Her

The way I see it, it’s not a lie until someone finds out. Until then it’s the truth. That’s what I keep telling myself as I sit on my discolored, sticky couch. This is the truth. I need to believe that. Otherwise, this is never going to work.I suddenly grow very aware of exactly how dirty my couch is. How many rum and cokes have been spilt on it. How many camel lights have missed the ashtray on it. How many of my friends have slept with each other on it. I desperately want a new couch.

“When was the last time you saw her?” her mother asks, tears sparkling over her cheekbones, getting caught in the deep lines. Valleys carved by worry. 

 ”Umm…this morning. When I left for school,” I lie.

 ”And she seemed okay? Not like…,” her mother trails off. I finish for her.

 ”Not like the other times, no.”

“We looked everywhere,” her mother says. “She won’t call us back. I don’t know where she could be.”

I know where she is. I know she is hunched down in the back of my closet, my closet several feet away, behind a hamper filled with my soiled clothes, taking short, shallow breaths for fear of being discovered. While her mother and I sit in the living room discussing her whereabouts, me on the couch, her mother not.

 ”I’m sorry I don’t know,” I lie again.

 ”You’ll call me, if you hear from her?” Those wet eyes plead something desperate but nothing new. This isn’t the first time.

“Of course,” I say with real concern. “Of course, I will.” I know what low feels like.

Her mother leaves, looking so tiny, and I have to hold back from setting that couch ablaze. I could probably get a new one for a decent price. By new I mean used.

She comes out from my closet. Her torn jeans expose one knee. She has nice knees the right shape, straight. She is wearing an accidentally bleached shirt because she likes the pattern of stains. She lights another cigarette. Her wrists are hacked open with a drug-store razor blade, nothing but red inside.

“You should go to the hospital,” I tell the truth.

She smiles. “That was close,” she pretends she doesn’t hear.

She melts into my disgusting, rotting couch and ashes her cigarette. She misses the ashtray.

Vancouver, B.C.

It’s not a good thing when your hostel is located directly next door to a strip club. It’s even worse when you can confuse one for the other.

For a split second, I actually thought my well-meaning boyfriend had accidentally made reservations at Vancouver’s shittiest brothel but then I noticed the discrete entrance to the left of the “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS” sign which was blinking pathetically. Like the bunny was about to croak. It was more like “G RLS GI LS GIR S” but you could figure it out.

I’ve never felt sorry for a whorehouse before. It’s not like it’s hard to make sex look appealing. But this place was failing. Miserably. Not to mention the people who actually worked there. I’m sure working in a strip joint is bad enough, but working in the White Castle of strip joints is somehow worse.

The hostel was run by this old man from somewhere else. Somewhere where they pronounce “W”s like “V”s. I only know this because I heard him yelling “Vhere’s my hairdryer!” at some very confused woman who claimed she had already returned the hairdryer. Not that he needed it, anyway.

We took to the streets because frankly the hostel was stuffy and odd. We explored Chinatown, which was within walking distance, in the drizzling rain. There were lots of vegetable and fruit stands. Meat shops which displayed every part of the chicken, not just the favorable ones. Chinese video stores. Each lamp post was adorned with a little red flag printed with the words “Historic Chinatown” as if that somehow changes what it really is: a ghetto. A ghetto that doubles as a tourist attraction. Tricky.

I saw some grass and got excited. But it was so covered with garbage there would have been enough of it to spell out the word “SHITHOLE” so it would be visible from an aerial view.

When we got back to the hostel, I went to my women only dorm-style room, where I encountered my first real hostel friend. I energetically introduced myself and inquired as to which of the bunks were open. She stared at me blankly. It became increasingly clear that no, she was not deaf or dumb. Just foreign. My geocentrism had got the best of me. The whole world doesn’t speak English, after all. I could only imagine what she saw. Some tall, white as chalk dust, red-haired American bellowing her sloppy language and expecting something.

I bet I made her miss home.

Cupid Aims For the Eye

During the Medieval period, love was a little different than it is now. While I’m certain couples still text messaged “I hrt U” and played mashed potato kisses, their ideas about how you fall in love where slightly less romantic.

Come to find out, love was not a choice. For anybody. Love was an affliction that led to severe physical discomfort, atrophy, disfigurement and eventually death. If left untreated.

Cupid, that bloody little bastard, would shoot you not in the butt or heart or anywhere “cute” but he would shoot you right smack dab in the eyeball. This was deemed the more humane option over shooting through your skull. Cupid wanted in your brain and the eye was his easiest route.

