Frankie Goes to Home Depot: Stories landlocked in the Heartland

61. Ray the Loser

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:49:00 +0000

Settling into my comfy chair in the Study, NPR on in the background, the air outside with a wisp of fall, I was in heaven. Having been back in the heartland for two weeks, I was thrilled to be home, doing nothing that involved travel. It was a Sunday morning, the day that I was most ecstatic to be a couple on, as we just stayed in and did our own thing, no stress, experiencing each others company, silently. And under my blanket, snuggled in with the big fat Sunday paper, life just felt right.

The home phone rang from a far room.

“Phone!” Thad called from the Kitchen.

Ignoring him, I instead focused on the op-ed section of the paper: people were more and more frequently talking about the power of Jesus in reference to city politics, which just baffled me.

“Phone!” Thad called again with a dangerous clang of a pot.

I frowned as I read a Tea Partier’s lecture on the necessity of ‘In God We Trust’ being displayed in City Hall. Norman was turning red as I sat there, and I did not like it one whit.

The phone rang again.

“Good God!” I hear Thad huff, and then the sounds of him stomping to get the phone and then stampeding toward me.

I tried to look very busy as he burst into the room.

“Did you hear me?” he snapped.

“No,” I lied, but not one of those bad couple lies, more like a good lie; a lie that saves face, saves pain, saves a relationship.

“It’s Becky.” He thrust the phone at me.

“Thanks,” I smiled up at him, and then into the receiver, “Hey. What’s up?”

He frowned like a cartoon crab and stomped off.

“What’s wrong with him?” Becky said.

“Wait,” I whispered as I listened for him to regain the Kitchen. Then I whispered, “He’s in a mood.”

“How surprising,” she said. “What is it this time?”

“He had a bad visit with Ma’am,” I whispered. “But he won’t tell me.”

“How’s she doing?

“Not well.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. So, what’s up?” I asked in my normal voice.

She was silent, then, “Ray’s a dick.”

“What?” I tried not to giggle.

“Ray’s a dick.” She repeated.

“Well, yes, but what brought this on?” I knew that Becky had met Ray up at Mickey Mantle’s Steak House in the City two months ago, and she had not taken Pablo, but she had never said much about it. And as Becky was not someone who succumbed to my badgering, and Mother knew no more, I had been hanging on about who she was going to choose: the Loser Ray or Pablo.

“I went out with him again last night.” She said. “The first time in Bricktown in July was just weird. I mean, I hadn’t seen him in almost a year. I hardly recognized him. He’s gotten really fat and looked awful. But he was real sweet and, I don’t know, we didn’t have a bad time, but we didn’t really have a good time either. I mean, it was like a work thing, where we were both just real stiff, like we were being interviewed.”

“Yeah, that’s too bad.”

“So we started texting after that, kinda here and there, and he started calling every once in a while, but then he always got mad whenever I had to stop and take care of Pablo, like he was jealous. And I know Ray; he was jealous. But I thought he would, at least let it go since he knows I really love Pablo.”

“Have you told Ray that?”

“Yes, and he just laughed at me, and told me I shouldn’t get attached as the State could just take him away any minute, and then where would I be?”

“That’s a bit much.” I said, wanting to add, ‘The Loser has a point,’ but decided to leave it.

“But I knew he was busy with work,” she continued, “And figured he would take to Pablo once he was around him some, he’s just such a cute little guy and all. And anyway, then Ray asked me out again, for last night, and this time he was coming to Norman.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And he wanted to meet at the Mont. And I didn’t mention anything about Pablo, and he didn’t either, so I just decided to bring him anyway, and not even ask Ray if it was okay. I mean, I do have a child now if he likes it or not.”

“Yes,” I kept my mouth shut again.

“So Pablo and I got there early and got a table out on the patio and Ray showed-up, and he was just pissed off immediately that I had Pablo with me. He was, like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were gonna bring him,’ and ‘You should have told me, I would have brought my dog.’ And he wasn’t awful…”

“That sounds pretty awful. I mean, comparing Pablo to his dog...”

“Okay, yeah,” she stopped. “But he could have been worse.”

“Yeah, but still…”

“I know. And he wasn’t mean or awful directly to Pablo, but he didn’t really talk to him at all. And Pablo was so well behaved, he just sat there and ate his chicken strips, and was really quiet. But I was hoping for…more from Ray.”

“Don’t we always?” Things had been odd with Thad since I got back from Puerto Rico. I didn’t know what was going through his head, but my interest was piqued. But this was Becky’s time, so I kept my story to myself.

“So, what did you do?”

“Well, after dinner Ray tried to kiss me out by the car, and I just pulled away. He smelled like beer and cheap cigarettes and, I don’t know, I just didn’t want to. I just wanted to go home because Pablo was tired and I had to get him to bed. That’s all I cared about. Not Ray, and certainly not being kissed by him.”

“And what did Ray do?”

“He kinda laughed and tried again and I just told him, ‘I got to go…’ and ‘maybe I’ll talk to you later.’ But I could tell by the look on his face he knew what was going on.” She fell silent.

“What?”

She took a deep breath. “That it wasn’t working, that we need to go ahead and just get a divorce.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” I said. “But I am so proud of you for standing up for yourself. It’s good because Pablo needs you now.”

“I know." She said with tears in her voice.

“And I know how hard this is one you, and what a big decision it is, I mean it’s one you have wrestled with for over a year, but at least it sounds like you’ve finally come to a decision.”

“I know it’s the right thing to do, ” she cried quietly. “Ray just needs to fade away. I know that, but it hurts….”

We talked for the better part of an hour, she sad but hopeful, and finally with clear eyes about the merit, or lack thereof, of the Loser Ray.

62. It Sucks to Date an Alcoholic

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:48:00 +0000

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me” I said quickly.

“Michael?” Becky asked. “What’s wrong?”

It was three days after we had the big talk about her and Ray. I rearranged myself on the bed and tried to think of a lie to tell her. One did not come to me: I hated lying to my sister. “Nothing.”

“You’re lying,” she said, “Spill it. Is it Mom? What’d she do?”

“No, no, it’s not Mom.” I said, tight-lipped. I did not want to have to tell her what I was about to tell her. My faced burned with shame, but I had to talk to someone about this, and I knew she wouldn’t be cruel.

“Is she on an eating binge again?” Becky asked. “You know every time she comes back from the Dietician and he tells her she can’t eat nuts because of her diverticulitis, she just gorges herself on peanuts and pecans and then can’t stop going to the bathroom for the next three days…”

“No, it’s not Mom…” and my voice caught.

“Oh Lord,” she said. “What’d Thad do now?”

“Is it that easy to tell?” I laughed softly.

“Yes, after all these years.”

Rolling back over, I took a deep breath. It was early in the evening, but lying on my bed just seemed like the best place to be, as it took the least effort. In the last two days everything Thad and I had - everything - had gone to hell in a hand basket.

“Look, I just need to talk to you,” I said. “But you can’t…”

“I won’t tell Mom.”

“Or anyone else,” I cautioned.

“Or anyone else,” She repeated. “Witches’ honor.”

I started, then stopped, then started again, “He’s had a drinking incident again.”

“Oh, no!” She gasped, and I heard her stand. “I’m so sorry. How long has it been?”

“Fifteen months.”

“That’s terrible. How did you find out?”

Fighting away the nausea I said, “Look, I’ll tell you but you can’t hold it against me, because if you told me something like this, I would hold it against you…”

“Yeah, yeah, well, that’s you…”

“Because you know Thad and I will probably stay together,” I continued. “And that just reflects so poorly on me. And I can’t have you treating me differently or looking at him weird at Thanksgiving.”

“No, don’t worry,” she grunted. “How did you find out?”

“He called from jail.”

“Good God no!” I heard her knock something over “Dammit! There went my Pepsi! I have to get a towel…hold on…”

As she banged around, grunting and huffing, I looked up at the ceiling and just hated Thad for putting me through this. Hated him. Hated him for what he did and hated him more for embarrassing me now in front of my sister. Surely Becky wouldn’t tell Mom; Becky was trustworthy. But I had to talk to someone, to start the release of the poison inside me.

“Okay, sorry.” Becky said coming back to the phone. “So he called you from jail? And what happened? When was this?”

“Three days ago, Sunday night, the last time we talked. Later that afternoon he went home and he said he had just decided to go get some beer that night…”

“After fifteen months of straight sobriety?”

“Well, fifteen months of straight sobriety that I know of. I’ve been suspicious of him this whole time. He called me once in Puerto Rico and I swear he was drunk, and that’s happened on and off over the last year, but nothing I could prove. So maybe I was paranoid, or maybe not. But this is what I have been afraid of, that he would just fall back off the wagon.”

“Is it off the wagon or on the wagon?”

“Not sure, not important. But he said he went to get some beer and then he drank it and then drove up to the gay bars in Oklahoma City.”

“No! He drank and drove?”

“Yup.”

“Does he go up there often?”

“Never.”

“Then why did he go?” she asked quietly.

This is the part that hurt the most; the rawness of the reality was still red.

“I don’t know. He said to dance, drink, whatever…” I trailed off, knowing what the gay bars were good for when you were drunk and alone. “And you know he’s done this before, to bad result….”

“When you broke up last time?”

“Yup.” I grimaced, dredging it all up again. “Back when we were dating and living together last time, in 95-96, he did the same thing-got drunk, drove up to the gay bars but he cheated on me then, so we broke up for the next decade and then some, rat bastard. And I’ve hardly trusted him since. And you know that’s been our biggest obstacle since we got back together four years ago: I just don’t trust him and it all goes back to when he cheated on me. And to make it worse, of course he didn’t tell me outright. I had to pry it out of him after a few weeks, and then he didn’t even tell me the whole truth until he got really loaded again and when he finally told me, then I just broke up with him. I mean I had suspected all along, but the reality of it - the cheating - was horrible.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Me too.” I stood to pace. “And he says nothing like that happened this time. I mean, he said he just went up to the bars to dance and talk to some people but I just don’t know if I can believe him. He lies. He’s a liar. But no matter what, when he was driving back he was pulled over by the Oklahoma City Cops and arrested for DUI.”

“Oh no.”

“I know. It’s his third or fourth. I‘ll be surprised if he still has a license after this.”

“And he called you that night?” she asked.

“No, the next morning. He spent the night in the drunk tank.” I chuckled. “Serves him right. And I wouldn’t go get him.”

“You’re kidding?” she gasped. “You wouldn’t?”

“No. Hell with him. It was Monday morning and I had a departmental meeting and he was all the way in the City. So I called his Mom and made her go do it.” The thought of that punishment offered me some solace besides the pain I had been wallowing in.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And she went and got him out?”

“Yup. Like she always does…”

We were silent for a moment. I stopped to sit, crushed, knowing she though less of me now; that I was unworthy as I loved someone as base as Thad, and that here - at this moment -she was realizing what a failure I was as an older brother.

“You know,” she began, “I had been thinking about how paranoid you’ve been about him, about his drinking. I mean, how you’ve still been talking about it and worrying about it. And I really thought it was all just a lot of wasted effort, that it was in your head, and that he was better and all. But I guess he isn’t.”

“It sucks dating an alcoholic.” I had never uttered a more painful phrase.

“How’s he doing?”

“The rat bastard?” I chortled.

“Yes.”

“He’s fine, I guess. I don’t care. We’ve fought every day since. I just hate him right now. I am ashamed and mortified and don’t even know what to feel. He betrayed my trust by drinking, put himself and others in danger drinking and driving, and then - did he cheat on me again? How am I to know because all I can do is trust him, and of course I don’t trust him! Oh, and he went to jail. Classy, that is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Has he drunk again since?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, I mean he said he hasn’t, but who really knows since he lies. He’s a lying drunk.” I laughed to myself. “ The last few months have been great. I mean, I was paranoid and kind of a mess through them-especially when he moved out- but that was nothing compared to what I’m dealing with now-I mean real troubles. But I had even started to trust him some. I mean, I was so sad to leave him when I went to Puerto Rico. And now he’s a lying drunk again, with all those fifteen months, gone. Pouf! We’re back at the beginning.”

“That’s too bad. But at least he’s okay.”

“Yeah, I guess. Have you heard the old joke, ‘How can you tell if an alcoholic is lying?’”

“No. How?”

“’His lips are moving,’”

She snickered, but in a sad way. “Why do you think he did it, I mean drink after such a long time?”

I lay back down. “I thought about that, and all I could think was that he has been real sad over Ma’am.”

“Did he ever tell you what happened during his last visit?”

“Yesterday he said something about it. Apparent she didn’t recognize him at all and then made fun of his hair in a really mean way, and he had cried all the way back from the City. He said he knew it was just the Alzheimer’s making her crazy, but he wasn’t expecting her to be mean. He seemed so hurt by it.”

“And you think that did it? That set him off?”

“I guess. I don’t know. He wouldn’t really talk about it, but he never wants to talk about anything serious. He just clams up and sulks.”

“But you two are talking?” she asked, “I mean, have you talked about it?”

“Oh yeah. Twice. The first time Monday night after his Mom sprang him, for me to get the facts of the story straight and the second time, yesterday, to cover my points of disappointment in him. I had a list.”

“Of course you did.”

“Of course I did! And he made fun of me too for having one too, saying, ‘Can’t you even speak from the heart?’ and I just hissed, “I think you’re a fucking whore. That’s what’s in my heart. Do you want to hear anymore that’s in there?’ and he didn’t say anything else about the list after that.”

“Oh my.”

“Yeah. So we’re talking, but hardly. And I haven’t even talked to him all day today. And I don’t know what to do. I’m just really sad, and I just wish things were back to the way they were, back to normal. But that can’t be. And I am just so disappointed in him, and I keep feeling like I’m falling. Like falling and falling and I have nothing to stop me, and everything is hollow around me and I can’t even hardly breathe.” I stopped. “I hate that so much of me is him, especially when he is so terrible.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“I know. Thank you,” and for the first time I teared-up. “That’s why I wanted to call you. I was just so sad and didn’t know what to do-if I should call him or not-and I just wanted to just to hear your voice, and I knew you would make me feel better.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“But I don’t know that it will,” I sobbed into the phone.

We talked for two more hours, quietly, this time she calming me.

