Tall, Lanky, Curly- Haired Hippy Wanderer
Living in that house seems a million worlds away. The separation of lives and ages finally settling on the bottom of the glass like tiny bits of sediment…was it a dream? I remember the first night Danny made us all pasta puttanesca. I’d never even heard of it and then it became the refrain of our entire year. Garlic, tomatoes, olives, capers and spiciness. Mounds and mounds of it. Candlelight and stars. Sitting around the old, wood, built-in, kitchen table. Eight of us, young, bright-eyed and world-weary before we’d actually experienced anything. Bottles of purple teeth and hand-rolled cigarettes. The evenings always ended with dancing and hand-rolled cigarettes. Me, Chris, Beth, Danny, Degge and that other guy -- what was his name? I can’t believe I can’t remember his name. Goofy, curly-haired, lover, Berkeley-tumbleweed. Oh, and Brett and Alex. I’d never been friends with Lesbians before. And I think the tall, curly-haired boy was their lover too. I think Alex has a husband and two children now. Maybe she wasn’t really a lesbian – just a 20-something experimenter. Who knows? And sometimes Pearl and Brooke came to dinner. I loved them both. They were there the night of the Taurus extravaganza. Did we really make a giant paper maché bull and wind our way down the staircase dancing to the Kronos quartet? Wigs and endless nights in my loft, out on the porch, looking out over the San Francisco skyline pondering the possibilities of adulthood. Bopping through the timeless days of twenty; hazy mornings that melted into wistful nights, Saul’s Deli and love. It was the first time I felt the love of a group. We were a group, weren’t we? Like the mates of St. Elmos Fire. Where you only know you’re part of it once it’s over, looking back at it in retrospect. Because being aware of it while you’re in it is next to impossible – especially at that age. And so we swayed our hips to the music and kissed and smoked weed and complained about all the responsibility we didn’t have and made plans we never kept – although we kept the plan to go to New York. And Danny and Beth kept their plans to move back to France. But, after that, the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into jobs and wives and husbands and cities all over the world. And then eventually, we just forgot. Forgot we’d been comrades, forgot about that old house on Spruce and Rose, forgot how much we’d been in love. I’ve even forgotten his name; the tall, lanky, curly-haired, Hippie-wanderer. I can’t even remember his name.
Call Brother Northincale
She asked if Izzy used to leave his body when he was little. I thought about my mother and how she would scoff at even asking such a ridiculous question. But I said, I’m not sure. I think he used to. I wanted to hear what she would say -- before I told her anything. She said he did. She said he used to leave when he was sleeping. He was going back home because he was homesick. Northincale. Izzy stopped talking about it a few years ago but it used to be our dinner conversation at least a few nights a week. I know so much about Northincale. Izzy started talking about it when he was 1, or maybe earlier. It was whenever he knew enough words to put a sentence together because as soon as he could do that, he started telling us about Northincale; about how beautiful it was, about how the people never died, about his older brother and his little baby sister. As he was falling asleep he’d say, “Mommy, I miss my brother,” and it would break my heart. Break my heart because I couldn’t do anything about it. He missed somebody and I had no idea how to help. One night he went out to the porch with Lily and they were looking up at the stars and Lily said, the stars are so beautiful, they make me feel sleepy. And he said, not me, they make me miss my brother. He wasn’t even two. We put a letter for his brother in the mailbox, he tried asking Siri to find him, to call him, to tell him what to do. Finally, I told him the best way to contact his brother was through his heart, in his dreams. He came into the kitchen yesterday morning holding his front tooth. Big wide grin like a proud mother holding her newborn. And our eyes connected and we slowly melted together, my face merging with his, our bodies connecting and as I stood in his body looking out, I saw me. And as me, as him, I watched as my mamma grew old and wrinkled, like a sweet old prune and I, as him, remembered my childhood like it was a dream. You know, I don’t even know if Northincale is even real anymore. That’s what I thought, as Izzy, as me. And most everyone around me would agree, Northincale was probably just a dream. I wonder what my mamma would say if she were still alive?
