Three Days Minus Jena

Three Days Minus Jena


(previously published)
copyright @aladreth antionette brown



He was beautiful.  Ted Danson beautiful.


Well, okay, Ted isn't totally beautiful, but I'm sure his wife, Mary Steenburgen, thinks he's just fine. 


I bet Flagstaff, Arizona thinks he's beautiful, as he was raised near there and they love their 'boy-made-good.'


I bet all those environmental places he works with loves him and finds great beauty in his little white toothed soul.


God, what am I doing defending Ted's beauty and getting off the story? 


Let's just say this man was far too beautiful for me and my granny panties, as Oprah likes to call them. 


The beautiful man, as he was over me, pulling my jeans off of me, got me to thinking.  I kept worrying he would be judging those too normal and nice peach cotton panties, so I slipped them off as quickly as possible.


He wasn't judging, though, he was looking straight in my eyes.  I thought it quite gentlemanly of him.


Or perhaps the straight-in-the-eye thing was animal like two alpha wolves mating, teasing, taunting each other.  I remember how we were tugging and yanking and ripping at each others clothes.  One of the buttons on his lovely dark purple dress shirt hit me in the lip. 


No biggie.  I survived. 


Yes, I survived to tell another to tale. 


Oh, the songs that were playing in my head that night he showed me how to spit Brandy right out of the bottle in to the sea. 


It was like I was spitting right smack dab in my mother's face, you know. 


I imagined her like one of the Titanic survivors in a life boat half filled on the black water.  Unsinkable Molly Brown meets naughty night time daughter.


Then my beauteous Ted look-a-like, he'd put a lit flame from a gold 70's half naked woman lighter in the stream of my Brandy and fire would come forth just like I was Goddess Gaia spewing the earth in to existence.


This motel was on the ocean.  Yes, salt and sea.  Right there.


A cheeky sign on the door leading to the dock read, "Caution to all drunks or dizzy people, this door opens directly to THE OCEAN.  Be careful to not fall in.  No lifeguards or night watchmen on duty."


And it shook and swayed, just like any dock would do, but with the door open from our room, I was shy and embarrassed all over again.


"Can we shut the door, Ken?" I asked.


See, his name was short one syllable like, "Ted," but it was, "Ken."


"Who is going to be walking on the dock at one o'clock in the morning?" he wanted me to explain.


"I don't know, darling, but I'm sure we aren't the only ones awake and while I doubt anyone would be too frightened to see your old arse twisting above me, I seriously doubt they'd want to see my fat bod'."


Ah, he argued.  Said something about how he adored my body and loved me too. 


He finally gave in to me, though, and pushed the door, throwing his leg off the bed and hitting it with the back of his heel, but not too hard, he left it open a crack and coaxed me to 'be loud.'


"You don't want them to see you, but who cares if they *hear* you?" 


Where, oh where had that girl gone, the one, who less than ten years ago didn't care what anyone thought of her looks and never cared if she ever saw Ken, Ted, John, Bob, or whatever their names were again? 


Oh, all the time during her demise, there were signs.


Signs. 


Yes, no one can stay at the top.  All these men telling me I was the best at whatever it was they would be talking about at the time.  The funniest, the best voice, the best writer, the most beautifully decorated home, the fanciest car. 


How did I turn out to be such a sorry sack then?


One said I was the best dominatrix he had ever submitted to.  One said the sex he had with me was the best he had ever had.  He even went as far to say it was better than anything he had ever done in his life, including the most expensive drugs.  One man said I was his drug. 


One said I was beautiful. 


Not just cute, mind you, but the big word.  The one word hardly no woman believes.


But, I don't know where those men are now. 


Ken, who didn't even care about my granny panties, received a telephone call that night.  It was the front desk telling him his credit card wouldn't take another night. 


I mean, to give him the benefit of the doubt, the place was quite expensive.  You can't stay right on the ocean and not expect to pay a hefty fee for powerfully awesome God enriched scenery. 


As I lay next to him running my fingers down his chest while he talked with the front desk clerk, I thought of how much I had available on that one pretty credit card, the platinum one with red roses.  Even my credit cards were romantic sunsets and flowers.  I wanted at least one more day and night with drunk Ken.  I could tell myself later the only reason he was with me was because of the Brandy.


Well, now, it had come to this.  I had to pay for the room and I was in quite a stressful rush around to get out before check out, which was 11am the next morning.  I didn't want to pay for another night. 


At the end of the day, sex with Ken wasn't worth it.  Sex with anyone wasn't worth paying so dearly for it.


I had a short moment of sanity. 


Maybe this is why I decided to take a sabbatical with the nuns.  I mean, "The Nons." That's what they called themselves.  They were witches, I suppose. We called each other Sister This and Sister That. 


Women are so different from men.  Women you can talk to and they will give you advice.  They give such wonderful advice that they even preface it with, "Well, I can't tell you what to do." Dot, dot, dot. "But, here's what I think you should do."


Oh, yes, women.  Quite frankly, they will try to heal you and Lord knows I need healed. 


Men, they make me laugh and they can be so romantic.  I love those two things about men.


Women are more straight forward.  I came right out and told Jena I was a sex fiend and I told her how I couldn't live for a month without it.  No matter how pretty The Nons Sanctuary was.  No matter how many Swedish massages they offered and no matter how many little mystical spells they cast on me. 