63. Luxor

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:47:00 +0000

“Where do you want to go eat?” Thad asked in a forced upbeat voice.

“I don’t know. Where do you want to go eat?”

He screwed up his face and shrugged. “Well, it’s date night Saturday, so someplace nice?”

“Yeah,” I said noncommittally “That sounds good,” and walked into my Study.

It was four days later and I could still hardly look at him. After a monumental fight with him the night that I talked to Becky, I broke up with Thad in a grand and histrionic way that will surely be reproduced by Noh Theatre troops for years to come. And we stayed broken-up for 55 hours- 55 horrible hours of no sleep and paranoia and rage and ennui. That is until I caved in last night, afraid I was overreacting, and called him back in a complete panic to make-up and to get back together.

So things had supposedly gotten better, as we were still a couple but then there was the problem that we were still a couple and that he was still an alcoholic who had drunk and drove to the gay bars and got thrown in jail for it. And to top it off, after we got back together last night, he didn’t want to see me, instead he said he already had plans with Bettina, which left me glad we had made-up, but then livid and paranoid and jealous since I couldn’t see him immediately and that he had -again - chosen her over me.

I had picked him up this morning, it now Saturday, and we had garage sailed some, but neither of us were into it. We just came back to the house and went to our separate corners, he to watch TV in the Den and me to brood over my computer in the Study. A home OU football raged outside, cars and people and crimson and creme everywhere.

I had no idea what to do. I loved him and wanted to stay together, but this was big. He was an alcoholic. A big, nasty dumbass alcoholic and I was going to have to realize that there was nothing that could change that. He had been better, but I guess I was going to have to accept these falls, these terrible, terrible, crushing falls, as part of our life.

But the drinking wasn’t even the worse of it. The worst of it was that he had gotten drunk and went to the gay bars. And I wanted to trust him, that nothing had happened, but I didn’t trust him because of all of our past, so that was that. And my paranoia was having a heyday imagining the Karma Sutra of sin he revealed in up there, all before his magnanimous fall to arrest.

Shame. Hatred. Scorn. Terror. Wrath. Vengeance.

I heard him coming and tried to calm down.

“Hey!” he said sticking his head in the door. “Guess what?”

I wanted to say, ‘You are a completely horrible human being who doesn’t deserve me, and the only reason you’ve never committed suicide is because you are incapable of finishing anything.’ But I did not. Instead I said, “What?”

“Guess who Bettina is going on a date with next week?”

“Who?” I said, trying to sound human.

“Oliver!”

“Really?” I said, actually caught off guard. And then to snap back, “That’s really stupid, he’s gay.”

“Yeah, I told her that, but she just wants a nice free meal, so she demanded Legend’s.”

“Well, I wish them the best.” I looked back to my computer.

“I’ll water the porch plants.” He said to no one in particular.

“Great, thanks,” I did not look back up.

He was trying; I just hated him for it. This was to be our day to get back into our groove, to get back to being us, but I just wasn’t feeling it. When we were breaking up the other day he had screamed at me, ‘I can’t live in your bubble. That’s your life-your expectations. Not mine!’ I had thought about this, but didn’t really know what he meant. I mean, my bubble was a good bubble, a good life. Why wouldn’t he want that? He just didn’t know he wanted it yet. He was at fault.

He exited the room silently.

Fifteen minutes later he walked back in to hand me the mail.

“Thanks,” I said not looking up. I wanted him to be punished for a long time, punished in a remarkably abstract kind of way that was illegal in seventeen states; that could feature in a Saw movie; that would even disturb the Marquis de Sade’s dreams. I wanted him punished like no other. Punished till he knew how bad I hurt inside.

He walked out and I fished through the mail to find junk and bills and a pink and gold post card. The picture on the front was of the Las Vegas Luxor hotel. My breath caught. I flipped it over and immediately recognized the slanted cursive handwriting of my father.

Michael-

Hello. Got your letter. Glad to hear that you and Rebecca are well. Would like to talk to you both. I am sorry it’s been so long.

My phone number is: 702-798-5595.

Love, Charles

I just sat there, stunned. What a day to get this! I could hardly focus but I made myself, rereading it. It was like my father was talking to me, just to me, there for the first time in 33 years. I could still hear his voice, or at least the voice I always remembered as his. The tears came quickly. My father wanted to be part of my life again, and I could not be happier. Tear for him and tears for how terrible Thad was came all at the same time.

Thad stuck his head back in. I looked down, rubbing my eyes.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I just…” and then I remembered that I had not told him about the letter, about writing to Dad, and felt ashamed. Now who was the liar? But then I thought about it: he did not deserve it then and certainly not now. He did not need to be part of this now, not with what he had just done to me. “Nothing.” I slid the postcard away.

“Okay. You sure?” he said seriously.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you going to forgive me?” Thad asked sternly, coming into the room. “Or are you just never going to let me in again?”

“What?” I feigned. “You know we’ve only been back together for a day. What you did was terrible.”

“I know and I apologized.”

“Again.”

“Yes.”

We stared at each other with pure unadulterated hate.

“I read the postcard,” he said. “I’m sorry for what I did- I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. But we are still a couple and I didn’t even know you had written your father, and now he’s writing you back and you’re not even going to tell me about it? You’re just going to push it away and not tell me?” It was Thad’s turn to tear-up, which never, ever happened, and sobered me right the Hell up.

“No, it’s just…” I started, looking down at the postcard half hidden under my keyboard, and then I just lost it. “I’m just so sad.”

“I know.” He said, coming over to put his hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry. I fucked up. It was a fluke. It really was.”

“And other than this you’ve been sober for this whole time?” I said, trying to regain my composure.

“Yes, I swear.”

“And nothing happened up in the City? There was no cheating?”

“No, God, no. I just went up there to dance. I was drunk, I wasn’t even thinking…”

“You know I can’t believe you, I can’t trust you at all because you’ve done exactly this before-and cheated on me…”

“I know,” He said wiping at his eyes, “I know. And I know that I’ve apologized for that before, but you have to believe me this time. I am telling the truth. I got drunk and drove up there and got arrested on the way back, but nothing else. I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

He cried harder than I had seen him cry in years, and it god-damn melted my heart.

“You weren’t even going to tell me…” he sobbed, pointing at the postcard.

Rising, I hugged him.

“I’m sorry…” he sputtered.

“I know, I know, baby.”

“Mom is taking my car away.”

“You’re kidding!” I said, genuinely surprised. It had been impounded, and he had not gotten it back yet, but I just assumed it was on its way.

“Nope. She told me Wednesday. No more car. They can’t keep me on their insurance. Plus I might lose my license, anyway, what with the DUI.”

‘Serves you right, you know.”

“I know,” he wiped his eyes. “So I’m not going to have to be catching a ride with you for a while.”

“That’s fine. We can work it out.”

“It’ll suck.” He paused, and looked up at me. “I hate to cry. You know I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Wiping his eyes, he looked over at my desk. “Now, are you going to tell me about the postcard?”

So I did. I pulled it out and handed it to him and told him about writing to Dad. Thad and I talked about how exciting it was that I could call him now, and maybe see him sometime. And how happy that would make Becky, and also told him about Becky’s decision to kick Ray the Loser to the curb and keep Pablo, and Thad was happy for her for that.

And as we sat and talked, we held hands and it felt good, now not great, but right, and I really, really wanted to believe him this time.

64. The Garden Rapist and the Fullness of Time

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:46:00 +0000

Later that afternoon, with the kink over Thad starting to be replaced by the sudden bubble of joy over my father’s postcard, I realized there was something I needed to do; a score that needed to be settled. The universe had just shown me a mitzvah in the midst of my emotional desert, so now I needed to repay that. I now need to do some good to prove that I still could. And maybe, just maybe, this blackness of life would turn around for me.

I told Thad that I was just going to run up to the bank to get cash for tonight, but instead drove straight to the Farmer’s Market.

Inside, the country folk hawked their wares in a Nashville cum Currier and Ives kind of way. Shame still in my heart from the last time I dared dim these doors with my presence, I kept my eyes down and power walked though. As I passed, men held up NASCAR shirts and ladies waggled purses made from tin cans and yarn at me. I kept my eyes down and did not stop until I saw her: the Garden Rapist.

She sat at her birdhouse booth with her husband, they cracking and eating pecans out of a tin pail. I took a breath and walked straight up to her.

“Hi, you probably remember me…” I began, my voice shaking.

“Well, Michael. Yes, I do.” The Garden Rapist said as her husband stood. She turned and held out her French manicured hand up to him, “Let it be.”

The husband looked like he might kill me in a quiet hippy way.

“First off,” I rushed. “I am so sorry about last time. I just had a very sentimental terra cotta chicken planter full of ivy stolen off my porch…”

“The one you were screaming at me about? The one you said I stole?” she said, one painted on eyebrow arched highly as her tremendous ponytails stood straight out from her head.

“Yes. I was wrong to accuse you of that. It’s just that it was stolen the last time you were over and I told you I didn’t want to do a flower exchange, and I just assumed it was you because you were mad. But I found out it was some drunk college kids from down the street. So, I had no right to scream at you like that. I over-reacted. I just wanted to come and tell you that. I am sorry.”

With eyes wide, the Garden Rapist made a slight grunt and then stood up to join her husband. She looked to him and then back to me.

I prepared myself for a full psycho explosion.

“Oh, that’s just fine,” she said, waving at me like the country folk do. “Water under the bridge and all. I figured it was just a misunderstanding. I mean, didn’t I say that, sugar?” She looked back to her husband and he nodded, sitting back down.

“Oh, good! Good!” I gushed. “I have felt terrible ever since. I’m glad you didn’t take it personally. I mean, I was just being crazy.”

“No, no, hon. I figured it was a mistake.” She reached over and slapped her husband on the hand. “Didn’t I say that? I said, ‘that boy’s gone and got things all messed-up.’ Didn’t I say that?”

The husband nodded and ate another pecan.

“Well, good,” I said. “I just didn’t want there to be any hard feelings or anything….”

“No, no, naw. Not at all.”

“Good, good.” I smiled, relieved she hadn’t climbed over her folding table and stabbed me with her big silver gardening fork, which I’m assuming she always kept around for just such emergency killings.

“But you know what you could do to make up for it?” She had a twinkle of the old crazy in her eye.

“What?” I asked, knowing what was coming.

“We could still do that flower exchange you talked about. It’s about time to plant the spring bloomers.”

“Sure,” I smiled honesty, having already emotionally prepared myself for this inevitable outcome. “It’ll be my pleasure. You can drop by any time you want, even if I’m not there…”

For the next half-hour we continued to talk gardening and about the recent drought, about irises and daffodils, about how to prune roses, rain vs. hose watering, and the supreme and amazing recuperative power of manure.

_ _

This ends the first cycle of the Frankie Goes to Home Depot stories.

57. The Travails of Travel

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:06:00 +0000

Ahead of me, a haggard frump bounced up and down in her seat laughing uproariously and waggling her plump hands in the air. Her friend, or sister, or old school chum or whatever that sat across the aisle from me on the plane chortled and giggled and jiggled back. They both were apparently completely unaware that they were in a confined metal tube full of angry strangers. The ladies laughed and talked and slapped hands and-I kid you not here-even had a tickle fight at 32,000 feet, likes they were gunning for the Senior Citizens discount into the lesbionic Mile High Club.

Crammed into my tiny horrid airplane seat, unnerved by the altitude and the whole craptastic experience that was modern flying, I cursed the 9/11 terrorists for making previously uncomfortable air travel so much more blatantly unbearable. The harridan ahead laughed loudly and reached back to slap her friend of the leg; her friend responded with a hoot. I hated them both; hated them with a burning passion akin only to what the public currently felt for that Floridian baby-killing woman who OJ-ed it and got away scot free.

Looking around the plane, I realized that I was not in the worst possible seating configuration, but it was bad. At least I wasn’t directly between them, which would have been worst besides being sat anywhere near a baby or a precocious child, or even worse a bored, talkative businessman. And, yes, I could have switched seats with one of the woman so that they could be next to each other to talk and whisper and tickle, but I chose not to, as the present scenario gave me something to do on the 4 ½ flight from Dallas to San Juan: hate them incessantly instead of worrying about the plane bursting into flame and breaking apart midair and me falling, falling, falling to my doom-while on fire-trapped, as I am unable to get my seatbelt unfastened.

Ah, travel.

I had left home this afternoon after a weird crying jag to Thad. It wasn’t that I was that afraid to go on the trip, I mean, Puerto Rico was in the United States-how scary could it really be? I was just sad to leave him. I had asked him to go, and he had refused. His fear of travel was something I had decided we would work on now that we had hopefully chucked the problems with the bottle and were entering our 4^th year of near-matrimony. But I had no idea if I could ever pry him out of Norman.

Actually in all of our 20+ years of dating, we had never even left the state together; the farthest he had ever let me take him was Tulsa, with the Gaga debacle being one of those trips. And maybe I didn’t ask him pleadingly enough to go with me to this conference, as spouses were invited. But maybe that was because he was such a pain nationally, I had no idea what havoc he could wreck on me internationally, and this was a business trip anyway.

Whatever the case, this morning I was the one to lose it. I had grown very comfortable lately, settled into our conflictless life of the last year or so quite happily, aside from his moving in with Bettina and the possible threat of Spandex Hair Mane, that is. This was the first time that I would be leaving him while being actually happy. Previously I had always traveled to get away from my life, to run, to try and find myself; but now, for the first time, I knew who I was, and that was next to Thad. So I had blubbered some version of this to him this morning and he had just looked at me like I had sprouted a fern from my head and said, “You’ll be fine. We’ll talk every day. Bye.” But I could tell he was moved; he just hid his emotions.

Driving myself to the airport, I had cried until I was about halfway there. I had forced myself to calm and readopt my 42 year old university faculty mean that was necessary for civilized travel: I was an adult, I could do this.

Having already changed flights in Dallas, I was now on a direct flight to San Juan. Besides the talkative bouncing matrons to my front and left, the girls sitting next to me were more like slight muses. They were about fifteen or sixteen, just coming into their womanhood with make-up and daring lace tops and ipods. They were clearly Puerto Rican nationals, as they rattled back and forth to eat other in machine-gun Spanish, but then would address me in broken English such as, “Yes, hell-O. Do you have the time?” They were charming and pretty and non-bouncy which made them nice seat mates. But they sang.

