim relief.
“Your roommates are fucked-up.” Chip was still in bed, he’d rolled over on his side and was staring at the heavily curtained window. You could hear the birds chirping outside, a weird sound in this room. “What’s up with Travis and his shitting?” Tamara was sickeningly skinny, her pelvic bones sticking out over the tops of her low-slung jeans as she pulled them on over her pink thong.
“He can’t digest anything except ground beef and meat. He tried to eat some vegetables yesterday and they must be making him sick this morning. I don’t know how he doesn’t get scurvy or whatever.” Chip felt bad for Travis. He knew how sensitive his stomach was and that Travis secretly worried about his health. It wasn’t cool to be twenty-seven and have to baby your insides like that.
“I have to get going. Sam’s dad is going to be pissed if I don’t get home in time today. I made him late for work yesterday and he was so mad he threw Sam’s tricycle against the trailer. It took me a god-damn half-hour to calm Sam down. That fucker has no control of his anger.”
“What did you do about the internet thing?”
“Oh, that, well, uh, I can’t get into it now. I have to go. See you at work.”
Tamara was the hostess at the restaurant Chip managed. She was known county-wide for her white-trash-long-legged beauty and promiscuity. She had no problem telling anyone who would care to listen, how many men she’d slept with, that she had herpes, and that she had never had an orgasm. Sex with hundreds and no orgasm for any of it. Her way of getting-off was not based on the delicious clenching of her insides. She got-off by getting what she wanted out of men. She didn’t want physical pleasure, she wanted money, power, a sense of being desired. She told the waitresses at Chip’s restaurant the first week she was there that her fantasy was to bed the boss and that’s just what she did, using her body to get the best shifts on the schedule, the privilege of coming into work late, of being the head “door-ho.” Sleeping with the boss was a drag though when Chip was around, because then, she had to be sneakier about her flirting and working the customers at the bar. Guys would come into the restaurant just to get a glimpse of her, to flirt, get material to build their hand-jobs on later, and she would get a twenty and a phone number neatly folded together slipped to her.
No orgasms for Tamara. She had that one thing in common with the three at Llano house, the ability to shut-out the unwanted, the unremembered, the undealt with and to handle the consequences, like a non-existence, like no sexual fulfillment. She stuffed her personal trauma so deep inside herself, choosing her hole as the burial plot, so deep up inside her that no penis was long enough to unlock her pearl box of tears and release and love-juice.
The other girls at the restaurant found her entertaining. She always had some drama going on and they got to be bystanders at the car crash that was her life. At first they felt empathy for her and wanted to “be there” for her, and then, later, they felt themselves being drained by her, she sucking their vitality right out of them by her mere presence. And then she quit nursing her baby, Sam, and her breasts deflated, her once oh-so-glamorous halter dresses started hanging badly, sagging where they had once been eye-catchingly full. She began to show her mean, venomness side to the other girls, as if her sweetness had dried up along with her mother’s milk. One slow night when the girls were hanging around the kitchen window waiting for the staff meal to come up, she announced, “If any of you want to give me your extra fat off your asses I’m going to use it for a breast enlargement.”
That’s when the tables turned.
“Use your own fuckin extra fat!”
Tamara
She was six years old when her uncle started inserting things into her. First it was a finger, then a whatever was within reach in the child’s room. It was as if the innocence of the objects themselves would hide the horror of what was happening, but the innocence was quickly stained and withered away and everday objects became objectionable to her. Why didn’t little V want her purple lollipop from the doctor? What a naughty girl smashing all her new crayons. Why did she insist on hiding all her Barbies under her bed?
In middle school, she realized her experience in the realm of the taboo was power, a power she could use to get whatever she wanted. She didn’t care about grades, had no ambition to do well academically. She wanted safety. Safety came from being the one in control. What was for other girls a time of budding ripeness and panties glistening with mysteries, Tamara was learning how to change what had been a shame, a scar, a hidden wound into a shield of protection and a sword of vindication. She would allow many boys to touch her, to explore their sexual awakenings through her body, but she would never allow herself to enjoy it. She liked to see the boy’s faces bewildered by their own pleasure, by the power she had over them to keep them going till they burst, or leave them to their own devices. At thirteen, she could suck and stroke and tease as good as the best whore in Nevada, but she would never ever come. Coming was meant you were vulnerable, helpless, in the power of another.
That’s what got tricky when she became a mother. In being a mom, even a careless, heartless mom, you became vulnerable, and another controlled you. A wee baby controlled your sleep, your pleasure, your every waking thought. A toddler controlled you even more, and a grown child can look at you and really see you for who you are and wither you with your own mom-grown guilt.
Sam’s dad wasn’t much help, in fact, most would say he was a danger. Kicked out of home when he was a child, he lived scrounging himself an existence in the countryside of El Salvadore where he was born to unwilling parents. Not much was known about him except his propensity for child pornography and his fits of rage. Tamara would complain to the girls at work how she had come home from work to her trailer and her babysitting ex and find downloads of child porn on her computer. This didn’t stop her from having him care for her four year old son, although most wondered at her judgement. Miriam was always too scared, too disgusted to ask what gender the children had been in the videos, what ages, how violent had the acts been and how could she ever, ever consider having that man go near her son?
Miriam had always had a good place to live. She was the type that could float into a new town and find the unlisted, lower-than-market-price, on three acres dream house. Tamara had been living in her thoroughly mildewed trailer on her dad’s property for years. “What do you think about renting one of those big farm houses out off of Highway 12 together?” Tamara could smell happiness and success on Miriam and she wanted some for herself. “We could share child-care and do crafts together…maybe start some kind of little business together?” A big part of Miriam wanted to be Tamara’s savior. She saw the hurt little girl, saw the desire to be a good mom, to make better for herself and hers, wanted to believe that that could happen. Tamara’s beauty and tiny frame were seductive. One wanted to rescue her, scoop her up and set her right. Wash away the makeup and put her in vocational school. But Miriam’s primal mother instincts screamed out “Keep anything to do with Tamara far far away from my precious little girl.” There was no way she would let the father of Sam near her little girl, not even let someone like that know where they lived, let alone share a house with a relative of his. There was no way she wanted to get sucked down into the vortex of Tamara’s black hole of self-destruction and misery. Miriam did not have any extra fat off her ass or her life to cut Tamara.
The house did once look out upon lush, green plains on which dairy cows grazed. The bottom of this little valley where the house stands upon a slight rise must have been idyllic at one time. Before they situated the sewer-treatment plant behind the rise, before the plain became pockmarked by ranch houses, thrown up with no aesthetics to house the families of the dairy farmers. Flat facades with no faces, rooflines that had no relationship to the gnarled ancient oaks that predated the cows, sewer plant, even the name llano.