Becoming My Mother
I was with a friend the other day and she was holding her one month-old baby and she said that she couldn’t believe it but she was already becoming her mother. She said it with a face-full-of-dread and then proceeded to explain how she’d vowed she would NEVER be like her mother.
You know, come on, we all say that, “I’m never going to turn into my mother.” And then somewhere in our thirties we silently start thinking, “Shit, I’m turning into my mother.” Do you know why that happens? Why, you don’t want to become your mother but then you start becoming her anyway? BECAUSE YOU ALREADY ARE YOUR MOTHER. You have been since Day 1, you just didn’t know because you had no perspective. You are her DNA, her quirky qualities, her annoying habits, YOU ARE her ENTIRE BEING. And, by the way, you loved that entire being for a long time until, one day, you didn’t.
Here’s what we do: We WORSHIP our parents until we’re like 14, then we JUDGE THEM until we’re like 40 and then we slowly start BECOMING them. Why do we start becoming them around age 40? Because that’s the same age THEY WERE when we started judging them. Do you see? It’s an illusion! We didn’t START becoming them, we already were them just at a younger age. They weren’t always 40, they used to be 15 and they were carefree and awesome. But then when we were about 15 and they were about 40 we stopped seeing them through the eyes of the adoring child.
We started seeing them as two regular adults and we were horrified with what we saw because adults do things that seem horrific to kids. They’re serious and they make rules and they get angry and frustrated and all the shit that comes along with having responsibilities.
And we say, “I’m never gonna be like that, “ but then we grow and grow and grow until we finally become adults and then we start doing the same things our parents did when they were 40 because now we’re 40! And that’s how people are when they’re 40!
So really, don’t be scared that you’re going to become your mother. You already ARE your mother. You should just start worshipping her again, like you did when you were little, because it’s you.
You know, come on, we all say that, “I’m never going to turn into my mother.” And then somewhere in our thirties we silently start thinking, “Shit, I’m turning into my mother.” Do you know why that happens? Why, you don’t want to become your mother but then you start becoming her anyway? BECAUSE YOU ALREADY ARE YOUR MOTHER. You have been since Day 1, you just didn’t know because you had no perspective. You are her DNA, her quirky qualities, her annoying habits, YOU ARE her ENTIRE BEING. And, by the way, you loved that entire being for a long time until, one day, you didn’t.
Here’s what we do: We WORSHIP our parents until we’re like 14, then we JUDGE THEM until we’re like 40 and then we slowly start BECOMING them. Why do we start becoming them around age 40? Because that’s the same age THEY WERE when we started judging them. Do you see? It’s an illusion! We didn’t START becoming them, we already were them just at a younger age. They weren’t always 40, they used to be 15 and they were carefree and awesome. But then when we were about 15 and they were about 40 we stopped seeing them through the eyes of the adoring child.
We started seeing them as two regular adults and we were horrified with what we saw because adults do things that seem horrific to kids. They’re serious and they make rules and they get angry and frustrated and all the shit that comes along with having responsibilities.
And we say, “I’m never gonna be like that, “ but then we grow and grow and grow until we finally become adults and then we start doing the same things our parents did when they were 40 because now we’re 40! And that’s how people are when they’re 40!
So really, don’t be scared that you’re going to become your mother. You already ARE your mother. You should just start worshipping her again, like you did when you were little, because it’s you.