At first I thought it was music being pumped into the cabin, as it was soft, lilting, and melodic. But then in my periphery I noticed the lips of the girl closest to me were moving. It was not an unpleasant sound being barely pianissimo, or whatever that is in Spanish. But as the voyage drew on, and I continued to entertain myself frowning up a storm at the bouncing aged women, the girl’s voice grew slightly louder, now not loud, but louder. And it still was not unpleasant, more like church music, or the song from an adjoining garden, or the theme of a sad movie you liked. And as we neared their home island, the other girl joined her in all I can assume was some sort of Puerto Rican song of assumption, and their soft fragile voices guided our plane in to a safe and sound landing.

As the tires bounced once, twice, and then a third time, to then stay down, everyone on the plane burst into applause, and I felt like I was the surprise winner of a 1950’s game show.

Once into the San Juan terminal, I grabbed my luggage and taxied in to my hotel, finding it adequate. It was a redone 1960’s Best Westerny styled place, my room up on the 5^th floor with an ocean view, which was always startling for someone from a landlocked state. The room had a mini-fridge and WIFI, my only two real requirements in a modern hotel room. The bedspread had a mysterious Rorschach stain that I chose to ignore, yet I kept staring at it as it seemed to move.

I called Thad immediately, who was staying at the house while I was gone. He answered upbeat, but I could tell taken aback by my disappearance.

“I miss you!’ he said. “I really do.”

“I miss you too, honey.”

Since we had gotten back together, the only other time we had been separated for more than a day was when I went to this same conference in Milan two years ago, and he had not handled that well at all. Suffice to say, the bottle had been his comfort during my absence. During that trip I had to fend off a number of drunken, “I miss you…I can’t believe you left me, you bastard!” phone calls. Yeah, charming. I just hoped this went better. It really was his Sword of Damocles moment; if he could stay sober through this-40 and all-I think he could make it through most anything.

“I’ll call you tomorrow…” I said, just wanting to settle in and go to bed.

“Oh, just one more thing…” and then he told me a silly story about Charlotte Bronte and her adventures with a toy mouse she had found in my Study. It was nice just to hear his voice, to hear him laugh.

“Okay then…” I said, not wanting to cut him off, but really weary from the stupid flight.

“Bye!” he said abruptly and the conversation was over.

He sounded okay, I think. I hope. Was he drunk? Did he sound drunk? I don’t think so. Maybe. Probably not.

I don’t handle situations well where I have no control –situations such as this. And in those situations Paranoia very quickly becomes my friend. And then Mania comes and sits down beside me, with Panic on the other side holding my hand. I looked over and was sure the Rorschach stain moved again.

I’m almost sure he was sober.

Almost.

58. A Tour of the Historic Bathrooms of Old San Juan

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:04:00 +0000

The next morning as I sat on my hotels’ rooftop terrace and ate breakfast, I realized my sadness at leaving Thad was passing. Looking out at the blue-white-blue curling ocean, I realized the amazing recuperative powers of waffles and sausage amid an open air tropical terrace view, while being waited on by handsome mocha skinned fellows who all kinda looked like Prince, cat-eyes and all.

After another wistful glance out to sea, but not down, as my vertigo kept me far away from the terrace’s edge, I reviewed my itinerary: touring today, then six days of conference, interspersed with more touring and conference events, then one more day of touring and then back home. It was a simple 10 day/9 night trip, that’s it. It would be easy…but I was nervous, as it was just the beginning of my adventures. I knew all I had to do was suck it up and head out this morning to get the feel of the neighborhood and that would start to calm me, but I had to fight the fear that just wanted me to go back and hide in my safe hotel room.

But, alas, I could not allow the fear to win. In preparation for this trip, and accompanying paranoia, I had devised a number of mental rules: (1) use a little Spanish before demanding they speak English to you; (2) Try not to be too grotesquely American; (3) Try not to piss off the natives; (4) Don’t get robbed; (5) Don’t get in the wrong cab and get kidnapped; (6) Don’t get your kidneys stolen, as you need them, or at least one, I think; (7) Be wary of parrots-they may look friendly but they carry disease (Mother said); (8), Don’t eat the local food as it might poison your sensitive stomach (also from Mother); and (9)Don’t drink the water (again from Mother, except I questioned this one, as it was America, so maybe the water was okay), and (10) Beware of hurricanes, as it was hurricane season and the weather was predicted to be stormy over the next few days.
Oh, and (11) Be cautious of Tsunamis. Thad had first warned me of this one: “If a Tsunami is coming run - one killed Oprah’s gay Nate’s boyfriend, and he was so sad, but then got a TV show out of it, but make sure to run first.” Sage advice as always there from my Dear Thaddeus.

Yet as I went through this list, staying in hiding in my hotel room sounded better and better.

By 9 AM I had forced myself out to go wonder around Condado, the neighborhood where my hotel and the Conference Center were located. As I passed decorative stores and high-rise hotels, I realized the neighborhood wasn’t scary at all; there were no machete wielding banditos or parrots slavering at the mouth. In fact I was in a totally fabulous touurista part of town. And as I passed Gucci and Cartier, my undies unbunched and I began to saunter.

The weather was warm, as expected since it was summer on the equator and all, but not unbearable. Actually Oklahoma was hotter and had no pleasant ocean breeze or the cool recourse that came with rain. The foliage was weird, like a movie set of a tropical island-tall palms and small spiny palms, and huge trees covered in vines with lizards zipping up and down the stalks. The whole affair was very Gilligan’s Island.

I wondered a few blocks over, mentally mapping my escape route back to the hotel in case there was a riot or cannibals with clubs, and came across even fancier hotels and restaurants and casinos and gift shops and then the ocean! It was just right there, all big and flat and frothy as it is. So apparently my hotel was only 3 blocks from the ocean, with a Walgreen’s dropped right in the middle it: now that’s America! I could have a dip in the ocean and pick up a 12-pack of pampers all in one trip! And looking around and seeing a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Wendy’s, and a cab stand, I realized I really would be fine.

After lunch from a charming local establishment called Subway Sandwiches, I cabbed to Old San Juan, to start my day of real touring. This area of town was where all of the cool historic stuff was, so I had my camera (to preserve), a bottle of water (to preserve me, as the growing humidity was beginning to make me feel like I was wrapped in a fat man’s wet blanket), a snack (in case I got lost), tons of cash (to pay off the kidnappers), an umbrella (as it had already rained once this morning), a brief language book (to be able to speak to the kidnappers), and stomach pills (as I was sure to become violently ill at any second, even from looking too closely at the local, ethnic, cuisine). So like Christopher Columbus before me, I screwed down my courage and set off on a life-changing adventure.

An hour later, as I sat in a Ben and Jerry’s and tried to cool off from an imminent heat stroke; I realized maybe I wasn’t a true adventurer after all, as all I had really sought among the interesting and beautiful ethnic sights was a clean bathroom. My journey had taken me to a cool 1500’s fort, through two crazy old churches, a scenic square or two, and many curiosity shops, but all I could really focus on the whole time was trying to find a clean, private bathroom.

See, to be a bit scatological: public bathrooms terrified me. I mean, horrified me in a crippling kind of way. I would say they scared the pee out of me, but actually the experience was exactly the opposite. And there’s no reason to go into the psychology behind it, yes, whatever you are thinking Dr. Freud is fine, but I hated public bathrooms. Enough said.

At home this wasn’t a problem, as I was comfortable with my local loos, but out and about, with new and adventurous toilets to experience, all I could do was shutter and run the other direction. I mean can you imagine a church from 1530 really having a good restroom? Well they don’t, and that is just a travesty for all Christians.

And having gotten older and my prostate apparently older and weaker along with it, I had to pee all the damn time now. But the OCD was at odds with my urinary track, as my body wanted to just pee, pee, pee, all over, all over everything now, but my mind would only allow it under very special circumstances. And being in a four-hundred year old fort with 9 other men at a trough urinal really just doesn’t cut it. So I ran. I just ran. I mean, what else could a civilized person do?

And this bathroom search pretty much colored most of the trip. I know. And I knew it was a product of my OCD more than anything, some sort of reaction to being out of pocket and scared of parrots and nervous about being kidnapped and not knowing the words for “Please, don’t cut off my finger and mail it to my Mother!”-but what was I do to? Crazy is as crazy does. At least I could travel, and wasn’t stuck at home next to Thad, curled into a ball rocking back and forth obsessively fighting over who got to pet Charlotte Bronte next.

So I just ran from one historical site’s incredibly terrifying bathroom to the next historical site’s even more terrifying bathroom. We almost had a winner in the second oldest Church in the Western Hemisphere, but lost when there were no doors on the stalls, which faced out. So no dice. I mean, Jesus, people, get with the program. And so I left, my bladder beating against me, my heart racing from the fear, and the heat just about to kill me dead.

Trekking up an angry hill, wondering what on earth I was going to do, I saw my beacon, the star that led my way: a glowing sign for a Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Parlor. And I ran, ran to it, arms out, to find salvation in its cool air conditioning and a gloriously private, citron smelling bathroom with real paper towels and a lock on the door. And all is cost me was a $3 can of coke. And they called Ponce de Leon an adventurer!

After that, my OCD calmed and I was able to somewhat enjoy myself.

Old San Juan is cool, like New Orleans’ French Quarter, or old Boston, or anywhere in Europe: old buildings with fabulous iron work and interesting doors, tiny streets, and crumbling cobblestones. But the buildings here were painted bright Caribbean colors, and the foliage grew like the beanstalks from fairytales. So I wondered hither and yon, through interesting shops, charming parks, and stellar sights, all with a magnificent view of the blue rolling ocean off in the distance.

Oh, and tidal waves. I needed to remember to be worried about tidal waves too. (12) Tidal waves.

Much later that evening as I walked down the dank dark hall of my hotel toward my room, I felt good. I had spent the afternoon touring and conquering little fear after little fear. I was proud of myself for not crying and staying in my room all day. It might seem simple to some, but it was enough to make me feel proud.

As I neared my door I saw something I did not understand. Standing at the door past my room, backlit by a big window was a figure, hunched over, trying to get its door open. But the oddness was the way that the figure was hunched that confused me: I could not tell if it was man or woman, and its one outstretched arm appeared huge, almost malformed.

I neared, warily, pulling out my own key card quietly. And as I came closer I realized it was an armless Middle Eastern man using his foot to manipulate the keycard into the door slot apparatus. He was hunched over to get his leg high enough and arched enough to lower the keycard down, held firmly in place by his toes. And I stopped and then immediately looked away, not wanting to get caught staring, and embarrass him.

Fumbling with my own keycard, I hustled into my room, eyes down. Door open, me in, door shut.

For the remainder of the night I thought about how brave the armless man must be to travel, and how I just wished I had half of his courage.

59. The Polite Canadian

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 12:59:00 +0000

“And that is why,” the Eastern Indian keynote speaker said adjusting her brilliant pink and turquoise sari, “a new reading of Troilus and Cressida is needed in the light of the recent gender and queer studies movements in Britain, as well as the United States.”

She cleared her throat and tapped her laptop, trying to get the PowerPoint presentation to move forward. Someone in the back sneezed. It sounded German. And someone else laughed, probably a Swede, as they were rather giggly.

Sitting in the big hall of the Conference Center, I busied myself doodling a picture of Charlotte Bronte dancing a jig. Troilus and Cressida was one of my least favorites, and this woman’s monosyllabic drone was not helping me stay awake. It was early and I had slept poorly and now was all dressed up, with it hot-hot-hot outside already.

“Just one second please,” the speaker said, whispering something to her technical assistant, as now both fussed with her laptop.

Shakespearians and computers were incongruent, if that was not obvious.

I yawned and looked around the room. The International Shakespeare Conferences were a hoot. This was my sixth to attend in the last decade. It was nice that this was close to home, as most of the time I had to hoof it to Europe, or worse. I usually skipped the ones in the Far East, as Europe really was my preference, as was Will’s.

There were about a thousand people present, from all over the world. There were serious looking men in suits, hippy Berkeley ladies in flowery dresses, Brit in corduroy and vests, Scots in tartan, African men in colorful pajama-looking clothes, African ladies in dashikis, Muslim ladies in head scarves, and even two Buddhist monks in orange robes. It was all very dramatic and a neat homage for one lone writer who died 400 years ago, and we weren’t even sure he was the one wrote the stuff (I personally think it was Christopher Marlowe). But more than anything, it was impressive.

I smiled at the two young guys sitting in the row down from me, both apparently in that awkward beginning stage of growing a scholarly beard. You could tell they were European by their shoes. The Europeans had the weirdest shoes. I would guess they were German by their pointed features and apparent drollness. I bent in to listen.

“Sono affamato. Che cosa circa voi?”

Italians! I was wrong!

One of the guys noticed me looking and waved and said, “El-o.”

I smiled and pretended to busy myself with my notes. A second later I snuck another glance at their shoes again: I should have guessed they were Italians as not only were the shoes weird, but also very expensive looking.

“Okay, I think we got it.” The Indian woman said from the stage. “Here we go…” and she launched into her paper, beginning to read it word for word.

I yawned cartoonishly and wondered how I was going to manage this for six more days.

That night at a dinner reception as I spoke to group of Japanese about my book, I really wished I still drank as they all held festive cocktails and I just had 7-Up and lime.

“Oh, yes. Shakespeare’s use of, if I may say, whores, as we say…”

They all laughed, the men loudly, but the women quietly, looking down shyly.

“…was quite prevalent through many of the plays and especially the sonnets, as I’m sure you’re quite aware……” and I continued the lecture, promoting my book.

One of the men spoke to me at length, his English not great, but better than my Japanese. As I listened and tried to decipher his points, I kept thinking of the joke that I had been told over and over at these international conferences: “A person who speaks three languages is trilingual, a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks one language is…American!” This was inevitably followed by much twittering on the part of the foreigner, as I always just smiled and thought, ‘Yes, but Shakespeare wrote in English, so suck on that.’