The brain must be accessed because it is here that the infection of love thrives best. The brain is divided into three parts: imagination, memory, and something else equally important. A young man spends his formative years constructing the vision of his perfect mate. Born in his imagination and stored in his memory, Cupid’s arrow triggers this fusion of spheres when a man’s self-made optimal other half is in his presence and he’s too stupid to figure it out on his own.

So, boom. Arrow in eye, man in love. But it gets even better. The fair lady in this essential equation doesn’t get a say in any of it. No matter if she is interested in Romeo or not, her duty is to fulfill (sleep with) this man lest he keel over from a broken heart. And that isn’t a figure of speech. I’m talking a legit broken heart. So you’re either a ho or a murderer. No pressure or anything.

The point is, maybe love isn’t all its cracked up to be. Maybe they had it right and we have it oh so wrong. Maybe love really is a parasitic infection that feeds on brain tissue.

But I have to admit, if we knew a cure I sure as hell wouldn’t take it.

Love

My mother always prepped us the same way on the ride over. “It’s not that Grandma doesn’t like you,” she would say, “it’s just that she doesn’t like children in general.”

Grandma had given birth 11 times, which is more than some dogs do, so her attitude toward kids was glaring indifference at best. Visits to Grandma’s house were tense and resulted in a lot of free time for us kids. The standard procedure was thus: knock; wait for Grandma’s shout of approval; enter; remove shoes; roll up pants if pants happened to be muddy; say hello to Grandma; hug Grandma only if she initiated it; and last but not least, hide. I spent a lot of time on my Grandma’s three-season patio where she kept a toy chest filled with dangerous metal toys with rusty edges and books that smelled of Play-doh despite there being no Play-doh in the house, to my dismay.

Any reason to disturb my mother and Grandma, who drank what must have been cup after cup of coffee in the kitchen, had better be a matter of tetanus or disfigurement. Potty breaks and candy requests did not count. If for some reason one of us grew bold enough to dare enter the kitchen, we were only met with Grandma’s exasperated sighs and rolling eyes. My mother would do her motherly duty by getting us the glass of water or the cracker then quickly shoo us off again, apologizing for the unwarranted interruption.

On this particular anxious visit to Grandma’s house, I only got halfway through the introductory entrance procedure before I was caught completely off guard. I was removing my shoes when Grandma approached me with a look on her face that was half amazement and half disgust.

“Look at this hair,” Grandma almost whispered as she ran her wrinkly fingers over my scalp. “It’s too pretty to be all knotted up like this. Come over here and sit in front of me.”  Grandma turned and slowly advanced on her favorite wooden-backed kitchen chair. I stood there dumbfounded. I wasn’t quite sure if she was really talking to me or if there was someone else standing behind me.

“Well?” Grandma prompted after she had plopped down in her seat. “Let’s get a move on.” I quickly did as I was told. Even Grandma’s affection was a little scary.

I sat down on the floor infront of Grandma with my feet tucked under me. She said that put me at the perfect height for her to put a French braid in my hair. I had never had my hair French braided before. Let alone by my Grandma whose idea of hospitality was letting me stay in the house when we came to visit. Her only instruction to me was to not move. No matter what.

So I didn’t. I just sat there. I sat so still I thought people driving by would think I was a mannequin head like the kind at the beauty parlor. Grandma was a perfectionist. She slowly and deliberately sectioned off my hair into manageable pieces. She combed through it, all the way down my back. She carefully began twisting and weaving the sections with a dexterity I was surprised she still had. All the while, the feeling in my legs slowly began fading. But still, I sat. I couldn’t disappoint Grandma.

By the time Grandma had finished, which felt like hours after she first began, I could feel nothing below my knees. I swiveled my head around to make sure my feet still existed. Grandma handed me a mirror while she held one behind my head so I could see the back.

“There,” Grandma said with satisfaction. “That’s much better. You know, you are a pretty girl after all.”

I was sure that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Ever.

“Now go play,” Grandma commanded.

I jumped to me feet, energized and on top of the world. I skipped off to the patio to spend my afternoon with Grandma’s toy chest and with each painful, needle-pricked step I took I knew she really loved me.

Last Night

I had never seen anything like it. It lit up the sky like a million tiny bombs detonating consecutively for what felt like forever. Maybe it was for all I know. Somehow the moon was still out. Despite the thick stratification of clouds, thick and heavy, the moon still made its presence known by shinning more phenomenally than usual. The water below would catch its light which gave it an eerie glow, choppy and sparkling as it was, then throw it back to us. This is god talking, I thought. This is what makes people think they have a purpose, this language of light.

