Dad | 17 February 2022

“You do realize every time we visit your Dad you say it will be the last time we visit him, right?”

“I know, babe. But this time is different."

BNR Response

I paused, tightening my grip on the steering wheel and noticing my knuckles turn over white.  I took a deep breath and made the left turn into my childhood neighborhood.

“I’ve got to get Mom out of the house.”  I said, in a mumble, as I knew Rod wouldn’t like to hear this.

“Wait, WHAT?!  Oh hell no.  Hard pass.  I’m not going in.  You can’t sneak this under the radar in the last minute.  No way – uh uh.  Not cool.  NOT COOL, Bev.”  Rod stared hard out the passenger window at the adjacent field as if wishing he could teleport himself out of the car and physically far away from me.  He was worse than pissed, he was hurt.  Many a time I had gotten him out to my Dad’s house in the last year with ulterior motives: for drive-bys, to get my old things out of the house, to perform covert welfare checks on my 20-year old tabby, but this one was below the belt...and I knew it. 

We all knew Dad had a new fling, maybe she was the mid-life crisis girlfriend that he never had, and she was seemingly always around.  It was more than that, though, it was embarrassing.  She had died her white hair a candy apple red and wore lipstick to match.  She had gotten an obvious amount of plastic surgery that rendered it nearly impossible for her to close her mouth, and her lips formed an eternal “O” especially when she tried to close them.  Whenever I looked at her I couldn’t help but see her as a cross between Ronald McDonald and a blow-up doll.  Every time we were there she had some subterfuge to explain her presence…helping my dad clean the silver or returning a hatchet she borrowed.  Terrible excuses, but even if they had been better we all knew the truth.  I just wondered how Mom maybe felt about it.

So much of Dad’s behavior had become humiliating over the past twelve months that I had felt the need to be strategic about my trips so as to both accomplish my objectives and limit interactions with Shirley.  I couldn’t actually remember her name but there is some movie where Shirley MacLaine ironically dies her hair fire engine red and, unable to separate the image, the nickname stuck.  He had taken up a bunch of new hobbies, most of which had been introduced by Shirley.  There was the experimentation with Furries, the season of tandem pottery making (think Ghost), and the dabbling with painting live nudes.  Through all of it, Mom had been a sport, though she had been playing a shrinking role in the household through it all.  I wasn’t looking forward to telling Rod about dad’s latest venture.

“Look, I told Dad we were going to swing by on our way to the lake house to pick up some of my old books...”  Rod inhaled through his front teeth and I kept talking hoping to block his ability to remind me how shady this was, “He got all excited and asked to show us his new taxidermy projects,” the wind made a squealing sound as it passed through Rod’s clenched jaw, “and so I said you were into it!  And that you would check it out while I gathered my stuff!”  I was nearing my street and let my eyes dart frequently over to Rod, not wanting to actually turn my head to witness his full reaction but just enough to see if he was about to tuck and roll out of the Saab.

“His TAXIDERRRRR…”

“Hear me out!  Hear me out!  Hear me out!  It’s the perfect cover!”  I wince and open my eyes just enough to be able to continue safely driving, “You can be with him and Shirley while-“

“Her name is Elaine, and you know that.”
“Fine, with Elaine checking out the badgers or chickens or whatever he’s…’stuffing’ in his workshop and I can go find Mom and get her out.”

I was pulling into the driveway, and dad came out on the porch to greet us.  There was no more time to chat.  Rod was seething.

The plan mostly worked.  I hugged Dad warmly, glaring at Shir-laine as the reason I couldn’t have a normal relationship with my dad anymore, and made a beeline inside.  I heard Rod, the dutiful accomplice, immediately fall into place by asking about the “new hobby” Dad had been working on in the woodshop.  Dad, Shir-laine, and Rod shuffled fairly quickly out through the house and into the backyard where dad’s shed was.  I scoured the house for Mom, unable to find her anywhere.  I checked the window seat in the sun where she used to sit with her books.  I then moved to the attic where she’d comb through her old hope chest and our baby clothes to pass time.  I went to the kitchen, where she spent countless hours trying to perfect both old family recipes and new meals at all hours, especially during sleepless nights.  No dice.  I was becoming worried.  Had that redheaded blow-up bitch finally fully weaseled her way fully into Dad’s life, shuffling Mom to some far corner of the home?

I emerged from the dim house into the sunlight, the rays bright in my eyes.  I put my hand at my brow while they adjusted and approached the workshop.  As I neared the door, Rod came out abruptly.  “Ugh babe.  I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to-“

“Dad?!  Dad.  Where is mom.  Where is mom.”

Rod formed a human door between me, Dad, and Big Red and took me softly by both arms.  Just then I thought I could see Mom through the shade in the back of the shed.  I walked in the large structure, more a barn than a woodshed, and was immediately put off by the smell of turpentine and critters.  Dad’s ‘creations’ were everywhere: a racoon was standing on two hind legs posed with his nose to a silk flower held in his own little paw.  A pigeon was hanging from the rafters, its false eyes hadn’t quite adhered, leaving it to resemble a mutant coming in for an aerial attack.  A catfish was blowing glass bubbles towards a nearby squirrel who bore such a wide-eyed look of delight that it stopped me in my tracks.  Oh, Dad.  This hobby had really taken off.

I could hear all three of them coming in after me, trying to stop me, but I didn’t hear their words.  I got to the back of the barn, found Mom, and wrapped her in my arms.  I no longer cared how it looked. 

“Kiddo…Bev?  Wait, kiddo.  It’s not what you think.”  Daddy said quietly, and I felt a pang go straight through my heart.

“I’m sorry, Dad.  But it’s time that Mom come stay with me for a bit.  I know you’re experimenting with a lot of new things but I just don’t think it’s best for either of you.”  I didn’t waste an opportunity to shoot Shirley another dirty look.

I turned on my heel to exit the barn and dad said, “That’s just it kiddo, she’s not in there anymore she’s in here.  He motioned first to the urn in my arms and then to the spirited stuffed raccoon.  Oh god, Dad, what had Shirley gotten you to do now?

Park Place | 12 February 2022

For females, parks are a great way to take in the sun, walk the dog, or get some exercise.  For men, they’re a dangerous, treacherous, and sometimes lethal public space.

BNR Response

I jogged through the marine layer, happy for the quiet.  As I entered the tunnel I was gripped by a momentary sensation of fear, tightness in my chest as the darkness covered my head, then hips, and finally calves.  Moments later, emerging into the orange morning light, I tried to shake off the tension between my shoulder blades.  I rolled my neck and threw a few jabs at the air, reminding myself that I was a stronger iteration than he who had barely survived an encounter here last Fall. 

I closed my eyes and reopened them, hoping to reset my mind like skipping past an unwanted image in a Disney ViewMaster.  No luck.  In the same moment, the two men running towards me were my assailants.  I shook my head vigorously and refocused, allowing reality to settle in, only to discover that they were clearly a coach and an athlete on a morning training run.  A dog was bolting towards me from the left, teeth bared and ears back.  No, the Doberman was chasing a frisbee, quick to turn and deliver it back to his human.  Feet shuffling behind me surely belonged to a larger man, ready to mug me in the daylight.  The owner of the feet was a pregnant woman struggling to hold a jogging pace.

I stopped, legs softening under me like unset jello.  I stumbled over to the grass and threw myself down, the sky above me spinning like a Tilt-a-Whirl of trees, shade, and fog.  And then the flaskback hit me head on: the panting.  The sound of my own running feet hitting the pavement.  The sweat stinging my eyes and the heckles of, “Hey, Pretty boy!” coming from all around me.  A blow from behind, men approaching from ahead, then the hits that kept coming.  I’d united strangers against a common enemy, they were prideful in their bigotry.

Once my heart calmed and the rushing in my ears relented, I sat up and tried to reconnect to reality.  I was safe.  I had healed.  I had persevered.  I had not only survived, I had thrived.  I tried to eschew resentment toward the single women running with their earbuds in, the droves doing yoga by the arboretum, the women meeting Bumble dates here for the safety of a sense of public space.

Most consider the threats that linger in dark alleys and unlit parking lots, but dismiss the dangers posed in the light of day if you’re the chosen target.

New Ink | 8 February 2022

“Jesus Christ, Aaron.  Your surprise for me is that you got another tattoo?  Where the fuck are you getting the money for all this new ‘art’?”

“Well, uh…that’s kind of what I’ve been trying to talk to you about.”

BNR Response

“Try harder.”  I exhaled forcefully, wishing I could physically expel my disgust for him through my nostrils.  No joy.  Still there.

“Well, it’s complicated.  I mean, first I got fired from Radio Shack and then Freddie needed me to repay that poker loan-“

“I’m hearing a lot more reasons why you don’t have money and why you shouldn’t have spent hundreds, well, scratch that, you shouldn’t have paid ANYTHING on that god-awful neck tattoo.  Where did you even get it done?  It looks like a toddler had some sort of fit that resulted in stabbing you repeatedly with a Bic pen.  You know what?  You know what?!  It doesn’t even matter.”  I push my hands deep into my pockets, fists clenched.  I drop my head and squeeze my eyes shut tightly as if blocking out direct sunlight, willing the words to stay inside me.

“I know, I know.”  Aaron paused, head hung, shoulders slumped.  He winced and cowered as if waiting for me to hit him.  Goddamn it, I’m angry but I’m not going to lay a beating on anybody.  His fragility enraged me.  “That’s not all.  I had to sell the Pinto to cover the ink.  Harley said that gets me halfway there, but I still needed $500 to cover the rest, so...”

“The REST?!  Ok, you know, this is all fascinating, Aaron,” I condescend, “but I don’t quite understand what you want me to do about any of this.  In fact, I fail to comprehend just how I got sucked into your warped little doom loop in the first place.  Let’s walk this out for a second: we had one date, where I ruled you out as anything other than a cautionary tale about online dating, and then I made the very unfortunate mistake of inviting you over for a movie night where you proceeded to get plastered and ask to sleep over.  The next thing I know, I catch you on my doorbell cam stealing the furniture off of my porch.”