I answered the man’s questions as best as I could and he bowed and walked off. As they were leaving, one of the women told me she had read my book, “It very good. Funny, but good.”

“Great! Thank you!” I smiled.

Left alone, I beamed over the compliment, bestriding the reception like a mighty academician.

Striding back to the bar to get more 7-Up, I looked around the room. I needed to find some publishers and see if anyone would be interested in Whores in Musicals. It would be a stretch here, but they had to realize man could not live on Shakespeare alone, not even here.

That evening on a shuttle bus back to my hotel, I sat next to a talkative Canadian man with a cane. He was rotund and elderly with a moon face and twinkling eyes, like a Disney uncle. I sat next to the window, he on the aisle. I was doing a slight sitting pee dance, as the bathrooms at the reception hall scared me.

“Have you been to the Caribbean before?” the Canadian asked.

“Just once with my parents, to the Bahamas in the early 1990’s. It was okay. It just seemed like south Texas. But this really seems like a topical island.”

“Well, that’s because it is a tropical island, son,” the man chuckled.

“I guess you’re right,” I smiled. The Caribbean family vacation had been a God-awful disaster of a trip: Smith had made Becky and I both cry before we were even out of Oklahoma, and that was just day one of a sixteen day trip.

“This conference seldom comes to the tropics,” the old man continued. “It’s nice to get out into the sun. So many scholars just stay so cooped-up in the dark. And thank goodness we’re not stuck in some dank hole in Norway or Switzerland, where they take research so, so deadly seriously. I could do without the rain here, though.”

“It does rain about everyday doesn’t it?”

“Like clockwork.” He smiled, checking his watch. “That dinner was nice, but I had no idea what the Frenchman speaker was talking about: Hamlet as metaphor for war? Phah!”

At this point the bus took a sudden left turn and the kindly old Canadian gentleman slid out of his seat and into the floor of the bus. It all happened in a split second, and I tried to grab him but was also concerned with holding myself in.

As soon as the bus righted its path, I rose to help the old man up, trying not to think about the status of my full bladder, “Here, let me…”

“No, no, I am fine,” the old man said, rolling about the floor of the bus trying to right himself. “It’s just something that happens.”

“But, I can…” I said, trying to decide if I should pull him up or just let him flounder there like a really smart turtle. Two other men behind me had also stood and also had similar disturbed expressions on their faces.

“No, no, I am fine. Don’t trouble yourself…” the man said, flailing about.

So I sat back down, feeling terrible, as the man got his cane out from underneath him and eventually after a time or two finally pushed himself up. I looked out the window and wondered how the Canadians managed to be such a polite people.

The old man heaved himself back up and plopped down next to me to take a deep breath, wipe the grime off his hands and say, “As I was saying, I don’t think that Frenchman had the right take on Hamlet at all…”

And I looked back over at him and said, “Uh huh…” like nothing had happened at all, but, boy, I had to pee.

In my room later that night, I talked to Thad. He was out in the yard watering, telling me some story about being at Homeland today.

“Yeah, so I was like, ‘Heydew knowf, you know’” he said, “and then she was, like, “No, I don’t thark po’ …so there, that’s it. Don’t you thank?”

“Really?” I said, not understanding half of what he said, but holding my tongue as I was sure he was drunk. Drunk! Now due to the fact that he normally slurred his words like a Slavic sorority girl with a mouthful of marbles, let alone huffing and puffing as he was out in the yard working-totally out of shape, or as he called it ‘loved’- I swear he sounded drunk.

“Well, don’t ya think?” Thad repeated.

“Are you drinking?” I snapped, the crazy taking over.

“What?” he said, suddenly very clear. “No.”

“Well, I can’t understand a thing you are saying.” Mania was snuggling into me.

“CAN YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?” he said in perfectly loud English.

“Yes,” I said, scared.

“OKAY, THEN GOODBYE.”

“No, wait,” I said, the panic OCD alarms going off in my head. “Don’t hang up.” I had told him not to pitch a petite prince fit while I was gone, and had even bought him a carton of cigarettes to get a promise of good behavior out of him-like we were doing prison bartering or something. The last thing I wanted was to get in some transatlantic fight with him, where I had no power and then he refused to answer my calls for a few days: I could handle Princess stateside, but not while I was out of my comfort zone, not like this.

“I should go,” he said, not sounding drunk at all, now just pissed.

“Look,” I snapped, suddenly livid, “We talked about this. I bought you all those cigarettes, and you said you wouldn’t throw a fit. You said you wouldn’t.” As I said it, I realize that this was a bad tact to take with him, as purchased guilt never worked on Thad or any of the wealthy.

“I should go,” he said sternly.

We were both silent for a second, even though I was raging, dangling from his every slurry whim, which I hate-hate-hated!

“Okay.” I said sweetly. “I love you and miss you.”

“Uh huh. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye,” he snapped and hung up the phone.

“Bye…”

After I hung up I realized he wasn’t drunk; I was just paranoid.

I slept fitfully that night, but did decide not to talk to him anymore near bedtime just in case he was drinking, rat bastard.

60. A Tale of a Fateful Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 12:58:00 +0000

After a long day of translated Shakespearian pontifications blared through headphones, I was on a bus full of giddy foreigner experiencing a true conference perk: the organized outing. When registering you could pick any number of touristy side trips, and I always did as they featured sight-seeing to local historical areas or some such entertaining fare. The outing I was currently being driven to was a 2-hour sunset cruise to take in the ocean at its finest. I had been looking forward to this all conference.

As noted in the brochure, we were to meet at the conference center in the late afternoon, take an hour and a half bus ride through the countryside and end-up at some bay famous for snorkeling and scuba diving and other activities that get you eaten by sharks. From there we were to be whisked away for an evening of drinks and hors d’oeuvres on a cruise ship, in all I could imagine would be big red velvet cushioned couches snuggled deep inside the ship, where handsome waiters would pass me shrimp cocktails as large as basketballs, as the ocean glided gracefully by outside. I was prepared for luxury that even Robin Leech would choke on.

Once the bus pulled into the marina, we poured out to see no cruise ship at all, just small boats. As a group, the sixty or so of us craned our heads and looked around until the bus driver pointed to a diminutive sail boat directly ahead of us.

“Over there!” he hollered from the bus, “That one. The catamaran.”

And with that I almost just darted right back on the bus.

Now a catamaran, for those of you without your sea legs, is a not-very-large-at-all pontoon styled sail boat, open to the water –and not a cruise ship at all-rather one of those sailboats with names like ‘Vitalus’ or ‘Erectus,’ you see Ted Turner or other rich old men racing around the world, as they drank brown drink from a cut crystal glass with a bikinied blond woman hung to them. I could not see that name of the boat but assumed it was ‘Final Mistake,’ or ‘Watery Grave.’

But surely this wasn’t our boat? We were going on a cruise-which implied ‘cruise ship.’ I looked around to make sure we weren’t being punked. No, as there were no cameras. And then it hit me: How were 60 of us even going to fit onto a boat that appeared to have been built to hold about 20?

And a hush fell over the previously excited crowd, as I assumed the other academics had also just come to this same conclusion: there were too many of us for the one tiny boat.

Shakespearians as a rule of thumb are not risk takers: one: because most of them are old, and two: they seldom left their house except to go to the office or to teach, or go hide in the library stacks.

There is no extreme sporting among the literary.

And let me tell you did I contemplate just hustling back to hide on that bus, and from the rumblings of the crowd I could tell others were thinking the same thing.

But as if on cue, a pretty blonde girl in tiny shorts emerged from the catamaran and screamed, “Okay, everybody, hey! Welcome aboard! Just come on up, but stay on the plank so you don’t fall in the water…”

Small brown crewmen scurried out from behind her and lowered a plank from the boat to the dock. We, the crowd, eyed her suspiciously, silent and unmoving. You could have heard a copy of The Tempest drop.

I looked back to the bus frantically, as did a few others. But I didn’t even know if the boat was coming back here; it might be dropping us off somewhere else at the end of the cruise, which means this bus might not even be going back to town. And looking around the marina, there were no cabs or even stores where I might wait to call a cab-and how much would a cab be for an hour and a half back to my hotel? My lovely safe hotel.

I “Come on, ya’ll! Get on!” The pretty girl in the tiny shorts sang. “Let’s get this party started. Woo!”

The tiny catamaran bobbed up in down in the water in a viscerally angry way, like a pig trying to loosen wild burrs.

“I thought it would be a bigger boat,” a rotund British man said.

“Yes. A big boat,” an Afrikaner added in his Dutch accident.

The crowd murmured in agreement.

“Woo! Come on!” The girl said, dancing around in her long-legged beauty. “It’ll be fun!”

And then one by one people started to queue up as the crowd mentality kicked in and people started walking up the plank, heads down, clearly afraid.

I looked back to see the bus driving off. So that was that: No exit. And even though suddenly I wanted to, did I dare throw a screaming crying fit in front of my respected peers? And that option was even ending quickly as people continued to plod onto the boat one by one.

So I did what everyone else did, and just queued-up and boarded. The whole thing felt like the beginning of Amistad, and I worried if the African contingency would begin having flashbacks.

Oh, and it was so much worse than anticipated. The only real structure on the boat was a big plastic bar in the middle of the deck. The only seating was a plastic bench all around half of the interior, which afforded seating for about 30. I used my massive American height and weight to push through the discombobulated masses to get a seat. Sorry to the women and the elderly, but I was not going to be standing up on this open air monstrosity when it took to sea.

I ended-up next to some shy Japanese women, two despondent Danish men and a mouthy Frenchman who kept saying, “But this is not a cruise ship! We were told in the brochure it would be a cruise ship!” The pretty blonde girl responded to each of his calls with, “Woo! This’ll be great! Woo!”

The Dane closest to me leaned in to say, “This wasn’t what I was thinking. I hate the sea. I thought it would be a bigger boat...” And I agreed, alas poor Yorick. But looking around, I was glad at least I got a seat, as everyone else just had to stand kinda free-floating in the middle of the deck, like they were waiting for an elevator. And the boat was going up and down, and up and down and up and down, and we were still at the dock.

An old alcoholic pirate of a man in a tennis shirt and dirty white shorts emerged from the hold to cough, “Aye-I’m your Captain.” He barked commands and said, “Snacks are up here-and it’s all the rum ye can drink! But if you see me grab a bottle and a life-jacket, you might want to be following!” And no one really laughed, realizing at that moment we might be about to die on the open sea, while this AA-reject worried about saving the booze first. And seeing our fear and academic consternation, the Captain just laughed contemptuously like a particularly effective Scooby Doo villain.

So I tuned him out and focused on not crying in public, and how important it was for my career not to cry in front of all of my international peers, as no one wants to buy a book written by a crybaby, not even one who died nobly at sea. I thought about Thad and how he would tell me ‘It’ll be okay,” and how that would calm me. But he wasn’t there to carry me to safety like he was at Gaga.

My ears perked up as I hear the Captain say, “And if you haveta go to the bathroom…” which of course I did, to make this the perfect storm of Titanic terror: trapped on an overcrowded slave ship, desperately having to pee.

The Captain continued, “The bathroom is down below, and you got to go down that ladder over there-backwards-and the bathrooms, they’re at the bottom.”

I literally snorted out loud. What? Were we on a reality show? Was this how they had decided to wean the world of famous Shakespearians? Whoever could go to the bathroom on an overcrowded boat wouldn’t be kicked off the island? Jesus Jumping Christ!

But amid my snark and pop, the boat lurched backwards, then forwards and the sail spun around as little brown men with cat eyes in little shorts ran around pulling ropes, and the sail unfurled and shot up and spun back around to catch the wind and we were moving before we knew it. The boat began going up and down and up and down and up and down, and within minutes we left the marina and were out at sea and it was just the most horrifyingly terrible experience I could ever imagine.

The sea was angry that day, like a fat lady in too tight of panties. See, there was a hurricane coming, and I had heard on the news that the water was choppier than normal, and, boy howdy, could you tell out on it. I had first noticed how aggressive the tide was when I had been down at the beach last night, as it seeming like it was trying to drag me in, like it was mad we ever left it in the first place. So the up and down and up and down we had experienced in the marina was nothing to the UP AND DOWN AND UP AND DOWN of the wide open devouring, hurricane enraged sea.

Rule 10. Be afraid of Hurricanes.

I shook uncontrollably as water splashed us as wave after wave crashed into the ship. Everyone around me just held on for their dear lives, except the Frenchman who tried to get up to get food. He just fell back down with a “Woosh!” and another cry of, “This is not a cruise ship!” The blond girl just waved from behind the big bar, “Woo!” The timid Danes picked at their clothing, apparently so freaked out that not either of them could even look up.

And then I really looked up for the first time, as I had forgotten to do that as I had been so focused on not dying. I looked up and out at the majestic ocean, but it was just too much and too up and down and I just had to look back away. Stupid ocean.

And time went so slow, measured by wave after wave smacking into the boat, each one signifying the father and father we were from the shore.

As we sailed, everyone around continued to cling to anything that would hold them stable except for the Chinese, who were grouped together in the middle of the deck, unfettered. And I don’t know if was their low centers of gravity or what, but as we really got out into the choppy water, they all began to fall: one over another, in a splay of sadness and terror. And they tried to help each other up, but then another would fall, and I should have rose-these were tiny round old men and women falling-but I could not, as I was not going to give up my seat, as it was the only thing keeping me from screaming and frothing at the mouth, running and shaking people uncontrollably and screaming, “Turn this God-Damn thing around and take me home you bastards!”

And then the Danes began to vomit.

I guess one went, then the other.

I was not sure, but whatever the case, it was copious, like they had just had a free Shoney’s smorgasbord buffet.

And then the Japanese women on the other side of them began to cry. Cry real Japanese lady tears. One of them became so completely unfettered that her friend had to lay her down, but in order to do that people had to rise to make space for her, so then there were even less seats and even more people standing trying not to fall like the unfortunate Chinese or vomit like the Danes. And I was resolute not to give up my seat, as it was literally the only thing holding me down. So I just held my ground and tried not to vomit and just looked at the floor where paper plates and plastic cups from the bar rolled back and forth with the rocking and dipping and diving of the ship, and the up and down and the back and forth and the up and down of the rocking of the ship.