 I had never met anyone like him. His eyes darting back and forth excitedly between each bolt of fire ripping across the sky. He took my hand and squeezed it with anticipation of something I could only speculate on. I never knew what he was thinking. I would try sometimes but I could only rarely understand and he would only rarely understand me. This was our understanding. We completely understood that we never would. His amazed sighs after each explosion were the loudest thing about that night. He was mesmerized and he was mesmerizing.

I could barely determine which one was more amazing. This incredible act of nature, the closest thing to war or heaven, unfolding before what felt like was me alone in the whole universe or that this guy was sitting here watching it too, touching me at the exact moment I felt untouchable. I had never felt anything like it.

Or him, for that matter.

Velour is the New Cashmere

They sounded like my 6th grade teacher’s footsteps. The click-clack of Payless knock-off heels. But not real heels. We’re talking a nice, low kitten heel. Conservative, yet almost bad ass.

I was in the baking aisle deciding which brand of tapioca to purchase so I didn’t bother turning around. Then suddenly the click-clacking stopped short, by my estimation somewhere in the flour/sugar region of the same aisle. There was silence except for the muzak version of a Lisa Loeb song blaring over the intercom. The click-clacker reversed directions without even turning around. You could tell because it became a clack-click. It was the kind of reverse you might do if you thought you saw a Friends cast member browsing cake mix at your local store; quick, excited, hopeful.

Now, that was worth turning around for. To see what this Click-Clacker was making such a fuss about. And there he was. One of the stranger shaped people I had ever seen. He was staring up at the aluminum baking dishes in awe. The kind you would bake a casserole in and give it to your friend. But not a friend you would expect your Tupperware back from.

He was short. Probably 5′3. He had the posture of a five-year-old girl. Back arched so his pudgy belly and bulbous ass stuck out. He was shaped like a ‘J.’ Or some kind of nut. He would be the style love child produced if Prince, Missy Elliot, and Tim Mcgraw had a threesome. He was wearing a purple velour running suit which included pants and a matching hoodie. His pant legs were shoved haphazardly into studded cowboy boots. He wore a similar cowboy hat that had seen its day in a previous decade. Around his neck were big, gangsta chains. There was a lot of gold.

He stared at the pans and tins mesmerized. He reached out and deliberately picked a flat baking sheet off the shelves. His eyes seemed to light up probably much like Herman Melville’s did after he got the idea for Moby-Dick. He shoved the sheet in his basket and hightailed it to dairy.

Twenty minutes later I was unloading my box potatoes and peas (skipped the tapioca) onto the check out conveyor belt when the Click-Clacker approached. I heard him coming. He began unloading his groceries behind mine which by now included: butter, eggs, vegetable oil, flour, sugar, vanilla extract, chocolate chips, baking powder/soda. The cookie sheet. Basically every last thing you need to make cookies. Including the cooking utensils.

Then he talked.

“Can you put nuths in cookieth?” he asked me. Of course this hopelessly strange man would have an overpowering lisp. I wondered if he was so strange because of the lisp or the lisp made him so strange? Kinda like what came first, the chicken or the lisp?

“Umm…yeah,” I responded, a little off guard. “My mom puts walnuts in everything.”

The Click-Clacker thought for a moment. “I wath thinking more like pecanth!” His dark skin grew rosy with excitement. “I’ll be back in a thecond,” he told the bewildered cashier. We both watched his fat, little ass click-clack away to the nut aisle.

“He’s funny,” I said to break the silence.

“You know him?” the cashier asked, a little disgusted.

“I wish.” And I really do.

The Last First Day

A montage played in my head as I walked to school today. Every seemingly minute or mundane moment of my college career interwoven with the victorious and devastating ones flashed through my mind like a lifetime coming to an end. I saw my freshman self sitting in pit classes with an eagerness only freshmen can have; my sophomore self doodling on my lab partner and running late into class; my junior self in the library eating wheat thins and texting to avoid whatever I was doing. And my current self doing all that but just a lot better. I saw myself, face-painted, in the athletic stands rooting my school’s team on to playoff victory. My sorority sisters and I chugging beer in mini skirts. Okay, so some of these images didn’t exactly happen. Everything is always so much more iconic in memory.