“I-“

“No, A-A-Ron, let me finish.  The only reason I even took your call today was to see if you were going to return my vintage glider.  That sucked, man.  That was my bubby’s glider.”

“Well, I already sold it to Dino to cover gas to the Nickelback concert on Saturday, so...”  Aaron’s sentence faded out and he wouldn’t lift his head let alone get close to making eye contact with me.  I felt an unfamiliar combination of pity and anger swirling in my chest, accompanied by the sting in my nose similar to chlorine as my eyes unexpectedly welled up.    

“Look, Aaron.” I cleared my throat, pushing my empathy in check.  “I don’t know what to tell you.  You seem like a decent human, but fuckin-A do you make piss poor decisions.  I just need to ask that you not involve me in your antics anymore.  That means that you stop texting, you stop calling, that you stop sleeping in my yard, that you stop giving my number to your loan sharks.  Stop stealing from me, and stop getting my name tattooed on your body.”  I catch his eye and hold him there.  “We cool?”

“Yeah, Carrie.  Yeah, I get it.”  He pauses with his mouth open like he’s going to say something else, and breaks eye contact, his feet kicking the dirt by my wood pile.  “There’s just one more thing.  That other $500?  That I owed Harley?  I mayyyyyyy have told him that he and Squee could meet us here to get it.  They should be here in like-“

Cue the squeal of El Camino tires in my front drive.  Goddamn it, Aaron!

The Telltale Tap | 5 February 2022

Once I stopped dismissing it and really listened, the faint tapping sound wasn’t irregular at all.  The pattern was long but predictable.  After about 15 cycles I could tap along.

BNR Response

The developers had only finished renovating about a quarter of the old hosiery factory into the makers collective when they started renting out spaces.  As a serial creator, I used my area to suit whatever I was commissioned to repair or create.  I’d been here for five months and so far there’d only been two other spaces rented, so I spent most of my time in this old factory alone.

From the exterior, the structure itself was neither imposing nor threatening, but the latent energy that remained inside the building sometimes made it feel as if the walls were breathing.  The rabbit warren of old foreman offices, long unwindowed corridors leading to vast production floors with drooping, decommissioned equipment, odd mezzanine levels with unknown egress: all told the place felt more like an industrial maze than a run-of-the-mill warehouse.  A night owl by nature, I was often here late into the evening, and I was tiring of the motion-sensor lights that shut off every three minutes if they didn’t detect new activity.  I work deliberately, and yet I was constantly getting caught in the dark because I was apparently not animated enough for the building to feel it needed to light me.

Sometimes I had the feeling that the old factory was toying with me in a menacing way.  One too many times I’d left my workstation for a bathroom break only to get locked in a hallway or I’d emerged from the shared kitchen wholly disoriented as if intoxicated or in a labyrinth with shifting walls.  I was stuck in the industrial version of the goddamned Winchester Mystery House. 

I had just resolved that being one of three tenants in this double-football-field-sized lot was no longer for me, and had about a week left on my space rental.  It was around 3AM, and, having reached a stopping point on my latest commission, I realized that my mix tape had long ended and the silence had settled around me.  I blinked my eyes hard trying to get them to moisten, rolled my head around to wake up my neck, and straightened up, coming out of my focused work as if just waking from a downy slumber.  Now this tapping.  It was too regular to be man-made.  Was there a maker’s station that abutted mine that I had somehow missed?  I removed my safety goggles from their perch on my brow and felt instant relief from the removal of the elastic band around my head.  Shimmying my shoulders to loosen up some more, I put my ear to the paint-chipped brick wall.  The lights shut off.  I waved my arms over my head in an SOS fashion and focused on the whirring clicking I heard on the other side of the wall.  Keeping my ear as close as possible, I followed the maze of darkened corridors for what felt like 20 minutes before finding a “Principal”-like frosted glass door I hadn’t seen before.  Greasy handprints marred the glass, and I felt a draft cooling the air above my head.  A dim amber light emanated from under the door, prompting me to give the handle a try.  I was stunned to find that it opened, and I pushed it forward with purpose and slowly let my head lead me into the room.  I was so shocked at what I found that I wandered, zombie-like, into the middle of the eight-by-ten cavity.  The wall facing the door was covered ceiling to floor with twelve-inch screens, each displaying every centimeter of the warehouse space.  There were dozens and dozens of them, stacked together flawlessly like a light grid.  On the wall to the right was what looked like a command center and a large screen that looked like something an NFL enthusiast had chosen for size.  There were all manner of buttons and keyboards, dials and switches, and all this machinery was collectively making the tapping I had heard on my side of the wall.  As I stumbled, eyes affixed on the big screen, I was horrified to see it focused on a wide-angle of my workstation.  A number of smaller laptops’ faces in the command center are zoomed in on the details of my space: my paint-splattered boom box, my leather apron, my Thermos lunchbox.  I felt my mouth drop open as I stepped closer to this desk to examine what these controls actually controlled, when I was snapped to attention by the sound of a door slamming.  The screens went black and my eyes were shocked by the sudden pitch when a figure approached me.  “How the hell did you get in here, Pinky?”  I still couldn’t see but I felt large hands wrap themselves under the straps of my overalls, lifting me slightly off the ground.  It’s at this moment that it hit me: all this time it wasn’t the building’s breathing that had been haunting me, it was this thing’s.

Game Playing | 19 January 2022

She was feeling kinda bored and thought, “Games.  We need games,“ so she got off the sofa and opened the game cabinet.  The cabinet with a missing handle for over two years.  Often this reminds her of how much she doesn’t see, and she feels lonely.  Tonight was different, because her focus was on what was inside the cabinet.  Trouble.  The fun kind of trouble.  Pop-o-matic!  She didn’t even ask if he wanted to play, but as she opened the box and set up the pieces, he sat up and scooted to the edge of the sofa.  “If I win, I get a blowjob,” he said.  “Game on,” she replied.

BNR Response

She knew there was no chance in hell that Jack would win, and she was right.  But it was well worth the gamble to get them out of their rainy-day slump.  He’d been watching YouTube videos on his phone all morning and afternoon while she worked the crossword and then as she started and finished a jigsaw puzzle on the covered porch.  Hours had gone by where they hadn’t said a word, and she hadn’t been sure if it was the silence that comes from resentment or the kind that comes from ease of being alone while with someone.  She was relieved to find it to be the latter.  Years ago, rainy days in the mountains meant no cell service, lots of time in the clawfoot tub together, and nights up talking over several bottles of wine.  These days it was mostly scrolling through Reddit and Instagram, weekend working, arguments over the kids’ calendars, and silence across the dinner table.

This weekend the kids were all otherwise occupied leaving them here, alone, to their own devices.  Now that he had indicated he was maybe just bored and not irritated with her over some minor unknown infraction, (why hadn’t the water pitcher been refilled?!), she felt the tension in the middle of her back shake loose.  She lifted her shoulders to her ears and let them drop as if she was shrugging off the stress of their entire 12-year marriage.  Jack stood up, his knees creaking a bit, and sauntered over to the game chest.  He returned Trouble to its home and pulled out Jenga.  As they pulled the tower out of its box, she realized it was the Truth or Dare version and not the kid-friendly one they played as a family.  She skipped to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of cognac and two snifters and sat cross-legged on the floor with an impish grin on her face.  If you’re gonna get wet, you might as well go swimmin’.

Hours of actual game playing and a few glasses of aged-to-perfection Remy Martin later, she was feeling like a teenager again.  The rain came down harder, banging on the tin roof so loudly that they had to raise their voices to hear each other.  They had been playing Motown on low as the sun went down and he stood and turned it up to 11.  Seized by an impulse she couldn’t identify, she got up, grabbed his hand, and led him outside in the rain.  “Are the stars out tonight, I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright…” echoed out from the house after them like the music emanating from the gymnasium during a school dance, providing the cadence for their revelry.  They swayed like fools and laughed like drunkards and gave the neighbors fodder for next morning’s gossip. 

After 15 minutes, soaked to the skin, she first took his shirt off and then her own.  She admired how Jack’s body had aged, skin softer and looser but clinging to taught muscles honed through decades of rowing and running.  She was less friendly to herself about her own body but had learned to shut down the voice in her head that reminded her she wasn’t 25 anymore.  She felt warm tears streak her cold cheeks and hoped he wouldn’t notice.  He did.  “What’s that for?” he inquired, tenderly.  Something cracked open inside her and she felt the words rising in her chest, then behind her Adam’s apple.  She choked on the words in her throat, afraid to say them but unable to hold them inside, “Where have you been?”  Her mind flashed through a desperate montage of years of battles over parenting, fights about housework and work work, questions of trust, and expectations uncommunicated and unmet.  Years of sad, wasted, and lost time.  As if in a movie, he responded like he had read her mind, “I don’t know, but I want to find my way back.”  It was at that moment that the surprisingly loud buzzer from the dryer sounded and jolted her eyes back to focus on what was truly ahead of her: darkness shrouded her as she sat, chilly and alone in front of the porch puzzle table and the eerie, familiar glow of Jack’s phone reflecting in his eyeglasses.

I Gotta Go | 19 January 2022

Why does walking in the cold make your bladder seem to shrink?  Suddenly I was desperate.  Before COVID it was hard enough to use a business’s bathroom without getting the stink eye, but these days it feels impossible.  I spotted what looked like a park across the street.  Yes.  Dark enough.  Let’s do this.  That is to say, it was dark until blue and red lights lit up my bare ass.

