Blind Dates | 8 November 2021
I walked up to the door with a quiet confidence that was lost to me just last week. “I can do this. I will do this.” I thought as I closed my fist and knocked on the glossy wooden door. I heard footsteps approaching and took a deep breath. “This woman needs to know how I expect my son to be treated.” I thought to myself, and then I froze. The man that answered the door – the man who clearly lived here – was the same man I met last week on a Tinder date.
BNR Response
“And then she said, ‘Now that’s a chocolate starfish!” Travis guffawed, his face turned inward toward the house, as he fully opened the door. “I’m sorry,” he sighed, eyes closed, turning to face me. As I recognized that this man was Travis, my Travis, sex-on-the-first-date Travis from last Friday, I momentarily lost all sense of mission. The part of me that had come to confront my son’s stalker ex-girlfriend was now blurring with the part of me that had wanted to appear carefree, cool, and sexy to the guy I hoped I’d snag a second date with. Then, righteously, the sum of my parts began to piece together why he was answering Felisha’s door…and I realized I had to quickly try to speak actual words comprehended by English speakers.
“Who the fuck is it?” I hear Felisha bark from inside, still laughing from Travis’ joke.
“Uhhhh…” A look of surprise covers Travis’s face as he searches for words to understand why his one-night stand is on his doorstep and how I might know where he lived. Felisha is banging pots and pans in the kitchen so loudly I wonder whether she’s cooking or practicing ringing in the New Year.
“I’m Sydney’s mom, Constance. I’m here to see Felisha.” I state firmly, still not knowing whether to acknowledge Travis or pretend we haven’t met. At this point, Travis still having said nothing, Felisha makes her way to the foyer, aggressively grabbing the door out of his hands to reveal me on the stoop.
“Oh my godnessssssss,” Felisha hisses, wiping her hands on the worn dishrag in her hands. I feel my chest get tight, my cheeks hot with anger. I’m seeing for the first time that this woman is my age. “You’re Sy’s mommmmWOWWW,” she inhales sharply, then exhales in a way that reminds me of LaMaze breathing, as if trying to blow out candles on a birthday cake, “Ummmm, what are you doing here?” she chokes out in a whisper.
“I came to talk to you about the situation with my son, but I think we three have more to discuss now. I really don’t want to come into your, uh, snake pit of a home, so would you both please join me in the driveway?” I feel myself switching from freeze to fight as my inner survivor mobilizes to manage this curveball.
“I’m not sure how I am part of the equation, so I’ll just leave you two ladies to it,” Travis says, trying to retreat from the foreground into what I remark is a sea of teal Chintze-upholstered furniture and a large display of Hubble dolls in the interior.
“Travis! COME.” Felisha snaps her fingers and points to her heel like you do with a disobedient cocker spaniel. They join me at the foot of the steps.
“Ok, let’s get caught up.” I clap my hands together like a coach giving a final directive to a losing team about to hit the field with a little left on the clock, “Felisha: Travis and I went on a Tinder date on Friday and he banged my brains out in the back of his Chevy in the parking lot behind the Cliff House. Travis: Felisha had been ‘dating’ [I use air quotes] my son for the last three months until her behavior took a Fatal Attraction turn.” Felisha’s face is ashen and I’m relieved to see that the bitch may have some sense of propriety in recognizing that the sordid jig is up. Travis is unmoving and silent, slack-jawed like an idiot. I continue, “Prior to coming here, my primary grievance was with you, FeFe,” I aim my two ‘church is the steeple’ pointer fingers a bit too close to her face, “and that your infatuation with my son has crossed the line into stalking. I wanted to personally notify you that we have alerted the authorities.”
Felisha turns to Travis and simultaneously tries to cobble together an explanation to the two of us. I can see her tiny brain is having trouble reconciling seeking Travis’s forgiveness while realizing that he also needs to seek hers. Travis, yet to respond in any meaningful way at all, is proving to be much less the savvy and adroit businessman that first attracted me to his online profile. To add insult to injury, I now notice that the dullard is wearing pleated trousers. I gag.