It was a perfect spot for the three to settle, but left me asking the question, did the location form the boy’s current state, or were they drawn there because they felt in their ball-sacks the zing of a connection? Did they feel an affinity to the landscape? Where they moved by the countless old oaks, the views from the rise, and the dilapidated state of the outbuildings? Did the ruts in the long dirt driveway up the rise jostle into them a sense of the old-frontier? When first viewing the place, did they imagine themselves as rough and tumble ranch-hands?
The property was vast. Twenty-two acres of prime real estate on the outskirts of a very desirable small town. One of those small towns that has enough big town qualities to make it a place where people want to raise their families, to become involved in the community and do their civic duty, to march in the harvest parade, celebrating the fruits of what was and what is. Twenty-two acres of defunct dairy farmland, with giant old rusting barns and feed silos, piles of discarded building material for the boom that never came, four ranch-hand-quarters where the boys lived, that now command full-market-value for their rental, and a deserted single-family home, circa 1890 which no one wants to renovate. The rot could be torn out and replaced, the termite’s destiny put to a stop, the solid wood floors could be sanded and refinished, the massive attic turned into a cozy play-room for a child, or a quiet study for a writer, but none of this will happen. Not until people have forgotten about the tree next to the kitchen door. Or cut it down and burned it. Would burning “smudge” away the gloom and foreboding that clings to that tree’s bows?
The three lived in the center quarters. A house that began at the kitchen and added on from there. First a bedroom right off the kitchen, then a living room, then three more bedrooms, each smaller and more half-fast then the last. The living room was paneled in pine, that rustic-cabin look must have been charming in a way when the original occupants sat around in their cotton flannel shirts after a long day coaxing stubborn cows into their milking slots. Now the pine had a layer of posters and other bachelor memorabilia over it. Joe Montana. A cheerleading squad standing in formation, boobs jutting. An old color photo of Travis, age seven, taped to the wall, holding a whisky bottle and smiling for the camera.
The main furnishings in the house were the sofa, TV, coffee table, and lazy-boy recliner in the living room. Coffee table always loaded to capacity with filled ashtrays, empty beer bottles, plates with dried catsup and grease. TV perpetually on, showing a zombie-killing video game or a DVD Travis brought home from work. The entire Fall season of CSI that the three would watch into the morning hours. There was no bone structure left to the couch, just a sagging pile of orange and brown organic matter, the grease stains, and other spots one felt repelled to identify, having more substance than the actual frame and foam now. Sitting on the couch for one not initiated into the deep groove of funky filth of Llano house took courage. You sat straight and prim on the edge of the sloping rot of upholstery, trying to make as little contact with it as possible. The smell of the house was a constant blend of pack after pack of cigarettes masterfully mixed with fried meat; bacon and ground beef being the main component of any meal consumed off half washed slippery plates. Windows and doors remained tightly shut to protect the inhabitants from any fresh breeze that might disturb the gray clouds that hung over the rooms like a spectre.
On this day, the one named Tyson was lying on his bed staring at the flatness of the ceiling as he dragged on his second cigarette of the day. The soothing smooth whiteness of the ceiling fastened his eyes to it like fishing line. After a while, he let his eyes drift over the two feet or so to the corners of his room. In one corner a daddy long legs was hanging out in a newly-made web. Tyson wondered what made the spider choose that corner and not one of the others. Was there a breeze somehow? A source for little gnats or whatever long legs live on? He loved ruminating on things, turning them over in his mind, puzzling them out. As long as they were puzzles that had no connection to his life. That’s one of the reasons he loved reading so much. He would chow through a book in a day. He went through cycles, reading everything a writer had published, the Sherlock Holmes series had been a train he’d ridden on for a month or so, and then it was Stephen King, Tolstoy, Harry Potter, C.S. Lewis. The bigger the book, or the longer the series the better, the longer the escape. Escape is what it came down to. What could best keep him from hearing the murmur of his non-existence, the muffled voices somewhere deep inside of him that screamed and chortled and ridiculed him into shutting them out and drowning them in beer and TV and books. He heaved his body out of bed and shuffled in his boxers to the kitchen and the cold supply of beer. Popping the lid of what would be his first of many that morning, he landed himself on the sofa and lit another cigarette. The sky was visible through the blinds and it looked like a gray one. The room felt quiet and empty, hungry. He flicked on the TV and instantly felt the buzz of the screen calming his nerves. No one else was awake yet. He got up earlier than the other two for work. He had to get to the winery before they opened, to sweep out the visitors center and entrance way, empty the trash cans, recycle all the bottles used up in yesterday’s wine tastings. The smell of stale wine was always in his nostrils it seemed, even on his days off.
There was an hour before he had to be at work. Enough time for a game of “Ghouls”.
Travis found him sunk into the sofa, beer in hand, fighting off the living dead with his joy stick.
“Mornin”
“Hey, why you up so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep again.”
“Nightmares?”
“Yeah. Same ones.”
Travis was still deeply religious. He had been in training as a minister in college and then decided being a video-store clerk was just fine for him. At 29, he held a job most high school students would consider, and that was fine for him. He was busy. His time at home was spent between watching every movie ever made and dominating the world in a simulated conquest video game. His religious beliefs forbade him from having pre-marital sex with the girl he had been dating for four years. The ban on pre-marital sex led to sodomy instead of intercourse and did not hinder his drinking, which he did in excess - though not quite as much as Tyson.
The nightmares that plagued Travis always featured the same sad looking dog walking down the side of a road. In the dream, Travis would come rolling down the road in his pick-up truck, and would catch sight of the animal just in time to see his hang-dog expression as he walked into the path of the truck. Travis would wake up in a sweat, his breathe cut short by the thud of the dog under his tires. As many times as he’d had the dream, he was never able to swerve and miss the dog, or turn a corner and go down a different road, or slam on the brakes. It got to the point where he dreaded going to sleep. And he dreaded driving to work. What if he saw a dead dog on the side of the road? The roads around Llano house were constantly littered with road kill. Possums were the most common victims, but rabbits, cats, turkey vultures, who had become too involved in eating the latest flattened winner of a ticket to the dump and succumbed to the same fate. Their wings would flap as you drove by, the wind re-animating their soaring screech.
Sometimes a deer would grace the edge. One day when Travis was a young boy, he stumbled upon a deer that had been dead a week or so. He had first noticed the heavy-sweet smell of decomposition from quite a ways away, but was too young to know what it was till he was standing over the quivering, wiggling corpse of the deer being devoured by maggots. He didn’t want to see any dogs in that same state, he didn’t want to see any dogs with that haunted, accusing look in their eye like the one in his dream.