BNR Response

As the cops sidle up behind me, clutching their belts like gunslingers from the Wild West (why do they all do that?), I’m already pissing with such need and urgency that I cannot stop mid-stream.  Luckily, I am able to zip up before they are upon me, but that doesn’t stifle the immense humiliation of the moment.  They write me a ticket for public indecency, make no less than three jokes about my “lady parts” being exposed to the elements, and all but high-five themselves on their way back to the squad car.

As they pull away, I’m once again alone in the darkness of the trees.  I pull reflexively down on my jacket, covering the sliver of skin laid bare between my hip huggers and my shirt, and I tell myself that I can recover from this.  “Get it together, Bristow,” I say aloud.  I then examine my violation slip for the first time and realize that the financial penalty for having a waz outdoors is 350 smackaroos.  Jesus Keeeerist.

What a fuckin’ week.  First, I get kicked out of my place so my roommate Sadie can shag her boyfriend while he’s off the road for a week between shows.  I discover that sleeping on couches isn’t as glamourous as it sounds, even for a few nights.  My car breaks down on my way to Pescadero, and while I was able to safely walk to town in a few hours it had worn a hole in the bottom of my favorite boots from Mom that she rocked in the 70s.  Earlier that night, I sat at the bar at Duarte’s for a few hours and warmed my stomach on Cream of Green Chile Soup and my soul on well whisky.  I recounted my tale to Joaquin at the bar, and through a fog of booze and self-pity, raised a fist at the sky and asked what else the universe had in store for me.  I know better than to chase trouble.

Petey asked me to keep him company while he inventoried the bar and locked up, and I happily obliged.  I was supposed to meet Paula here to hang with her tonight, but she was a no-show.  My phone battery was almost dead so I just let it ride and decided to see what might happen with Pete.  We’d flirted with each other since Chemistry class in high school, and I thought maybe all this shite had happened to get me to this point right here.  Petey hadn’t changed all that much, and what had changed was for the better: same beautiful hands but with more character, those muscular forearms that looked like they could tackle an ox, crows feet appearing when he smiled at me.  Whoo-ee.  We shot Fernet and shut out the lights.  I mentioned my circumstances again, maybe it was the third time this evening, and he said I could crash at his place.  We hopped into his old Volvo wagon, and Pearl Jam on the radio combined with the fragrance of Sex Wax on his surfboards worked like a time machine.  The spell was broken, however, when we arrived at his apartment to find his angry girlfriend in nothing but an oversized Pantera tee-shirt on the stoop.  She’d locked herself out while she stepped out for a smoke and was BEYOND pissed.  Petey told me it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to stick around and that’s when I started hike number two of the day…but this time it was around 3AM, I was without a plan nor destination, and that hole in my boot indicated it was about 45 degrees.

It was at this time that I decided that maybe my best bet was to try to make it back to my car. Sure enough, just like Murphy predicted, as soon as I was back on the PCH I realized I had to go.  I walked for another 15, 20 minutes but then it was unbearable.  That’s when I had found the grove of trees, the campgrounds, whatever it was, relieved myself, had my lively encounter with highway patrol, and was just done.  Just done with it all.  Which brings us back to the present moment.  Still several mile markers away from my car, I drop to the ground and wallow for a moment at my shit circumstances.  And yet, the scent and sound of the eucalyptus swaying around me bring me to a place of calm.  I wander deeper into the thicket, feeling oddly safe in this familiar and yet unfamiliar place.  I think I see a bit of a clearing ahead, and then, yes, a campfire.  There appear to be a few people gathering, is that a drum circle?, but I can’t make out any details.  As I leave the shadows of the trees and bodies begin to take shape and encircle me with curiosity, I figure, what the fuck, what’s the worst that could happen?

Gems | 9 December 2021

Nestled in their settings, the glint of the gems was dazzling.  Through the store window they reminded me of the backlit liquor bottles which seduced me into my first bar.  We’ll be together soon, my beauties.  I promise.

BNR Response

I lingered on my way out of La Arcada even though I was running late to an appointment.  I cast one last, longing gaze at the jewels in the window and thought to myself, “Please don’t let the Bimbo lock up tonight, Jules,” hoping the owner of the jewelry shop would wait for my return so the job could be done properly.  Every time the Bimbo locked up it took me hours longer to open the following morning thanks to the catastrophes she inevitably created: gems mixed up, rubbing face to face, improper stacking leading to many gems falling entirely out of the velvet trays…many of which we were never able to retrieve.  Unacceptable!

I didn’t always think she was a Bimbo.  When Jules first introduced me to Jackie I’d felt a kind of kinship with her.  She reminded me of myself when I first started apprenticing under Jules at Heart Shaped Box.  This was back when Jackie’s now-ex-husband was still involved and the store was named Jules’ Jewels.  The details of the sudden divorce and subsequent business name change were suspect at best, in retrospect, but I guess it was none of my business.  Back to Jackie.  Jackie had a way of dressing, a way of carrying herself – elegant and sensual all at once.  She had the credentials and the ambition to really make something of herself.  I saw promise in her.

However, in the last year all that had changed.  The scenario I encountered upon my return to the boutique had become all too familiar: Jackie was strategically draped over the case of freshwater pearls, allowing her crisscross top to fall open and expose her Agent Provocateur brassiere.  (I know the brand because I have the same bra in nude.)  Mr. Spencer, on the customer side of the glass, had his card on the counter and his face virtually touching her decolletage.  His head was cocked to one side and his eyes were fixated on Jackie’s cleavage as if they held an optical illusion in a Carnival fun house.  It was the Spencer’s 21st wedding anniversary this Saturday and I had called his office earlier to remind him that we had Mrs. S’s wish list at the ready.  I opened the door just slightly and overheard Mr. Spencer cooing at Jackie, “C’mon, you know you want to come out with me again…Maybe this time I can give you a pearl necklace.”  The welcoming bells jingle jangled with my full extension of the door and all eyes were suddenly on me.  It was clear the jig was up to everyone except Jules, who emerged from the back with Mr. Spencer’s receipt as she cheerily put a gift-wrapped jewelry box in a fresh gift bag.

“Mr. Spencer!”  I purred, “So pleased you made it in today!  I trust that you’ve been taken good care of in my absence.”  I lifted up the countertop and glided up next to Jackie, the contrasting fabrics on our hips rubbed together like opposing Velcro.  This was the sixth large commission this Bimbo had taken from me in fewer days, and her antics were really starting to hit me in the pocketbook.  I’d seen the Spencers through the toddler years, through the affairs, and recently, the empty nesting.  I’d cultivated caring relationships with them, as with all of my customers, over decades.  I wanted them to have the best and I knew what the best was for them.  The best was not Jackie.  Not this Jackie of the past year, the floozy who “accidentally” forgot to button the middle portion of her blouse and who let her fingers wander on the inner elbow of my clients’ Brioni suits.  The Jackie who had butterfingers and had a few too many lost items on her shifts.  My commissions were all going to her cleavage.

Mr. Spencer quickly departed, flashing Jackie one last hopeful eyebrow raise over the shoulder, and it was time to lock up.  Jules was rushing, she had her sunglasses on already and the keys to the Lotus in her hand when she told me that she and Jackie had a client dinner at Lucky’s that they’d be “lucky” to arrive fashionably late to.  Fine by me.  GTFO.  As I locked up, I think about all the times during the past nine months where I’d tried to talk to Jules about Jackie.  There was the time I hired the mediator, the lunches spent in “mentor” mode, and many frank conversations in the office that all ended poorly.  Jules was certainly another who had fallen under Jackie’s spell, and I was at my wits’ end trying to get her to snap out of it and see the truth. 

It was while I was putting the last few trays of jewels in the safe that it all became clear: I would start by locking up and securing all the gems, making my visible exit on the close circuit surveillance cameras and pulling down the shades, only to return several hours later.  I would slip in through the freight entrance where the camera had broken last month.  I would take my favorite pieces, notably: the 7-carat sapphire antique Tiffany cocktail ring, the widely photographed bespoke engagement ring that a Hollywood A-lister had consigned after his latest divorce, and the Cartier canary diamond pendant necklace that Jessica Chastain had worn to Cannes in the wake of her renewed Scenes from a Marriage fame.  I’d suspected that Jackie was squirreling away the missing jewels somewhere in the ice box until she could unload them on one of her Johns at a discount.  Unlike the missing semi-precious gems and odd diamond studs, however, these losses couldn’t be simply written off the balance sheet.  Jules wouldn’t be able to let this one slide.  I would never be a suspect because I had devoted my entire life to Jules and the store, and I’d suffered for it: I’d been held up at gunpoint no less than a dozen times over the past 25 years, I’d lost two marriages to my dedication to the store, and I’d never had children as a result.  Once Jackie was discovered for the thieving tramp that she truly was, Jules would once again see me as the steadfast partner I had been all along, and all would be right with the world.

The plan was working flawlessly, and I congratulated myself on how well everything came together given the haphazard planning on my part.  I entered, opened the safe, delicately lifted our largest treasures from their slumber and relocated them in the icebox.  Just as I had suspected, there was a false bottom to an ice tray where the skank had hidden a rather astounding amount of “lost” merchandise.  I secured the safe once again and was just about to leave when I heard an unrecognizable sound coming from the office, which created a buffer between the front of house and the kitchen and safe rooms.  Without thinking, I unlocked the door to the office and flipped on the lights.  Jules and Jackie were a tangled mess of bare limbs, that Agent Provocateur brassiere dangling from the green editor desk lamp.  “What the fuuuuuck?” I whispered, as Jules lifted her head from the delta of Jackie’s thighs.  Well, this certainly complicates things.

Fumes | 30 November 2021

The street was aswirl with a dense fog of weed, tobacco, and the vodka fumes still outgassing from everyone’s skin from the night before.  Blinded by its density, I reached my hand out, and…

BNR Response

…touched the back of someone remarkably close yet visually undetectable.  I was so startled, I felt as if I’d been swimming somewhere alone in the dark only to be unexpectedly grazed by a fin.  I recoiled and smiled at the face that turned to identify the owner of the groping hand.