“I actually don’t think I have much more work to do here.” I say, “Felisha, an order of restraint has been placed against you, but for some reason I think you’ll have your hands far too full with Trav here to be concerned with my boy any longer.”
I turn on my heel and fire up my car. I hear Felisha and Travis start to squabble in what sounds like a desperate dog dance as I begin put my car in reverse. Savoring the view ahead of me and chuckling to myself, I am jolted by a sudden impact from behind. Sheeeeiiiiit. As the airbag deflates, I turn my head to see who has hit me at the entrance to the driveway, and notice it is my ex-husband Scott. What the ever-living fuck is this bag of dicks doing here?! Apparently, this story is just beginning to unfold.
The Wash | 23 September 2021
Washing clothes. Washing dishes. I thought it was gonna be a washing day when I dressed in the clothes discarded by my bed the previous night. Had I known the doorbell would change my plans so dramatically, I definitely would have shaved my legs.
BNR Response
My head was bent over the sink so I could wash a week’s worth of glitter off of me and brush my teeth when the doorbell rang for a second time. I had had so much cumulatively to drink over the past several days that the opening scene from Butterfield-8 allowed me to momentarily entertain a glug of whisky to rinse the toothpaste out of my mouth. Through my hangover, I’d dismissed the first ring as either imaginary or another exercise in torture, much like that of the neighbor who’d decided to mow at 7 fucking AM this morning. Coming to the realization that the doorbell was real and not post-festival tinnitus, I stumbled, hand towel drying my scrubbed-red face, to my foyer.
Tripping over a drunkenly discarded high heel as I opened the door, I quickly pivoted from expletive to greeting, “CHRISSSSSST-hiiiiiiii!”
“Uh, hi. I’m your neighbor down a few blocks.” The confident stranger was having trouble finding words, no doubt due to my disheveled appearance and maybe my smell. “I live on the corner of Miramar in the house with the red mailbox…?” The handsome stranger paused for recognition that my foggy, now humiliated, brain could not deliver. “Anyway!” The charming stranger smiled largely, “I think your dog must have gotten out – the golden? – because he was in my yard. I had him by the collar for a moment and caught your address on his tag, but then he slipped out of it and headed back down this way. He’s pretty fast and he’s a ways ahead of us, but I think we have a good chance of catching him if we move quickly.”
The helpful stranger handed me the collar as I reached for my keys and the leash I kept by the door. “Ummm, you might want shoes?” The disarming stranger said, squinting his eyes as if trying not to deepen my embarrassment. I looked down and found that my feet were DISGUSTING and realized that, no, I had not put on shoes before heading out the door, so I ducked back inside and returned in flip flops.
As we headed down the hill in the direction of the beach, I learned more about this flirtatious stranger. No, neighbor. His name was Fox, and boy was he ever. Newer to town, only having been here for the past 9 months. Divorced, gainfully employed, homeowner, surfed after work and on weekends, good with mailbox paint color selection, helpful with dogs…I felt the boxes getting checked with every new player stat.
After ten minutes we were at Dunes and I was thanking the universe for this twist of fate. It could have been my lingering alcohol-fueled poor judgment, but I believed we were hitting it off.
I spotted Quint getting attention at Ebb Tide Café right across from the beach, and he came running at my first call. He was a good boy. He was a good boy who had clearly spent time in the waves before heading to the café for pettings, and he needed desperately to be hosed off. I put his collar and leash on, tightening the collar by one more notch, and the three of us headed home. The odd, nostalgic sensation of being a family or a unit or a something washed over me: walking on my street with dog and man in tow. I hadn’t felt this way since long before my two-year-old divorce from Fuckwit.