It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the video store was next to a pet store in the upscale shopping center where all the happy families of the small town came to pay too much money for the privilege of buying their groceries from one of the shi-shi stores in town. The one with a real butcher counter and real live sushi chef. The one you were lucky to get out of for under seventy-five bucks. The shopping center also had a gift store, an espresso cart, a mediocre Chinese restaurant, and an overpriced hardware store, all of which Travis never stepped foot inside. He did his shopping elsewhere.
Travis spent his afternoons in the video store, minding the front counter, helping customers choose which film to entertain them for the night, and avoiding looking out the huge glass windows that made up the front of the store. He didn’t want to see any dogs. A glimpse of tail would give him the shivers. It was ridiculous. He knew it. He had been told to go to a shrink by his girlfriend, even his roommates had joked that he should get some help until they saw that their suggestion caused him more pain than the nightmares did. He relied on prayer. If he could believe deeply enough in his heart that Jesus would help him, heal him, then it would be okay. It would be just fine. Meanwhile, he had taken to drinking cough medicine before bed, hoping the deep, drug-induced sleep would block out the dreams. It hadn’t worked.
Tyson and Travis heard the mumbling of voices from Chip’s room, then the steady squeak of the bed. Chip’s girl was over again. Tyson rolled his eyes at Travis and tilted back his head to get the last drops out of the can.
“Can’t they ever go to her house?”
“She’s got a kid and a crazy ex, remember? But I know what you mean, I’m sick of waiting for an hour to get in the john. What does she do in there?”
“I’m gonna jump in there now before he cums and she gets up to wash it off.”
“Watch it, Tys”
“What? It’s true. . .happens every morning.”
“I’m going to make some coffee. Want some?”
“Is it the good stuff?”
“No, its that cheap shit from Costco.”
“Yeah, okay.”
The bathroom was small, solidly mildewed, and had the heavy grunge of three guy’s bodily functions lurking in it like some phantom from a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Yellow dribbles around the toilet calcifying into a sticky-pure haze of odor. Even the Mr.T sticker placed strategically on the lid of the toilet wasn’t enough to scare away the crud of that room. How anybody could go in there and come out clean was pure miracle out of scripture. Maybe Travis’s prayers were being answered, just in a tweaked-out way.
Tyson came out, ruddy cheeked, wrapped in a towel, and made his way back to the frig to grab another beer.
“Breakfast of champions again there Tys?” Travis was sitting on the front porch, coffee and cigarette making up his breakfast of choice. “These damn strays are driving me crazy. Why don’t you stop feeding them so they’ll go away? There has to be like fifty of ‘em now.”
“They need me. They’re used to getting food. If I cut them off, they’ll starve.”
Tys didn’t see Travis kick a stray when it got too close to him. He was in his room getting dressed for work. The pile of books by his bed had stopped growing recently. He’d gotten hooked on all the TV series Travis had been bringing home. TV was better, noisier, more effective at blocking out the whining in his head.
Travis sat cursing the cats and drinking his coffee. His butt was numb from the prickliness of the astro-turf on the front porch and the coldness of the cement beneath. Getting up, he noticed how stiff he was. “I gotta join a gym,” he thought to himself. “Just have to find the time.”
“See ya, Travis.” Tyson grabbed a cup of coffee to go from the kitchen and headed out. “Another day, another dollar.” His SUV was waiting, shining through the gray morning. Nice of his parents to buy it for him. Nice car. Would be good for trips up to the snow if he ever thought of it. Maybe he would get the guys to go with him next weekend. They could buy a few six packs and head up for the day. Do some snowboarding. Yeah, that would be cool.
Travis settled into the furrow of the couch, resting his head on the back, closing his eyes. It was his day off. Maybe a sleep on the couch would be safe. . .a different location, a different dream? He drifted into a light sleep, only to be awakened by the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut He chuckled to himself. “Tys was right.”
What would he do today? He had taken the last clean coffee mug off the shelf, the other dozen or so were in different states of muck on the kitchen counters. Tys would be back later, he would handle that, he always did. Chip and Travis never did the dishes, or any cleaning for that matter around the quarters. Why bother? Tyson did it all. Before the fourth, Moses, had moved out, Moses and Tys had kept the place looking pretty good, vacuuming, garbage out every week, dishes back in the cupboards. But now that it was just the three of them, it all fell on Tyson and he seemed to only have the stamina to clean when every last fork, plate, and cup had been used. A couple of weeks ago, someone had offered them a box of glasses and mixed-matched plates. Chip and Travis were all for it, but Tys knew it would just lengthen the amount of time between clean-ups and make more work for him.
Chip and Travis had no guilt in letting Tys do all the cleaning. He was their little bitch, though none of them would say it out-loud. They were the men of the house, he was the passive mouse. “Wonder what happened to Tys? Why does he never leave the house except for work?” It never got beyond that question. Maybe because they didn’t want to ruin their good thing of having a bitch to do all the work, or maybe because they were afraid, afraid to know the truth. Everyone that knew the three and knew the dynamics of Llano house asked that question, but no one ever went beyond the asking. No one ever talked to Tyson about it. Denial, an essential skill.
From all outer appearances, Tyson had lived a totally normal childhood. His parents were well-off, run-of-the-mill ‘burb types, dad accountant, mom elementary school teacher. They bought Tyson a shiny sports car in high school and that helped Tyson to be a bit of a playboy and hot-shot during his teens. Then he moved to the city and descended into a deep depression, though that was never what it was called by anyone. He became so deeply affected that he wouldn’t leave his apartment, after a while, he wouldn’t leave his armchair. Even when his friends would bang on the door and yell at him to open up, let them in, he wouldn’t stir. He didn’t have to work, so he didn’t have to leave his apartment. His parents supported him. Finally, seeing their son was doing “nothing was his life,” his parents cut-him-off and he moved back to the ‘burbs and into Llano house and got the job. That was three years ago.
Travis wasn’t thinking about all this, he wasn’t thinking about what kind of demons Tyson must’ve been wrestling with. He wasn’t even thinking about his own demons, dog-headed demons that blamed him. Blamed him for what? No. He was thinking about his girlfriend who was now down at UCLA getting her B.A. and probably screwing every frat boy in sight to make up for all the years of vaginal celibacy she had wasted with him. She said she was being true to him, but how could she? He remembered her begging him to have sex, asking why they had to wait? Why he could only sneak in the back door. He would launch into some deep philosophical conversation, steering their passion away from their bodies and into their cortexes. They both loved debate and hours could go by while they talked about the environment or the sins of eating red meat, (he lived on beef, she was a vegetarian).
Travis’s lower guts grumbled. Oh lord, another attack. Was Chip’s girl out of the toilet yet? Travis couldn’t hold it back once his gut started moaning. He got up, took five brisk steps towards the bathroom and pounded on the door, “I need to get in there. Now!”