The light was orange and hazy.  Was it dawn or was it dusk?  I couldn’t recall the last few hours of the Halloween party, and there were just enough people on the streets for it to still be the evening of the party or the morning after.  As I passed the entrance to the zoo, the decorations from the big bash were at once a close recollection and a distant, headachy memory.  Through the gloaming of my remaining inebriation I could see hanging pumpkin lanterns, sagging with fog and dew, as well as the orange fairy lights slumping yet still affixed to the tree branches lining the grand entry path.

I continued down the block until I got to the beach and the Great Highway.  The ocean air briefly reviving me from my dehydration.  I paused at the stoplight and looked to my left, where I noticed someone exiting Zeke’s.  I had a brief and feeble mock-debate with myself about going in or not.  A small group of people wandered around the door and parking lot, zombie-like and as if high on the marine layer.  I took their lead and surrendered to my baser urges.

As I approached, I noted how it still felt like Halloween…eerie light in the sky and the Santa Anas blowing hot for either late at night or early morning.  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and was greeted by a lifeless black screen.  It must have died due to copious photos taken during the party and no charge.  I passed through the swinging saloon doors of Zeke’s and realized that they had been open for long over 24 hours and were still very much celebrating All Hallow’s Eve.

Tammi, dressed as a low-rent homemade Ursula the Sea Witch seemed a little too on-the-nose given her ongoing taunting-cum-downright-jealousy-fueled-feud with the redheaded bartender actually named Ariel.  Her neck and chest tattoos added edge to the look, which she wore with total disinterest.

I nodded at Tammi but she looked right through me.  I got a lukewarm beer from Ariel, who was also snubbing me…what was going on?  The cast of characters at Zeke’s continued to puzzle me as well…Julia was the only regular, and she was slumped down in the corner booth with a fake costume knife embedded in her breast.  I thought she had overdone it with the fake blood, but it was a decent look nonetheless.  The passed-out Julia was surrounded by a crew of over-confident tourists wearing an irritating mix of Ed Hardy and Harley Davidson biker gear.  “This must be how the French feel about visiting Americans” I thought to myself as I watched a man wearing full skeleton face paint, a Macho Man Randy Savage muscle tank, and cut-offs order Ariel to deliver a round of 15 Miller Lites to his friends in the corner booth with Julia.  They surrounded her, draping themselves over her in a disturbing manner and mocking her in a Weekend at Bernie’s  kind of way.  Their looks prompted me to look down at my body, and I surprised myself that I was still wearing the Cleopatra costume I had toiled for so many hours on.  That explained the “come fuck me” eyes I was getting from the table of touring bikers.  The clock on the wall had been stuck at 3AM since the first day I ever stepped foot in Zeke’s, but today it was another detail that didn’t help. 

I was trying to get Ariel’s attention for a second beer when a handsome stranger got my attention with a dirty joke and a mischievous smile.  He ordered us two shots and I stupidly fell for the peer pressure, the already-bendy time suddenly becoming a carousel of disguised drunks, new “friends” from the Halloween zoo party, drinks, and more missed red flags.

I grew more and more distressed as I failed to make eye-contact with Ariel even once, her eyes glazed and fixed.  Tammi aka Ursula was tending to the sloppy wannabe bikers in a mechanical tattooed Stepford Wives fashion, as if on a conveyor belt or grooved track sweeping through the bar and collecting empties while delivering fresh rounds.  The 80s jukebox was stuck on a five-song loop which was festive at first but haunting several hours later.  “Seasons don’t fear the Reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain…we can be like they are…come on, baby…take my hand…”

Mikey, the good-looking stranger, was halfway through a story about an unpleasant encounter with a potato bug when I decided it was time for me to head home.  I stood up quickly and had to steady myself by clutching tightly to the bar.  This was endlessly humorous to Mikey.  Dick wagon.  I tried to nonchalantly head to the back of the joint to slip out the oversized window in the ladies’ room, when I realized that Julia was definitely in a real version of Weekend at Bernie’s.   As I rapped nervously on the occupied bathroom door, I noticed that Julia appeared to be in a state of rigor as the buffoons jostled and cavorted around her.  Lividity was starting to appear on the underside of the bare forearm, still clutching a half-full pint glass on the table.  Time to get the fuck out.

I tried to disguise my fear but my drunkenness was conspicuous.  I tripped over my own feet and knocked over one of the old wooden bar stools, its crash echoing through the bar.  As I reached for the swinging doors, a large arm fell across it like a tumbling redwood.  It belonged to a creature, a man, so piratey and decrepit that he appeared to have floated up from Davey Jones’s Locker just for the occasion of stopping my exit.  “Just where do you think you’re going, dollface?  This party is just getting started.”

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 Big One | 5 November 2021

So that was it: “The Big One.”  Adrenaline pumping, I checked my body like it didn’t belong to me.  No pain yet.  The apartment was in much worse shape.  Heavy cracks spread like arteries on the walls and ceiling.  The front door was wedged on bent hinges inside a now parallelogram frame.  Outside I heard car alarms, shouting, and the hiss of water.  The face of my alarm clock was black.  The block was busted.  I could stay and hope for the best, or I could leave and not worry about the roof collapsing in on me.  The emergency backpack stuffed in the closet was looking more appealing by the minute.

BNR Response

Bleary eyed and having been awoken by the shake, I rubbed my eyes and put my feet on the floor.  Rising up out of bed I reached for my favorite pajama-soft Pearl Jam tee, worn as a dress, threw on a hoodie and Uggs.  I grabbed my go bag, phone, and apparently unnecessary keys, and made it through the trapezoid door.  Every step down the hallway felt like a move across an Indiana Jones bridge rapidly collapsing in a pit of lava behind me.  I felt guilty relief in knowing that 99% of my stuff was already packed and in transit to move across the Bay.  Now I just had to figure out if my new place had been hit.

Once on the street I was able to fully survey and assess the damage.  It wasn’t great, but perhaps not as bleak as within my apartment building.  I could see smoke billowing up from the bridge, and a fire hydrant was responsible for the hissing water, but the most unusual scene at the moment was the number of people out in the streets.  As I walked down my block toward where I meet the crew for brunch every Saturday, the regional code-5 disaster only mildly distracted me from the fog caused by the other tumult I experienced in the last 24 hours: my latest conquest.

As I stepped over fallen bricks from my neighbor’s balcony, I searched my phone for last night’s text messages.  The usual semi-drunken exchanges with Bertus, Frosty, and Lo took a familiar shape as I described the Viking-esque 6-footer I had targeted the night before at the speakeasy a cab ride away. 

I stopped to console a hysterical Maria (2 doors down) who couldn’t find her dog after the 8.1 quake.  I hug her hurriedly, noting that her disheveled appearance isn’t going to do her any favors if she wants her philandering boyfriend to stick around.  Randall liked to look.  I should know.

My mission was to get to breakfast, which my phone told me I had 5 minutes to do, before everyone got their orders in.  As I stopped dutifully at the light, a jacked-up taxi drove by with its bumper dragging on the ground, a large boulder-sized dent in the hood, and I realized I was functioning on autopilot.  I hadn’t gotten that lit last night so I couldn’t blame the Sidecars, so I chalked up my cavalier attitude to both shock and post-coital buzz.

I pulled my hoodie back on my shoulder from where Maria had tugged it down in her unseemly crying spell, and the wind bristled against my unshaven legs.  I felt the eyes of the suit walking past me acknowledging that I didn’t have pants on.  If I weren’t in such a hurry, I’d see where that suit was going and find out if he wanted a tag-along.  Immediately behind that suit came the disapproving look from some hausfrau, I rolled my eyes and walked on.  It ain’t for you anyway, lady, so wave off.

I nearly skipped the remaining 5 short blocks to Johnny’s, the greasy spoon we frequent, and saw the gang seated in the primo window table.  An extraordinary number of people were waiting on the sidewalk, emptying the carafes of coffee left outside for those whose seats weren’t yet ready.  The side door was open, and I could see they’re handing out meal kits to people presenting at the window in need of food.  I then realized that the line reached down the block and wrapped around the corner.  It’s a Pirates of the Caribbean ride-like line that no one wants to be in.  I recognized the guy up next in line at the door as someone I had bagged a few weeks prior, whose name I conveniently couldn’t remember.  Whew, what a night that was.  He had full sleeves of tattoos and wore several rings on his hands.  He had this sick loft right on the Embarcadero with those endlessly high ceilings.  I should try to recall his name so I can text him later to see if he’s still got a hunger for redheads.  And if his apartment is still standing.  I mean, we will need a place to go and mine’s out so…

I edged past the huddled masses in line for the free food at the door and opted for the main entrance to the café.  I slid into the booth window seat next to Lo and threw my head down on the table in feigned drama and exhaustion.  No one laughed.  I couldn’t wait to tell them about last night, and tittered as I remembered bringing Thor back to my place: shimmying out of my low-slung jeans and camisole, the room spinny as we clumsily fumbled toward an appropriate surface (table gone already, so countertop?).  We danced in an inebriated roundabout, kissing, removing his clothes next.  I couldn’t stop teasing him about his name, sure that it was a bar alias (mine was “Natasha.”)  I was in the haze of remembering how young he looked, his blonde hair falling across his remarkably unblemished face, when Lo snapped her fingers in front of me like a hypnotist breaking the spell. 

“Earth to Gabby!” she said, then I came to and saw that she and Bertus and Frosty were all looking at me with stern incredulity.  I listened intently at how their flats were in various states of disrepair, how thank goodness Johnny’s was open and had chargers and WiFi, blah blah until their attention drifted away from me and I could focus on more important things…like our waiter’s ass.