Ronnie and Babette, a couple who lived across the way, passed us, and we stopped to chat for a moment – none of us acknowledging the question of how Fox, Quint, and I were connected. Fox and I caught each other’s eyes during this exchange in that fresh, exciting, almost scary energy of a secret or of something new. Fox reached for and grabbed my hand and I was feeling all kinds of swell until Babette’s urgent-eyed non-verbal queue directed my attention to my chest. I gazed down, head in the clouds, and quickly realized that I hadn’t fully buttoned my peasant dress and my left breast had emerged, unabashedly, from the sheer cotton and was on full display. Jesus, I was a mess!
We laughed and parted ways and I explained to handsome Fox about Burning Man, arriving home early this morning after hitching a ride in the back of Kaiser’s Airstream, and being so proud of myself for having started the laundry and dishes despite my shampoo-effect-esque condition.
We arrived back at my house and Fox easily followed me to the back of the bungalow to help wash the sand and brine off of Quint. We laughed through the inevitable dog-washing montage: getting splashed, chasing around the patio, the shake-off moment, and our attempt at drying him with a too-small beach towel. Between his morning adventure and all this attention, Quint was living his best life. For a moment, I thought I might be, too.
I slide the glass patio door open, trying to think of a reason for Fox to stay, when he surprised my lips with a kiss. He pushed my obviously unwashed hair off my forehead, grabbed both of my hands and exposed my soiled palms, gave me a confident look up and down and said, “Well, Sadie, you got your laundry in the machine, dishes are in the washer, Quint’s all clean…who’s gonna wash you?” And with that, he leaned in and motioned for me to raise my arms. He slipped my dress off over my head, grazed my body as he squeezed though the patio doorway, and led me by the hand in search of the bathroom. Washing day indeed.
Can Ya Dig It? | 10 August 2021
“It takes time. You knew it’d take time, but, shovel in hand, you were digging til dawn. You’re hurting right now from the wrists on up. The sun comes up and all you have to show for it is the blisters on your hands and a pile of dirt right by that fucker you knew would try that shit again.”
BNR Response
I pause, sweaty and breathless, to reflect on the last 5 years that landed me here.
Giuseppe and I met while each serving short sentences in County, me for petty larceny and G for armed robbery. Having grown up on a particular side of town to parents of lesser means, we had developed reasonably long wrap-sheets but nothing aggravated. Until now, I bemoaned.
As cellies, we bonded over a shared love of Louis Prima and the movie Raising Arizona. Not the expected movie of choice for two wannabe wise guys, but arguably some of Nicolas Coppola’s best work. Our wives became friends while we were on the inside, after seeing each other on visitors’ days several times in a row. They initially eyed each other with that special kind of suspicion that women reserve for other women, but eventually their walls came down as they realized, week after week, that they were the only two women on the list who wore J Crew instead of faux Gucci and Keds instead of Candies.
That’s another thing we had in common: we both loved our wives and were (mostly) monogamous. I did slip up once, and while I wasn’t proud that one night sleeping with Giuseppe’s girl, I was fairly certain she was the only reason I was still alive.
I’d always been a small-time grifter and, as much as I loosely fantasized about getting made, it wasn’t the life for me. I held day jobs all my life and passed as a working stiff. I augmented my income with side jobs here and there and was a purist: I kept my money under my own roof.
When you come from a background like mine, you never know when the bottom’s gonna drop out and I never wanted Valerie to have to worry. I thought Giuseppe and I saw things eye-to-eye, I thought we were on the level. If I didn’t I never would have told him where my stash was. Val knew she would be safe, but I never told her where the money was. I wanted her to have plausible deniability while I was under investigation, and it was also just a good insurance policy that she wouldn’t run out on me while I was in the joint. Now, this loot fluctuated based on depending on what I had cooking. At it’s “lowest” it was enough for Val and I to restart with and live for about 10 years. Other times it was inflated while I held certain parties’ money in escrow. In May I was holding a large amount to ensure a multi-month off-shore deal went through without unnecessary wet work.