These images were set to some incredibly cheesy farewell anthem like Green Day’s ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).’ You know the one. That song that has been every graduating class’ theme since 2000. That song from the Seinfeld finale. That song that makes you want to be deaf. I was being nostalgic. Emotions weaken common sense and good taste.

Today was my last first day as a college undergrad. In fourteen weeks, I will have completed my degree, my credit requirements, my goal, and will ceremoniously take yet another walk across a stage that somehow concludes and remunerates four years of intellectual toil. In fourteen weeks, I will no longer have the convenient excuse for anything and everything:

Why don’t you have any money? “I’m a student.”

Why don’t you have a real job? “I’m a student.”

Why do you dress like a lesbian hobo? “I’m a student.”

Suddenly my insufficient funds and wardrobe are going to need a new reason for their wackness. They are going to need to stand on their own and not rely on the comforting, familiar defenses supplied by a life of academia. No longer can I shove my inadequacies off onto my lack of an education. With a degree comes expectations. I will need to come up with something new. But “I’m a recent college grad thrust into a post-Bushian economy *cough* pity me *cough*” just doesn’t sound as good.  

Not to mention, its taken me four years to locate the perfect bathroom on campus, out of the way and rarely visited by others, and just when I do they expect me to pack it up and move on? I’m gonna use that bathroom every day for the next fourteen weeks.

Gotta make all this worth it.

F is for Female

Its name was Jean and it came during geography class.

“Class,” our teacher said, “this is Jean. Our new…student.” Not boy or girl. Just student. Jean was taller than everyone. Even the teacher. Jean was probably a boy. Jean had long hair. Kinda. Okay, Jean was probably a girl. Jean was dirty. Like a boy. Jean giggled. Like a girl. And it went on like this. For every seemingly masculine trait Jean had, there was a feminine one to contradict it.

Jean didn’t use the boys room. But she didn’t use the girl’s room either. She simply didn’t go to the bathroom at all. We knew because we watched. Very closely, we watched. Nothing about Jean really gave it away. We were all 14 and deeply confused.

But then we remembered: gym class. Of course, gym class. When Jean was placed in the girl’s or boy’s gym class the mystery of Jean’s genitalia would be solved and we could start stereotyping her properly. Everyone would be very relieved.

Jean was put in the girl’s gym class but she didn’t do what the other girls did. She didn’t play the games. Her thick arms would look funny swinging a jump rope. She didn’t change clothes. And she certainly didn’t shower. We said we were afraid she would look at us but really, we knew we’d be looking at her.

Jean didn’t go swimming with the class. And one day, neither did I. I made up some excuse. I had cramps or I didn’t have a tampon or I didn’t know what a tampon was or something like that, using my femininity as a weapon. We sat, Jean and I, on the wooden benches in our quiet captivity and watched the other girls swim. Jean didn’t talk much. But I wanted to make her.

I slid over next to her. She stiffened. She rubbed her gnawed down fingernails into the pad of her thumbs one at a time. If we were in a cartoon world, she would have had stink lines. Her hair was the same color as her skin. Everything about her was a little gray. But up close, and by close I mean a normal distance, you could see she had green eyes. Bright green eyes.

“Why aren’t you swimming?” I asked. I was young and blunt.

Jean paused for a moment. Then she explained. “Well, one time,” Jean responded confidently, like she had planned on and been waiting for this day to come, “I was at a zoo with my family and there was a bear that was, like, rabid or something. And everyone was freaking out ’cause the zookeepers were too afraid to stick it with this needle with medicine on it. So I took the needle and jammed it into the bear, okay. And the bear scratched me really bad and the scars are just too freaky it would freak you all out to see.”

She could have just said she had a penis, I thought. Instead she expected me to believe, at probably 12 years old, she had wrestled a bear. And won.

Soon after that, Jean left as quickly as she came. No one knew where or why and no one really asked. Jean was a freak. An ‘it.” Her quick stint in girl’s gym was unconvincing. But Jean was just benign enough to be forgettable.

Three years later, some friends and I drove through a little town on the way to somewhere else and stopped at a gas station. I purchased my carbonated sugar and went to leave but something caught my eye. A pie-shaped, androgynous face. Gray. Brilliant green eyes. It stared at me wanly with just the hint of a smile. Jean. On paper.

The top of the flyer said “MISSING PERSON” and gave a date two weeks prior. Jean’s picture was underneath. But then I saw it. Right there in black and white.

Sex: F

Turns out, that “F” was just the beginning of Jean’s mystery.

