The Widow and The Past "A Christmas Story"

The Widow and The Past

"A Christmas Story"

@aladreth ©2013

“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.” ~ Poe

It was Christmas time and she was resting on her bed.

The Past entered her bedroom in a black pinstripe suit; flood cut skinny legs, and propped his bony ass self against her antique headboard.

There was digging (clawing more like it) in the Christmas decorations scattered all over the floor.  There was no tree.  She wanted one, but how good was she? All the fancy ornaments strewn all around? Such disrespected pretties.

How good was she? Not good at all.

Now there was a monster in all the tinsel and lights.

Or rodents.

She *had* let things go.

She felt wolves, foxes, hyenas, all sorts of dog-like species nibbling, chewing even, at her hands in the middle of the night. She had been told, "Don't let them smell your fear," so she walked on through their dirty bathroom lair.  They growled and nipped at her fingers, but it wasn't the worse pain she had felt.

She was looking for her robot scientist boy.  He was off filling his plate with stuffed dill cream cheese cucumbers and baked mac and cheese at the Christmas Festival pie booth.  Then he went to his mother's house to get his pencils sharpened.

The last she would see him would be: white draped ribbon and flowers, white coffin, white hearse, white everything - but it would only be a farce because he faked his death to stay out of the papers. Away from the degradation of robots being turned in to bean bag chairs.  A laugh really, but she could be stressed out by anything and much of nothing too.

But enough of this concocting stories to avoid the "Here and Now."

Back to The Past.

She was a widow.  And he had not asked her once, "Are you okay?" or "Are you alright?"  The Past was a right cunt.  Did The Past care?  Oh, no! Not at all.  He judged her, accused her, put her in his sermons he preached, and the most hurtful of all; The Past said she had a victim-complex.

She? She had a victim complex?  WTF. (As they say online and in text messages and everywhere nowadays.) WTF to the nth degree.

So, she let the past go.  Just like your Reiki spiritualists and Buddhists and such say to do - she let it go.  Without ceremony or ritual or fancy fanfare, she just let go.

Yet, here he was, The Past.  And innocent enough he began to show her old photographs and paintings, as she lay seemingly protected under mounds of covers.

"See?  Here is the King of Pop," he shared, "And you have a picture like this too."  Yes, she did.  It was only a common thing they were doing, looking at a memory long gone. Just remembering song lyrics about peace and love and changing the world one man, one mirror, one forest and one chimp at a time.

Then, "See, here is the King of all the horror stories.  You remember how we read that really long one together? And another one?"  In fact, she had.  She pulled a few books from the headboard.  Yes, she did enjoy that King too.  Fluff, really compared to the classics and too ashamed to say it aloud, but his writing was interesting.

She recalled that trip to Utah.  As she drove and listened to one story read from a London theater by the author himself.  She loved that drive.  She saw all four seasons in one day.  The moral of the story was so true, as well: a cat person should never be with a dog person.  A basic principle you cannot deny even if you try.  The past was certainly a cat person.  A cat person who would hoard 96 cats in a rented house given the chance.  She was sure of it.  She was a dog person.  A stable (of course that was debatable) dog person. Two or three dogs, let them be dog god self and all would be well.

The Past carried on.  He appealed to her romantic nature.  He reminded her of a South Carolina haunted house.  What an intensely beautiful old home and the sex of the previous occupants was almost violent.  She was in the way, really.  The Ghosts stole the show that hot summer night.

Then, The Past brought out more photographs. There.  A gazebo.  On the grounds of a Winery.  She had shown that same photo to Cynthia one time.  "He looks intense," was her only response.  Negative, she was sure, but the intensity is what she sought.  The place where breath stopped and sighs began.  The sun was beating down.  A brothel was nearby.  Nevada had legal houses of ill repute and they talked about it that day, but they would never really do anything like that, would they?  The cars transmission was going out. "Write," he said.  She opened her planner and began to try to write everything.  How five days could change you forever.  She stopped.  She looked up at him looking at the mountains, the trees, and her. Like all three things were the same.  Equal.

Later, she had painted oil on canvas to try and capture that very scene. It took months.  Everyone said it was her best painting.  She hated it because it couldn't accurately convey anything at all.  The gazebo was too small.  The sun? You couldn't even see the sun.  The mountains.  Yes, they looked good and so did the winding road leading there.  Did she really look as good as the mountains, the trees?  She was in a sun dress, but she was fat so she wore a white shirt under it to cover her upper arms.  She had clunky high heels, not sexy at all.  Oh, but he said the right things.  She had convinced him of so much.  Had she tricked him?  He had loved being tricked.

The Past showed her a picture of yellow blooms on an Arizona cactus.  "See? Here? You have this shot too. Why don't we compare our photos? Y'know, see if we remember things the same?"  The Past commented, "Yours is more of a painting, mine has more of a sapphire tint."  Sure, yes. She had glued a saying in Indian font.  Something about past and being quiet. She hung it on her office wall and her CEO always commented on it.

She remember how she had been cheated.  How she discovered a period right in the center of words and that's how she knew.  Like, how couldn't she know?  She knew desire when she read it.  She knew loneliness.  She knew passion.  She knew lies.

Knowing lies was the worse thing.  However, she pretended well that she didn't know what she knew.  It was better that way.

It was all nice at times and other times it was sickening.  Bleh. Blah. Blech.  Ick. Gross.  Too much.  Stupidity.  Too much belief.  Yes, that was it.  Too much belief.

That's when The Past touched her.  Reached under those covers and touched her naked skin.  To fuck her.  Oh, not fuck her over fuck her, but literally to have sex with her.  And she wasn't about to go there again.  Hell to the no.  Hell to the know.  Yeah, she knew.  Palpitations started, the crushing weight of a heart attack coming on.  Yes, she was about to die.

Maybe she had nothing to live for this year.  This Christmas.  Should she give in, just die?  Just end it all now?  But, what of allowing The Past to have his way with her first?  No.  She jerked away from his embrace.