“Okay!” her annoyance audible in the way the “ay” came out as three syllables.
Thirty-seconds went by. “NOW!” Travis was almost doubled over with the effort to keep himself from soiling his pj bottoms.
The door swung open and out came Tamara, smelling like mall-bought body spray, her hair wrapped in a towel. “Jesus, Travis! What’s the fuckin’ emergency?”
Travis didn’t answer. He slammed the door in her face and sank down to the toilet in grim relief.
“Your roommates are fucked-up.” Chip was still in bed, he’d rolled over on his side and was staring at the heavily curtained window. You could hear the birds chirping outside, a weird sound in this room. “What’s up with Travis and his shitting?” Tamara was sickeningly skinny, her pelvic bones sticking out over the tops of her low-slung jeans as she pulled them on over her pink thong.
“He can’t digest anything except ground beef and meat. He tried to eat some vegetables yesterday and they must be making him sick this morning. I don’t know how he doesn’t get scurvy or whatever.” Chip felt bad for Travis. He knew how sensitive his stomach was and that Travis secretly worried about his health. It wasn’t cool to be twenty-seven and have to baby your insides like that.
“I have to get going. Sam’s dad is going to be pissed if I don’t get home in time today. I made him late for work yesterday and he was so mad he threw Sam’s tricycle against the trailer. It took me a god-damn half-hour to calm Sam down. That fucker has no control of his anger.”
“What did you do about the internet thing?”
“Oh, that, well, uh, I can’t get into it now. I have to go. See you at work.”
Tamara was the hostess at the restaurant Chip managed. She was known county-wide for her white-trash-long-legged beauty and promiscuity. She had no problem telling anyone who would care to listen, how many men she’d slept with, that she had herpes, and that she had never had an orgasm. Sex with hundreds and no orgasm for any of it. Her way of getting-off was not based on the delicious clenching of her insides. She got-off by getting what she wanted out of men. She didn’t want physical pleasure, she wanted money, power, a sense of being desired. She told the waitresses at Chip’s restaurant the first week she was there that her fantasy was to bed the boss and that’s just what she did, using her body to get the best shifts on the schedule, the privilege of coming into work late, of being the head “door-ho.” Sleeping with the boss was a drag though when Chip was around, because then, she had to be sneakier about her flirting and working the customers at the bar. Guys would come into the restaurant just to get a glimpse of her, to flirt, get material to build their hand-jobs on later, and she would get a twenty and a phone number neatly folded together slipped to her.
No orgasms for Tamara. She had that one thing in common with the three at Llano house, the ability to shut-out the unwanted, the unremembered, the undealt with and to handle the consequences, like a non-existence, like no sexual fulfillment. She stuffed her personal trauma so deep inside herself, choosing her hole as the burial plot, so deep up inside her that no penis was long enough to unlock her pearl box of tears and release and love-juice.
The other girls at the restaurant found her entertaining. She always had some drama going on and they got to be bystanders at the car crash that was her life. At first they felt empathy for her and wanted to “be there” for her, and then, later, they felt themselves being drained by her, she sucking their vitality right out of them by her mere presence. And then she quit nursing her baby, Sam, and her breasts deflated, her once oh-so-glamorous halter dresses started hanging badly, sagging where they had once been eye-catchingly full. She began to show her mean, venomness side to the other girls, as if her sweetness had dried up along with her mother’s milk. One slow night when the girls were hanging around the kitchen window waiting for the staff meal to come up, she announced, “If any of you want to give me your extra fat off your asses I’m going to use it for a breast enlargement.”
That’s when the tables turned.
“Use your own fuckin extra fat!”
Tamara
She was six years old when her uncle started inserting things into her. First it was a finger, then a whatever was within reach in the child’s room. It was as if the innocence of the objects themselves would hide the horror of what was happening, but the innocence was quickly stained and withered away and everday objects became objectionable to her. Why didn’t little V want her purple lollipop from the doctor? What a naughty girl smashing all her new crayons. Why did she insist on hiding all her Barbies under her bed?
In middle school, she realized her experience in the realm of the taboo was power, a power she could use to get whatever she wanted. She didn’t care about grades, had no ambition to do well academically. She wanted safety. Safety came from being the one in control. What was for other girls a time of budding ripeness and panties glistening with mysteries, Tamara was learning how to change what had been a shame, a scar, a hidden wound into a shield of protection and a sword of vindication. She would allow many boys to touch her, to explore their sexual awakenings through her body, but she would never allow herself to enjoy it. She liked to see the boy’s faces bewildered by their own pleasure, by the power she had over them to keep them going till they burst, or leave them to their own devices. At thirteen, she could suck and stroke and tease as good as the best whore in Nevada, but she would never ever come. Coming was meant you were vulnerable, helpless, in the power of another.
That’s what got tricky when she became a mother. In being a mom, even a careless, heartless mom, you became vulnerable, and another controlled you. A wee baby controlled your sleep, your pleasure, your every waking thought. A toddler controlled you even more, and a grown child can look at you and really see you for who you are and wither you with your own mom-grown guilt.
Sam’s dad wasn’t much help, in fact, most would say he was a danger. Kicked out of home when he was a child, he lived scrounging himself an existence in the countryside of El Salvadore where he was born to unwilling parents. Not much was known about him except his propensity for child pornography and his fits of rage. Tamara would complain to the girls at work how she had come home from work to her trailer and her babysitting ex and find downloads of child porn on her computer. This didn’t stop her from having him care for her four year old son, although most wondered at her judgement. Miriam was always too scared, too disgusted to ask what gender the children had been in the videos, what ages, how violent had the acts been and how could she ever, ever consider having that man go near her son?
Miriam had always had a good place to live. She was the type that could float into a new town and find the unlisted, lower-than-market-price, on three acres dream house. Tamara had been living in her thoroughly mildewed trailer on her dad’s property for years. “What do you think about renting one of those big farm houses out off of Highway 12 together?” Tamara could smell happiness and success on Miriam and she wanted some for herself. “We could share child-care and do crafts together…maybe start some kind of little business together?” A big part of Miriam wanted to be Tamara’s savior. She saw the hurt little girl, saw the desire to be a good mom, to make better for herself and hers, wanted to believe that that could happen. Tamara’s beauty and tiny frame were seductive. One wanted to rescue her, scoop her up and set her right. Wash away the makeup and put her in vocational school. But Miriam’s primal mother instincts screamed out “Keep anything to do with Tamara far far away from my precious little girl.” There was no way she would let the father of Sam near her little girl, not even let someone like that know where they lived, let alone share a house with a relative of his. There was no way she wanted to get sucked down into the vortex of Tamara’s black hole of self-destruction and misery. Miriam did not have any extra fat off her ass or her life to cut Tamara.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Look Back in Anger
Am I able to write well only when writing from anger? The last couple of posting have not been that great, not compelling, not sparkling and it's because I didn't feel any anger when I was writing them. My frustrations at waiting tables is stale, haven't felt it for months so its not deep enough to vividly paint anything but a twice-removed bystander's remarks. Ditto for my posting on remembering my childhood Christmases. Being that they were the time of the year when things were good, I don't have the acrid taste of injustice and heavy tears in my throat as I write and therefore I feel the writing is weak and flimsy and does nothing to me or the reader.