So I don’t have to spit in your drink

I work at a restaurant where those little novelty drink umbrellas are required ornamentation but there is not one recycling bin in sight. We have free helium on tap but a crappy little smoothie is $6. You must be paying for the name. The drinks have names like “Costa Rican Cutie” and “Blonde Bombshell.” The drinks are more attractive than your date. Apparently. I have yet to serve a “Gold-digger.”

There are so many pictures on the wall you can’t tell what color the paint is. Movie posters, still frames, works of art brought out of obscurity into the bittersweet light of corporate notoriety. Some of the pictures are hung, strategically, upside-down. I wonder how many people were in charge of deciding which pictures would be hung in such orchestrated defiance.

“No, no. Not that one. This one. The one of the kittens in the paint cans. Put this one upside-down.”

We are just too zany. Too zany for our own damn good.

We are required encouraged to have fun at this restaurant. As long as every food item is out of the kitchen in eight minutes, there is not one empty glass in the house, there is absolutely no dirt or garbage ANYWHERE, every table is bussed, and every guest is completely satisfied. Then every remaining moment is dedicated to fun. The most fun happens when people order.  

“I’ll have this,” a woman says as she points to an item on the menu because hell, it’s Friday, and she’s been reading and talking all week. The weekend is all about cavemanish hand signals. Everyone knows that.

But really, she doesn’t want that. She wants nothing to do with that.

“Can you hold the mayo? And I don’t want any tomatoes, onions, or lettuce either. But I would like a side of ranch and instead of the fries can I just get some bacon?”

Then she will proceed to order something equally ridiculous for her baby who will just mash whatever it happens to be into the carpet with his fat, grubby, baby fingers. Yes, carpet. I work in a carpeted restaurant. I often wonder what brainiac made that call. Probably the same person who decided on the upside-down picture hangings.

If only I could be assured hell was like it was in mythology where punishments truly fit the crime. This person would spend all eternity on his/her hands and knees picking dried macaroni and cheese out of carpet fibers.

And then make fun a priority.

Careless Charity

He always smells like food. Like a nice thick pea or lentil soup. The kind with chunks of fatty ham floating around in it. It makes me want to rub bread all over him and then taste it. This could use a little pepper, I would probably say. I’m always so hard on the first course.

But naturally, you don’t just rub bread on people. Especially people you tutor, the people you are supposed to be helping. I tutor him, this soupy boy, in reading and writing, things like that. Things I’m supposed to know about but have learned I really don’t. He’s 23 and reads at a third-grade level.  Something is wrong with him and he knows it. He told me. And after a 12 hour training program, I’m supposed to fix him.  But a couple of weeks ago, he tried to quit on me.

The phone rings.

“Hi this is (insert boy’s name) and I’m really sorry, I mean, you are a very good tutor but I just don’t want to be tutored anymore and it’s not you it’s me, for real, because I just have a lot going on right now, and I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like I’m doing anything but I really like you, I promise.”

Then I said “Hello.” And then, I panicked. For two different reasons. First, there was the original reason then I panicked because that reason meant I was a horrible person. I panicked, originally, because I needed him. I mean, I needed him. I don’t tutor because I enjoy it. Because deep down, it does something to my soul like fill a void left behind by apathetic parenting or teenage promiscuity. God, no. This tutoring gig was simply an item on a list. But a very important list. A list important people will look at and decide if my good acts outweigh my mediocre; if I’m worthy of their school, their company, their money. It’s a resume builder.

God help me, at that moment I wanted to agree with Soupy. You’re right, I should say. You don’t wanna get caught up with the likes of me, kid. I’m a mover and a shaker. You’re a dime a dozen. You wanna get stepped on like this? Used like a rummage sale book, spine all broken? That’s all you’ll ever be to me. Run! Run away!

But instead all I could do was panic. Wait, I pleaded. No, don’t leave me! My intrinsically good acts will be meaningless without you there to receive them! Don’t deny my kindness you son of a bitch!

Then of course I realized that only a horrible, greedy, selfish person would think of good deeds as treasures to be accumulated and collected, stored and saved until one day you need to pull them out and show them off. See, I’m a good person. See? See?!? 

Should I start carrying around pre-made forms for my kindness victims to fill out after experiencing my philanthropy. Here, granny. Grab ahold, sure any part, of this able body and let me escort your fleshy little vessel across this busy street. And if you could just initial here, here, and here. Documentation, you see. Harvard may want to know about this.

In the end, Soupy agreed to give tutoring another go. All I had to do was promise cupcakes on his birthday.

There. Now we are both getting what we want.