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.

New in Town | 15 September 2021

“A little further back.  A little further back.  A little further back.  Okay, you’re there.”

And there I was, the U-Haul successfully parked, right in front of the new place.  I didn’t yet know the city.  I hadn’t seen my new home.  I didn’t even know the name of the neighbor who’d flagged me into the spot.

BNR Response

I got out and shook the hand of the seemingly friendly pleb who’d helped guide the U-Haul driver into the spot in the basement garage of my new luxury apartment.  U-Hauls don’t come with drivers, but I insisted on personally moving my most valuable items separate from the corporate relocation trucks and had hired someone to commandeer the boat across state lines.

The pleb introduced himself as Hank, and, as I gazed over his should to survey the surroundings – not seeing any desirable basement amenities: no vanity parking spots, no golf cart parking, no vault…where had I landed, the Ukraine?! – I tried to palm him a Benjamin for his trouble.  Hank laughed sweetly, refusing my tip and informing me he was my welcome wagon.  Surprise!

“Oh, I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood.  I was told that a Junior Partner would be meeting me at the firm’s office later this morning to begin my introductions to this branch’s team.  Are you the Super?” I asked, eyeing his ruddy cheeks and plaid Brooks Brothers shirt with confusion.  Since when did BB make plaid?

“No, ma’am, I’m the Junior Partner.  I heard about your having to drive the U-Haul across from New York and imagined there must have been some kind of problem with the moving company.  I wouldn’t want to arrive in a new place to a new home and with no one to help me get situated, so I figured I’d head on over.  Besides, the firm is just down the way, so it was the least I could do.  Pa thought it was a good idea too, so here I am!”  Hank gestured down the road as if we could see the office from the basement.  He had a sort of “aw shucks” quality about him that was both charming and instantly irritating, but he was well-enough dressed, I supposed, to pass as a lawyer in these backwoods.

I didn’t feel the need to explain the U-Haul situation, though Hank was definitely perplexed when the moving truck pulled in a few moments later.  After the white glove delivery of all of my furniture and belongings had been completed from the relocation trucks, I had the Help unload the U-Haul under my careful supervision, staging Hank at the door to my condo while I manned the basement operations.

“You must be hungrier than a dilly bird!” Hank said, after washing his large hands and replacing his tweed blazer, “Let’s get you some eats before we head over to the office.”  His colloquialisms seemed to match my surroundings: rural Connecticut was supposed to be lovely, and while it was scenic it certainly had the stink of small town all over it.  Had the transfer from the Manhattan branch been voluntary, say so I could settle down and have the proverbial picket fence, this may have felt quirky.  Under the circumstances it just felt like some twisted Twilight Zone homecoming.

After a greasy Monte Carlo for lunch at the Grille just down the block, we walked another two blocks to the firm.  When the U-Haul driver had pulled into my underwhelming basement parking lot I should have known it was an indication of more disappointments to come.  My condo was best described as “quaint”: a mere 2,500 square feet, god knows who actually likes marble countertops anymore, an exposed refrigerator, no safe room, no dressing room, I could go on.  The horror.  The office had similar let-downs in store for me.  I was anticipating our flagship office to be a building of stature, instead I was met with a space that looked like a country cottage: single story, gingerbread accents along the roof line, shingled exterior walls, brick walkway, very local sheriff-cum-fishmonger-esque. 

As I sat around the Cracker Barrel board room table meeting my 5 new “colleagues” - 1 senior partner, 1 junior partner (Hank), 1 paralegal/admin, Hank’s mom (no apparent professional role), and the firm Cat, Murphy – I couldn’t help but wonder if this punishment fit my crime.  I felt the need to shake myself awake from this nightmare.  Didn’t they know who I was?  I had a corporate townhouse on the goddamned Upper East Side!  My former step-daughter went to camp every year in Switzerland (it did wonders for her celiac’s disease)!  My dog, Rufus, vacationed at an elite canine retreat in the Hamptons that cost more than Dartmouth!  Here I was, having put 20 years into building this firm only to be exiled to this Ashley Furniture shithole.  Did my boning the intern really merit my being deployed on this tour of duty in Hell’s armpit?  As I listened to Hank’s mom, Milly, adjust the Laura Ashley bib on her dress and prattle on about my duties of emptying the trash and walking Murphy, I realized that no.  No 26-year-old dick was worth spending two long years in the limbo of rural Connecticut.

Goldilocks | 26 August 2021

Once alone in the place, I couldn’t help myself from touching absolutely everything.  It was almost a compulsion.  Why was I like this?  I had to know what that fabric texture felt like, what the view looked like through the antique telescope, what the drying herbs hanging from the window tasted like, and what the cold weight of the jewelry on the dresser felt like.  I prayed there weren’t cameras in there.

BNR Response

The old wooden floors groaned under my bare feet and startled me, the first noise that had broken the silence of my invasion.  This moment represented the culmination of hours that stacked back-to-back, blurring into sleepless days of obsession over the past seven weeks since I found her key on my husband’s key ring.  I wasn’t a fool.  I knew my husband damn well, just as any woman who’s paying any attention at all knows her husband.  I couldn’t put my finger on it…was it something at the lab?  Was it concern over tenure?  The trip we had to cancel because of my unexpected promotion? 

I felt a sharp ringing in my ears the night it happened.  I was rinsing the “nice” wine glasses as we awaited company for dinner, and as he stood in our pantry-cum-wine cellar he absent-mindedly called to me, “Alex?”  He said, half focused, “Do we want the Petite Syrah or the Malbec?  Do we want jammy?”  He emerged from the dank and got unexpectedly caught in my eyes…I wasn’t drifting away, my laser focus frightened him.  As he realized I had been just a mere few steps away, he became befuddled.  “Why didn’t you answer me?”  I remained frozen, squeezing the spindly stem of a goblet until it nearly snapped.  “You didn’t ask me.  You asked Alex.  Who the fuck is Alex?”

The impending arrival of our guests coupled with my roast beeping at me from the oven bought him some time.  It bought me some time as well.  We both played it off during dinner, returning to the old habits that evolve after ten years of life with another human.  As we cleaned up after supper the air was thick as if we were strangers, each expecting the other to mention her but neither of us doing so.  After a few days, routine returned.  But I’m no fool. 

It was easy to figure it all out.  It was all so goddamned cliché.  An address scrawled on the back of Brophy Bros. calling card, water ring across the top.  Late night text messages and mysterious calls from “work”.  Everything shy of red Revlon on his monogram.  Alex Ainsley.  Some internet sleuthing, if you could even call it that, gave me enough fodder to last a lifetime: single white female, never married, 46, dog lover, blah blah blah.  Worked at the University, there you go.  Lived off of East Beach and was a regular at the coveted Opera Gala.  Turns out this bitch made her rounds at all the non-profit events.  Apparently, she’d donate a kidney if it got her at Steve Martin’s table.  While it was only a minor society circuit compared to nearby LA, she certainly wore the rug thin therein.  This woman had been photographed at least once a week over the last few years, after she had secured the Endowed Chair in Bioscience and was able to round out the diversity quotient for the bigger named charities. 

I hated her success.  I hated her confidence.  I hated that she had incredible fucking taste!  My fingers danced across the silks, satins, and sequins hanging idly in the spare room she devoted to her clothes.  Fabrics that only the wealthy can afford to actually live in and also maintain.  “Must be nice!” I said aloud, relishing the edge I heard in my own voice.  She had left a window open on her way out this morning, and the breeze was delicious and brought the music of the harbor with it.  The light was cloudy and orange in the kitchen and waded around the tops of orchids on the brushed concrete countertop.  There was only a glass left in the 1992 bottle of Pinot.  Stag’s Leap.  Bitch. 

I knew I wouldn’t find what I was looking for.  It didn’t stop me.  I was looking for why.  Why her.  My forehead felt hot and I felt myself drop into a chair.  Fucking Le Corbusier.  I was spinning, physically reeling with the unravelling of my marriage and all that goes into binding those ties.  I was in what some might consider a dangerous place: I knew it was over, I was full of very real rage, and I had nothing to lose.  “Let the bridges I burn light the path ahead,” I thought I’d read somewhere, and I cackled as I reached for a fresh wineglass and pulled the Pinot cork free with my teeth.  Three quick swigs later and I had found the remainder of her collection, I jostled a sleepy bottle of Fiddlehead from its dust and rustled through her drawers until I found the corkscrew. 

I found her stereo system and flipped on the turntable.  The ache of Billie Holiday swam in the air around me, “Oh my man I love him so, he’ll never know.  All my life is just despair, but I don’t care.”  I glided into that gilded closet, shimmying out of my boyfriend jeans and bathing myself in a slinky kimono.  I retrieved my glass and danced down the hall, opening the receding floor-to-ceiling glass doors and bringing the sea air into the living room.  I walked out onto the patio and found myself next to the telescope.  I quickly noticed there was a little set-up here, this is where she brought her men to impress them: globe lights crisscrossed overhead, outdoor speakers brought Billie into the fresh with me, and a wine bucket half-full of lukewarm water was on a stand by the scope. 

I leaned easily against the wooden railing, finished the second glass of cab, and gazed out at the boats in their slips, seagulls drifting on the breeze.  “What’s the difference if I say, ‘I’ll go away!’ when I know I’ll come back on my knees someday…for whatever my man is, I’m his forever more.”  “Well, fuck that noise,” I said as I sauntered back through Alex’s home.  I refilled my glass and slid to the back of the house into the milky white light of her bedroom.  I opened all the doors leading to yet another wrap-around porch, put my glass on the bedside table, and nestled into the down comforter…and waited.  It was Alex’s turn to discover that someone’d been sleeping in her bed.

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?

Public Relations | 5 August 2021

Rumors of prodigious happenings enveloped the community, some in whispers and others posted on signs warning all who enter. None of the stories were the same, and I wanted to know why.