She would unfriend him again.  Oh, this wasn't like Facebook or some social media game.  Unfriend was an old word. Those kids didn't know it, but Reader's Digest told her that the word, "unfriend" was hundreds of years old.  It was more than some silly networking sites idea of mayhem.  She would do it.  It was unfriend or die.

What *did* she have to live for?  What does any widow?  Her memories.  Not, the past, but those memories she would rewrite in every flower journal left in her old house.

Yes.  Her memories.

Flower Journal     @aladreth

He Moved On

copyright @aladreth antoinette brown



"He has his winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forgo his mortal nature." - John Keats



he moved on,
way on
to eight or ten
Rubenesque girls
all in love
with his good luck splurge

me, just one girl,
(I mean guy,)
big vulgar
creases
where he smiled a lot
on the River Thames
with its sea of lights,
silver pillars
in a church,
black green
porter bottle
lights

I dreamed
of changing tattoos
and telling my daughter,
one day, who her dad was
but, basically,
I did nothing.
I didn't change
for better
or worse.

he started fresh
with a pure green breast,
her milk
more than likely
wholesome,
long hair down her back
playing nurse
to him,
her beautiful pasty butt,
the taste in his mouth
of magic
and peppermint

candy balloon drops
to foreign lands
because we are so hated
here in America
he took his books,
records,
clothes,
and a clock,
he took his long stalk,
purple foxglove,
his singing tongue winding
wicked ways in bed,
he took
his colon,
as long as he is tall.

he took it all.

I went and confessed,
"I cursed."
"I told lies."
"I thought of murdering someone."
"Yes, I suppose I had bad thoughts."

But, now, I'm freed
of responsibility,
of feeling eternally guilty
...Because he's happy.

And, me...
at times,
I long to be touched,
but you can't just go out,
and ask people to touch you,
can you?

Massacre at Heber

Massacre at Heber @aladreth antoinette brown, previously published


The little girl was perfect in every way.  Why, she was just a little girl and truth be told, all little girls are perfect.

The little girl's mother was also perfect.

The little girl's father was perfect in his own way.

The little girl's mother made sure the little girl knew how to read and write way before everyone else her age. She also made sure she wore the most perfect clothes and went to all the most perfect places, joined the most perfect groups, and got in to the special gifted and talented classes.  The little girl's mother also made damn sure no one would suspect they were poor, even if she had to recycle and re-purpose every known item to man.

It was perfect.

The little girl's father liked to drink one glass of beer every Saturday night.  He liked it in a frosty big rimmed pedestal glass that had been frozen in the freezer for exactly 45 minutes.  He liked great food too.  Man's food; enchiladas, chili, cornbread, tuna casseroles, creamed spinach, and fried salmon patties.

It was all perfect to him.

The little girl's mother didn't think any of it was perfect even though she cooked and served the little girl's father so she nagged the father.  He called her a 'Bitch.' He was caught in a perfect world that wasn't so perfect and he gained one hundred pounds.

The little girl still thought her father was perfect.

The little girl drew and painted.  She didn't think her pictures were perfect enough so she would tear around the parts that were perfect and hold on to them.  One day she would make collage, she thought.  A collage of all of the most perfect parts of her work.

The most recent thing she tore out of a painting was a pink and blue spotted fish.  It was perfect.  The rest of the painting was not perfect so she crumpled it up and threw it on the burn pile outside.

The little girl had plenty of imagination.  One day she believed she saw a ghost in her bathroom.  It was a red-headed woman caught on the toilet. The red-headed ghost was alarmed and the little girl was too.  But, the little girl liked being a tad bit scared.  It broke up the monotony of being perfect.

The little girl also liked to write.  One day she wrote a great comedy of all of the weapons she could think of talking to each other.  She found pictures of power tools from the Sears catalog and cut them out and glued them above each weapon.  The weapons were threatening to beat up all the other weapons above or below them. "I'll kick your ass from here to Mexico," the saber saw said.  It was a vicious circle of weapons all threatening the other weapons.  It took hours to create.  Her mother didn't think it was so perfect.  The little girl loved it.

The little girl had a friend named Charlie.  Charlie was not a little boy as you might assume by the name, but was a little girl like herself but not perfect like herself because Charlie was bossy and might as well been a boy.  She had boy tendencies, as her mother would say, and she was a lot bigger than the perfect little girl so she ended up making a lot of the decisions in their friendship.  Charlie decided they would go to the forest and pretend to be witches.  They would dig in the forest for treasure.  It was perfect.  But, if the little girl got too dirty then the little girl's mother would freak out.

You just can't keep kids from getting dirty so the little girl's mother would freak out a lot.

Charlie's parents were photographers.  They had lots of talent according to what the little girl had heard around school.  They took lots of pictures of the children at school and went on field trips with them to photograph the wild flowers.  She liked them because they didn't work really hard and reminded her of hippies.  She also liked John's parents because they were authors who slept all day.  John was fun to play with but he was certainly not perfect.  He had ideas in his head that were all too messed up.

Whenever John and the little girl played together they would get in to a lot of trouble hiding places in the bathroom to catch other little girls peeing and dressing up in Big Foot costumes and chasing other little girls away with shotguns that had the working parts removed from them.

They would play jailer and prisoner and the prisoner would always get away and go over to John's parents house and steal stuff while John's parents were sleeping. Mainly it was Twinkies they stole, but sometimes John's father's watch would end up in their play things as well.  John's parents never seemed to freak out.  "Kids will be kids," they would say and they talked about how the little girl and John had such good imagination and were creative and would probably both grow up to be great authors like themselves.

The little girl's mother was growing weary trying to keep up with all the friends the little girl had and none of them were quite right or, you guessed it; perfect.