And all this time, as I could think besides “I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!” was, “I have to pee! I have to pee!”

This went on for about 45 tense awful minutes before Captain Drunkie apparently correctly assessed the situation through his boozy-filled glasses announced, “Okie Dokey, it looks like ye had enough. We’ll go ahead and take her back in.” And he turned the boat around and headed us back to the marina.

For the first time since we got on that dreaded Raft of the Medusa, my stomach unclenched. Everyone suddenly started smiling, even the Danes covered in their own vomit, as we knew we would soon be safe.

And feeling better, I looked back out at the sea and it was lovely, all oceany and all, with a beautiful orange and purple sunset behind us. But really, a postcard would have been fine. I did not have to experience this first hand. I mean it felt kinda like a house fire, it’s best not to view it from the inside.

In this gap of fear I finally realized how hungry I was and how desperate I really did need to pee. So biting the anchor, I decided to take both out at once: I would go to the bar for food and then down the ladder to the bathrooms. If I lost my seat now it would be fine as we were heading home; land was quickly approaching over the waves.

Forcing myself up, legs all a’wobble, I made it three steps before the ship pitched the opposite direction and I was thrown against the bar, but at least it was something stable to hang onto. Pushing people politely out of the way, I pulled my way around it to finally see our gloriously buffet. There were nacho chips, a tub of salsa, grapes, and miniature cheese blocks. And that’s it. For $125 I paid! So much for elegant shrimp cocktails from handsome waiters as I lay on red velvet cushions!

But starving, having not had dinner in preparation for this grand feast, I grabbed a handful of the little cheese blocks and popped them in my mouth. And as I rebalanced myself against the bar and chewed, I tasted sweaty sea cheese; sweaty sea cheese that felt like it had been in someone else’s mouth for about ten minutes previous. But, really, should I have expected anything other?

Carefully moving myself between handgrips on the bar, I finally made it to the bathroom ladder on the far opposite wall. Looking down the hold, there was a small hall with a door to the men’s on one side and to the woman’s on the other. There was no one in line, so it was perfect, I just had to remember how the Captain had said to go down the ladder. It was only 4 rungs, but was it front ways or back ways? Why was it so god-damn hard to get to the bathroom? Really? Was this a 15^th century church bathroom?

I started down front ways, as the ship pitched back and forth and then up and down, and then my bag got caught, and…and…I just gave up. I just didn’t care anymore, it was all just too challenging, and I didn’t care with the vomiting and crying and the up and the down, so I just let go and did a trust fall into the floor of the tiny hold, landing in a crumpled mess at the bottom. WHAP! I didn’t care how I looked; I just didn’t care, I just wanted to go home and be with Thad and fuss and argue with him, as that was so much easier than trying to survive out on the open sea. And I just laid there, and that was the most comfortable I had been so far on that awful ship yet.

But pulling myself up, I got in the men’s bathroom and then couldn’t go as each time the boat would go up and down my head would smack into the wall-as apparently boat bathrooms are made for wee folk- and I couldn’t focus and it was just all so horrible with the taste of the sweaty sea cheese and then my head whacking into the wall again and then I would right myself and then WHACK! –WHACK!- that I just decided to risk a ruptured bladder and gave up and climbed back up the ladder and went and stood in the corner of the boat as, yes, of course I had lost my seat-until the God-damn boat pulled back into the God-damn marina and we all streamed off of there like good little soldiers, some still covered in their own tears and vomit.

Ah, the joys of the sea.

After this, nothing about the conference was upsetting. I had looked evil in the face and it was the angry sea. I went to meetings and met more contacts and did some more touring, and talked to Thad about seventeen times a day, and he seemed sober most of the time. I even found a publisher interested in Whores in Musicals. And when I flew home it was even without any bouncing or singing aisle-mates. But through all of it whenever I would close my eyes, I could still feel that rocking and dipping and diving, and the up and down and the back and forth and the up and down of the rocking of the awful, awful sea.

52. His Big 4-0

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:24:00 +0000

The DING-DING-DING, WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP,CHING-CHING TING-TING of the slot machines ratatated through my head with percussive density. Angry clouds of cigarette smoke lingered over the maimed poor, hunched protectively over their pulsating gambling machines. Apparently gone were the days where one had to exertingly pull a lever, as now the downtrodden simply had to push a button to make electronic screens spins with apples and oranges and little pots of gold they would never win. Ah, the benefits of a modern world. And above the DING-DING-DING, CHING-CHING TING-TING sang the dulcet tones of a Dokken/Poison/Ratt medley played from hidden speakers.

I was in Hell in our local Indian casino.

When Thad and I first gotten back together, we used to go to the Casino now and again, as he loved it. But I had quickly grown to hate it, as the place was so depressing, full of the old and disabled and destitute and hopeless, all spilling their coins to the giant golden Indian god of gambling. And after one especially morally appalling trip involving the sighting of not one, but two people with stumps, I finally put my foot down and refused to go any longer. But as it was his 40^th birthday, and this was the one thing he really wanted to do, I had to agree.

“I’m having such a blast!” Thad screamed, running by to stop and grab my hand like parishioner to a particularly lachrymose priest.

“Great! Great!” I winced, really trying to fake it.

He smiled crazily and ran back over to Bettina, who was lighting up another cigarette, drunkenly propped up against a slot machine like the lady she was.

We had been in this den of gambling inequity for almost three hours now. As planned, we had picked up Bettina at their house and headed out to the Casino, out across the river and into redman lands: the Chickasaw Nation. We had his birthday dinner in the big restaurant, and it was fine except for all of the elderly with oxygen tanks and face bandages. Thad had ordered grandly and then complained about most of what he ate, as was his way. Bettina had requested a small glass of wine, which then turned into two more before the check was handed to me. Our big Injun waitress may have once been a man, but I was not sure.

After dinner we had retired to the gaming area of the establishment, as Thad’s favorite thing about the Casino were the slot machines. He loved the lights and the DING-DING-DING noise and the thought that he might win enough money someday to never ever have to take orders from his parents again; but he never did. He lost, just like everyone else there, except when he lost he just lost his allowance. When they lost, they blew all of their government check and then had to go home and eat cat food for the rest of the month. Charming.

But for now Thad was happy, thrilled to be with Bettina and thrilled to be feeding money I had given him into a large flashing, singing machine. The two of them ran among the blinking and blaring machines like enflamed children, having the time of their damn lives. And I looked at my watch wondering how much longer I was going to have to smilingly persevere.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play?” Thad said, dancing back over to me a few minutes later, whimsy in his eyes.

“No, no. I’m fine here,” I said, patting the table in the food court I current held down. “I’ll just watch our cokes. You go have fun.” I felt like the father watching his son play in the ball pit at McDonald, if the ball pit was full of sin and the dying elderly.

“You know she’s just lit,” he said, thumbing back to Bettina.

“Is she on hard liquor yet?”

“Oh, of course!” he laughed.

“At least it’s on her dime now.” I huffed.

Ignoring my jab he said, “Thank you for letting me invite her.” He was sincere. “This is a great birthday.” He touched my hand, which in a redneck place like this could get you kidnapped and tied to a fence and left to die if you weren’t careful. But by doing so in such a public place, I knew he meant it.

“Sure,” I said, snapping my hand away, not wanting to be slain as Pantera blared in the background.

Thad giggled and ran back to Bettina. I watched them both light up, as the Casino had some sort of Satanic pact with the cigarette companies so that you could leisurely smoke anywhere within the entire grand hall. And drink. And probably purchase a woman of leisure. But as I watched Thad take an extended drag off of one of Bettina’s long brown black lady cigarettes, I knitted my brow, jealous as all get out that I could no longer smoke, but he could. He had recently just gone back to smoking in front of me, now sporting it enough that ashtrays again dotted the backyard like mushrooms after a spring rain. He still said he wanted to quit, or at least he did between cigarettes.

With small eyes I watched them laugh and exhale together, and just hoped that that was the worst of his current vices he had picked up from living with her. The fact that he had remained sober through all of his 40^th birthday proceedings was amazing to me. I had also not heard any more of Spandex Hair Mane, and let me tell you, I had been listening. And as this was the last hour of his birthday, and so far he had not combusted, we were almost in the clear. I mean, I had really figured he would have taken back to the bottle by now, amid fits and birthday curses, but no, so God love him and fingers crossed.

In fact, as his birthday had neared, he had seemed to take it in stride. His parents had a little party for him up at Ma’am’s, but I was not invited, as his parents would be there. This cut me, but I swallowed it, thinking ‘it’s just Thadworld. He deals with my shit; I deal with his.’ So then the next day, Mom and Becky had come over and brought him presents. And some of his other friends had called or sent cards. And then earlier today I had given him his gifts-some clothes and an Xbox gaming system, which seemed a gift a 40 year old man should be embarrassed to ask (nee begged) for, but he was just thrilled and couldn’t wait to start fighting zombies, or shooting aliens, or driving over prostitutes, or whatever middle-aged men did in those weird masturbatory games.

But this Casino night was the end of it. This was it. He would be 40. And apparently okay with it.

A loud bell went off down a long row of machines and I glanced over to see an old woman doing some sort of victory dance with her walker. As I looked over the waves of unwashed masses, and how happy they seemed plugging their last dimes away at a hope that would never come to them, it made me think that maybe the unexamined life might be worth living.

When I turned 40 two years ago, it had torn me up. I had felt unaccomplished, indigent, useless, as I was only an Associate Professor with only two published books, had only sort of travelled extensively, was heavy but in good health, and who had just gotten back together with the love of his life. But I didn’t have a novel published, or own an island, and thus I had been morbidly depressed.

I looked up to see Thad trip by, chasing Bettina, heading to the bank of Price is Right glimmering and popping machines. He was smiling, with apparently not a depressed thought in his head even though he lived off his parents, had no job, had not finished school, and the only real accomplish he could stamp on a resume besides catching me, was that he had recently trumped his twenty-year alcohol addiction. But he was happy, so happy right now. Maybe he was the lucky one; the one with the uncluttered mind.

And I loved him and envied the Hell out of him for it.

About ten minutes later Thad slunk back over and took a mournful drink of his coke.

“Did you win anything?” I asked, over the DING-DING-DING racket.

“No,” he said, downtrodden. “I just lost it all on damn Bob Barker over there.” He sighed dramatically.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked, hopeful.

“No…” he smiled, trying to be precious.

“Do you want some more money?” I said dryly.

“No…” he tried to fake, but then “Yes!”

I shrugged and pulled out my wallet, handing him another twenty.

“Yeah! I’ll be done soon!” he screamed, running back to Bettina and the flash-pounding machines, waving the twenty above his head.

I consigned myself to continue crowd watching as Motley Crue roared from above over the DING-DING-DING of the place. To add to the ambience, a trashy couple had sat down at the table next to me to have their dinner of nachos and cigarettes. They were lookers, with maybe a mouthful of teeth between them; luckily the nachos looked soft and gummy.

Across the food court I saw something that didn’t make sense: the metal footrests of a wheelchair lying beside a trash can. I craned my head around to see if some wheelchair person had dropped them, but everyone around was ambulatory, and smoking. I looked back and tried to take in why the footrests would just be cast aside, as they had to be an expensive part of a wheelchair. But I couldn’t, which left me feeling weird and surrealistic.

Bettina walked by and winked at me. I smiled. She was a pretty girl; too bad she was an alcoholic. She strutted over to a waitress and ordered what I assumed was another cup of swill. Thad had disappeared, I guessed in search of the perfect DING-DING-DING, CHING-CHING-CHING game.

Now that I was almost done Sherpaing him through his hallowed birthday, I was becoming nervous about my upcoming Shakespeare conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was on countdown to just over a month till I left, but Thad had told me I was not allowed to rambled about it until after his birthday, as I had stayed mum on the issue. The fact that I could travel at all amazed me, but it took weeks of worrying and list-making to get me through it. So I had already planned to begin really worrying about it tomorrow-post his 40^th- and the thought enticed me.

Thad popped his head around a bank of TING-TING-TING machines and waved me over.

Gathering our cokes I walked over, “Yes?”

“Hey!” He said, “Check this out! I’m winning!” and he pointed to the slot machine he sat at. It was Wheel of Fortune, and he was up $10.

“Good. Neat.” I could care less, but, again, was trying to be a good spouse.

An old geezer sat to his left, systematically pushing a button to make his machine spin.

I watched Thad push the button and watched him watch the electronic display spin, and wondered how he didn’t wonder if the whole thing was fixed, as it clearly was. If we can’t trust electronic voting machine, why in God’s green Earth would we trust electronic slot machines?

He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and looked up at me, “Bettina gave it to me. Do you mind?”

“No,” I lied. “Of course not, it’s your birthday…” but the irony was lost on him as he leaned over to old man next to him and said, “Do you mind?”

The old man shrugged his shoulders with an implied, “Why not…”

Thad lit up and smoke curled up and around his face and into my nose, and it smelled wonderful, but also kinda like failure. But more like wonderful, which made me want to smack him in the head. He pushed the button again and the electric display rotated and the machine went DING-DING-DING, and he did it again and it did it again, and he did it again and it did it again, and he was just mesmerized, hypnotized. But then after a few spins he began to lose, and dropped down to $5.

But next he pushed the button his machine exploded with PING-PING-PING and TWANG-TWANG-TWANG and flashing lights and as the display showed he had won $25 and Thad jumped up and down and acted like had had won the damn lottery and he looked up at me with the most joyous expression of accomplishment on his face I had ever seen, and I just softened as he was so happy, even though I knew it meant we would have to be here for hours more.

And as the bell on Thad’s machine stopped BLING-BLING-BLINGING, the old man leaned over and said, “Wow! You did good!”

But it was how he said it that was the most interesting: he said it through a tracheotomy wand held up to the metal hole in his throat. And Thad just froze, cigarette held up in mid-puff as I tried not to laugh, as the look on Thad’s face was priceless. And after a second he said, “Thanks…” and turned to exhale his smoke discretely, and the man said, “Sure,” in his mechanic robot voice of doom voice. I really had to force myself not to laugh as Thad crushed out his cigarette and turned around and looked at me and mouthed, “Let’s go.”

And for saving me, I mentally thanked Tracheotomy Man.