A piece I wrote several years back that I think of as some of my best work was written with fresh, juicy judgement and disdain and that emotion carried me through eight pages before I got distracted----- or happy. Do I have the power to pull out strong prose without the fresh smart of pain to push me on? I don't want to be unhappy my whole life, is that what it takes to be a great writer? What a cliche! I was terribly happy in undergrad and wrote some really strong and vibrant essays. Perhaps the emotion doesn't have to be negative, just there. My fears about needing to be angry to write well are perhaps just another attempt to make an excuse why not to write.
I dream of having the time, the passion, the commitment to keep going, beyond eight pages, deep into a story and create so many words and images and characters and situations that get you right there that it becomes a book. This longing to create more than a few pages feels the same as when I am deeply lonely, or when I was thirty and felt that I must have a child or I would die. I want to go away somewhere alone and lock myself up with the computer and let it all gush out of me.
But then there is the fear that it wouldn't gush, that it is now and always will be only a trickle. The fear that I am a dabbler, the horrid word, dilettante, and not a true writer, that I don't have enough to sustain a novel. Since I was a young adult, I always said my worst fear was to be mediocre. I would rather fail miserably than be mediocre. Perhaps this partially explains my choice in men. Mediocrity was synonymous with the suburbs, with "normalcy," with pre-fab creativity and store-bought uniqueness, with men that were nice and kind and boring in bed.
I panic when I think of this "thing" that I have never done. I feel plagued by it. Since third grade, I have heard it, "You should write!" I want to do it, I want to write, but I am so afraid of it not being good, and then what will I fall back on as my reason for being, for the great thing I want to yet attain in life? "You should take your writing seriously." I am afraid to take my writing seriously because if I do, and I fail, if it sucks, or worse, is mediocre, then what am I left with? If I keep putting it off, pushing aside those cunning little phrases that lodge themselves in my brain when I am driving and demand to be noted down, if I keep making up excuses not to write as I have for decades now, then I will never know, and maybe that is better. Maybe the bittersweet, "I coulda been" is better than the conclusive, cold, hard "I am not."
Christmas Behind the Avocado Green Door
Christmas wasn’t just the rare chance to get new toys and books, it was the time of year that mom usually felt the best and was happy and positive and awake in the morning. It was the time of year when the house was clean and we did crafts together in the evenings and had company over to decorate cookies with. There were Christmas records on as I fell asleep at night and a sense of safety and security. Mom wasn’t going to spiral down in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Like Johnny Mathis crooned, at Christmas-time, I could count on her.
In the manic roller-coaster ride of living with her, Christmas was always that highest pinnacle of “up” time before the deep plunge down in January. We never had just the one tree that would remain in the living room until late April; we usually had at least five or six. The framed art on the wall was switched to paintings of the Christmas story by Fra Fillipo Lippi, and Da Vinci. Mom assembled her beautifully detailed nativity scene on three shelves of the china cabinet. Little antiqued scrolls with quotes from Luke and Mathew hung in each scene. The three Magi wore robes of Indian silk and velvet and escorted camels from Iran burdened with gifts, the shepherds and their flock stood in a field of rocks and twig-trees, the angel hovering over their heads, an outburst of light surrounding her. The holy family was nestled in a stable covered in moss, carpeted with hay and populated with carved wooden animals. Sitting and listening to my favorite Christmas music while looking at these scenes was one of my favorite things during Christmas. Mom had made a perfect environment for the baby Jesus. This baby was tended and loved and surrounded by people. Even the ox and the ass looked with love towards him.
Every evening we would open a window of the old advent calendar mom had bought for herself when she was a child. It was a scene of a bustling street in some old-world town. Behind each window there was a numerical reference to a passage in the bible, again from Luke or Mathew, chronologically telling with each night, the story of the birth of Christ. I would sit in her lap in the giant old leather armchair that had been my grandfathers, and she would read the passage to me.
On Christmas eve, after the milk, cookies and nine carrots had been left out for santa, and my letter to him had been written, we would light candles, turn out the lights, and listen to Handel’s Messiah, a tradition my grandmother started, only at her house it was always in front of the fire accompanied by shrimp cocktail for me and real cocktails for the adults. These times together were so peaceful and nourishing, it is a surprise I did not turn out to be religious. Instead, I just became very attached to Christmas.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Neighbors
It gets hot in Stockton, during the summer and early fall, the heat is relentless and leaves most stuck by their air conditioners. The heat had that effect on our neighbors, Doris and Bernard, both retired, both overweight, and looking back, both probably concerned for the skinny lonely girl that lived next door to them. Doris had large wiggly upper arms that were usually exposed by her bright floral mumu. She would sit in her rocking lazy-boy recliner and talk with mom about bonsai gardening and knitting. I was always bored when we visited D&B, but also grateful to have a respite from the barren loneliness of our life. Bernard was balding, simple, kind, wore polyester plaid pants and matching shirts with topstitching, and was my escort at the Campfire Girl’s Father-Daughter dinner when I was 9. I was embarrassed as hell to have this old dork fronting for my dad. A neighbor! In my apartment building! All the other girls in my troop were from the good side of town. They had architect dads and doctor dads and lawyer dads, all of whom came to the dinner, and lived in plush real houses with moms that got up in the morning and played tennis and made them casseroles for dinner. Me, skinny as a toothpick, polyester knit headband over greasy hair, so excited to be eating “real food” from a “happy home” at the potluck dinner, fending off the questions, “Is that your dad? Where is your dad?” I would do my best to disappear, which wasn’t hard.
On the other side of our apartment, in #39, lived Dorothy, another single mom, and her mentally handicapped teenage son, Martin. Martin was obsessed with Elvis. Sometimes when I hear Elvis, I can still smell Martin, a mix of hormones, stress and nerves buckling under his giant frame and through his perfectly pressed shirt. Mom was afraid of him, afraid of me being alone in his room with him…I was too young to know why or understand, but her fear, his scent, and Elvis became cobbled in my little brain. Elvis was sexual frustration.