Even the little girl started to think maybe Charlie wasn't perfect enough to play with. Maybe she should dump Charlie.  John was full of so many ideas that the little girl was just eating up, sucking down and spitting back out in different forms that she couldn't give up John.  Anyway, her father loved John and would give him baseball hats and talk to him about little boy things such as sports, cars and hunting alligators and the little girl liked to make her father happy.  He seemed happy the little girl was playing with John.  Her father liked it when she played baseball and little boy's sports.  So, she dumped Charlie.

Charlie's parents weren't aware of it but they took the last photo of Charlie and the little girl together right in front of a big old Elephant Ear plant.  They were were smiling really big in the photo.  The little girl was perfect.  Charlie had stringy hair and a tooth missing.

Something bad happened to Charlie and her parents after that.  They were all killed according to what the little girl was told.  It was bloody people said.  She didn't fully understand it. She didn't know if it was like when she would play dead for twenty minutes at a time laying flat on the cement staring at the sun to see if would make her go blind like her perfect mother said.  Or was it more like when a doberman tore through a wire pen and ate all her baby chickens and baby rabbits. That was a bloody mess she came home to after school one day.  Feathers and fur everywhere!

All the little girl knew was it was a 'Massacre' because that is what everyone said.

It was a sad day.  Even more sad, there seemed to be other people who were 'massacred.'  The people up on the hill who kept a pet tiger, they were all gone and their house was 'violated' the little girl heard.

The little girl started to feel guilty.  What if she would have never dumped Charlie as her friend?  What if Charlie would have been at her house the night the man had come in to kill her and her family?

She started thinking she could have saved Charlie but because she was a 'Bitch' like her mother she didn't. She loved her father so much and he was more than right about her mother most of the time.  But, what about her?  Was she still perfect?

One day not too long after the girl was thinking all of this, the little girl came home from school and found a man in a grayish-brown suit swinging on her swing set in the back yard.  He was sort of lolly-gagging.  That was a word her mother used. "Stop lolly-gagging," She would say.  Well, the little girl wasn't sure what it meant, but she thought the man was doing it.

She came within ten feet of the man and asked him who he was. He said, "Well, I'm the man who has been killing people here in town."

The little girl stood perfectly still with her hands behind her back. She could run but he would chase her.  He was tall and had far longer legs than she did, plus she had long hair and he could reach out and grab it.  She was smart enough to know that.

Maybe she could talk him out of his wicked ways.  She was always told she was perfect and in her eight year old brain, she practiced a lot of psychology.  She thought a lot about things.  She had analyzed a lot of situations by herself.  Any man in a three piece suit couldn't be all bad.

He didn't look like a killer.  He didn't look like someone who would have killed Charlie.

He smiled.  He had perfect teeth.  More proof something didn't fit.  A killer would certainly have crooked teeth or one tooth missing right in the front.  No, the killer had perfect teeth.  Straight and really shiny white.

"Do you like fried salmon patties?"  She asked him.

"Quite right I do," he replied, twisting around in the swing, back and forth, twirling the top chains around each other with his perfectly polished alligator skin shoes.

The perfect little girl might not have been able to save Charlie, but she would save the killer man in the nice suit.

She took a couple of steps forward and reached out her hand, "Well, you might like to join us for dinner then."

Hope Dies Last

Hope Dies Last
Copyright @aladreth

"The luck will alter and the star will rise." - John Masefield 

Carol was wide awake exactly two hours before the alarm was to go off this morning. That gave her two hours to think.

There were positive things and there were negative things to think about for that amount of time.

First, and foremost, was how to decipher this new life of hers.

Her first life was pretty cool.  But it ended some time around the year she got married.  She tried to carry that first life into the second life and all hell broke loose.

Not once, but twice.  All she could say was, "I'm sorry."

She said, "I'm sorry," various different ways.  She really meant it too, when she said it.

She loved the way her naked body felt in the bed, the crisp sheets against her skin. Her body was soft. There.  She said it.

She was, what one of her lovers called, "A Namio Woman."  He liked women like that, so that was good.  Most men didn't like women like that, so that was bad.  She wasn't no hard-body-athletic type and she sure wasn't in the best of health.  But, she loved how she didn't wake up with arthritis in her hands anymore since she had been taking a most wonderful miracle health food derived from an Indian herb and a Japanese cheese.  It was amazing.

She liked her "When Pigs Fly" earrings.  She would wear them to work today.  She hoped the new tall girl would ask about them and that would allow Carol to talk about Mardi Gras circa 1989.

Yes, everything was connected.

She thought about breakfast.  Two boiled eggs mashed with mayonnaise on one slice of whole grain bread. She would also have an orange. And coffee.  God love coffee.

She thought about that twat of an ex boyfriend of hers and how he was liable to kill her one day.  Just right out of the blue he would show up and since he didn't give fuck all care about life, he would take hers too.

She remembered chips she had received from an anonymous twelve step help group and how she had read somewhere she was to never throw them away if there was ever a chance she would return to the group.

She remembered her ex sponsor's words even though she had not seen her in years.  One day Carol said to her, "I am killing myself with, insert addictive substance, here."  Her ex sponsor replied, "No, you are aren't actually killing yourself, you are cutting ten years off your life." And then she added, "Ten out of ten people die, so don't take life too seriously."

Her ex sponsor was wrong.  Carol was killing herself with her addictive behaviour, slash behaviours.  She thought about how others in the group would talk about how those behaviours had served her well before, perhaps masking pain, or somehow comforting her, but now they were just part of the "stinkin' thinkin.'"

Gotta love the cliches in twelve step groups.

Her favourite twelve step cliche of all time was, "If you pray for a Cadillac and God sends a jackass, ride it."

And ride it, she could.

So, she would be okay.

Carol was in love again but only with the idea of love.

God forbid she ever tell another man that she loved him.  It made men just evil when you said you loved them.