We found Bettina at the bar (duh) and got her to wrap it up, even though she wanted to stay. She whined around a bit as she sucked back her glass of firewater, but now that Thad was freaked like he had seen his Ghost of Christmas Future, all he wanted was to be gone, so he just kept tugging on her to hurry.

In the car driving away, Bettina in the backseat arguing into her phone with Bayne, Thad took my hand and whispered, “Thank you. You did everything right.”

“Well, my pleasure, baby. You deserve it. Happy Birthday.”

He squeezed my hand and I felt truly happy.

As we drove out of the parking lot we passed an old drunk looking man scooting around in his wheelchair, and I realized where the discarded footrests had come from: He had just thrown them away so he could move around, unfettered.

The power of that Casino was awesome.

53. Farmer’s Market Massacre

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:22:00 +0000

Being of good country stock on my Mother’s potato-loving Irish side of the family, I have always had an interest in the agrarian sect: it’s ways and morays and just how they loved their Loretta Lynn 8-tracks and Hank Williams, Jr. sleeveless t-shirts won at the State Fair. And these salts of the earth were never on better display that at our local Farmer’s Market.

Held weekly, local farmers from the surrounding countryside would come into town, bringing their most freshly picked bushels and pecks of all manner of vegetables and fruits, and random country junk the needed to sell to buy pills or booze or meth or whatever got them through living out in the country. These fine folk would lay their wares out on folding tables covered in plastic gingham tablecloths under tailgating tents in the parking lot of the country fairgrounds for the city folk to rummage through and make comments like, “Well, it’s from the country-so it’s got to be good.”

On this one somewhat bearable Saturday morning in July, before the temperatures were to hit a high of 102, Thad and I curtailed our garage sailing to head to the Farmer’s Market. We were in search of a good cantaloupe, as the ones at the stores had just been bland as all get out lately.

I was fine cutting our garage sailing short, as Thad had done pissed me off at the last one by screaming, “Mike! They got silver! It’s cheap! Come here! Come here!” So by the time I had stomped over to him, to see the well-priced silver pieces, the proprietress had also walked over, and decided she now wanted twice for them what she had marked. I could have strangled him, except he was completely oblivious of his sin, having no conception how to follow the Four Cardinal Rules of Garage Sailing at all. Suffice to say, I did not get any silver this morning.

“Are these juicy?” Thad asked, holding up a big fat cantaloupe to a wrinkled little grandpa farmer in Big John overalls.

“Yup. They’re up from Texas. Oklahoma hasn’t produced a good cantaloupe yet this year. Not enough rain. Makes ‘em tough. Texas got some good rain that just missed us. So them be good.”

“Good, good.” Thad smelled it, squeezed it softly, and said, “Well, okay. I’ll take one. How are your tomatoes?”

As the oldster began a diatribe on the effect of rain on tomatoes, I wondered over to look at a booth of potted plants. They had all sorts of flowers, much bigger and healthier than you could find at any chain store or garden center. The heat had already killed some of my front porch potted petunias, so I bought a half tray of big pink ones. The granny sales lady handed me my change and smiled, “God be with you.” Ah, country folk.

Looking back around, I didn’t see Thad. With petunias in hand, I began to walk the rows of booths, smiling at people as they passed. Junk booths were interspersed with the other booths, allowing people to drag out grandmas’ old quilts or granddad’s antique tin cars to sell along with the fruits of the land; it all made for an interestingly bucolic shopping experience.

Since Thad’s birthday last week, a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders: the danger had passed. He had seemed a little down since, but nothing too much. He mainly had been at his house playing with his new game, which had given me ample time to freak out over my upcoming trip: three weeks and counting.

Turning a corner around a display of wind chimes made of shredded coke cans, I spotted Thad at a junk table talking to a short lady with odd blonde ponytails. Thad was animated, laughing and waving his arms. The lady stood with hands on hips…and then it hit me: I recognized her. I knew her. Those pony tails. Those crazy eyes! And then she turned to me at that exact moment and I swear mouthed something looking right at me: it was the Garden Rapist!

I gasped and almost dropped my petunias. How dare her show her face after stealing my terra cotta chicken planter full of clover! What was she even doing here? I stepped behind the coke can wind chime display and peered back out like a spy. She was manning a table of crap: it must be her booth! How heinous! How despicable! To ruin something as charming as the Farmer’s Market with her vile thieving self!

And what was Thad doing? He was just chatting her up? Did he even know it was her- The embodiment of porch-stealing evil? I watched his body movements: he was perfectly at ease-he had no idea the monster he was blathering too! And there she was, just drinking it in, probably laughing at his innocence, thinking how she would go home and rub her dirty feet all over our purloined terra cotta chicken planter full of clover, and maybe even plan to come back in the cover of night and steal even more. Maybe even my new petunias, before they could even take root! She looked up, and I swear she looked directly at me again, and I double dog swear I saw laugher in her eyes! Laughter at our expense!

Without another thought I stomped over to Thad.

“What you doing?” I snapped, red-faced, not acknowledging the witch.

“Hey,” he said snidely. “Just talking about bird feeders. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I spat. “We should go.”

“What’s your deal?” he said, clearly not understanding the moral terror of the situation he was in.

“I would just like to go now.” I said as sternly as possible.

“Well, hey there Michael. I thought that was you…” the Garden Rapist said as stickily sweet as possible.

Without turning I said, “Hey. We were just going.”

With a confused look on his face, Thad mouthed, ‘What?’ to me.

And I mouthed back, “Garden Rapist.”

And he mouthed back, “What?” screwing up his face.

And I mouthed back, ‘GAR-DEN RAPE-IST.’

And his eyes got really wide like he had just seen death or accidently weighed himself.

“So how is you guy’s garden?” the Garden Rapist said, apparently having watched or entire pantomimed exchanged and thought nothing of it. “I could still use some of those big ol’ irises of yours, if you want to do another exchange.”

And then, without thought, I apparently just frickin’ lost it. I’m not exactly sure what I said, but I turned and exploded on her with something like, “How dare you! After you stole my terra cotta chicken planter full of clover! Really! Why don’t you just return it and we can call this good, as I have already called the Police and now that I know you have a booth here, maybe I should just tell them where they can find you! Huh! How would you like that! Huh! Huh? Just return it- YOU THIEF!” gesticulating like a crazed Italian.

And then there was silence.

With blood coursing through my head I could hear very little else besides the throbbing in my brain, but what I could certainly hear was the complete silence of everyone around me. The Garden Rapist stood transfixed, silent, mouth open. As if in slow motion, her husband, who I had not noticed before, stood up from behind her and walked over, looking mad. Thad took my arm, and pushed me, but I would not move. I couldn’t. I was stuck.

And then everything came back to present as Thad whispered, “We need to go.”

I looked down to see that I had dropped my petunias all over the ground: It looked like a CSI floral crime scene with splattered dirt, exposed rootballs, leaves bend unnaturally back, and flower heads decapitated.

“But, my flowers…” I muttered, unmoving as he tugged on me.

I looked back up and the Garden Rapist looked so scared, like she was about to cry. And her hippy-dippy husband looked like he was about to jump over that table of handmade birdhouses and kill me right then and there. And that’s when I knew I had overstayed my welcome.

“Come on!” Thad barked, pulling on me, and I moved one step, treading on my poor little dropped flowers, and then another to let him lead me away.

And all of those good God-loving country people around us watched as we left in shame, Thad hiding his face like Sean Penn from the 80’s. I was numb and suddenly afraid I might be arrested for assault.

Once at the truck, I stopped, “You know that was the Garden Rapist?”

“No, I didn’t know it was her! But, good God, did you have to yell at her like that!” He said, whipping his keys out.

“But she stole my terra cotta chicken full of clover…” I said.

“I know! Just get in the car,” he snapped. “It looked like you were going to kill her. I thought she would pee her pants. You ought to be glad they didn’t call security.”

Getting in the car, suddenly shame-faced, I mopped the sweat off my brow. I had no idea I hated her that much.

“Was it that bad?” I asked like a child.

Throwing it in reverse Thad snapped, “Well, we won’t ever be coming back here again. Does that answer your question, Mr. Psycho?”

As he sped us off, I decided that the cantaloupes from the store were just fine enough for my taste. Those country people could just keep their moist, rain-soaked ones.

54. Spandex Hair Mane

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:20:00 +0000

August came in like a lion eating a lamb: it was the hottest summer Oklahoma had ever had in recorded history. It was the hottest summer ever for a state in recorded history.

I sat in my office, sweating through the 35th consecutive day of temperatures over 100 degrees, as the air conditioning blasted the sweat off of me. Banging away at my PC, I desperately tried to organize my upcoming conference trip (countdown: 2 weeks), but all I kept thinking about was what Thad had said over lunch.

We had gone and grabbed a quick bite at KFC, and as he was driving me back to the University, from out of nowhere he said, “Have you ever just wanted to move away?”

And my heart sank-as there it was: the inevitable depression that came along with 40. In that one statement he expressed depression and complete displeasure with everything in his life, which, of course, I assumed meant me. Typical of Thad to be late on everything, even late to his own sorrow, as his birthday was almost two weeks ago.

“Yeah,” I said, but then, “No. Are you okay?”

He just waved his hand to signal ‘I am done with this conversation.’ And that scared me even more.

We drove on in silence.

Whereas my depressions were loud and tawdry affairs, his were quiet and lonesome. I would roll about the floor and moan, decrying my horrid life to the Gods, but he would just retreat like a hurt animal, either to heal or flee. I just didn’t want him to flee. Not again.

So sitting in my office, typing and web surfing on my trip, I just wondered how he would fare without me for almost two weeks. I mean, Thad hated it when I went I made evening plans without him; whereas he, on the other hand, could skip away from me at a whim-but, me, oh, I had to clear it with him first. And I had cleared this trip with him, and even asked him to go, but his fear of travel precluded him leaving the state.

But I didn’t think the reality of my actual departure had started to sink into until I had really begun to rattle about the trip, now post-birthday. And apparently already depressed about his 40th, suddenly he was now aware of my imminent departure, and had already started showing signs of separation anxiety. If I didn’t answer the phone now in 3 rings or less, he would howl. He always wanted to know where I was. And suddenly he was snippy about everything, especially the trip, which he had no interest in talking about. And it’s not that he wasn’t being supportive, it’s just that he wasn’t being that supportive. But I understood and made myself hold my tongue.

I refocused and continued through the conference brochure, making notes of which meetings I wanted to attend and which tours I wanted to take. The trip was for the International Shakespeare Conference, which looked to be a good one; I had attended them on and off over the last decade all over the world, and always enjoyed them. They were full of interesting international scholars, editors, and book people, and as I was looking for a publisher for my next book, the contacts I made at the Conference could make or break the project. Plus, I had never been to Puerto Rico and was looking forward to exploring the island. And although not a beach person, a tropic local was appealing, especially as it was a remarkable twenty degrees cooler there on the Equator than it currently was in nasty ol’ Oklahoma. I just hoped Thad would be okay in my absence.

Later at the house, as Thad made dinner in the Kitchen, his cell phone went off.

I sat in the dining room perusing the conference schedule. There was a session on Mistress Doll I would definitely have to be at. And a sunset boat tour I shouldn’t miss.

His phone rang again and he walked out to the Dining Room and picked it up: “Hello?” and then “Oh! Hey! How are you!” and then promptly dropped his voice and walked straight into the Bedroom.

Immediately en guard, I strained to hear but I got was “Bettina…yes, crazy,” a few laughs, and then a, “I’ll call you later.”

As he exited and walked back to the Kitchen I restrained myself for exactly one and a half seconds before I asked, “And who was that?”

“Oh…that?” he paused, and I could tell he was trying to calculate the decision of lying, but then just, “Julian. The drummer from…”

“Yeah, I know who he is.” Spandex Hair Mane! “What did he want?” I tried to sound casual, but know I sounded like J. Edgar Hoover with a run in his stocking.

“Just to say ‘hi.’; Thad said coolly. “I had called him last week and he was just calling me back. We might go do something.”

“Really?” I said, standing, telling myself not to recreate the Garden Rapist massacre here in the Dining Room.

“Yeah,” he said defiantly. “I mean you’ll be gone soon, and I have to have someone to hang out with.”

If he had stabbed me with a dagger it could not have hurt any more. And that’s exactly how he planned it from the look of accomplishment on his face: this was my punishment for leaving him.

“Oh, neat,” I said way more icily than I meant. “What about Bettina? I mean, can’t you hang out with her while I’m gone.”

“Yeah, but she’s depressed, so she’s no fun.”

“What do you mean?” I wanted to stab him repeatedly with a screwdriver.

“Well, don’t say anything, but she broke up with Bayne the other night. That’s one of the things Julian wanted to talk about. Apparently they had some big blow out at Bayne’s late Sunday night and stuff got broke, and they haven’t spoken since, and Bettina says she hates him and never wants to see him.”

“Then you should probably spend more time with her…”

“Yeah,” he fakely smiled, walking back into the Kitchen. “So do you want chicken or ham on your salad?”

“Ham.” I said, my face beginning to twitch, looking for that screwdriver.

Thad hanging out with Spandex Hair Mane while I was gone was actually the worst thing that could happen. As I assumed there would be drinking, and infidelity, and then we have to break-up, all while I’m trapped on a damn Caribbean island, powerless. I began to pace, wishing I smoked, wishing I smoked. And I could tell Thad was just doing it to get to me, just to smite me. And that enraged me, as why would he do that when he knew what a nervous traveler I was? It was just cruel!

“I don’t want you hanging out with him!” I kinda screamed, arms akimbo.

“Pardon me?” Thad said looking around the corner of the Kitchen. “And why not?”

“I just don’t.” I barked.

“So, I’m not supposed to have any other friends besides you? Is that it again?”

“No,” I lied. “You know what I mean. But guy friends: no.”

“You have male friends…” he countered, in a tone that said not to trifle with him.

“I know. It’s just that you know how nervous I get about leaving, and why would you do this to me right here before I go-just to punish me for going? You know this is a work thing and I can’t get out of it. I’m trying to get a publisher for my book, you now this? And I invited you and you said no. So why don’t you not jerk me around on this just because you’re mad that I’m leaving.” I was raging, yes, but it was a wee rage.

