Beauty and the Beast

Rachel (names have been kept the same to expose the scandalous) was a beauty queen in every since of the tainted word. She was the kind of girl who had words like “Dream” and “Believe” painted on her walls. The kind of girl that cried when she got haircuts. The kind of girl that smiled to your face but scowled when you turned away. The kind of girl I happened to live with.

The funny thing is, she really was a beauty queen. Literally. She had those strange dresses that looked as if there were perpetually a person in them, even when there wasn’t. Her room was lined with pictures of her winning various titles: Miss Northeast Wisconsin, Miss Fox Valley, Miss Somewhere Else Nondescript. Each title became reduced down to merely a frame on her dresser, a pathetically isolated reminder of her worth.

I found out later that beauty queens don’t get to keep their crowns. They pass them on to the reigning champion, a symbolic removal from the spotlight which can induce symptoms of postpartum depression minus the subsequent child. This knowledge made what Rachel did (a little) more understandable.

Just so happened, I also lived with a current title-holding Miss Something. Don’t ask me how I ended up with two pageant girls for college roommates. Shit happens.

This Miss Something kept her crown in an oak box lined with blue velvet secured by a gold lock under her bed. One particular day she went to retrieve said crown from its velvet napping place but (gasp!) it wasn’t there. Naturally all fingers pointed to Rachel. Poor Rachel, hungry for the sweet, sweet glory she had developed a taste for, had robbed Miss Something of not only her crown but her faith in womankind.

She must have turned that room upside down, savagely searching for the crown. Oh, the satisfaction she must have felt when she finally found it and ever so carefully placed it on her unfamiliar head. Like a vampire feeding on warm blood, I imagine. After originally denying the allegations, Rachel eventually admitted that the crown was in the trunk of her car. It was swiftly collected and replaced to its box.

I had a dream that I was watching like a movie with Rachel as the leading role. She dressed conservatively, like a mother would dress, and snuck into the maternity ward of the hospital where Miss Something had just given birth. She grabbed a bundle from an incubator and bolted for the door. Just then, a nurse grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around revealing the swaddled ball in her arms was a diamond studded crown, not a baby. That was the first time I can remember laughing in my sleep.

Thanks, Rachel.

Shock and Awe

How a women’s black lacy, presumably used, thong ends up in the front yard of a 75-year-old man is beyond me. Underwear isn’t typically considered a layering item to be taken off if you get too warm during the evening cookout or put on in defense of mosquitoes. Underwear is meant to remain where you last placed it. Proper locations might include the laundry, a dresser drawer designated for like items, or on your person. If you are traveling with it, it should be shamefully tucked into the darkest corner of your suitcase ensuring a safe and concealed transport to its new location. Any incident that occurs resulting in your undergarments flying out the car window, accosting an innocent neighborhood could only be described as “freak.”

I’m sure my grandfather felt the same way. This man took immense care of his yard. His grass was always a uniform 1 ¼ inches long. Any one blade never had the chance to outshine the others. Even around trees and mailbox poles where most people give up trying to mow, my grandfather got on his hands and knees with a scissors and snipped that grass into shape. He ran sprinklers while it was raining. Perhaps that’s why my grandfather’s lawn was always a brilliant emerald green next to my own family’s pukey olive. Everything was manicured, everything had its place. You can imagine his dismay on the morning he woke up to find his pristine lawn tainted by a pair of slutty underpants.

I ran next door to inform him of the invasion, as if he hadn’t been up since dawn devising a suitable plan of attack.

“Grandpa,” I said when he opened the door, “there is underwear in your yard.”

He looked past me to the scene of the crime, squinted his eyes and whispered, “I know.”

I spent the rest of the morning playing in my driveway, fabricating new games in order to stay outside longer. We were all very curious as to what my grandfather would do.

Finally, he emerged. He stalked out of his garage wearing rubber waders that hit mid-thigh, the sleeves of his flannel shit rolled up to the elbow, suspenders across each shoulder. He wore a floppy straw hat and carried a large, lethal looking pitchfork. But most importantly, he wore a look of resolved determination in defeating the underwear.

He approached it confidently, yet cautiously, like you would a wild animal you can never fully predict. After a brief inspection, my grandfather speared the negligee on the end of one of the pitchfork prongs. He returned to the garage holding the pitchforked underpants as far from his body as possible. I felt a strange sense of admiration for my grandfather at that moment, as I watched him take that underwear to its fate.