However, the idea of love.  Ah, love in perfection.  It made her think of thousands of honey bees in a church court yard.  Beautiful honey bees with the faces of men. Half of the honey bees were saying, "We, we, we." The other half of the honey bees were saying, "Oi, Oi, Oi."

Carol was so in love with the idea of love.  It made her think of painting the sky on the face of a gorgeous man, eight years her senior.  Painting it right on his face, with glorious bold strokes and then forcing his mouth open and poetry would come flying out of his mouth like those honey bees.

His lovely mouth.  Oh, so lovely, the entire universe of philosophy and scrambled eggs was in that mouth.

Her mother hated the last two big Christmas gifts she had bought her, even saying, "Just take them home with you!"  Her husband had only had sex with her three times in three months, and two of those times had been when she had to bribe him with a six hundred dollar getaway at a cabin.  Her mentally unstable ex boyfriend was a total stalker.  We already mentioned him, didn't we?

She could hide under a rock.  Carol could just hide her head right under the crisp cotton sheets!

But the church court yard of honey bees was calling her.

photograph copyright 2007, RIP 

story previously published, 2009

Our Shangri-La

"As long as I know that you understand," he whispered. "But of  course you do.  It's a great satisfaction to have got somebody to understand.  You seem to have been there on purpose."  And in the same whisper, as if we two whenever we talked had to say things to each other which were not for for the world to hear, he added, "it's very wonderful."  - Joseph Conrad - "The Secret Sharer"

***
Prelude to Poetry; I bought you a cherry ice cream at the Kwik Stop - extra cherry, and I drove you to the mountains.

I like driving.
I like you sitting in the passenger seat.

I like when people look at us in my shiny car.  The car you call a car only "car snobs" would drive.

I turned "The Stranglers" CD very, very loud and took you to an exclusive area where all the very, very rich people live.

"Liberation for women
That's what I preach
Preacher man
Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches"

It was blaring out of the speakers, the windows were down.  My long hair was blowing all over the place.

The temperature was a perfect 75 degrees and it was 10pm on a Saturday night.

It wasn't so long ago in the grande scheme of things.

I touched your cheek at one point during our drive and it was wet.  You were crying. I knew you were happy, though. I was very happy myself.  I licked your tears from my fingers and carried on eating my own ice cream with one hand while driving with the other.

The homes were massive with great big windows and the ceilings were so high. Looking in the windows from the winding roads, we didn't see anything.  You couldn't see anything unless you had binoculars.  And we might be voyeurs, but we didn't have any binoculars on us that night.

We didn't speak, except for one time.

You said, "Shouldn't you turn the music down?"

I asked, "Why?"

You said, "Well, because of the fancy neighborhood we are driving through."

I answered, "We are rebels."  I leaned forward and cranked the volume higher and fixed my shirt where "The Girls" could breathe the fresh mountain air and then I howled like a great big ol' she-wolf.


***


Our Shangri-La
© aladreth

I bought you
a book
that would appeal
to your hippie
light on money
heavy on love
sense of style

We laid in bed
reading about
the haunted
Catskill Mountains

Woodstock, way before
the music appeared
there were arts,
crafts,
handmade houses
from hemlocks,
creek rock,
bluestone,
chestnut,
scavenged pieces
from barns, dumps, cabins,
schoolhouses, churches

we learned an astrologer
high on the mountainside
always knew
where her stars were

Queen Basil gate greeted us,
autumn leaves used
for insulation

you traced your finger
over photographs
of carved doors,
skylights with seashells,
round windows,
crooked brick pavers,
painted karma
oak sanctuary,
shelves sagging
with books,

"Yes, that does look like
Mary Jane in those porcelain pots."
"And there's the home of
our favourite
hippie priest."

I wrote on the cover page,
just for you, my lover,
"Choose my favourite bedroom"

Turn yourself inside, mister,
be straight, be gay, say
you'll be
everything for me

and you do, oh, boy
do you,
as you lean
over me
everything forgiven,
accepted
still bearing same scars
but soaring freedom inside

your lips against my forehead
then my voice in your ear
calling you horrid, dirty names
all these words
for many months

all of you
all inside

all death and life
breaking forth

our Woodstock,
our Shangri-la

breathing
areas of previous
occupants
garments
hung ready
for settlers
boon boom

strangely expecting
hung clung
corporeal presences
to reanimate them

your breath
almost to climax now
yes, almost there,

the page
laid open
to where
our Bob Dylan
used to sleep

and falling now,
halcyon times
recite those Shakespeare lines
by reams,

in the seams of
tight lace and leather tied,
tongues from a Pentecostal invasion

Oh, my God,
Thanks for warning me,
you nearly skulled me

"Fancy that."
"I wasn't even aiming."

previously published 

copyright 2007-2013

The Nuns of La Padina

THE NUNS OF LA PADINA

COPYRIGHT 2013

@aladreth

In the San Juan Quin Valley, there is a little known convent called the Nuns of La Padina.  I knew six girls who went there to study.  They were quick to point out they signed a contract stating they didn't only worship God, but worshiped stones as well.  I wasn't sure why this was so important that they tell everyone - but it was.  

These girls wore their habits, but they were quite naughty before they came to study how to be a proper nun.  They had been really bad girls before they signed on at the convent.

One in particular was Leah, and she was a thief. 

One day I was in a car with her and I was so thrown off about how she was like, often saying to her, "See, how you are like!?!" 

That particular day, she had her nun's outfit on - except with six-inch high heels!  She looked like a dirty slutty whore, posing as a nun.

"I bet they have to tie you up to get you to say your bedtime prayers!" I said.

I imagined her tied with red rope around her wrists.  Thick rope.  Tight.  Permanently in the position of praying hands.

I was so caught up about her that day, I left my purse in a Chinese carry out.  I went back in to the restaurant and at the counter was a man named Thomas paying his check.  I teased him that I was a 'Doubting Thomas' myself right at that moment, worried nothing would be left in my purse, if it had even been recovered.