BNR Response

I pushed open the gate to the quaint B&B we were staying at and pointed to the sign posted there which read, “Conception Weekend will commence Friday evening at sundown and last through Sunday’s sunset!  Beware your intentions and be careful the company you keep.” I stopped to read the sign a second time while simultaneously shooting a look of suspicion to my husband.  “Ummm, what the fuck is THIS?  Some kind of stupid Punk’d home-edition or something?”

Bob shrugged while stepping ahead of me to open the door to the lobby.  I watched his schlubbish body lumber through the narrow passage and hoped this was the kind of “traditional” place that put even the most married of couples in rooms with two twin beds.  He was always pulling this kind of weird shit and I really wasn’t in the mood.  Last birthday it was the murder mystery dinner gone too far, and our anniversary was an ultra-realistic kidnapping fantasy run by former Special Forces dudes in the desert near Joshua Tree.  Who has a kidnapping fantasy?  Really?  Do husbands think this passes for romance these days?  I mean, get me a five-star hotel with a pool and unleash me on the spa with a bottomless glass of bubbly and I’ll put out every night.  EVERY NIGHT.

I eyed the thatched roof of the cottage as I ducked slightly to walk through the wooden door to the lobby.  There was Bob, yucking it up with the elderly couple behind the front desk.  She had the face of an apple doll, the kind we made in kindergarten, and I imagined she was likely much younger than her mumsy attire and color-rinse made her appear.  He looked like he had just stepped out of a 1980’s lumberjack catalogue, sporting a plaid shirt and suspenders that were holding up his trousers the way suspenders hold up the barrel around rodeo clowns.

“I see you booked the full CW package, Mr. Sweeney.  You won’t be disappointed!”  Apple Doll’s eyes were glinting as she gazed at my schmo of a hubby.  He seemed really into her energy, which doubly creeped me out.  It was like watching my man lust after his own grandmother or something.  Luckily I caught myself grimacing in visible disgust before any of them realized I was there.  I went to stand next to Bob and let my eyes take in the full splendor of this local specimen while he continued to schmooze.

“Of course we offer a money-back guarantee, you know, Champ!  All you need to do is, well, *fake cough* and the CW takes care of the rest.”  Lumberjack all but elbowed Bob in the ribs while they shared a chortle.  What was that on the shelf behind them, was that some kind of huge dildo?  Couldn’t be, it was made from wood.  It must be rustic…art of some kind?  I took a sip from my welcome beverage and winced at its strength.  It had a pungent odor and tasted worse than PGA but it sure was taking the edge off the realization that Bob apparently wanted to join a sex cult.

Admittedly I zoned out while continuing to examine my surroundings, with only a few key phrases penetrating my incredulity and shock.  The more I looked around at the phalluses made from, um, non-traditional materials (coral, honeycomb, cork?) and Georgia O’Keefe-esque yonic imagery, the more I felt almost prudish.  That was a first.  I snorted audibly and snapped myself out of the unwanted mental porno.  I took another sip from my vagina mug and had to sit down.  Whatever these rubes put in this nectar was no bullshit, could it be they also had a moonshine still hidden here in this sex cave?

The room starts swimming and I suddenly find myself oddly into this whole scene.  Someone has put music on and suddenly, “Rockytop” is the most sensual sound that has ever entered my aura.  I look over at Apple Doll and think, “You know, maybe I can be into chicks after all.”  She starts to unbotton her Laura Ashley blouse.  Time passes and I find myself laying on my back in a part of the lobby that’s been cordoned off by a curtain.  I feel the rug against my bare skin, smiling like a drunken Junior on Prom Night looking up at my Prom King, er, Kings.  I arch my back to assist the Lumberjack in pulling my jeans off and unzip Bob’s zipper.  I enter a groovy dreamscape and the next thing I know Bob is smiling down on me like I’m a sedated cat and in an underwater garbled sound I hear, “We did it, Champ!  CW is guaranteed to give you the baby she wants.  We’ll give you a map for the other coital stops in town to amplify your results.  Just keep feeding her a steady stream of the fertility juice and you can’t lose.”

As I drift closer to clarity I remember the day I tossed my birth control pills in the waste bin at work, thinking how pointless they were given my dedication to celibacy where Bob was involved.  At the same moment the familiar longing for motherhood floods my brain and I realized that maybe the schmuck had finally gotten it right.  And I was finally ready to give him a piece of ass.

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.”

Afflicted | 28 July 2021

It always struck me as funny that they called it an, “affliction.”  It never came up with any pain, or suffering.  But there I’d be, laid up in bed for days at a time, staring through the ceiling directly up at…well, you, I guess.

BNR Response

So, mom, there are juts a couple of things I wanted you to know.  We don’t always communicate that well when we try to talk to one another, so I wanted to put this in writing.  I’m also hoping it is something you read and reread, and that it is a source of reflection for you in thinking about how we curate our future relationship.

I preferred when my episodes happened near the beach in Aberdeen, rendering me too far from the Clinic so I got to stay in the casita for my “recovery” instead.  The last time it came over me things got really quiet and all of a sudden I felt the warm scrub on sand against my back, and the dangerous tickle of waves kissing the bottoms of my feet.  My skin prickled fresh with goosebumps as the air from the shore glided over me and up the bluff towards the Kurt Coabin Memorial.

“Marc.  MARC.”  You jolted me awake, rattling me by the shoulders like a faulty vending machine and with just as much unnecessary force.  I remember you chiding me again, like so many times before, “Marc.  You had one of your episodes again.  You know, if you don’t straighten up and start taking more of your meds then your affliction is just going to keep getting worse.”

You always have a way of taking everything to that Blanche DuBois level of melodrama, don’t ya, ma?  At first, I couldn’t understand what was so bad about losing 15 minutes here and there while my mind escaped the hell of your house to imagine the beach.  Then I started examining the whole situation more closely. 

Why did you insist on my staying with you after I graduated from Reed, even when my scholarship paid for me to stay in my beautiful on-campus housing until my post-doc work at RISD was supposed to start?  I was laid up in the bed at the main house, coming in and out of the gloaming, when it dawned on me that my “affliction” had only started I’d left Oregon altogether.  It all started to come together that night once again reflecting upon the last two lost years I’ve spent wasting away in either the stuffy Olympia estate or in the casita or at the Clinic.  In that haze where you thought I was asleep, I caught you sneaking something in my soup.

After “waking” to see the corrupted food on the tray table, I waited for you to leave the room and then dumped my lunch into the vase on the bedside table.  I then feigned sleep when I heard you heading toward my room from your study down the hall.  I heard you hovering, I could feel your eyes on me as you got closer (too close) to my face.  I watched through nearly shut eyes to see you turn partially and produce another unlabeled bottle of sap-colored liquid. 

You were eerily calm, measured, when you took me by the shoulder and swiftly launched into your familiar refrain about my latest episode and my need for more drugs.  When I was noticeably conscious you became almost panicked, spit nearly frothing at the edges of your mouth.

As you smugly removed the empty bowl and returned it to the kitchen, I resolved to start my rebellion.  I haven’t eaten anything you’ve put in front of me for the last month and I’ve never felt better.  My friends have supplemented my diet during their visits, and, while I sometimes miss my beach daydreams, I can now enjoy the actual beach.

I waited to share this letter with you until we were back at the Clinic for my monthly examination.  I waited so that Dr. Fransblau and I could share the news with you: while I will be discharged this afternoon, it’s my pleasure to inform you that, as the song goes, “you can check out anytime you like, but you can’t never leave.”  Enjoy your stay here, ma.  You won’t be leaving any time soon.

Your son,

Marc.

Eye Test | 19 July 2021

“Try to stop focusing your eyes.”

“I’m trying.  I think I can see one now.”

“That’s not quite right.  Relax.  Don’t think too hard about it.  Just allow yourself to take it all in.”

BNR Response

I blinked my eyes a few times to reset, I really wanted to see the stars I had heard so much about.  Opening my eyes anew, I found there was something obstructing my view.  Then there was a body. 

“Ugh!  Char-LIE!  Get OFF!”  I push upward against Charlie’s soft body mass, like trying to get a squishy coffin lid open. 

“PPPPFFFFFFF what’s wrong?”  he stage-whispered with genuine exasperation.  “I thought you said you were ready to finally do it!”

“I didn’t say that, and even if I were it wouldn’t be in the planetarium!  Mr. Fleischmann is right over there!”  I reason.  I was in no mood to have our creepy AP Chem teacher watch me get felt up.

And just like that, the lights fade even further and I realize that I hadn’t been able to see the stars because they hadn’t yet turned them on.  How had I fallen for that?  We lay next to each other in the darkness, Charlie and I, in the full-recline seats they had told us about before the field trip.  He was so close that our sleeves were touching, and I could hear his breath, but I felt worlds apart.  We’d been going together for six months and I thought I really meant something to him – not just another SnapChat hook-up like the other girls.  When I had said I wanted to take things slow, he had been patient and understanding.  Now that prom was a week away, it seemed that my stay of execution had been abruptly denied. 

“Come on, let’s head to the taxidermized animals instead, this blows.” Charlie said, now at full volume, hopping up so quickly out of his chair that it snapped back to ninety degrees like a mousetrap.  I got up, sheepishly, and followed him out of the darkened room by feeling my way along the aisle, my eyes not yet fully adjusted to the pitch.

He slid his right hand down my jeans in front of the cro magnon mannequins and, later, his left hand conveniently dropped from my shoulder to my boob in the mummy exhibit.  I wasn’t frigid or anything, which had become his refrain-of-the-week, but I also wasn’t trying to get branded a slut or to run into my parent’s friends while necking among the dinosaur bones.