The Game

Our summer nights usually consist of this, Trivial Pursuit and a bottle of Jagermeister. Maybe two rounds of one, the other, or both depending on the night. We used to use the Jager as a reward, taking a shot upon answering a question correctly, but that seems to happen so rarely that now the Jager is a punishment to be endured after each incorrect response. More shots are consumed this way. We discuss purchasing a new board, one with questions pertaining to our brief lifetimes, but she decides against it. She always has been a glutton for punishment. As it stands, our lonely little amputated circles longing for their completing pie pieces usually end up in the couch cushions as we stagger to the bar defeated, waving a white flag to the last few drops of Jagermeister. We still have a ways to go tonight.

We own the 1981 Genus edition, the original. The answers to the questions are many times countries that don’t exist anymore, records that have been long since broken, and refuted scientific claims. We aren’t playing to get any smarter.

“Nope, the answer is Czechoslovakia. See?” she points to the card.

“Yeah that was the answer in 1981,” I protest.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” she says. “Now drink.”

I comply. The tepid Jager goes down like cough syrup. It tastes strangely comforting, familiar, like so many wasted nights spent rolling the die over and over again. First a two, then a five, then one, four, six in no particular order. We work our way around the game board toward a goal we both know will eventually be abandoned for a smoky, dimly lit bar. It gives our conversations a taste, our conversations about the meaning of life (death), work (infuriating yet necessary), her disease (permanent). It all tastes like Jagermeister.

It’s her turn. She rolls. Her strategy consists of utilizing every “roll again” spot on the game board until she no longer can. She rolls again. And again, and again, until finally she has to answer a question.

Martin Luther King Jr. vs Me

Enter two 15-year-old girls each with a 13-year-old amount of eyeliner on. They are holding hands out of spite for society and its confinements. They don’t know yet how much they need it. Without any boundaries to spit on, they would be just like everyone else. Sheep is a term they would probably use.

They approach the counter and order their drinks. Someone should have told them not to order smoothies. They get their drinks and look slightly relieved that they now have something else to do with their hands. They are each others first (and last) girlfriend.

I’m glad these sea monkey lesbians are subjected to the same bullshit Matchbox Twenty cover rendition that I am. The same rambling, incoherent “poetry” curiously strung along with no discernible point. We all clap because if you didn’t get it, it must be genius.

Pretension (prē ten′suh un) noun:

1. attitude of superiority regarding oneself

2. constructed insanity in the name of art (“My insanity is genius. Here, read it for yourself.”)

3. self-proclaimed creative writers and their classes

I want to go back to a time when art meant something. When there was such a thing as a stupid question. When coffee was hot and dykes were butch. Is it possible to miss an era you never knew?

A girl can dream.

Home

Everyone needs that place. A sanctuary where they can retreat after a day of waiting rooms, conference rooms, classrooms. The world is full of these rooms where things happen and everyone wants out. Everyone needs some place, some place that caresses without expecting anything back. Maybe it’s a big Victorian home with a manicured lawn or a particular bench in the park protected by trees. It could be a king size bed with 400-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets or the bottom of a swimming pool. Just a place to call home.

His was his apartment that he rented with the tips he got from the restaurant. But this wasn’t a normal apartment. This apartment was alive. This apartment breathed life; it had a discernable heartbeat. Her radiators hummed a jazz beat. She had windows like eyes stretched out tall. She had eyes in the back of her head. These eyes faced the street, the alley, and the parking lot. The stories she could have told if she could only speak. The scenery never changed but the stories where always evolving. Stories of forbidden love, bachelor parties, and bad tattoos.

She heard it all and remembered everything. There was no sneaking around with her. There were no secrets. There was no way you could creep in at 2 in the morning undetected. Each and every door slammed with certainty and definition like the punctuation at the end of a sentence, an exclamation point. Every floorboard eagerly announced your crimes. Her hallways were rich with empty words and pipe dreams. Each dent and every nick told a story and only she knew them all. We could only speculate. That dent was from a dresser and that one was a broken promise.

Within her walls had lived starving artists who had no business being artists in the first place. People just trying to get by on their pathetic, little breaks. Now he occupied her. He added to the tapestry like handprints in wet cement. That was the thing about her. Her foundation had been laid a lifetime ago but you could still make an impression.

Sure the stove required the use of matches and the wooden floors were freezing in the winter. Maybe it did take a good five minutes to get water running hot but that’s why he loved her. He probably could have done better. He surely could have been able to afford a cloned apartment where everything smells of wet paint and fresh linoleum. But through that he found nothing. Sometimes it’s worth the inconveniences to be part of something bigger. Sometimes it’s the scars that make you beautiful.