He let me go in front of him.  Then he stood next to me. A form of support.  Solidarity in a stranger.  I had lost something important to me.  My purse is a monument of nostalgia and love and promises and just all good stuff.  All my memories are locked in that purse and I carry it with me to remember everything from the past.  

One day Karen told me about one of her friends who would collect things and put them in her purse.  I asked, "What is wrong with that?" Knowing I did the same.  Karen replied, "She does it because she is broken.  There is something wrong with her.  Something happened in her past."  I just nodded and held on to the information.  There must be something wrong with me, as well.

Thomas felt for me.  I could tell.  Bones and sinew over a body of pain, I could see and he 

'got' me already.  Well, I guessed he did, because as they were locating my purse that had been returned by a nice do-good person, he put together a package for me.  Something like a little care package.

A plastic bag with candies and frilly bookmarks.  Little verses and fortunes he had collected by the cash register and purchased.  Oh, and gum.  Cinnamon flavour. 

Also included was a card he even signed as I was looking through my purse to make sure all was there. 

Credit cards? Check.  

Cash?  Really? Someone left the cash?  

They probably felt sorry for me as it wasn't much and I carry silly things in my purse.  

I was so grateful, but still so shook up.  I had almost lost my life.  Yes, my purse was my life.  And unless you have just about lost your life, don't argue with the fact that a purse can hold everything. I've seen women, on the news, in the middle of flash floods on the roof of their cars, holding tightly to their purse and the reporters from the helicopter commenting, "Let go, Lady! Your life is more important!" 

But, it's not true.  Their life is in their purse, man, their life is in there!

Roger, or did I say his name was Thomas?  I don't know because the rest of the night I didn't call him by his name.  I just called him, "The sweet boy."  Well, the people behind the counter knew him and seemed to 'tsk tsk' him, even making a comment about why would a nice, tall, good looking man like him want to risk his marriage.  

I looked over my glasses and rolled my eyes. Did they really think things would go that far from a goodie bag?  Well, I was sentimental.  

But excuse me!  Why bring up his evident better looking self! Sheeesh!

I asked him, "Can you write your name and number down in the card?"

Then another girl from behind the counter spoke up and said, "Roger Thomas, don't you dare! You are married!"  He looked at me and shrugged and then leaned down and whispered into the back of my head, right behind my ear, "Not happily."

"Oh, it doesn't matter, dear," I cooed, just as much to the girl behind the counter as to him, "It's just a thoughtful thing for you to make a nice little package of gifts here for me.  Just because I lost my purse? Oh, it's so sweet."   

I pondered, "Is he younger than me? He really looks it," and "I wonder if he has kids."  The kids thing bothered me.  I suppose every adult is free to do what they want.  I wanted to pretend this was a dream.  He wasn't married.  I could just erase that bit.  

What would be wrong with a dinner with a tall guy who just bought me stuff I was so nostalgic about?  It reminded me of airport departure goodbyes already.  Tiny books of kisses, signed, "I have so enjoyed our trip together.  I love you, I will always love you.  Here is a tiny book to prove it. Goodbye now, but we will see each other again. I am your slave forever."

 I still have that book. Tear stained book because I took that book in the airport bathroom and bawled like a baby in a stall as his airplane left.  

But, enough about airport departure goodbyes and stupid tiny books about kissing.  

Silly, really, when I'm not even much a kisser.  

Silly, really, because he's gone.  Long gone.  

And there was Thomas.

He was silly himself, I could tell.  He had on a yellow and red striped shirt and it was not in fashion.  But, oh, he was so good looking.

I sort of threw some of the hard candy at his chest and said, "I don't need these at all! Can't you see how fat I am?"  

"Good," is all he replied, as he caught them and stuck them back in my bag.

Leah was waiting in the car as I dragged Thomas out, holding his hand in one of my hands and his package of goodies in my other,  and my recovered life over my shoulder.

I pulled him in to the backseat and scooted over.

"So, you found everything, eh," she said turning around toward me, and then to Thomas, "She's quite persnickety," Shaking her head, "You've been warned." 

I defended myself, "She's not even a real nun, Thomas!  They don't worship God out there at that convent!  Just stones."

Alone

Alone 
@aladreth antionette brown copyright 2013

I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness—I myself am the enemy who must be loved—Carl Jung





It was years ago.

I suppose I don't go off now anywhere alone. I like to be with someone.  I pretty much always have someone around me. I don't like being alone.

But, it was years ago.

I was dreaming of you then on the river walk, during historic home tours and walking in the sweltering humidity of nature.

I dreamed of you even in the scary stories the cab drivers would tell, "Now, you would think you could take a short cut through that park there, but I wouldn't advise it.  Someone was killed just last week."

"Oh, really? Tell me about it," I would ask details, trying to prolong my time with them - almost wanting to say, "Can you just drive me all around the city and be my personal tour guide and then could we spend the night together?"

I wonder how many taxi drivers have had that proposition before?

I'm not sure what stopped me because sex has always been highly important to me.  It is nothing for me to have sex every day and want more.  Well, actually I do know what stopped me.  They weren't my 'type.' For my 'type', I will do anything.  I will move a mountain for my 'type.' And I just wasn't finding a taxi driver who was my 'type.'

I went to "the oldest" this and "the oldest" that. I love old things.  I always have.

I thought of you even those years ago as I stuck my fingers in flour made at the oldest mill.  I thought of you as I ran my hand down the smooth banister of the oldest stairway in a Victorian home.  I thought of you as I stirred water in creeks with sticks pretending I was working a cauldron.  I thought of you as I investigated long deserted cabins once used by Boy Scouts.

I thought of you as I entered sacred ground.

There was a sign on the door of that place.  I suppose it's been nearly 25 years. I am not sure if that sign is even still there.

It read, "Out of respect for the many lives lost at this site, we ask you to remain silent after you open the doors and enter in."