The Souks
Tentatively we push our way through the cobblestoned streets of the Medina. The air is heavy and wafts through our bones -- a mixture of exotic spices, car exhaust, cow dung, animal urine and roasting meat. In the labyrinth of the souks, there’s barely room to walk. Pungent bodies rubbing up against our arms, carts piled high with turnips pulled by emaciated mules, starving dogs searching for scraps, vendors calling into the crowd, dilapidated scooters carrying entire families wending their ways through the throngs of dark robes. The side-by-side stalls are a visual cornucopia. Metal lamps, silk scarves, leather shoes, teapots, glassware, clothing, candles, spices, oils. Yet I try not to let my eyes become distracted, because I know that if they rest too long on any one stall, I will be accosted. “Hey, ma’am, something you like? Yes, you come see. Ma’am, yes, come. Oh, Ali Baba.” My husband’s bright blue eyes have earned him the nickname Ali Baba and the vendors use it liberally to try and garner our attention. We avert our eyes but too late. My arm is being squeezed by a rough hand pulling me towards a stall. I’ve learned not to smile or politely decline like I would at home. Instead I yank back and pull away. And then the facade of charm quickly dissipates and we’re left with a sneer and a few choice words muttered under exhaled breath. We push forward. The searing sun has begun to cool as afternoon fades into evening. Turning the map over and around, my husband puts one finger on a spindly line and another on the center of the web. If he is correct, we have only a few more turns to make before we’ll be in the Jmaa el-Fnaa. Once there, we will order our coffee and watch the chained monkeys jump for their masters, the snake charmers entice the daring to snap a picture with their cobras. We follow the faint sound of the flutes, turning, turning, turning until the endless maze finally opens onto the dimly lit square, bustling with entertainers, tourists, vendors and beasts. And then my foot catches on the crumpled blankets of a blind woman situated on the cobblestone in a mound of soiled and tattered clothing. One of her arms reaches out towards us, the other clutches her crying baby.
First Kiss
Bear, that was his name. There’s Bear singing on stage, his plump little body squeezed into a dress, wearing tights and singing an old Irish Ballad. And the night air wraps around my tiny body like a cool blanket and all the children around me are giggling and bright-faced, taking in the scene. Ruthie on one side of me, Missy on the other, I’m following Bear around the stage, but my eyes keep darting to Brian. His striped green and blue shirt and blue corduroy short- shorts, skinny little legs, sitting next to Missy. Tonight is the night. The last night of camp, the last campfire, the last talent show, the last opportunity to kiss. My palms feel clammy. And then we’re all walking back to the bunks, ten girls arm-in-arm, chattering, giggling, breathless from our night of revelry. And in the cool, magical darkness, the stars begin to fall around me. Landing in the grassy field and then lightly on my head, one on my shoulder, two on my lips and then suddenly, I’m choking on them, little stars caught in my throat and lungs and now they’re filling up my stomach so that I feel like I might puke. And the girls are all giggling and asking, “Are you gonna French him? Have you already Frenched him?” I open my mouth to speak but instead, my tongue sticks out and starts twirling through the darkness. And stars are floating up from my belly as I twist and turn my tongue and then I grasp an empty coke bottle and thrust my tongue through it’s tiny opening and it winds its way to the bottom, feeling the cold glass all the way down. And now it’s travelling through the glass bottom and into the dirt, through the grass and it tastes muddy and dry and now it starting to hurt from hitting the rocks and I try and pull it back but it won’t stop. It’s slithering and sliding all the way to the boy’s bunkhouse and now it’s climbing up the cold metal foot of Brian’s bed, over his dirty sheets, across his face, smudged with marshmallows and chocolate, straight into his mouth. Warm and wet, our tongues intertwine like the tails of possums, melting and melding together. And now I’m in a slightly yellowed wedding dress and Brian is standing next to me in half a tuxedo, still wearing his little corduroy blue shorts and he says, “I do.” And I say “I do!” so enthusiastically that suddenly my tongue flinches and whips out of his mouth and recoils over his bed sheets, across the wooden slats of the floor, through the dirty field separating the boy’s camp from the girl’s and snaps back into my mouth. Stinging, swirling, I think I’m gonna throw up
The Miscarriage