Jena was a future teller.  I hate to say she was a fortune teller because seldom did she inform you money would be coming your way.


Jena was the one who told me Ken or someone like Ken was going to kill me.  She came right out with it.  She didn't pull punches one bit.  She said things were so attached with men's egos and one day I was going to break one or make him jealous or say the wrong thing and he was going to just do me in.  Jena sounded almost like my dad, for a second there.  He was always warning me that one day, yes, one day, my smart mouth was going to get me in trouble.


I suppose everyone can predict a little bit of the future.  Like I can tell you with eighty percent accuracy when the phone rings who is going to be on the other end. 


Our government uses remote viewers and from what I understand they are only accurate forty-eight percent of the time. 


This means I can see the future better than government employees can.


I'm proud of that fact. 


So, there.


Ain't no shame in my game, you know, and all that.


Well, a few times, I suppose, I have prophesied what is going to happen in someones life. 


Maybe it's my greatest fantasy to be a prophet. 


Jena said I could be a prophet at The Nons, if only I devoted myself to a month in their service. 


"But can I get fucked?"  That was my greatest concern.


"You're the prophet," she said with a slightly upturned lip.  The clever bitch.


I can tell you when it will rain by looking at the moon and I sometimes dream of fatal transportation crashes before they happen and trips before I make them, but I didn't know for sure what would happen at The Nons.


It wasn't until recent I found out not everyone dreamed of airplanes crashing.  I thought everyone dreamed those dreams.  I was at a steak house with a lot of my family and friends when I found I was the only one. 


I quickly asked mother to defend me, "Oh, mom with all those nightmares you say you have, tell me, you got to dream about airplane crashes, don't you?" 


No, she said she hadn't had occasion to dream of airplane crashes and gave me that look like, "Did I give birth to this girl?" 


So, I shut up.


One time I gave some money to a lady in a card anonymously.  I gave it to a guy and told him a story about when I sat down, I found it in my seat but it was addressed to the lady.  He took it to her.


When I wrote the card out, I don't know what I said exactly but I remembered it had come from God or an angel and that was enough for me.  It's like the old saying, "When E.F. Hutton speaks, I listen."  


I just wrote and wrote.  I didn't question what I was writing about. Even when I was going on and on about gas.  I thought I was just giving a lady some money for some petrol so she could get around. 


In a couple of days, however, she was standing outside her trailer smoking a cigarette, when she heard a noise.  The first thing that came to her mind was the anonymous ranting and raving in the card and she put out her cigarette and ran, as the place was exploding from a gas leak. 


Who cared about the money I gave her.  Hallelujah, her life was  saved because of my card.


At least that is the story she told.  She didn't know who had sent the card but she made sure to tell everyone that whoever had sent it was a, "Prophet of God." 


I liked the way that sounded and repeated it whenever I would get the date right it was going to rain or when I knew who was going to be the next to go off "Survivor." 


So, at The Nons, I became known as Sister Rachel, Prophet of God, recovering sex addict.


It was only a bunch of middle aged, overweight women but they sure and hell knew how to practice magic. 


What a September that was. The first I enjoyed in a very long time.


Before then, the month of September was like a bag of shite, sans bag.


September was when my dad died, you know and September was when two planes flew in to the buildings across from my old work place.


September was when my matriarchal kitty cat died and September was when my sister died and September was the month of the fires. 


September was the month I found a lump in my breast, September was when I was so sick I thought I might die.  Hell, I wanted to hit myself right in the area of the pain, so hard, to make me feel something different.  I might have even, for a second there, thought death would be a relief.


September, oh, yes, that was when years before more grief and sorrow happened I had prophesied it with one of those remote viewing drawings.  Well, that's what they called it, but I just think it was a coincidence.  Maybe I just expected bad things to happen in the month of September and that they did. 


But, I never expected my father or sister to die.  No.  Dad even said he'd be back as he kissed my cheek when I was all bundled up in an afghan on the couch and I believed him because big strong guys don't die.


And my sister?  Oh, my.  Well, we had just got back from a trip up north, and sure, she seemed to have some trouble breathing in the high altitude, but I never, for a second, thought anything was wrong with her.  Two days after our return, she was dying.  Her face was in my lap, drooling, laboring to live and me wailing and denying the entire thing. 


"This can't be!!! Not her!!!"


She had her band.   We were her band members.


We never sang together after she died.


Truth be told, we never sang at all after that.


Ah, fuck the memories. 


The Nons promised me a lot of things. 


Jena promised me more.


"Do you want to get healed?"


"Yes."


"Then you need to do what you have never done before."


"Well, I've never bit anyones nipples so hard they bled."


That was me thinking I could 'get over' once again with my sex-talk and my fantastical thinking.  All witches, I mean nuns, should be nymphos.  Easy peasy score, I thought.  Seriously, that was my idea.


"I meant like running and eating raw berries and seeds," She casually said back.


"Don't tell me no one has sex up here in the mountains, all the trees, all the ropes," I protested, "And, I don't run.  My tits are too big and I'm too fat. I will certainly die if I put myself in that much motion."


"Sounds like you have discovered what you must do then."


"I thought I only needed to give up Ken 'cause you think he's going to kill me, and men in general?"


"That too."


Running and no cock. 


It was to be a long month.