Those doors.  They were double medieval to me, so heavy, so full of wear and blood and pain. I pushed them open and entered quietly and quickly, so not to let in the outside sounds of traffic, boom boxes and arguments between lovers.

I took a breath.  Looked around at the expanse - the open floor plan.  The tourists gathered around the side walls reading framed letters and such.

I felt I must hold my breath.  All of a sudden I was needing to speak, needing to say something.

To be told not to speak had thrown me off and I had to calm my heart and mind.  I felt I might hyperventilate.

So, I took another deep breath and I started searching for souls I might see, some spiritual experience to gain.

No death here.  Was it all a lie?  It was so peaceful.  Could this really be the spot of such devastation?

I pondered, "How will I ever be able to experience all life has to offer?"

***

That night, I thought of you again.  Thought of you in the future.  I didn't even know you existed.  I thought of how you would be.

Randy had sneaked in to my room that early evening and left a note on my pillow.  I pretended he wasn't married.  It wouldn't have stopped me back then, but, I pretended he was mine, all mine.

"Where are you? Come join us in the courtyard for a beer," he had written.   Wendy had let him in to my hotel room. I smelled the note.  I smell every note anyone leaves me, for the smell of chemistry.

If there isn't chemistry, people will leave you.  It might be exciting to begin with, but scientifically, it only lasts 18 months, then the true test begins.  Do you still love them after 18 months?  Then it is real.  True chemistry.

There's your "science porn" for the day.

I smelled Randy's note and I smelled him.  I thought of being with him.

I was alone, though and even though quite the sex addict, I was also prone to alcohol and food addiction.  I raided the mini-bar.  I could not believe how expensive everything was, but I figured they would never know what I had taken.  How naive I was.  Alone in a big city.  Alone and not even knowing how they handle a mini-bar in a fancy hotel. Not even knowing that they would know.

Everyone would know how much I had drank and ate alone in my hotel room.

I couldn't handle drinking or eating alone in a restaurant, though.  And truthfully if Randy and I weren't going to end up back in one of our respective hotel rooms that night doing the dirty, I didn't want to make the effort to go to the courtyard for a beer with him and all the others.  I needed a guarantee that night for some reason.  So, after raiding the mini-bar and flipping through yellow pages full of escorts, I went out to walk along the river.

I saw flamenco dancers - they were about to put on a show.  Hundreds of people gathered to watch them on cement steps facing their stage in front of the water.   Maybe I was the only one alone there.  It  sure felt like it. I kept pretending someone would join me, "Oh, my husband just went to go get drinks and a popcorn, he'll be right back," I played these silly fantasies and tried to bore them into the head of the folks who would look at me; a young, well dressed woman on her own on a Friday night.

There was no husband.  There was no one coming with drinks and popcorn.  I looked at families with theirs and wanted.  Part of me desired to slap them - awaken their senses to be happy.  Part of me desired to cry, pout, "Fucking hell, I'm alone! Can't you see?"

I prayed it would rain.  Oh, I loved the dancers.  I just wanted to see them drenched.  I wanted to see their hair fall and their colourful skirts plaster to their dark skin.  I wanted to see the drops from the sky fall on the river and make beautiful ripples - like a woman's breast heavy with ache for a man's suckle, I wanted to see it rain.

On another day, I went to the ocean alone.  I wore a lightweight skirt and blouse.   The skirt went past my knees. The blouse was buttoned low, showing some of my bra and cleavage.  I took my sandals off the second my feet hit the sand and I sat down on the beach to watch the ocean.  I wasn't alone long, before a man came up to me.  He was a weird man.  I seem to attract the weird ones.

I don't have to be wearing a swim suit on the beach to get attention, obviously.  It may not be the right attention, but it's attention.  I learned this a long time ago, for it has happened over and over again in my life. Now older, I know these things happen for a reason and people are drawn to us for certain necessity and there are always good reasons, no matter what comes of it in the end.

Weird or not, he was quite good looking and asked if he could sit down next to me.   We talked and I liked him alright.  He smelled good and that is important to me, as you have heard. He did most of the talking while I watched the ocean, every so often glancing his way to notice his five o'clock shadow.  I like that shadow.

When it got close to be 530pm, he said he needed to walk down to where the pier was, pointing to it in the distance.  The pier was littered with buildings and lots of people.

"Come with me," he nearly begged.

"What for?" I asked.

"I have to go to an AA meeting. Come with me."

There was the clincher.  He was a drunk.  But, no, he wasn't a drunk. He wasn't drunk right then, now, was he?  He was being a "good" boy.  I thought, "Hey, he's really committed to getting well, isn't he?"

I answered his plea, "Oh, I don't think I'd fit in too well, hon."

The begging went on for a bit.  It became not so much I didn't want to go, because I drank all the time myself and would feel so out of place at an AA meeting, but because I felt he was pushing it too hard.  I remembered that 'warning' to women about never letting anyone take you to a second location.  As a woman we constantly live in fear.  Constantly have to have our guards up, constantly have to follow our intuition.

Especially with men who approach you when you are alone.

I had said, "No," too many times.

Finally he gave up and left because I wasn't about to get my big ass up and go anywhere.

The ocean was my lover that day.

But, I thought of you as the tide was coming in.  As my feet began to get wet I thought of you.

I thought of you as the wind came up and tangled my long hair in knots.

The you I never knew back then, the you who would tell me you had missed me when you didn't see me, the you who would say I was the greatest lover you had ever been with, the you who was so well read, knowledgeable, wise, and oh, so clever.  The you who could twist my hair around your hand and make me love everything about you.

The you.

The you I knew even back when I was alone.

When later I would become a perfume, when I would become an old crone goddess, I would know I had gathered it from my want, my need to not be alone. It would be like some Greek tragedy. Minding my own business in the mundane world, you would come and drag me down to your filthy, raw ways and I would submit because I am pure and innocent and know nothing really of the world.