I knew things were lean for Giuseppe and Donna when he called me one night, drunk, his voice betraying that he was feeling lower than a whale’s belly. “Sil,” his gravelly voice was soft, “I was wondering if you were still interested in my Stingray. I just had it detailed and you know I’d do you right-“ I cut him off and showed up on his doorstep 30 minutes later with enough money to cover his mortgage for June and July.
I was out of town for the Commercial Dishwasher Convention in early August when I received three missed calls from Giuseppe’s home phone. Irritated, I broke away from the two customers lingering by my display and called him back, and as soon as I heard the line engage I reminded G that I was manning the booth and couldn’t talk. Donna interrupted me. She sounded worried and wasn’t finishing her sentences. She reported they’d been arguing about money for the last six months and things were tense, when all of a sudden he came home flush with cash and super keyed up. Aside from concern that he’d bought and done a bunch of coke, she was skeptical of his lack of explanation and the way he was side-stepping all of her questions.
As you can imagine, I tried to get Giuseppe on the phone but there was no answer. It sounded like he’d boosted my cash the day I left for Fort Lauderdale, nearly two weeks ago. This wasn’t the first time this Summer that he had tried to get his hands on my nest egg, and I had given him a stern warning last time without going into all the details about why. Upon returning home, the worst was confirmed: he’d taken everything, including several hundred K I was holding in escrow for the cartel deal. I didn’t know the intricacies of how he found my relocated stash, when he got into my dojo to get it, and I was beyond needing to think about that.
I’ll never know where the money went, or why he couldn’t return it. It’s beyond me how someone I had trusted like a brother could have done us both so dirty. Now here I was, the shittiest day of my life, with the sun rising in front of me over the Hackensack River, and a row of cartel dudes lined up behind me while I dug my best friend’s grave. Just then, I heard Giuseppe moan (was he alive after the way I’d worked him over!?) and I turned to face the barrel of a gun pointed at me at close range. Goddamn it. Could this day get any worse?
What’s in the Box? | 30 July 2021
It was an otherwise normal Sunday morning, when Timothy finally decided to get out of bed around 9:15am and start the coffee brewing process, one which included using a fancy pour over system gifted to him by Helena, his brief girlfriend some 4 years ago. Only halfway into his first cup of a Honduran blend he was interrupted by an urgent knocking at his front door and decided old sweatpants and no shirt were appropriate attire to answer on such a day but by the time he opened the two-door system, which required him to bring his elusive keys to the doors, no one was there; only a medium brown U-Haul box set on his stoop. This morning was about to awaken much faster than Timothy had ever expected.
BNR Response
He stepped cautiously out onto the porch, looking around from side to side as if in a slasher flic where the killer lures the unsuspecting victim outside only to pounce with an unwieldly large knife, maybe a Kaiser Blade. Instead of an agile and elusive killer, Timothy locked eyes with his next-door neighbor Bob who was getting the Journal off his front steps. After a polite wave and rehearsed smile, Timothy walked down his front walk and across the broad lawns over towards Bob to shoot the shit, asking whether they’d be tailgating together later that morning at the Chapel Hill game. After discovering that they had inadvertently snagged parking spots right next to each other in the 1000+ car lot, they strategized about barbecue and beer before agreeing to smarten up and continue their conversation at the game. “Hit the showers, Timbo!” Bob joked. Timothy loved being called by his old nickname, days when he was still the star quarterback for the team and when his knees were still good. Bob was the best.
Returning to his own walk-up, Timothy paused to enjoy the spectacle of his home: signature wrap-around porch of its era, grand brick steps aligning with an even grander internal staircase up to the second, and, later, third floors. Man, if it hadn’t been for that sweet piece (otherwise known as Tawny, the realtor, girlfriend number 4 of this year) he had dated for a hot minute he would never have been able to score this place. Tiffany? Tandy? T-boz? Ah, whatever. Her cosigning for his loan made this place a cinch to get, and at a great interest rate.