About an hour or so later, we somehow found ourselves reintegrated with the rest of our class.  It was as if we had just taken an unintentional detour and come through the other side of a worm hole and landed right where we were meant to be.  I was relieved for it, a respite from my boyfriend the octopus.  Charlie was bereft and wandered over to a few of his bros to strategize about spit balls or wedgies or whatever boys care about.  Following the group, we were now going into some kind of dark tunnel and another atmosphere change.  It felt clammy and it smelled like damp, this must be the amphibian space.  Once again disoriented by the sudden change in environments and fragrances.  This museum had like ten worlds and epochs inside one giant football field-sized building, I loved it here.  I could feel bodies bumping around me in the close quarters.  The soft masses navigated and orbited each other like a gentle spin cycle, offering up body odor, adolescent cologne, and the wonderful smell of flannel.  We bumped and jostled as we pushed our way through the glass-walled tunnel, lined with snake enclosures and reptile habitats.  Then, the familiar, the inevitable: a hand, firm, squeezing, on my butt.  “Jesus, Charlie!”  I hissed as we emerged into the light, bright in our eyes as when waking from a nap in the sun. 

“What, babe?” Charlie called back from ahead of me, in the light.

My neck then snapped around to identify the owner of this probing hand.  “Mr. Fleischmann?!” 

DD Response

I closed my eyes and focused on letting go until I knew I wasn’t blocking myself, and I opened my eyes. Millions of fireflies danced around the field, and I was awestruck.

I watched their dance and was transported back to Tullahoma, Tennessee in the summer of 1966. Granddaddy took me with him on his tractor to check on the cows. Time with him included a lot of silence, but I knew it was different than the silence that came from my mama’s pursed lips. I felt so wanted sitting between his legs with his big scruffy hands covering mine on the steering wheel. We rode out to the pasture over the hill where the cows were grazing and stopped, not getting too close. Granddaddy watched, and I watched him watch. I know now he was counting, but then I just thought he was watching. Not watching to catch them doing something bad, but watching to make sure they were all safe. I wanted to be watched like that.

 “Up,” he said, and I knew he wanted me to get up off his lap. He held my hand and supported me as I jumped to the ground. I turned and watched his slow steady movements as he climbed down and bent over to pick something up off the ground. “June bug” he said, holding a shiny iridescent green bug. Granddaddy handed me the bug and it buzzed in my little hands. He smiled as he reached into the pack hanging on the back of the tractor seat and pulled out a ball of string. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out his pocket knife. I watched him curiously knowing that he was doing something for me. Just for me. He handed me the piece of string as he put away his knife and asked if I knew how to fly a June bug. “I think you’re gonna show me,” I replied as he chuckled. He gingerly tied the string to one of the legs and handed me the other end as he threw the bug up in the air.

It buzzed and flew in a circle over my head like a tiny motorized kite. I circled in unison until I got dizzy and plopped to the ground laughing out loud. “That’ll do” he said as he cut the string away and set the June bug free. “Hop up,” he said. We mounted the tractor, and I snuggled back into Granddaddy’s lap for the ride back to the barn.

The sun was setting and the golden glow on the treetops faded to black on the ground underneath. We came around the final turn to home where the trees line up as sentry’s around the farmhouse backyard. I saw sparkles under the trees. “Look Grandaddy!!! Fairies!!!!”  I yelled with excitement. He chuckled and stopped the tractor just short of the barn door. We sat there in silence and watched the fairies dancing under the trees until Grandmother rang the bell calling us to dinner.

Night Swimming | 17 July 2021

Night swimming, so sexual and risky all at once. The lights were low and that aided on both counts: you were both protected and exposed at the same time.  The party was winding down. While you had not indulged, most of the attendees had enjoyed a few joints and a few bottles and were now, sluggishly, finding their way home. Out of the shadows you saw his tall figure emerge from behind a frond: just as it had in so many daydreams. He waded into the water, and you couldn’t yet divine whether he could detect your state of dress. Oh man, was this the moment you’d been waiting for?

DD Response

“Brie?,” he said as he saw me sitting on the bank. “Is that you?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

“I thought everyone was gone.”

“It’s just me. “

“Are you going to swim?”

“I didn’t bring a suit. Everyone was making fun of me, because I wouldn’t join in the skinny-dipping party. I don’t need to hear more of that.”

“You won’t hear any of that from me.”

“But you’re doing it.”

“Because I thought everyone was gone. I’m not in to voyeurism and group sex parties, but it does feel really good to swim naked. There is something really freeing about it. Wanna try? I will turn around while you get in the water.”

The crickets chirped the only reply as I swallowed the fear. Seconds passed and he let my silent debate have its space.

“Okay” I said as he turned his back to the shore and waded in up to his chest.

I slowly undressed and folded my clothes into a neat pile. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I thought. But it felt safe and exciting and powerful. “I’m not ready yet,” I said as I gingerly stepped into the water.

“Take your time,” he replied.

I waded in a few feet away, parallel to where he was standing. The cold water moved around my body, and it felt amazing. I found myself smiling as I closed my eyes, outstretched my arms and looked up at the stars. “I’m here,” I said. “I know” he replied as he turned toward me with a smile of his own.

“I was talking to the universe” I said. “I know” he replied again. “That’s what I find so fascinating about you.”

That was the beginning of us, and as I sit here in the same spot 35 years later, I still smile. My partner, my friend, my lover always waited for me to find my courage. He didn’t expect more from me than I was able to offer, and one step at a time he walked beside me. I’ll never again touch his face or feel his arms hold me, but I’ll always have his love- his sweet patient love to carry me forward.

HCH Response

What was he still doing here?

I took an extra two steps backwards to cover my shoulders with water. Reflexive modesty — a little late for that, I guess. Soft mud squished between my toes, and a tickle grazed my ankle. I recited the night swimmer’s mantra: “It’s algae, it’s algae, it’s algae.”

His silhouette paused on the sand and raised its hand in an effortless hello. My pulse jumped. Had we ever spoken more than three words in a row to each other? My interest in him was irrational, pheromonal. If it hadn’t been for enough mutual friends to land both of us at an occasional gathering, we wouldn’t know each other from a hole in the ground. But as holes in the ground go, I’d gladly stop to investigate this one. Now here I was, buck naked in a lake, in a beam of unfiltered acknowledgment. Stupid broad shoulders. Stupid faraway eyes. Stupid baritone. Stupid way he was… undoing his… pants? Oh my god, he was wading in.

“This is the best idea anyone’s had all night,” he called out. His steps sent dark waves rippling toward me.

My mind flashed to the covers of trashy novels I’d found so scandalous as a teenager. I wondered if I looked as seductive — my hair slicked back with algae water and my fourth-worst underwear draped in a nearby tree — as those illustrated women moonbathing in their silvery lakes. Of course I wanted this experience. It’s just… I guess I thought it would follow hours of flirtation on dry land, not skip straight to the wet stuff.

He was near enough that I could feel the extra degree of warmth he’d brought with him. I suddenly fantasized about skipping even further ahead to a different myth: slipping into his arms, resting my head on his chest, listening to the frogs and crickets in the cattails, feeling so close that we could fall asleep holding each other. But my nerve endings were now pounding at the door, so trashy it would have to be.

“Hey there,” I tried on my best soap opera voice. Nope. Dropping that. “How’s your night been?”

“Good. But, you know.” He nodded toward the party, which had quieted down into a few glowing embers on the other side of the tree line. “It’s hard to keep up sometimes. So you just kind of hold on until the storm passes.”

“That’s a good way to put it.” We smiled. One, two, two and a half… There it was, the awkward pause. “Can I tell you something?” I saved us.

“Sure,” he said, with a hint of surprise.

“This is the first time I’ve ever been skinny-dipping in a lake.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’ve done it a bunch of times in the ocean. But it’s different in a lake, especially at night.”

“Mmmmmhm,” he agreed. “It’s more than peaceful. It brings all your senses to life. All your thoughts, memories even. Everything just comes rushing in.” Wow, that was unexpectedly thoughtful. Maybe he was hot and cool.

He took a deep breath and leaned his head back in appreciation. His chest rose and fell. I watched the water break and recollect its tension around his frame. I felt a light graze across my submerged arm closest to him. That was not algae. That was his hand, reaching for mine with his eyes closed. I joined it and reached for his other hand. We were now facing each other, a closed circuit with perfect current. The water between us was as warm as a bath.

“So… Anything else you want to tell me?” he asked, inching closer.

I could barely speak. Was this the part where we breathily confess that we have been noticing each other for a while, but neither of us had taken a chance to make the first move? And then we have a moonlit lake skinny-dipping kiss, and make out for an appropriate amount of time before transitioning to the hot’n’heavy, anti-gravity, tangled-limb, underwater groping portion? I did the only thing I could to play cool. I turned the tables. “You first,” I whispered.

He stood quietly, looking at me — no, through me. One, two, two and a half… I let this one ride. Then he closed his eyes again. His mouth opened but no words appeared before it closed again. “Um,” he started, and cleared his throat.

“Well,” he started softly. “When I was 10, I snuck into my brother’s room after school one day. He was at a friend’s house.”

“Okay…”

“I played with all of his action figures, and then I french-kissed his poster of Jennifer Lopez.” He furrowed his brow.

“Ohhhh?” I squashed a smile as if it were a sneeze I could barely keep in.

“Another time, when I was mad at him, I collected my boogers for a week and then put them in his bed.” He took a deep breath and let it slowly out. “Jesus, I’ve never told anyone about that. It feels so good.”

“Wowww.” My face fought to find an appropriate reaction. “So… You’ve been feeling bad about that for a long time?”

“I don’t feel that bad, he was always a jerk to me. But secrets eat you up inside, and I don’t know — when you asked if you could tell me something, it kind of felt like this must be the right time to open up.”