Dorothy was sexual frustration manifest. Not a hair out of place bee-hive, frosty blue eye shadow, frosty pink lipstick at all times, a house so impeccably clean and orderly it astounded or horrified. Her collection of white porcelain cat statues with turquoise blue rhinestone eyes lined up in perfect dust-free order on her coffee table. The little bowl of after-dinner mints I looked at in awe but was never invited to partake of. The same avocado-green-shag carpet, but hers was always fluffy.
Dorothy was a waitress at a venerable lunch spot on the Miracle Mile. The kind of place that had pie a la mode and a “diet plate” that consisted of a scoop of cottage cheese presented on a piece of iceberg, a hamburger patty and a sliced tomato. I used to dream of going there and getting a malted. Dorothy spent her time off work cleaning, dusting, polishing, perhaps in some mad hope that she could scrub away the "stain" of her son’s handicap, her divorce, and her empty life.
On the other side of our apartment, in #39, lived Dorothy, another single mom, and her mentally handicapped teenage son, Martin. Martin was obsessed with Elvis. Sometimes when I hear Elvis, I can still smell Martin, a mix of hormones, stress and nerves buckling under his giant frame and through his perfectly pressed shirt. Mom was afraid of him, afraid of me being alone in his room with him…I was too young to know why or understand, but her fear, his scent, and Elvis became cobbled in my little brain. Elvis was sexual frustration.
Dorothy was sexual frustration manifest. Not a hair out of place bee-hive, frosty blue eye shadow, frosty pink lipstick at all times, a house so impeccably clean and orderly it astounded or horrified. Her collection of white porcelain cat statues with turquoise blue rhinestone eyes lined up in perfect dust-free order on her coffee table. The little bowl of after-dinner mints I looked at in awe but was never invited to partake of. The same avocado-green-shag carpet, but hers was always fluffy.
Dorothy was a waitress at a venerable lunch spot on the Miracle Mile. The kind of place that had pie a la mode and a “diet plate” that consisted of a scoop of cottage cheese presented on a piece of iceberg, a hamburger patty and a sliced tomato. I used to dream of going there and getting a malted. Dorothy spent her time off work cleaning, dusting, polishing, perhaps in some mad hope that she could scrub away the "stain" of her son’s handicap, her divorce, and her empty life.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
No More Waiting
I got my first restaurant job in 1984, at the swankiest, bay-view vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. For the next two decades, I worked slinging hash. Whether driven by financial necessity or lack of any better ideas on what to do with my life, I waited to get by.
Here are some random notes from those days. I decided to post them today because I am so grateful not to be waiting any longer. Christmas was always the most heartbreaking time to be waiting as a single mom.
Flashback: 2004, Sonoma County
On busy nights, you wait to pee so long that you eventually don't have to pee anymore---so what happens? Where does it go? Does it turn into b.o? Or that pimple on your cheek? The pimple is probably from the food you grab and throw into your mouth...handfuls of cold french fries dipped in garlic aoili and swallowed as you walk to your new table, slowly you turn to get the water pitcher off the waitstand to buy yourself that extra second it takes to suck your tongue over the front of your teeth to make sure you don't have any remaining globs of starch stuck there. Two seconds later, you greet your customers: "May I offer you a cocktail?"
Sonoma is chock-full of cork-dorks. Everyone is either a grower, a maker, a connoisseur, or, the most popular category, a wanna-be. You have to learn how to talk the talk to get through a night with a room full of c.d.'s: from appellations to stelvin's to tannins and terroir, you had to at least be able to b.s. credibly.
Mocking customers and gossiping about each other gets your through the night. Who is Catherine bagging now? She's already moved through the grill and saute station's offerings and now is making her moves on, the manager: forbidden fruit. She can use the kitchen crew for sex, they won't get their hearts involved -they're tough and smell like stale sweat mixed with food. Of course, if you get on their bad side, you won't get that little extra snacky-treat when you're starving at the end of the night or that half a cheesecake for "your son."
Snobby Waiter Sniggers:
"Ranch dressing!"
"Well-done halibut!"
"Irish coffee with a half dozen oysters!"
"He thought the Marin French Double Cream was an ice cream!!"
"Fat guy on 32 started off with a half dozen Hog Islands, then had a New York with frites, a side of choufleur gratin, and a Diet Coke! HA! Lot of good that will do him!"
"She wanted a wine cooler!"
"Pina Colada! Ha! 'I'm sorry, we don't have a blender in the establishment.'"
You get home so tired, your feet and back aching, but you are completely wired from the adrenaline of dealing with hundreds of demands simultaneously. You stink and your face is sticky with sweat and grease from the open kitchen. But you have a nice little pile of cash and tomorrow till four o'clock to forget you are a waitress.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Oh Christmas Tree
It was a week before my birthday, but a party was probably not going to happen as the Christmas tree was still up
Its branches a strange orange-ish yellow, curving downward, it stood in our living room as an artifact from the last
time mom had been feeling good. We had joked about re-decorating it for all the holidays it had witnessed, a little
sprinkling of glitter red hearts would make it right as rain, a couple of mini Easter baskets and bunnies. But I didn’t
think there was a way to camouflage it adequately enough to make it not shout out “Crazy mom!” to friends at a
birthday party. The tree barred the door from anyone coming over to our house, so it had been a very lonely stretch- -
not that we ever had that many visitors. When we did finally take it down, I was so afraid of someone seeing us carrying
it to the curb, I begged mom to wait till after dark. All week, I walked by my jailer, the Christmas tree, wondering what
people thought of the home it came from. But the lightness in being liberated from it was amazing. I could pretend
we were normal again without the screeching curled-claw orange reminder.
Its branches a strange orange-ish yellow, curving downward, it stood in our living room as an artifact from the last
time mom had been feeling good. We had joked about re-decorating it for all the holidays it had witnessed, a little
sprinkling of glitter red hearts would make it right as rain, a couple of mini Easter baskets and bunnies. But I didn’t
think there was a way to camouflage it adequately enough to make it not shout out “Crazy mom!” to friends at a
birthday party. The tree barred the door from anyone coming over to our house, so it had been a very lonely stretch- -
not that we ever had that many visitors. When we did finally take it down, I was so afraid of someone seeing us carrying
it to the curb, I begged mom to wait till after dark. All week, I walked by my jailer, the Christmas tree, wondering what
people thought of the home it came from. But the lightness in being liberated from it was amazing. I could pretend
we were normal again without the screeching curled-claw orange reminder.