Coming out of his Tomcat fog, Timothy bent down to inspect the mysterious box. No immediate signs of malice presented themselves (but, let’s be honest, would he know what to look for other than visible blood or other organic detritus?), so he brought it inside. He turned to lock the security and front doors and sauntered back towards the kitchen, admiring his noteworthy abs in the foyer mirror on the way, and pushing the cardboard box forward with his foot. It was light, whatever it contained, so it wasn’t Gwyneth Paltrow’s head. He made himself laugh. He stopped short of self-high-fiving.
Returning to his kitchen island, he boosted the box onto the countertop. Tarheel, the cat, jumped up onto the counter and began an olfactory inspection of the parcel. Tim flicked open the knife on his multitool and cut through the tape, which was freshly applied as it hadn’t fully adhered to the corrugated box. Inside he found only a letter, he snorted at its innocuity, as he tore through where his name scrawled clumsily across the front. Some broad was pissed, as he gathered from his first impression. “Tawny! Taw-aw-aw-ny,“ he chuckled to himself. That was her name. Uh-oh Tawny was pissed. Behind her “woman scorned” handwritten note was a fairly thick legal document that notified him of his ensuing eviction. Across the front was a post-it that read, “Start packing, Namath, you’re moving out.” As the reality of the moment began to sink in, all Timothy could think to himself was, “Maybe this sassy minx is worth another pass.”
Solo Cup | 1 July 2021
She walked into the room and she saw him leaning against the wall under the peeling and tattered Jimi Hendrix poster looking down into his seemingly empty red solo cup. The sense of deja vu was overwhelming. This happened often and she'd learned to pay attention, so as she walked in his direction, she paid close attention to her internal reaction, and it spoke volumes. "Hey," she said. He looked up slowly and met her gaze. "Hey yourself," he said. "Are we gonna do this?" he added. She wasn't sure what he meant, but she said yes and accepted the hand reaching out to her.
BNR Response
He tried to pull her down to sit beside him but she countered his weight and pulled him up. She didn’t know what he had in mind, but she didn’t want to stay here to find out. As he rose he was a bit unstable on his feet, which she hated to admit she had been hoping for. If he’d had a bit too much to drink then he would need a ride home. After a few almost imperceptible stumbles, he instinctually handed her the keys and they made their way single-file down the narrow attic staircase to the second floor of the frat house. The party hadn’t raged that night, thank god, and instead had quickly migrated to the hellish home of the tri-delts (those sluts). The floor they were on was mostly bedrooms and was totally empty. It was weird to be here at night and for it to be desolate and so eerily quiet. They now disembarked down the broad grand staircase in the middle of the house into the area with the foosball table and where the beer pong seemed to be eternally ready for play. She imagined this house 40 or 50 years ago, the pride of some trapped housewife. This would have been the transitional room between the front parlor and the more casual dining room and telephone nook. The house had remarkably guarded much of its original charm: the hardwood floors still shone red under the dull scuffs from furniture moved clumsily, the original doorknobs were either glass and patinaed brass, the tile in the bathrooms was tiffany turquoise with matching vanity and commode. She wondered if local residents were ever able to wrest away and reclaim these historical properties, restoring them to their original luster, or if they were doomed to a slow, inevitable decay.
They walked out the back door and the still, summer air was close and hit them like a dead-end street. The sweet smell of cut grass, freshly mowed earlier that day, lingered with the fragrant ozone from recent rain. Lightning bugs created romantic atmosphere. Oh, if only she could reach out to his unattended hand, so close to her, and squeeze it.