Oh, sure I play the game, I pretend to be smart and clever.  But I know nothing.

One day you said to me, "You know nothing about being alone."

I thought, "I will show him.  I do so know about being alone!!!"  I planned then how I would list all the times I had been alone.  I would show him I knew all about it.

But, you are right.  I know nothing about being alone.  I know nothing.

The Last Straw

The Last Straw
copyright @aladreth 


"I think every artist worth
a damn has a red picnic basket." - Stephen King


I nearly died twice in the night.

Today, I have a horrible burning itch to write.  It's bright daylight.  Spring is springing, about to bubble, just bubble right over.  In the clouds afar off in the northern sky, I see an angel with great big wings sitting at a projection screen.

I hunt through the 'croc' bag to find a pen to write, my hands shaking, and ... shit, shit, shit!!! By the time I find my pen it has floated away - it is gone - no shiny halo remains, no white remnant, no fluffy feathers.  It looks only like a cloud.  A cloud within a cloud.

I help earth conservancy programs.  I trim my own hair.  Everywhere I go I steal pens. There is no paper.  There is an envelope holding a bill.  A bill from the carpet I bought.  I'm still paying for this carpet and it's still sitting uninstalled in my bedroom. Such is my life.  My personalized license plate is ADHD33.

So, I write on the back of an envelope, "The world is a red lamp, girls walking cat string - it's the year of the rat, tangerines and dope."

I don't know if it's really the year of the rat but it feels like it.

Life is funny.  In my dream last night I was so beautiful and happy at the beginning. At the end, I went smash, great big smash on the floor.

You think you are getting better.  Then you find out you are Kathleen Turner.  (I mean the "Now" Kathleen.)

God, what happened to us?

This strange vision in the clouds, oh my, oh my.  It was perhaps a great big hint to pay attention.  God, it could be that one day I will be looking back over my life on a great big angel's projection screen and find I did matter and I fucked up so many peoples lives.




I realize Loren and I talk much like Death and Taxes having lunch.

Death (Moi) says; "Life is brutally cruel, unfair and damn short!"

Taxes (Loren) replies, "All the more reason to save each and every one of your receipts!"



They say to write about what you know.  Well, I know Loren and me and I know after twenty-three years, he still doesn't "get" me.

 

I have lunch at the park with him.  We call it the dirt park.  There is no grass.  There is lots of dirt.  There are crazy people who talk to me.  I wear a T-shirt that says, "If you are crazy, talk to me."

The nice crazy man with the "Obama-Biden, Two Minds Are Better Than None" T-shirt talks to me.  He has bread, butter and a banana.  He's fit.

Everyone is fit nowadays, but me.  And Kathleen Turner.

The nice crazy man wants to talk about Obama, a basketball his radiant dog flattened all the air out of and dressing in women's clothes while reading Goethe.

I like the crazy man alright.  He talks about a lot of things.  Then he leaves.



My egg drop soup is gone and Loren and I am left at the park with one other person.  A lone man in a white truck is sitting there.  We leave the park and go to the post office.  When we come back to the park, the man in the truck is still there.

Loren asks, "Who sits at the park for all this time?"

I say, "Makes you wonder if he's going to kill himself."

"I never thought of THAT."

"That" is said in capitals with the tone once again, "I don't get you.  I just don't get you."





I dream of being the first inventor of the roller coaster and my first customers are Barbie Dolls.  Not the current dolls, but those 1960's dolls my cousin wants back from me because now they're worth three thousand dollars.  I won't let her have them because I know her greedy husband will just sell them on E-Bay.  He's a dirty, rotten cheater.

These Barbie Dolls love getting twisted around like they are tied in the middle of a jump rope.  They raise their little plastic arms with total excitement and praise to me, the first inventor of the roller coaster, and the rest of the grubby flannel world begs to pay me five bucks a piece to get on.  I get the filthy money shoved in my hands from every side.

Finally, I exhale, "Thank God, I didn't kill any Barbies on my fancy smancy roller coaster!"

I wake with myopia in the middle of the story three days beyond dirt patted off our behinds, cactus picked out of our soles.

Sometimes we are ghost town in the flesh.  Sometimes we are that sea in Israel that never gives.  It holds on to its water like a thirsty pirate, nothing growing, all sick, drowning in ivory hours. 

Everyone is writing about Galveston.  

Not me, though.  At the end of the day, I don't really know what I am writing about.  

How small we've grown.  Have we outlived the book?  To ill to think to the next?

Yes, how small we've grown.

Quiet Mike

Quiet Mike

@aladreth antoinette brown

"It's not that creepy." - said by a 'ghost' on EVP

"Quiet Mike." it's like a term I use to describe someone who reads my stuff and they want me to fuck them silly but they don't say it.  They just sit in the corner, reading, wanting and being quiet.

I have met Mike.  

Sometimes when you meet someone you get a certain feeling.  Like, "This is the one I can violate.  This is the one I can crawl right inside."

It's a feeling - one where you want to tear them apart.  In a good way, mind you.  Just a soft ripping of the flesh, not something like a bear or a tiger would do, but just a tiny thing, really.  Maybe get inside their mind and rummage around a bit.  Pretend you are a healer.  Pretend you are a psychic healer.  Mind fuck them.  Fuck them, in general.

I dated one person who believed in equality in relationships. 

Take note, one.  

Only one.  

Because it doesn't work.  There is never equality in relationships.  At least not the good ones.  

There is the individual who makes you want to thesaurus every single word for 'rip' and 'tear' and do it to all their memories, all their photographs, all their stories.  

There is the individual who will chase you and you will get a kick out of it for a certain period of time, but then you will not like it.  

It will be too much.  Maybe because you cannot stand to be put on that high of a pedestal.  Maybe you know, down deep you don't deserve that type of credit, that type of worship. 