You and Me Against the World
The pain began when I was six. It probably began before that but I was too young to notice. Mom and dad divorced when I was two. I remember very very early mornings being dropped off at day-care and mom heading to work as a high school art teacher. I remember tv dinners and spending time in her classroom while she worked, but none of those early memories are hard. I don’t know the particulars of how things happened or where I was, but I do remember having to spend the night at a stranger’s house, a woman who perhaps worked at the day-care center I went to or worked with my mom. I remember being afraid and sad and that the Roman Meal bread stuck in my throat terribly because I was trying to hold back the tears. I think I had gone home with this person from daycare, and had not seen my mom since she dropped me off. I don’t know if this was the day she walked onto the freeway and tried to kill herself, but I do know soon after I was living with a friend of my mom’s from work, Greta, and her daughter, Beth who was around my age. I think I remember packing with mom and being told it wouldn’t be for long, that mommie was sick and had to stay in a hospital. She gave me a little folding picture frame with two photos of she and I together and I remember just staring and staring at the photos and holding it at night as I fell asleep
The hospital was Stockton’s State Mental Hospital. The sickness was severe clinical depression and her three-month stay did not cure it. We visited mom on the hospital grounds a few times. It was actually a lovely place, outside. Big oak trees and large lawns. I heard many times growing up how it was not so lovely inside however. Mom had been asked to assist in shock-therapy sessions on other patients, had been abused or threatened by other patients and orderlies and had lived for three months in an environment that would make any sane person wacko. Unfortunately, my compassion for my mom’s ordeals inside the asylum was minimized by the early age at which I began to hear about her experiences there, and by years of repetition. I was six years old, and I was not loveable enough, important enough for my mom to want to live or want to be there for me. That was the lasting lesson.
Well, I could have gotten over that one, could have dealt with that initial abandonment, but in subsequent years, whenever things got too tough for mom, when she couldn’t handle reality any longer, she would either threaten or attempt suicide, although the threats were the most popular choice. One way to deal with the guilt, hurt, fear, loneliness that she was feeling was to say she couldn’t take anymore, that life was too hard, and that she was going to go drive her car over a cliff or into a brick wall. After such a statement was dramatically made, she would leave the house, revving the engine as she drove away and I had to use whatever eight-year-old skills I had to calm myself down and reassure myself that she would be back, that everything would be ok, that Christmas would come again next year and she would be there with me.
Often, I felt as if I were to blame for mom not being able to “take it anymore.” I thought if I held in all my worries and fears and complaints, all my dreams and desires, if I could stay quiet and good, mom would be good too and life wouldn’t be too hard for her. But it was hard for me to be quiet when I saw such injustice happening to me. Why did we have enough money on our miniscule budget for her cartons and cartons of cigarettes, (two packs a day), and not enough for a package of lunch-meat once in awhile, (peanut butter was my number one lunch ingredient, dressed up with pickles or banana on top). Why did I have to accept and allow her string of loser men into my life and what I judged as "between" us? Fine, let them try and wake her in the morning. Fine, I will accept and be happy about the Star Trek Enterprise plastic model set for my “big” birthday present because he is into model sets and we can “do it together.” Why did she get new clothes every time she was dating someone new, but I got my one set of school clothes and one pair of shoes for the year and they had to last, even though I was growing quick and all my pants ended up being floods by January (how was I to make it to June with floods like this?).
The relationships never lasted long, and she always came back to me, singing “our song”, “You and me against the world, sometimes it feels like you and me against the world. When all the others turn their back and walk away
You can count on me to stay”
The hospital was Stockton’s State Mental Hospital. The sickness was severe clinical depression and her three-month stay did not cure it. We visited mom on the hospital grounds a few times. It was actually a lovely place, outside. Big oak trees and large lawns. I heard many times growing up how it was not so lovely inside however. Mom had been asked to assist in shock-therapy sessions on other patients, had been abused or threatened by other patients and orderlies and had lived for three months in an environment that would make any sane person wacko. Unfortunately, my compassion for my mom’s ordeals inside the asylum was minimized by the early age at which I began to hear about her experiences there, and by years of repetition. I was six years old, and I was not loveable enough, important enough for my mom to want to live or want to be there for me. That was the lasting lesson.
Well, I could have gotten over that one, could have dealt with that initial abandonment, but in subsequent years, whenever things got too tough for mom, when she couldn’t handle reality any longer, she would either threaten or attempt suicide, although the threats were the most popular choice. One way to deal with the guilt, hurt, fear, loneliness that she was feeling was to say she couldn’t take anymore, that life was too hard, and that she was going to go drive her car over a cliff or into a brick wall. After such a statement was dramatically made, she would leave the house, revving the engine as she drove away and I had to use whatever eight-year-old skills I had to calm myself down and reassure myself that she would be back, that everything would be ok, that Christmas would come again next year and she would be there with me.
Often, I felt as if I were to blame for mom not being able to “take it anymore.” I thought if I held in all my worries and fears and complaints, all my dreams and desires, if I could stay quiet and good, mom would be good too and life wouldn’t be too hard for her. But it was hard for me to be quiet when I saw such injustice happening to me. Why did we have enough money on our miniscule budget for her cartons and cartons of cigarettes, (two packs a day), and not enough for a package of lunch-meat once in awhile, (peanut butter was my number one lunch ingredient, dressed up with pickles or banana on top). Why did I have to accept and allow her string of loser men into my life and what I judged as "between" us? Fine, let them try and wake her in the morning. Fine, I will accept and be happy about the Star Trek Enterprise plastic model set for my “big” birthday present because he is into model sets and we can “do it together.” Why did she get new clothes every time she was dating someone new, but I got my one set of school clothes and one pair of shoes for the year and they had to last, even though I was growing quick and all my pants ended up being floods by January (how was I to make it to June with floods like this?).
The relationships never lasted long, and she always came back to me, singing “our song”, “You and me against the world, sometimes it feels like you and me against the world. When all the others turn their back and walk away
You can count on me to stay”
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
A blog of one's own
Sometimes it gets annoying to have the "writer button" turned on in my brain. Especially if there is no time to get the stuff that begins to overload my circuits down on paper. I keep thinking it would be cool to have one of those little dictation devices so I could whip it out while driving and record my thoughts. But then there is the question , "how valuable are these passing notions and reflections?" -my strong inner-critic asks. Are my thoughts interesting enough to waste paper on? Do they add anything to the world besides more blahblahblah, that blogging has increased ten-thousand-fold?
What I do know is that when the writer button is on, I am able to step away from the action that is my life and gain some immediate perspective. I am not always able to narrate the events and gain key insights as things happen, especially in the emotional realm, but writing, daily writing, allows me to digest and reconsider recent history and by doing so, disconnect the emotional/reactionary and see the blow-by-blow reality.