They hopped in his pick-up, all the windows already down, and began the 4-minute drive to his apartment. They cruised through the blinking yellow streetlights, and Don Henley drifted on the airwaves from the AM/FM radio, “I thought I knew what love was, what did I know? Those days are gone forever, I should just let them go but…” and her chest felt hollowed out with longing. She knew her only real alone time with him was during stolen moments like these: his guard lowered by his being overtired or drunk, and when none of his bros were around to shoo her away. She had cobbled together a collage of these glimpses at happiness: that night after the movie in the park when his bike had been stolen. After cramming for an O Chem exam until the library closed, followed by a last call warm beer at the campus bar aptly named Study Hall. When his dog got run over and none of his roommates could deal. She sifted through these cherished memories and felt desperation in the realization that it might be months before she was alone with him again. The lyrics of Boys of Summer stuck with her in their haunting prophecy as she pulled up to his curb and they slowly climbed out from the cab, “I feel it in the air, the summer’s out of reach. Empty lake, empty beach, the sun goes down alone. I’m driving by your house, though I know you’re not home.” Would this be the last time she’d get this chance? Should she take it?
HCH Response
There’s a quality about guys like him I can sense from across the room. I sometimes wonder if I could find them blindfolded — that’s how accurate the radar is. Maybe it’s just experience? I’ve had years of practice after all, I thought with a smirk as I approached this one.
Shy, obviously. Duh. Alone helps. Ill-fitting clothes on a frame that’s been wasted by bad posture and worse self-esteem. Body language that suggests a desperate attempt to escape into one’s mortal shell, yet miraculously summoning the courage deep within a nerd’s heart to go to a gathering instead. Not a gathering like Magic: The Gathering — like, a party.
You might not think a woman would want a reputation like mine. But fuck em. I’m a benevolent angel of light. I’m the goddamn Mother Theresa of virginity’s oily shelf life. I’m providing a public service. And, to be petty, you will never feel hotter than I do when I am with my mark. So everybody can suck it.
What do I get out of it? Sure, fair question.
They are tender. I always have the upper hand; they can never hurt me. On the rare occasion when one steps out of bounds, he finds out immediately, like a shock collar or an electric fence. And, as any good performer who leaves the audience wanting more can relate, I know that he will compare every future encounter to ours. Last (and most mushily) of all, I feel that our trysts set these guys on a path of confidence. Slap em on the tighty-whitey ass. Go forth, young genius. You’ve just leveled up on the way to being a man. Bonus +100 XP and all.
I guess that’s why I was taken aback by his question, “Are we gonna do this?” Well, that was bold. He required no flattery, flirtation, or leading. I immediately thought to counter with, “Heyyy, bucko. I’m actually fuckin Batman, and that makes you Robin, but more naked.” Come on. We all love a good homoerotic superhero fantasy. Anyway, either my senses had misled me, and I was about to wrestle my way out of an unfortunate situation, or I was about to train this pup in some manners. Or...? Door number 3. I’d said I would listen to my internal reaction, and now here I was. In all honesty, I was curious. I had to find out what this dude’s deal was.
I followed him down the hall, lined with necking couples deluded enough to think it was a private nook. I shrugged. Private enough, right? Needs must. The closer we got to the end, the less clothed the gallery got. I stepped over bras, hoodies, and at one point a pair of jeans. Wow, I thought, these are some Olympic-grade makeouts. God bless you and I hope you are on birth control. I’d never been to an event at this particular house, and I kicked myself for not having done a full reconnaissance mission when I arrived. Sloppy. The gauntlet I’d just walked, following his hunched shoulders the whole way, left me feeling more vulnerable than I cared to admit.
We stopped short of the bathroom to face the last door on the right. He must have felt the giant question mark over my head when he knocked instead of just entering.
“Password?” A small voice inside beseeched.
“Uzra,” he said, his voice lowered considerably and louder than our initial exchange. He might as well have been saying “Oohrah” like he was a Marine.
The door creaked open.
Inside was the brightest room in the house, if I had to bet. One overhead light, one desk lamp, one standing lamp and one lava lamp all glowed blindingly at me. A circle of faces collectively gave me a side-eyed glance, then returned to their cards in hand.
He shut the door behind me and broke the silence we’d held since I approached him.
“You play Magic, right? You… seem like the type.”