Or maybe it's all in the evolution of man and woman, we need to have a chase.  And if someone is always there, then they are not chasing you, they are holding on to you, holding your leg, humping your leg.  They can't be on top of you at all times.  

So, you want the attention, you love the attention, but you want it at a level where you beg for it, where you go seeking to see where the hell they are, where you scream, "Why aren't you paying attention to me, Mike!?" 

"Chase me, Mike, chase me."

Give me a good run for my money, I say.  But, do it in a way where I am not tired as fuck to see you.  Don't make me wish you would drop off the face of the earth.  Make me want to keep up.  I am pretty high strung and can keep up with 98% of the people I meet.  Be that 2%, Mike.  Please.

So, Mike wants to come to Arizona.  I know he does.  He wants to know everything about Arizona.  He wants to talk about spiders and their webs and how they spin them.  He likes me to tell him the little witchie saying,

"If you want to live and thrive, let the spider stay alive."

He wants to hear about spiders on crack.  Spiders on caffeine.  I was in the middle of the study.  I researched it.  Their webs turned out all crazy like.  Nothing worse than seeing a spider on meth.

I know he wants me to sneak in a story about the Black Widow and how she eats her mates.  I know he likes stories like that.  

I hope to hell he likes my stories.  Because I like his hands and his art and that sort of manly look he has.  It's half boy, half man.  I don't know how to describe it but I want to smell him and just see if he's what I think he is.

I want him to be slightly scared of me.  But I want him to scare me.  Oh, he scares me already, but I don't want him to know.  Or, perhaps I do.

Yes, perhaps I'm scared of you, Mike.  And I don't scare easy.  At least I like to tell myself that.  Sometimes in the middle of the night I hear coyotes with their sharp shrill bark.  They sound like puppies, but coyotes are not puppies.  They will stare you down just for a moment like they are waiting for the second coming of Christ to set all things straight so they can lay down with the soft little sheep during the one thousand years of His reign. 

Coyotes wouldn't mind if you want to be the sheep, either.  You can see that in their eyes for just that split second. It's not an intelligent look like wolves.  

Wolves, you can see them and somehow feel you are their brother, like they are communicating with you and you want to run with them, dance with them.  They've made movies about it.  

Coyotes?  Not so much.  Dance with coyotes?  Doubt it.  I'm not saying coyotes aren't intelligent. I'm saying they really don't give a fuck one way or the other.  We have lots of coyotes on my mountain in Arizona.

Quiet Mike wants me to tell him about how a river is forged right through the middle of a dry bed in Arizona and he wants me to tell him how it's hot as hell, but it's a dry heat.  He wants me to tell him what the desert is like. 

 

You have to experience the desert, I can't write it, baby.  

I can tie you to a cactus in a wash - a dirty ditch and let you smell the desert at night, let you feel the flurries of snow at the noonday, yes snow!!! One day it blows white stuff out of the over cast sky in 45 degree temperature and the next day it's 85 degrees.  

You have to sit perfectly still in a Monsoon.  Sit right at the back of a mountain and breathe it in.  It's like pulling a groin muscle during sex.

Painful, hard, rough. 

God, the thunder and lightning you will get.  

Only in Arizona.

And you may think it's all cowboys and rural shit but there's cultural stuff here.  There was a gay pride parade today.  How much more cultural can you get? 

Mr. Glass was at the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts.  We have coffee houses, okay?  Outdoor garden coffee houses.  The Paper Heart has performing artists and hell, they have slam poetry night in my little podunk town. They have a bunch of writers from the Colorado River who established a website and tell other wannabe writers how to write.  

Lots of people believe in UFOs in Arizona.  You can see the sky better in Arizona than any other place.  The darkest place in the world - the best place to see the stars is in Arizona. They say that and I believe them.

Arizona has a vortex.  And yellow leaves and people preach to lizards in Arizona.  

We were one of the last states to want to be a state and we were one of the last states to honour Dr. King, so the good ones of us are constantly trying to prove to everyone we are good and we aren't racist shits - we love everyone.  

We love more than our share of people. There are a lot of loving people here. 

 

Sure, there are some real cunts who used to live here and blew up a building almost twenty years ago if I'm sadly recalling correctly.  The anniversary of so many senseless deaths just passed and the pain of knowing the bomber lived in our state still remains, but there are nice people who make quilts who live here too.

I guess people talk about us.  People in other states. They wonder what type of people live in a desert surrounded by a golf course or a golf course surrounded by a desert.

We were one of the only states to impeach our governor and we have a crazy sheriff who folks even know about in Washington, DC.  

Chavez marched our streets.  We love pissing outdoors.  We love eating mangoes in the bath.  We love fresh juice.  When it's 128 degrees outside, we like to take lots of cold showers. 

Some of us have ten wives.  Some of us wish we had seven husbands.  One for every day of the week.

And the sky is bright blue.  There are the most insane fluffy clouds.  Yes, they are insanely fluffy.  They are like that one ice cream, you know, with whip cream and marshmallow and it's like a cartoon.  The sky with those clouds.  Just like a cartoon.

There are lots of stories just waiting to be written in Arizona.  Why is that Recreation Vehicle parked across the street?  Why do some of the birds sound like cats?  Why does the recently deceased body break down at greater speed when buried in the dirt than in water or laying exposed to the elements?  

Mike and I don't live in the same town, so maybe I can convince him to sit with an object all day - maybe a book, maybe he'll sit with it, put it to his hairy chest, carry it in his pocket, go drink with it, and then mail it to me so I can sniff it.  

I'll give him my address and tell him that's what I want.  

A book.  

A book he has slept with.  

And one day, Quiet Mike and I will meet at an out of the way place in Arizona.  A place near a mine.  A place where you can still mine silver for a small price. A place that has cantaloupe and we'll meet at this David Lynch style motel.  The motel will have a big neon burro sign out front. 

We'll meet at a seedy and weedy motel and I'll sit right on his face.  

He'll be so quiet; Quiet Mike.