My partner tells me I have a very strong and active imagination. He is right. My imagination saved me as a child. It provided the happy, steady home I craved. But it can also get me in trouble when left on its own to run ravage over my relationship. With too much time on my hands, I can build ramparts and fortresses of defense against imaginary attackers. I think, also in this way, writing can save me. I can channel my creative imagination towards building something positive, something others might enjoy, rather than building a narrative with which to tear down my relationship with.
I have wanted to write since I was a child. My first "novel" was "published" in third grade, a mystery involving lost treasure, that I gave as Christmas presents to my family. My mother has always urged me to write, and in recent years, my dad has joined in the chorus. But I never believed in myself enough to do it seriously. The huge lack of confidence that led me to make so many mistakes with men, and in career choices also held me back from taking myself seriously enough to pursue writing. I would go through a period when I couldn't hold back the tide of words any longer and would write half of a short story, or one fantastic essay, and then years would pass. I have a well-worn folder I keep my writing in and periodically I would take out my favorite pieces and read them and literally weep. I could sense I was good, that this was my gift, but I didn't know how to sustain the desire through the obstacle course of single-motherhood, student-life, and the disasters I continually created with men. Opening that folder was like seeing my best friend I hadn't seen in years, the best friend that knows you so well she completes you, reflects the best of you back at you for you to marvel at. "Is that really me?" This may come-off as self-adoration, but sometimes my words would make me feel swoony with their beauty and power and I really would question if they were mine, if I was still capable of creating like that.
My words may never have that effect on anyone else, but the most important thing I know is that I feel at my best when I am writing. I feel powerful, capable, happy, confident, and hopeful. So whether I am read or not, I will continue to write. Whether I add something unique or just add to the sea of words, here it is.
Avocado Green Door
Avocado green door, brass #40 behind which lay matching shag carpet with flecks of goldenrod throughout. Like teal and mauve in the late eighties, a color combo that by 1975 had made its mark and left most civilized corners of the world but still stained my childhood home with its attempt at outdated hip-ness. Furnished with a mix of great-grandma’s brittle Victorian pieces, and curb finds reincarnated in our living as “pole lamp,” “side table,” and “armchair,” as well as the cool 70’s bookshelf: wood plank and bricks, it could have been cool, artistic, eclectic, if not for the shag that highlighted the beaten-down aspects of it all rather than a purposeful shabby-chic ness. Mom found home furnishings and men in the discard pile of other people’s lives. With her highly attuned ability to make something out of nothing, the veritable “silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” (one of her favorite expressions), she was cruelly blessed with deceitful optimism that a new coat of paint could render clean and new what was unrepairable.
Sometimes my chore would be to rake the shag rugs and make them fluffy, though one trip across the living room to flip a record over and the effect was ruined. The shag rake also doubled as a comb for the fringe on the Isfahan rug. When mom was up, meaning anal retentive and controlling as hell, every damned creamy fringe on that rug had to be straight. When she was down, meaning in a deep depression, entombed in her bed for days, there would be a straight-ish off-white line across the floor as well, but this one composed of maggots inching their way towards what?, and away from a week’s worth of piled garbage barricading the sliding door to the patio. Ah, to be able to open that door and get some relief from the smell a Stockton summer can summon up from brown bags full of gunk.
Mom dreamed “Sunset Home and Garden,” but didn’t get beyond an apartment cement patio filled with hundreds of potted plants and mac and cheese with hot dogs and frozen peas.
I knew early on she needed help, and I tried my best. At six I was the one getting up and making us breakfast, wanting to help sustain the dream of happy home and full tummies, and in the hope that this would be an “up” day and she would be out of bed before noon, before dinner time, and I could have a day not filled with deep fears (maybe she is dead in there, maybe I am alone now), and deep loneliness. I became a pro at raising the dead. The heavy anti-depressants and, according to her, her extreme low blood sugar, made her sleep so deeply, it took hours of coaching to get her to swallow a sip of orange juice or take a bite of toast with peanut butter. I would crouch by her bed, begging, “Mommie, just take a sip and swallow, swallow it! Now take a bite and chew. Chew Mommie, chew! Now swallow!!” Pinching her check to get her conscious enough to realize she had food in her mouth helped, but sometimes, I would get impatient and leave her with a bite in her mouth, the plate of toast on her bed. Coming back during a commercial break, walking down the hall, I would pray I would find her sitting up in bed, eating and cheerful, I would visualize it, get excited if I heard a noise from her room. Most often, I would find the glummy bite still in her cheek, peanut butter ooze on the corner of her mouth, deep deep away from me still. One day I found her face plastered in the toast, the peanut butter sticking the bread to her face, it was funny to a seven year old, would have been funnier if my tummy hadn’t been rumbling and it was 2 in the afternoon.
Sometimes my chore would be to rake the shag rugs and make them fluffy, though one trip across the living room to flip a record over and the effect was ruined. The shag rake also doubled as a comb for the fringe on the Isfahan rug. When mom was up, meaning anal retentive and controlling as hell, every damned creamy fringe on that rug had to be straight. When she was down, meaning in a deep depression, entombed in her bed for days, there would be a straight-ish off-white line across the floor as well, but this one composed of maggots inching their way towards what?, and away from a week’s worth of piled garbage barricading the sliding door to the patio. Ah, to be able to open that door and get some relief from the smell a Stockton summer can summon up from brown bags full of gunk.
Mom dreamed “Sunset Home and Garden,” but didn’t get beyond an apartment cement patio filled with hundreds of potted plants and mac and cheese with hot dogs and frozen peas.
I knew early on she needed help, and I tried my best. At six I was the one getting up and making us breakfast, wanting to help sustain the dream of happy home and full tummies, and in the hope that this would be an “up” day and she would be out of bed before noon, before dinner time, and I could have a day not filled with deep fears (maybe she is dead in there, maybe I am alone now), and deep loneliness. I became a pro at raising the dead. The heavy anti-depressants and, according to her, her extreme low blood sugar, made her sleep so deeply, it took hours of coaching to get her to swallow a sip of orange juice or take a bite of toast with peanut butter. I would crouch by her bed, begging, “Mommie, just take a sip and swallow, swallow it! Now take a bite and chew. Chew Mommie, chew! Now swallow!!” Pinching her check to get her conscious enough to realize she had food in her mouth helped, but sometimes, I would get impatient and leave her with a bite in her mouth, the plate of toast on her bed. Coming back during a commercial break, walking down the hall, I would pray I would find her sitting up in bed, eating and cheerful, I would visualize it, get excited if I heard a noise from her room. Most often, I would find the glummy bite still in her cheek, peanut butter ooze on the corner of her mouth, deep deep away from me still. One day I found her face plastered in the toast, the peanut butter sticking the bread to her face, it was funny to a seven year old, would have been funnier if my tummy hadn’t been rumbling and it was 2 in the afternoon.
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