Church Ghosts | 1 July 2021
I never saw bats in this belfry, but I knew for certain there were ghosts in these pews. For me at least. It had been nearly 45 years since I last set foot in this church. As the heavy doors swung closed behind me, the chill up my spine made it feel like it was all yesterday. I feared that as I walked further in, the ghosts would appear one by one.
DD Response
I remember mama and daddy holding hands as the preacher waned prolific about the need to repent and be saved. I remember hearing daddy sing those Baptist hymns so off key I would cringe. He didn’t care, but I did. And I remember coming home to what mama called the Baptist Bar. It’s where they stored their liquor, and it had louvered doors that would close if the preacher came to visit.
I remember the ghosts of my past mortification -my baptism, where the water made my garment translucent. At thirteen what was being exposed underneath carried more weight than what was presumably being washed clean. I remember sneaking up to the balcony bathroom to smoke cigarettes and flirting with the cute boy in my Sunday School class. The words and pretense of the congregation did not play out as virtues in my home. This building represents the very definition of hypocrisy.
Grandmother left her faith letters in a trunk. As the family historian, my home became the repository for all things “collectible.” One letter struck me more than the others. She wrote to her cousin about getting married. “If you ever have the smallest little spat, don’t say a word. Just pray, pray pray.” The ghosts of this building haunt me today. They tell me "Just smile and shut up."
BNR Response
My family left the mining town when I was eight years old, a full two years before the whole town was officially considered ghost in 1942. The people and buildings I remember haven’t made it to the historical society or the tourist brochure: the empty saloons on opposing street corners with the swinging doors leading right out onto the dirt thoroughfare, the triple story general store with balconies stretching end-to-end on every floor, the wide-open spaces full of tumbleweeds and prickly brush, and our home.
On the other hand, this church has been widely photographed and is a mainstay in many ghost town exhibitions and artefacts largely due to the archetypal simplicity of its construction as well as how well it has passively been preserved. In fact, iconic images of this space have been so widely shared and adopted that they are often wrongly attributed to coming from Tombstone rather than my birthplace of Bodie, California.
My time spent in this church was not what people might think of when reflecting on religious spaces: finding hidden silver nuggets under floorboards, sneaking sips of whisky from forgotten bottles stowed in the narthex, rowdy made-up dances in the social hall, yanking up my skirt so the boys could see my knickers, my first kiss in the bone yard. When we were kids we used to enter the church and climb up to the bell tower after dark, that is until Susie Johnson fell to her death that night in August when we were four.
What started out like a typical Western adolescence for my grandparents here; riding mustangs, helping raise and slaughter the hens and hogs, canning food in the summer to ready for the winter, ten months a year in the one-room schoolhouse with all kids from two to twelve; took a tandem downward turn with the negative trajectory of the town’s silver and gold yield.
Once people started shifting out of town it became a rat race to the top of the sinking ship. People jockeyed for positions as they were rarely and suddenly left vacant: Sheriff, banker, madame. People looted abandoned storefronts and stole wagons and horses. The town became unfriendly, breeding suspicion and deceit. The spiral down started long before I was born, so my education in the classroom, on the land, and in the house continued uninterrupted. Even mama and daddy were raised after the bottom fell out, and they relied on pappy and mee-maw to tell of the change in the town when they were first married in the 1880’s.
We escaped late, the last few stragglers to leave an already unwanted city. When you grow up in a place like that, constantly unearthing the interrupted moments of all those lives, the bookmarks people thought they’d come right back to, those ghosts never leave you be. The thing about a ghost town is that it isn’t just the spaces that are left behind. Seeing as it was plumb too expensive to pack all that up and wagon out of town all the way to Mono Lake, or, better yet, Yosemite, what’s left behind are not just the pieces and parts of folk’s lives but the remnants of a people. Everyone’s seen photos of the hardware store left in a dash, stocked ready for the Friday payday rush; the bar with the billiard balls still on the felt; dishes left dirty on the washboard. The town stopped living mid-breath.