“He’s straight,” Thad said in a calming voice.

“Well, yes, you were too when I met you.” I snapped.

He walked over to me, “It’s nothing. He’s just a friend. It’ll be fine.” I could tell he now was getting the attention he wanted, and was thrilled by it, which just redoubled my pain and hurt.

“I still don’t want you hanging out with him.” I repeated.

“Sorry,” he said impassionedly as he moved away. “But don’t tell me who I can or can’t be friends with. It’s rude. And it’s just a friend thing.”

I eyed him and remembered the screwdriver was in the tool box in the linen closet again…but then thought of something even more painful.

“Okay,” I smiled. “If that’s how it is, then you won’t mind if I go have coffee with the Gaybor?” I said it with as much moxy as I could smarth. “I mean it’s just a friend thing.”

I had called his hand and raised him one handsome gay neighbor.

“That’s fine,” Thad said in a most unconvincing tone.

“Good. Okay. Then I’m okay with you too. Just as long as we’re clear.” I said back to him, my voice shaking.

“Good,” he grimaced.

“Fine,” I agreed.

We stood there, silent, like two old west gun fighters, just waiting for the other to drop first.

“I’m going to go home now,” Thad said after a second, with eyes down.

“Okay, but…” I began.

“No,” Thad interrupted. “We’re done here for today.” He said, finger up. He washed by me, grabbed his keys and walked out the front door.

I heard his car start, back out, and drive off down the street in one fluid moment.

I looked in the Kitchen to see that my salad was only half done and wondered if I had overreacted.

But logic was not with me, but rage was as he had left me alone in my lividness. And all I wanted was to cause him pain for the pain he had caused me. I went to e-mail the Gaybor.

That would teach the little bastard.

55. Coffee with a Gaybor

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:17:00 +0000

Damn the immediacy of e-mail.

The following afternoon as I sat in the Student Union and waited for the Gaybor, I now realized maybe I had over-reacted last night. The Gaybor had e-mailed me back almost immediately last night to say ‘Great! What about coffee tomorrow?” and now I sat waiting on him, rather shame faced amd regretful.

I had called Thad this morning but he had not answered. I had not apologized, but I did leave a nice sounding message and a “Call me back.” He had not. So I had not spoken to him since he stomped out. At this point I knew just to let him call me. I had planned on cancelling this coffee if Thad and I had made up, but as that had not happened, the chess game that was our relationship continued: Queen takes Gaybor.

Sitting in a booth in the big empty Student Union Lounge, I thought about last night: it’s, not that I thought Thad would run out and cheat on me with Spandex Hair Mane the moment my back was turned, I mean, especially now that Thad was sober and in control of his sensibilities, it’s just I did not appreciate my emotions trifled with. And last night I felt Thad had poked at me just to be poking at me, mad that I was leaving. And thus he got my wrath. It was all his fault.

But now I was in a rather sticky wicket of a situation, feeling very weird about the upcoming coffee. I was not cheating, I mean the Gaybor was just a neighbor and colleague-but a handsome one. I mean, all clothes were going to stay on and all, and it was just coffee, but I still felt bad, like maybe I really was cheating. Maybe the cheating was more in the intent than the actuality. Whatever the case I wished that I had never e-mailed the Gaybor and I wish god-damn Thad had just answered my call this morning so I could have cancelled this whole damn thing and not be sitting waiting now.

In the midst of my mulling, the Gabor walked up.

“Hey…Steve,” I said rising.

“Hey there Micahel. Nice to see you. Glad you finally took me up on my offer.” We shook hands.

“Sure. Sure,” I said, flustered, as he was handsome as an Abercrombie and Fitch ad, except with a few more clothes on. He was in khakis shorts, a snug yellow polo and running shoes-a very collegiate summer look. His hair was sun dappled, and slightly windswept, like an early Robert Redford before the crinkly skin set in. Suddenly Thad and his messy phobias and alcoholism and bitchiness and raspberry streaked hair were not looking so good by comparison.

We walked over to one of the little restaurants and got drinks and went back to sit in a high-backed, dark wooden booth, just across from where Oliver and I had sat and fought about Bettina two months ago. Oliver and I had not had much to do with each other since: served him right.

Steve and I began by talking about our chosen professions: He being in architecture, talked about Frank Lloyd Wright and I being in Literature, spoke of Shakespeare. So we did our professions well, and got that out of the way. I watched him as he talked, his red lips, the way he laughed, the hand carefully drug through the hair, and pretended I had never heard of Thad, ‘Thad who?’ I asked myself. He really should have called me back: It was all his fault. He shouldn’t have provoked me.

“Your book?” The Gaybor repeated.

“Pardon?” I asked, pulling myself out of my reverie, even angrier at Thad for now ruing my coffee date with a cute guy.

“You had said you were working on a book?” he repeated.

“Oh, yes: Whores in Musicals.”

“Really?” he laughed.

“Yeah. I wrote a series of articles about whores and whorehouse imagery in Shakespeare-Mistress Quickly, “Get thee to a Nunnery” and all-and it got turned into my first book about two years ago.”

“That’s great.”

“Thanks. It sold a few hundred copies, like most academic titles, you know…”

“Yeah…”

“But it got me some acclaim in the Shakespearian world. So then I was watching RENT and it made me think about whores in Broadway plays, so I started researching that, and it’s really just crazy how many there are.” I stopped to take a breath, knowing I was just about to completely out myself, but better now than later.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I continued. “ I mean, if you think about it, musicals really developed out of opera, sort of an American happy bright opera, but the early gay Broadway writers-Cole Porter, Jule Styne, Jerry Herman-they couldn’t write what they wanted, love stories between men, so they put whores in instead.”

            “And the gays are the whores?”

            I raised an eyebrow and continued, “Well, no. The whores are stand-ins for

the gays, as the gays and the whores are similar because the only thing they are

doing wrong is having sex society has deemed illegal, which then they are then

persecuted for. But the sex hookers have is normal sex, it’s not bestiality or incest

or something awful, it’s just illegal in the eyes of the law.”

            Stopping here, I attempted to judge his reaction. I was good as out now, but

what about him?  Was this just another closeted guy like Oliver? Or was this one full

fledged straight? I couldn’t imagine that, I mean, he had originally asked me to coffee

and all.

            “Really?” he said, apparently unphased.

            So I continued. “The writers added prostitutes in the place of the gay guy,

so they could relate to it. Think about it: Guys and Dolls, Oliver, Cabaret,

Chicago, Best Little Whore House, even Gigi - Gigi for God’s sake! It’s the guy

falling in love with the whore, but then not being about to have her because of who

she is. The whore is the number one represented profession for women in musical

theatre. And that’s why gays love Broadway.  Whores in Musicals. ” I smiled

triumphantly.

“That’s really great.” He smiled, shaking his head. “I never was much into musicals.”

“Oh,” I said. Maybe he was straight, or at least butch. “My Dad left me all of these Broadway albums of his, and I always just liked them.” And not to dip into histrionic remorse, or veer off into the maudlin fact that I had not heard back from my father yet, I changed course with, “So what’s your research about?”

He lectured about some architecture something or other-barrel vault, ancient Egypt, blah, blah, blah, and I continued to watch him and wonder what exactly he looked like under those clothes and what I was getting myself into. Was this a straight dude who suddenly was realizing he was chatting up a gay? Would he bash me with some sort of ancient building tool? A level? A lathe? Or was he a gay?

After a few minutes the topic changed to our neighborhood and how he liked his house and gardening and how much his dog Ennis liked the yard.

“So you and your partner live there?” he asked with a big white smile.

“Well, no, but we did for just over two years. He-Thad- moved out a few months ago and moved in with a friend…”

“Oh…” he said with a pause.

“No, no.” I cautioned. “We’re still together. He moved in with a female friend to help her out. They live just east of here, and it’s actually not too bad. I thought it would be awful, but it’s really working out. I see him every day and he spends the weekends. It’s very mature seeming.” I kinda lied, kinda not. So we were absolutely on the gay strand now, so I looked at him with a John Waters' ‘Your turn, Mary’ look.

“Yeah,” He began. “My ex- and I had the same thing for years. He was in the military and kept a house up in Tulsa, and I was there most of the time, but I still had my own apartment. It worked out for the most part, I mean, until it didn’t work out any more.”

“Oh. Well, that’s too bad.” I said understandably. So we had contact: He was gay! I smiled broadly, relieved that I would not be bashed with a T-square.

And as he told me briefly about how he and the sergeant had met, and then dated for ten years, but then broke up, and that’s why he left Tulsa and moved to Norman, I just thought: Did he want this coffee to be more than just about coffee? Was he hoping I was single? Was he already in love with me, from afar? How would I break it to Thad? Or would I have to, since he never god-damn called me back!

The Gaybor’s cell phone rang and he whipped it out, “Sorry. Hold on.”

“Sure, sure.”

“Hey!” He said into his phone, launching into a stilted conversation

I sat and mused over his good looks and how I just wished Thad would call. And I realized, this guy was handsome and all, but I just wanted Thad. Thad: my messed-up, broken little puzzle piece that fit with my messed-up broken little puzzle piece. That’s all I ever wanted, idiot bastard. I should not have thrown such a fit last night, but this coffee was a mistake. I needed to call and apologize, and tell him that I trusted him and that he could hang out with whoever he wanted, even though I did not believe that.

And then I looked back at the Gaybor and wondered if I was going to have to break his heart, like his older military Ex-. But I would let him down easy. Tell him how long Thad and I had been together, and about how much Thad meant to me. I’m sure the Gaybor would understand. He seemed strong. He would move on.

The Gaybor hung up and said, “Sorry about that. That was Matt, one of the wrestling coaches. He finally called me back and we’re going out later this week.”

“Oh,” I said completely surprised.

“Have you met him? Little burly guy? Beard and buzzed head. Hot.”

“Yeah,” I said, having seen him around campus. “He’s gay?”

“Sure. I met him at this party up in the city a few weeks ago, and we’ve been texting back and forth since, and now we’re finally going out!”

“Yeah.” I said, suddenly deflated, not liking this Gaybor at all. So if he wasn’t in love with me from afar, what was this coffee all about? Huh? Did he just want to be friends? Gross. Was he one of those gays who collected other gays, in some sort of kumbaya, sort of we should stick together kind of way? Eugh. How offensive. How common.

“He lives out on 6 acres near the lake,” the Gaybor continued in a rather unappealing falsetto tone. “I’ve heard he’s got horses and a hot tub…”

As the Gaybor went on to describe what sounded like the beginnings of a 1970’s porno, I just became more and more uncomfortable. What was I even doing here? Why would I jeopardize my perfect relationship with Thad for something so stupid as a coffee with some random dumb guy? And I felt so stupid for thinking he was interested! I just wanted to go. I needed to call Thad and make sure everything was okay, that he still loved me, as apparently Mr. Dumbass Gaybor didn’t.

“So this has been very nice…” I said, interrupting his ramblings on the hunky wrestling coach. “But, gosh, I’ve got a lot of work to do on my book…”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” the Gaybor said, “This has been nice.”

We made a few pleasantries as I gathered my stuff, then he, “Well, if I don’t see you around here, maybe I’ll see you around the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, that would be great,” I said with no passion in my voice at all.

As we stood he said, “Oh, hey! One more question: Have you had anything stolen around your house lately?”

I stopped to stare at him, “Yes. I had a terra cotta chicken planter full of ivy stolen in April, why?”

“Really? Well, that doesn’t surprise me. I had some patio furniture stolen from the back of my house last month, and I talked to my neighbors to the north, and they said they had some nice concrete urns stolen in June, and they found them at this trashy rent house around the corner, so they just went and took them back. And I went over there, and it looks like college kids, and I peered over their fence and didn’t see my furniture, but they had a lot of other random yard stuff just piled up back there, like they had a collection going or something. So just be careful. It just looks like they probably get drunk and just go out looting. ”

“You are kidding!!” I exclaimed and then briefly told him the story of the Garden Rapist and my talking to the Police before Lady Gaga and ended with the story of me bawling out the Garden Rapist out at the Farmer’s Market two weeks ago.

“Huh. Well, if it wasn’t her, I bet it was these kids. You ought to go check out their yard.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said suddenly realizing what a terrible person I was. “I’ll see you around Steve.”

“Okay, bye. We should do this again…”

“Yeah,” I called as I stomped off, suddenly aware of all of my sins: I had implicated the Garden Rapist to the Police and then humiliated her in public, in front of her peers and husband, all on no solid evidence. And I had done the same to Thad. I was a terrible, terrible, crazy person.

I took off, running across campus, through the horrid heat and hot wind, to try and escape myself. I was a terrible, terrible person. I had to call Thad and apologize. I had to.

56. Our Goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:08:00 +0000

The next two weeks leading up to my trip were perfect, with everything involving Thad just spectacular. Too bad they were all based on a lie.

I did indeed call Thad after I ran away from the boorish Gaybor, and gushed an apology into his voicemail. Thad had called me back minutes later and we met and made up immediately. He told me had only said the thing about Spandex Hair Mane to get to me because he was mad that I was leaving him, and he apologized and said he would not see him, “because it would make you uncomfortable.” He went on to say that the most important thing was for me not be worried while I was gone, and that he had felt terrible for what he had said. He was incredibly adult about it all.

I apologized for screaming and being demanding, but decided to stay mum on the whole coffee with Gaybor thing. When Thad asked what I had done that morning I simply said, “research,” with a slightly reddening of my cheeks. I covered it with a fake cough and a look away.

In a fit of dishonest, I had decided to let sleeping Gaybors lie.

So for the next two weeks we were hardly separated. He came over and cooked fabulous meals and stayed night after night and we talked on the phone when we weren’t together and we watched movies and he listened intently to my boring ol’ stories, and we even held hands as we drove around at night, and it was just like when we first started dating again. And he told me how much I meant to him and how excited he was that I was traveling and how he would tend to the house and to Charlotte Bronte, and how I had nothing to worry about at all, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

It was all just perfect. But every bit of it, every flawlessly seasoned meal, every laughing joke, and every quiet conversation, but all of it was tempered with the fact that I had lied to him. And I still felt like a terrible person, just one out of danger, and that seemed particularly galling since I had had to lie to get myself to that place.