I miscarried a baby in between my son and my daughter. I was about eight weeks pregnant and had been nauseous for six weeks straight. Not just regular nausea, but senseless nausea. The kind of nausea where you can’t pick your head up off the pillow because you start getting the spins. The kind of nausea you feel in your bones, crawling on your skin. Anyway, blah, blah, blah, let’s just say I was fucking nauseous. And then one afternoon, it starts – the bleeding. At first, I think, wow, this is weird, I’m spotting. But pretty quickly, it turns from spotting into full-on bleeding. I sit down on the toilet and, after watching blood pour out of me, decide to call the midwife. “How much are you bleeding? Have you bled more than a cup?“ I look into the toilet. I had gotten several liter-sized yogurt containers to catch the blood because I was afraid the baby would drop into the toilet. “Three yogurt containers.” “Call 911.” So anyway, the ambulance comes and by that time, I’ve passed out on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t see myself but I imagine I looked like a sunken snowman. Pale, lifeless, melting. I remember the ambulance guy leaning in close, “Hi. I’m Jack. Do you know your name?” And then we’re in the ambulance speeding towards the hospital. He takes my blood pressure. 50 over 20. Wowza. And all I want to do is fall asleep but Jack talks and talks and talks all the way to the hospital, asking me inane questions. Later, I find out it’s because he doesn’t want me to pass out because I might not come back. Anyway, next thing I know we are in the ER and my mother-in-law and our friend Ben (who happens to be a doctor at the hospital) have come to the ER. Ben is sitting in the little plastic chair at the end of my bed and won’t take his eyes off the heart monitor. I keep trying to close my eyes to just get a little rest but my two companions won’t let me. They keep cracking jokes, asking me questions. Anyway, at some point, I start really bleeding and Ben jumps up and runs out of the room and then suddenly I’m starring in an episode of ER. I’m being wheeled into an operating room, bright lights in my face, five nurses, four doctors, everyone giving orders to everyone else. But I feel strangely calm. I can barely make out what anyone is saying except when they bend right over my face and shout – just like in the movies. I feel no pain, I feel like I could float away. And then, boom, the lights go out. And blah, blah, blah, it’s now the middle of the night and I wake up in a new room and I’ve had an operation and a blood transfusion. Bam! Just like that. What a freaking trip.
Fall With Me
I just sniffed my armpits. Bennett says it’s gross when I do that but no one is here with me so I think it’s ok. I stink. For the past twenty years, I’ve been going back and forth, back and forth between the aluminum filled deodorants and the natural sticks. It’s a hard choice really because although the aluminum deodorant clogs your lymph nodes, potentially causes Alzheimer's disease and increases your risk for breast cancer, the natural stuff doesn’t work. I’ve tried lavender sticks, peach bars with enzymes, crystal rocks – none of them work. Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration. They usually work for about 30 minutes. Right after I get out of the shower and rub it under my armpits, I smell fresh as a daisy. But of course, it only lasts for those brief few moments, oh jeeze, who cares? Who’s really smelling my armpits anyway? I want to throw a pie in someone’s face. Wouldn’t that be fun? There was once a Brady Bunch episode where the whole family, including funny little Oliver, had a pie fight and it was magical. Greg throwing pies at Cindy, Alice smashing pies into Bobby’s face. They were all laughing and carrying on -- it was extraordinary. Ever since that episode, I wished my family could have a pie fight. In fact, I wanted my family to do lots of fun and outrageous things. I remember one time, we were at a ski resort and they had this guy at the top of the mountain offering to take pictures of people’s groups as a souvenir. I got all excited and begged my family to take a photo while we all pretended to be falling over! I had seen an example of it at the photo shop down in the lodge that morning – a group of teenagers all lined up and laughing hysterically because they had started falling over when the photographer snapped the photo – and I desperately wanted a picture of my family doing the same thing. I imagined my whole family bursting into laughter as we fell into a pile of bodies and snow and I could already imagine the hilarious photo hanging in our living room above our fireplace for all to see. “Please mom?! Please Dad?! Can we all pretend to fall over?!” But my parents just sneered and dismissed the idea. My mom told me that if I wanted to fall over so badly, I should just fall over myself. So, reluctantly, I did. I started falling over and tried to get the photographer to snap the photo while I was mid-air but he misunderstood or just plain ignored me and waited until I was settled. Then he said smile, and we all did and it sucked. Even now looking at the picture -- all of us in our 70’s puffy ski suits, the four of them standing in a neat row and me, with my little braids, lying in the snow in front of them like some Sports Illustrated sex kitten gone wrong -- I feel the pang of my disappointment. Why can’t adults have more fun? Bunch of sticks-in-the-mud. That photo could have been awesome.