“I’m… glad you did.” My fingers were turning into prunes under the water, but he was still holding my hands. He was drawing some strength or comfort from our confession ring. The nerve endings had called off their battle cry. My nose itched. But you never know how this stuff goes — tears could be next. Pulling away now would be uncool. He squeezed my hands tighter and took one more deep breath.

“I peed on a coworker’s car,” he exhaled. “He’s just a real prick. I was there late one night, and he’d left his car in the lot because his girlfriend picked him up. So I peed on all the door handles. And the trunk latch.”

“Ahh?”

“Yeah. And the only ever time I’d ever done something like that was when I peed in my neighbor’s flowers because they hated my dog. Other than that, never. I swear. I’ve only done it to someone who really deserved it.” I pictured him as the self-appointed judge in the Court of Urine Punishment. I imagined him in a barrister’s wig and a robe, naked underneath for easy access to the weapon of choice.

“God, it is magical out here. I can’t believe you got me to tell you all this crazy stuff.” He chuckled. “You’re like a some kind of mermaid or a priestess or something. Or like, a hot Loch Ness Monster.”

He let go of my hands, and with a huge splash, he dunked himself underwater.

Meatloaf | 17 July 2021

I woke with the sun burning red against the back of my eyelids. I sat up too quickly, my head spinning, eyes focusing on dizzying palm trees swaying nearby. I know this pool, it’s the rooftop at the Peninsula. My blurry eyes catch the cocktail napkin, which tells me I’m at the Las Vegas Peninsula, not my local Westwood. The pool water is glass, all chairs realigned to perfect symmetry except mine. There isn’t a soul here. How did I get here? The last thing I remember is making Sunday meatloaf for Hank. Which day is it? How did I get here? What the hell happened?

HCH Response

Our patio used to be as busy as a bus station, I would joke. Hank’s business associates would arrive in groupings, like darts in a cloud of cologne. The gents, as my husband called them, barely acknowledged me other than to accept another cocktail from the tray with a cordial smile and a wink. “Thanks hon,” Hank mouthed as I would quickly excuse myself back inside, turning to look through the wall of glass separating our worlds. Though they were all baking in the heat of the late afternoon, it seemed my husband was the only one ever dabbing his brow with a handkerchief.

Back then, Hank and I got a lot of invitations to business functions at The Peninsula Westwood. That was the company spot for everything — dinners, happy hours, rooftop parties. I knew he was trying his best to make a name for himself among these men. I obsessed over my accessory combinations and rotated through my closet carefully so as never to wear the same thing twice, borrowing beautiful dresses from friends when I ran out. I pressed his shirts and insisted he wear the heirloom cuff links that he only ever donned for funerals. I loved walking through the lobby or the pool deck, pretending I was a high profile guest. I guess the performance paid off, because within the year he got the position he wanted. I was proud of him. My Hank.

That winter, an infection I had developed took an unexpected toll. I was back on my feet, folding laundry and watering the garden, but the world was muffled. I kept getting startled by Hank. He would appear in the doorway suddenly, frustrated, lips pursed. Sometimes I turned around to see him there as if he’d magically materialized, like an irritated genie. I let out a yelp of surprise. “What’s wrong?” I said. “I’ve been saying your name. Didn’t you hear me?” he demanded, then softened when he saw my confusion. I cried in his arms.

The specialist I saw told us my hearing would continue to degenerate, but that I could get some use out of a hearing aid for now. I resented its arrival. It was an awful, clunky thing. I couldn’t stand to wear for more than an hour at a time. I hated everything about it: regulating its sensitivity, bracing for its unpredictable feedback, the physical pressure on on my ear, how I saw my profile in the mirror. With Hank at work so much, I mostly let myself live in a world buffered by soft silence at home. I didn’t mind the peace, honestly. After a while, we found other ways to deal with the change. He knew to approach me from the front, and I learned to watch his mouth as he spoke. We said less that didn’t matter, and we touched more. The hearing aid often spent a week at a time in the kitchen drawer, happily neglected by me.

My new health status discouraged us from hosting. Even neighbors felt awkward as they shouted and exaggerated their faces when they greeted me on the street. Hank’s business associates knew, and he didn’t want to put either of us in that position by inviting them over. Not that he even had the time — it seemed his hours were getting longer and longer. I’d make dinner and watch for his headlights. Some nights I saw them shine through the front room sheers, and we would eat together. Other nights, not.

One uncharacteristically rainy evening, I decided to make a meatloaf. It was one of Hank’s favorite rare comforts. Tonight it felt right. I preheated the oven and diced onions. The sound of their sizzle was faint in the cast iron frying pan right in front of me. They danced, turned translucent. Smell and sight were such loyal friends in the kitchen. I caught the reflection of Hank’s headlights in the kitchen window. A wave of initial excitement turned into adrenaline and worry. The clock read only 5:10pm, and he was never home before 7:30, usually 8pm. I turned the stove off and waited in the kitchen entrance where I could see the front door.

Hank entered soaking wet, followed by two men I didn’t recognize. He looked pale and exhausted. I rushed to take his sopping coat. “Honey, the gents and I have some matters to discuss,” his lips said. He gestured to the associates behind him. I smiled and went to take their coats, but Hank stopped me and ushered me back to the kitchen. “They won’t stay long. No need to bring drinks. Are you making meatloaf? Smells wonderful.” He pulled me close. “Maybe best to just stay in here. I’m sorry. We will talk about it later,” he whispered directly into my ear. He looked in my eyes for confirmation, and I nodded.

This strangeness made me miss the patio days. What the hell was going on? Focus… I turned my back to the kitchen door and arranged the task in front of me on the countertop. Ground beef. Spices. Mixing bowl. Loaf pan. As I emptied the meat into the bowl, I was surprised to hear what I thought were voices coming from the sitting room. If they were reaching me, something was definitely not right. I slid open the drawer full of potholders and retrieved the unappreciated device. I clicked it on, pressed it into my ear, and jumped at the noises rushing all around me. Once I got acclimated, I turned it up full volume. Angry, raised voices — this time I could make out the words.

“You really shat the bed on this one, Lawson. You really fucked us all over. Now why would you do that? Huh?” A pause. “Speak up you sonofabitch. I can’t read lips, remember. Huh? Huh?”

“I said, it was a calculated risk, I, I… You were in the room with me, Bennett, I… ” Hank’s voice trembled under the weight of its volume, trying to sound confident and failing.

I worked my hands into the bowl of raw meat, squeezing it through my fingers nervously, so distracted I hardly realized it was becoming a paste.

“Yeah well, you’ve taken enough risks. That was your last one. You have no idea what you cost us. Burke, go check for mice.”

“Bennett, let me, just let me, I have a plan, I can turn this around,” Hank rambled.

I was so tuned into the voices, so paralyzed as my mind raced about what to do, and so intent on kneading the meatloaf into oblivion, that I didn’t register the footsteps approaching the kitchen. Suddenly an electronic shriek blasted my ear. I ripped the hearing aid away from my head and threw it on the ground, falling to my knees in shock and pain. I looked up to find one of the men standing in the doorway with a pocket radio in his hands. His fingers slowly twisted the frequency knob. I was aghast.

“I thought so,” Burke said, dropping the radio and reaching for my frying pan full of onions. “Can’t have that.” The bottom of the cast iron eclipsed the light of the kitchen ceiling.

…

“Ma’am? Ma’am?” repeated the young pool attendant, touching my shoulder. “Are you a guest here at The Peninsula? Can I help get you back to your room?” His eyes were kind, his teeth bright white, his mouth a hospitable read.

“Unfortunately... I don’t think so.” I muttered.

DD Response

Does it even matter? I certainly remember the most important part… I did it. I finally did it. I smile even though I’m not exactly sure how I arrived at this location. I smile because I’m sure it didn’t involve Hank.

THREE WEEKS EARLIER

Hank took a bite of the meatloaf and started complaining about my cooking. “Did you put Saltines in the meatloaf again? Is that ketchup I taste? Everyone knows real meatloaf is made with milk soaked Italian bread and Parmesan.”

I tuned out the rest of his long winded diatribe on the proper way to cook meatloaf. I’ve heard all of his stories about the value of homemade mayonnaise and how to make Texas chili and how onion trimmings are supposed to go into the disposal versus the trash. “I’ve heard his holier than thou bullshit for the last time,” I thought as I clench my throat against the rage. “I’m done.” Two words are all that escape my mouth.

“Done? You haven’t even taken a bite of your crappy meal,” he said.

“I’m done with you,” I said as I rose from the table. I walked to the bedroom and packed a suitcase with shaking hands. I threw in the clothes littered on the floor and a stack of newly folded t-shirts from the bench. “Underwear,” I thought. “I need underwear… and a toothbrush… and my iPad… and shoes.” My mind raced through the necessities. “If I don’t have it, I can buy it,” I assured myself. I have his credit card, and I’m glad to use it.

I walked by Hank as he continued to eat the unacceptable meal without even looking up, and I slipped out the door. I put my bags in the back seat and dropped into the driver’s seat and locked the doors. “Breathe,” I told myself, “Just breathe.” My heart was racing as I fumbled for the keys. “Start the car dear. Put your hands on the steering wheel and drive.”

I ended up at the Westwood, a place I had seen in ads during late night tv. Watching tv late into the night had become a habit, a way to avoid listening to Hank snore and feeling the heat of his body. Avoid. I’ve done a lot of that for the last ten years. I’ve avoiding my friends after 3:00pm, because he might come home and see they parked in his spot or left a glass on the counter or some other travesty. I’ve avoided working the NY Times crossword puzzle in the den, because he let me know regularly that looking up a word in the dictionary or grabbing the encyclopedia to look up the capital of Burma was cheating. I avoided going into the office and set up a tiny office in the sunroom where I accessed our company books remotely. My whole life was based on avoiding… avoiding Hank and the constant criticism.

Avoiding is not living. Today I’m going to start living, and apparently that’s going to happen at the Westwood.