The Fraternity Party
Music blaring, hundreds of twenty-somethings packed in like sardines, platform shoes, glossy lips, cool jeans, silky hair all throbbing to the beat of the music. Sweaty innocence, flirting eyes, groping hands, turn away, come back, go away, come back, oh she’s a tease! And the thrum, thrum, thrum of the drums, pounding, low bass guitar, keeping the room at a rhythmic swell; a giant mass of arms, legs, hair entangled on the dance floor; slippery wet with beer, damp walls from humidity rising. We push our way through, under, over, around towards the door and he takes the opportunity to rub up against me, leg on my thigh, ribs in my back. A coveted breath of fresh air from the courtyard and then grabbing my arm, he pulls me back into the sweaty mess. “Follow me.” He gives me a sly, over-the-shoulder glance but really I’ve got no choice, my arm is his, he won’t let go. Leading me past the gropers, pukers, screaming girls, drunk-for the-first-time madness towards the basement door. And we descend and then it’s dark, no pitch black and the floor feels rubbery beneath my feet. And it’s sweaty down there but different sweat, not dancing sweat but stale, dank sex sweat hanging in the air like a hungry cloud of VOG. Barely able to see my hand in front of my face, shadows in the corners, on the floor…what is it that we’re standing on? And then it dawns on me. I can’t see but I know what it is; sticky, filthy, dragged-from-their-beds, found-in-the-street, dirty used mattresses. Wall-to-wall, the entire basement. And then I hear it: Huh, huh, huh, huh, mmm, mmmm, mmmm, ahhh, ahhh, ohhhhhh! Sounds escaping the mouths of the couples surrounding us. How many are in here? Six? Eight? Twenty? A head rolls on my foot, good Lord, get me out. The muffled clamor from above sounds a million miles away. Pounding heart in my chest, head swirling in a haze of beer, frozen like Elmer Fudd as the rabbit makes off with his gun I try to retrieve my arm. And then I realize his strength, standing too close, breath on my neck like a venomous cobra whispering in my ear. Let me go. But it’s in my head, somehow, the words won’t pass through my lips. A drunken haze nightmare.
Tainted
I just saw Izzy’s teacher at school. I had a dream about her the other night that was so real and it affected me in such a way that it felt weird seeing her this morning. As if we’d actually experienced something together. I felt embarrassed. I almost couldn’t look her in the eye. When I was in fourth grade, my friend Kathleen Murphy one day decided that she was annoyed with the seventh and eighth graders leaving their stuff in our bathrooms (the fourth and fifth graders had their own bathrooms) while they went off to dance class. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go in there.” We walked into the bathroom and there it all was; bags and bags and bags stuffed with clothing, hairdryers, makeup. It was everywhere; on top of our sinks, on the windowsills, the backs of the toilets. So tempting. I wanted to look through it all. I wanted to see the riches the eighth graders kept stowed away in their grown-up looking bags. I wanted to try on their legwarmers, to put on their frosted lipsticks, to wear their blue and purple eyeshadows. I wanted to practice drying my hair, practice being an eighth grader. In the distance, we could hear the other fourth graders playing out on the blacktop but in the bathroom, it was silent; we were alone. And then it began. Kathleen started grabbing the bags. What was she going to do? I stood frozen, watching her pluck them off the windowsills and then one by one just throw them onto the bathroom floor. My heart started racing. By the time she was at the fourth bag, I remember her glancing back at me with a sparkling and devilish look in her eyes that said, “Come on, or are you too chicken?” And with that, I joined her. Me, the sit-in-the-very-front-row, raise-my-hand-to-answer-every-question, clap-the-erasers-for-the-teacher, straight-A student, decided to join her. There I was, being pulled by some unknown force to join in on the destruction. And destruction it was. The plucking turned into a frenzy. We knocked every bag in that bathroom onto the floor. I heard hairdryers crack as makeup spilled everywhere and clothing fell into the toilets. It was a symphony of demolition. And then it stopped. Breathless, we stood there for a moment in shock, but only for a moment because we could now hear the other fourth graders heading back into the classroom. We dashed out to join the others. I felt sick to my stomach. I can’t remember how long it took for Mr. Kelly to appear at the door to our classroom. I can’t really remember what he said. Something about detention, something about being really disappointed in us. But what I can remember is not being able to look him in the eye. I remember staring at my feet on the clay-red cement and feeling really small. Not so much because I’d let him down but because, for the first time in my life that I can remember, I felt like I’d let myself down. I felt cowardly. I felt tainted.
Lenny
The last time I saw Lenny he was sitting in his corduroy green chair watching The Wheel of Fortune in Florida. My sister and I had gone to visit my grandma, who lived with Lenny and we’d spent the week with them, going to early bird dinners, catching movie matinees and swimming by the pool of their retirement complex. My grandma had moved to Florida in 1979 with her sister Sarah and Lenny, Sarah’s husband. Up until then, the three of them along with my grandfather had been living in the Bronx in an old brownstone they’d bought in 1940. They’d all grown up together, raised their kids together and had retired together. And then my grandfather died. And yada, yada, yada cut to a few years later, they couldn’t stay in the Bronx any longer because the house was too big for the three of them and my Aunt Sarah had breast cancer and was dying. So, on the doctor’s orders, they moved to Florida. And, at first it was good. Sarah had a mastectomy and seemed to be recovering. But of course, about three years later, Sarah died. A pretty gruesome death actually, or so it seemed to me at the young age of eleven. Sitting on the edge of her bed in her hospital room, watching the doctor come in and whisper something to my Uncle Lenny and then watching Sarah start crying and pleading with Lenny, “Please don’t let them cut my toes off! Please don’t let them cut my toes off!” Evidently, they’d gone gangrene and they’d have to amputate or she’d risk losing her legs. Anyway, blah, blah, blah, they removed her toes and then a few months later they removed her other breast and then she got really freaking sick and I wasn’t allowed to visit anymore. A few months later, she died. So anyway, that’s how my grandmother was then living with my Uncle Lenny in Florida. A funny little pair, the two of them. Lenny didn’t pay much attention to my grandmother but, holy shit, my grandmother hated Lenny. Thought he was a lazy, good-for-nothing, son-of-a bitch who she had to clean up after and cook for. She’d been cooking for and cleaning up after him her whole fucking life and now her sister and her husband were dead and she was STILL taking care of that bastard. Anyway, blah, blah, that was how my grandma felt. I actually really liked Lenny. He was sweet to me and taught me how to draw. You never know when it’s gonna be the last time you see someone, you know? I wish I’d hugged him when I said goodbye.
Denny's
The waitress gives us a sideways glance and slowly saunters over to our booth. She is wearing a brown and ochre uniform accented by tiny splatters of soup, milkshake and butter. “What can I get you folks?” Her blondish greying hair is pulled back into a frazzled bun held together by a ballpoint pen. The overly lit fluorescent room illuminates her sallow face; her waxy opaque skin, gradually melting like a Madame Tussauds tragedy. It’s 1am and we’re all squinting as we gaze at her because the bright lights don’t agree with our stoned-out minds. Stoned-out minds. Everything slows down; hearing is heightened so one can almost hear the thoughts escaping from people’s minds. Paranoia occasionally sets in. Is he staring at me? Did that couple just whisper my name? Is this waitress on to us? On to me? But sometimes not. Sometimes you just ride the mellow wave of hyper-sensation, delighting in dust particles and cheesy music. That’s how I was that night. Savoring the portrait of our waitress, relishing in the clowned absurdity of our environment, breathing in the sticky sweet aromas that trademark a Denny’s. “I’ll have scrambled eggs with grits and biscuits with gravy. And a side of French toast.” I turn away and then, “Oh, do you have real maple syrup?” The waitress somehow manages to twist her face into an even more distorted expression so that now she looks like a wounded newborn baby. “What?” She says, feigning confusion. “You know, not Log Cabin but real maple syrup. You know, from trees?” Now she’s squinting at me and I begin to wonder if perhaps she is mocking me, if she’s on to me in my trippier-than-thou, marijuana haze. Maybe she is, maybe I’ll never know. Her pencil is dangling above her little white notepad like a limp appendage itching to write something simple like: fries and a coke or coffee no cream. And then she spells it out like an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary: “We have three kinds of syrup. Plain syrup, coconut syrup and blueberry syrup.” I nod. So that’s the way it’s gonna be.