I had gone and checked the yard that the Gaybor had told me about: it was a graveyard of stolen lawn art, but I did not see my precious terra cotta chicken planter full of ivy. But peering over that fence and looking at all of that discarded and broken loot surmounted by weeds and wild trumpet vine, I knew the Garden Rapist was innocent. And the fact that I couldn’t tell Thad of her exoneration almost killed me. Lies beget lies bet lies, alright.

The day before I left we shopped away the afternoon and then I took him out to a nice meal. I could tell he was nervous that I was leaving, but trying to make himself appear calm. But now I just worrying over if I would find a taxi from the airport, get robbed by the dancing Sharks gang, or know enough Spanish to find a hospital if necessary. Whereas he was just afraid to be alone. And I so felt for him. I was always there for him, I allowed him to lean on me and was proud to do it, but now I would be gone. Poof.

At home that night as I packed my bags in the Bedroom, he came in and stood in the door, a look of absolute abandon on his face.

“You’ll be okay.” I said.

“I know,” he said, unconvincingly.

“I’ll call you every day, and text. All the time. It’s only 10 days.”

“I know. I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

We kissed.

It was the perfect goodbye, if only I had not lied to him.

47. Breakfast for Lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:24:00 +0000

“What do want for lunch today?” Thad asked, perched upon the entrance to my Study.

“Oh, it’s okay,” I said, looking up from my laptop. I had not gone to work yet and was enjoying the lazy morning. “There are just some leftover noodles and cantaloupe I was going to have.”

“Eugh,” he said making a face. “That whole wheat pasta stuff you made? It’s awful.”

“No, it’s healthy.”

“Lookit, it’s awful,” he said. “It tastes like cardboard.”

“Uh huh,” I smirked: It was awful, and did taste like cardboard, but was healthy.

After my recent pre-Gaga doctor’s appointment, I had put myself back on Oprah’s Program, and had been rather successful at it. I was now walking to work and eating better- “affecting diet, exercise, and life style changes together to lose weight and keep it off”-and had already lost fifteen pounds. Now, granted, on a big man, that was not a lot, but it was something. And no matter what, I was very impressed with myself, or I should say more impressed than normal.

“How about I make you breakfast for lunch? You love that!” Thad asked with the tone of a clown at a child’s birthday.

“Yes, yes I do.” I eyed him suspiciously, hungrily.

“Good! Then that’s what I’ll make.” He said with a twirl and a bounce toward the Kitchen.

I looked back to my laptop and wondered if I was allowed to accusing him of trying to fatten me up, like I was Hansel and he was that awful gingerbread house witch.

Thad had initially been very supportive of my reinvigorated Program, offering dietary suggestions and useful exercise asides. I appreciated his opinions on eating more fruits and less carbs and hints about painless but effective cardio. But that all ended once I actually started to lose weight; he apparently my loss as an attack to his own snacking kingdom. And then he suddenly began asking to have cake around all the time, wanted to go get ice cream more often, and the meals he fixed quickly became much more elaborately fatty. And I know this was not purposefully vindictive, rather subliminal on his part, but still, it was becoming obvious.

The problem was that Thad wanted me fat so he could eat as much as he wanted and could still, always, be the thin one. This made sense to me, but I was dieting to fight off the diabetes, not to make him look bad. But through his lavender colored Thadworld glasses, though, I don’t think Thad saw it that way at all; he saw my weight loss as an attack on his exact worldly being.

A few minutes later I walked by the Kitchen, and smelled a symphony of aromas: bread and grease, butter and flour, sharp cheddar cheese and crisp green onions. I loved breakfast for lunch; there was no way I could resist it to eat crap wheat pasta and flaccid week-old cantaloupe.

“What you making?” I said, sticking my head in. I knew to stand on the other side of the kitchen door threshold when he was cooking: I was not allowed to enter his domicile while he ‘worked.’

“Eggs and sausage and biscuits and gravy,” he sang.

Those four words were never more eagerly heard by a fatman.

“Oh,” I sighed. “Even gravy?”

“From scratch!” he smiled, flipping the massive sputtering sausage patties over in the wrought iron skillet.

“It smells so good…” I salivated.

“Sure enough!” he smiled, brandishing his spatula like Paula Deen.

As I wondered off, the aroma of sausage and eggs dispelled Oprah and her stupid Program clear from my head and conscious.

Back in my Study, away from the smells, I frowned, knowing I was about to fail. The OCD had really latched onto this Program, and was pleased with the results. I had already gone down one shirt size and two pants sizes, so now I was only huge, not terrifying ginormous. The three miles or so of walking I was doing a day didn’t even seem that extreme anymore either, even in the summer heat, as it had become so de rigueur. But those rewards only came with constant perseverance, and perseverance was not served with a side of gravy.

Thad’s problem was in the snacking. On any given night when we would sit and watch a movie he would start off with a simple Freezie Pop, then make some microwave popcorn, then move on to a tin of black olives, then have another Freezie Pop, then an tiny wedge of cheese cut from the block, then a handful of salty crackers to accompany a larger wedge of cheese, then another Freezie Pop, and then finish off the evening with a hunk of cake and a tall glass of whole milk. And that was all after we consumed a rather large dinner. Thank God he was predisposed to thinness, as on anyone else that level of snacking would lead to obesity and quite soon, vestigial legs.

But he did not see this level of constant eating as a problem, rather as Competitive Snacking, which was the term he had come up with to describe his munching mania. He would joke that he was “In training,” and “These snacks aren’t going to eat themselves,” and “Who but me should represent America in Competitive Snacking in the 2012 Summer games?” The joke further included my mother as his second, a joke we never shared with her, but he giggled about often over handfuls of Gummy Bears or a plate of Oreos.

But I could not let Thad’s lack of control mire my supreme OCD constraint in a vat of, oh so delicious homemade gravy. I had to act.

“Hey,” I said, waking back into the Kitchen.

“Out!” he snapped

Realizing that I had trespassed, I stepped back to the threshold and said, “I think I’ll just have the wheat pasta and cantaloupe for lunch.”

His head turned toward me, but not his body, à la The Exorcist. “Why?” he said, the voice deep and from far and deep away.

“Um, it’s just my diet and all…” I said, afraid of him.

“Program,” He corrected, looking at me with hate.

“Yes, Program. My Program. I just need to stick with it, you know…” I could not meet his eyes; there was too much wrath therein.

“You know you are not fat. You’ve never been fat. I like you just the way you are.” But he did not say it like he exactly meant it. He said it more, like, ‘don’t you dare make me eat all of this sausage and eggs and biscuits and gravy by myself you selfish, selfish monster!’

“Thanks. That’s sweet,” I faked. “I’m just tired of being so big. Well, I will always be big; I just want to be less big. I mean, right now if they made a movie out of my life, Zach Galifianakis would have to play me in a fat suit.”

“That’s not true,” Thad said softly, looking back down to stir the eggs. “I’d say Bruce Vilanch.”

“Oh, ho ho,” I chuckled smarmily. “Well then guess who would play you?”

“Who?” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

“Andy Dick,” I smiled, hoping he realized it was not exactly a complementary comparison, what with the alcoholism and all.

“Oh, that’s terrible!” Thad snapped. “I can’t believe you said that. Take that back!”

“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “Maybe a 1980’s Robert Downy Jr. in a friz wig.” As Thad’s hair, albeit now without the raspberry streak, still looked rather silly and kinda Asian Pomeranian.

“You’re just being mean!” he snapped, waving his spatula so egg goo flew everywhere.

“Fine! I’ll stop. But I’m just tired of looking less like Jesus and more like Buddha each and every day.”

“But you’re my Buddha,” Thad said with a wink. I loved that he could wink. I couldn’t; when I tried it made me look like I was having a neural spasm.

“Well, thank you,” I smiled, “But I don’t think I’ll be having breakfast for lunch today.”

“You sure?” He said sidling up to me with the plate of steaming sausage patties, each one begging to be eaten in bite after bite of joyous mouthwatering pleasure.

“Well…”

So to say the least I had breakfast for lunch. Hell with it. Buddha is probably a lot more fun to have around than skinny ol’ Jesus anyway.

48. Why I Hate Pride

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:23:00 +0000

“What crawled up your panties today?” Oliver smiled at me. “Ants in your pants? Bee in your bonnet? Cat got your tongue? What’s up? ”

Frowning, I whispered, “Wait till we’re seated and then I’ll tell you.”

It was Tuesday afternoon and we were in the Student Union standing in line to get coffee. As it was summer the place was gloriously empty: summer was the best time to be at the University, as you got all of the amenities, but none of the teenage angst. Oliver had called me up earlier and I was in the mood to ditch my research and get out of the office. We had just met up and already he knew something was up. God-damn Thad.

“So what is it? What’s he do?” Oliver asked as we settled into a dark wood booth, tucked deep into an empty corner of the lounge.

“Am I that obvious?” I sputtered.

Oliver nodded his head like one of the less attractive seven dwarves.

“So it’s like this.” I began. “Last night I was at home and the phone rang about 9 o’clock. It was Thad calling from his house, so I answered and said ‘Hey,’ and he said, ‘Hey, is Julian there?’ and I thought he was just kidding, so I said, ‘Yeah! This is him,’ and he said, ‘Hey, Julian! This is Thad. What’s up?’ and then I realized he didn’t know it was me, and that he was actually calling some other guy named Julian.”

Wide-eyed, Oliver made a slight gagging sound.

“Yeah,” I continued. “So I said, ‘Thad, it’s me Michael.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, hey! Sorry. I guess I dialed the wrong number,’ but you could tell me was all flustered. And then I was like, ‘Who’s Julian?’ and he kinda laughed and said, ‘Oh, the drummer from Eyeball. He wanted to borrow this Lady Gaga remix CD of mine, and I was just calling to tell him he could come pick it up,’ like real nonchalant and all.”

Oliver still hadn’t moved.

“So then I thought about it, when you and I saw Eyeball at the Art Walk the last month, and I realized which one Blaine was …”

“The drummer in the ultra tight spandex pants and 80’s hair mane?” Oliver sputtered.

“Yes,” I snapped, “Ultra tight spandex and 80’s hair mane.”

“Oh, no,” Oliver sighed, fanning himself.

“Yes. The one whose package we could make out from the back row.”

“Oh, oh, I remember.” Oliver fanned himself faster.

“So I said to Thad, ‘And is this a straight man or a gay man that you’re calling up?’ and Thad said, ‘Oh, straight.’ And I said, ‘With a name like Julian?’”

“Yeah, like Less than Zero, right.” Oliver laughed.

“Right,” I said. “And Thad said ‘Calm down. He’s got a girlfriend. He just wants to borrow this CD, and I guess I dialed you by mistake. Sorry.’ And I said ‘You’re sure he’s straight?’ and he said “Yeah, he’s made it really clear.’ And I said, ‘When you pushed your unwanted advanced upon him?’ and he said, ‘No, and that’s really rude and stupid’ and then he just summarily let me go.”

“Really!” Oliver gasped.

“Yes,” I said. “And I just sat there and held the phone and was mortified thinking that he was off having an affair on me.”

“Really? Just because of that?” Oliver asked, taking a big slurp of his Shaken Passion Ice Tea Lemonade.

“Well, yes!” I stammered. “I mean, I caught him trying to call another guy…” my voice had raised so I looked around paranoid, but no one was near us.

“You’re here with me. Is that a crime?” Oliver said in a very Hercule Poirot kind of way.

“No!” I slapped the table. “You know what I mean.” I knew what he meant, but I had tried to sleep with Oliver a very long time ago, and we had been drunk at the time, of course, so that line of logic just exasperated the issue.

He took another drink. “You’re being silly. So he wants a friend. And a straight guy friend at that. Is he not allowed to have friends, Mr. Crazy Possessive Scorpio?”

“Of course he is,” I lied. “But doesn’t the whole thing seem suspicious? I mean he had never mentioned his guy and then all of a sudden Thad’s calling him, and I don’t even find out except on accident?”

“Did Thad scream, ‘You caught me!’ ? Or hang up? Pretend to suddenly go mute? No. He just told you what happened. And it is rather sweet that he dials your home phone number automatically.”

“It was his too, for two years, three months…”

We went silent.

I frowned into my coke. Oliver wasn’t sympathizing with me at all. Right now I just needed him to agree with my paranoia and offer ‘tuts’ and sighs of sympathy for Thad being such an awful boyfriend.

“Have you talked to him today?” Oliver asked, eyebrows arched either through concern or cosmetics.

“Yes. He came over and made me lunch.”

Oliver snorted. “Oh, poor baby. And was he covered in hickeys or have spandex burns?”

“No. Shut-up,” I snapped.

“So it’s fine. Did you ask him about the Spandex Hair Mane guy?”

“Yes. Thad said the guy’s just been hanging around the house with Bettina and Bayne and the other Eyeball guys...”

“Oh! Bettina…” Oliver said making an unpleasant slurping sound.

“Yes,” I continued, “He’s just some townie band guy. Thad said he had talked to him a few times, and once they talked about Lady Gaga or something and Thad has some special order CD, I don’t know. But Thad told me he ended-up calling him last night after he got off the phone with me and the guy stopped by later and got the CD and left and then Thad went to bed. But other than that, Thad was rather tight-lipped about the whole thing.”

“But isn’t he always a little tight lipped Cancerian? Hiding in his shell? Especially when you’re accusing him of cheating on you with a Spandex Hair Mane guy?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I said with a wave, brushing aside his ridiculous zodiacal nonsense. “It still freaked me out all last night. I didn’t sleep much. I just keep thinking he’s out drinking and whoring and how that would devastate me, because then I would have to break up with him again, and then what would I do? And I just couldn’t turn it off. So I just tossed and turned all night.”

“I’m sorry.” Oliver said seriously.

“Yeah, I know it’s a lot my deal, but we have our issues, so there is some reality here. And plus he’s been all weird about his upcoming 40^th. He’s been real quiet about it, but I can tell it’s really bothering him getting older and heavier and all.”

“It happens to the best of us.” Oliver said, pulling back the Shar-Pei wrinkles around his eyes like Norma Desmond.

“The other day he was complaining about his moobs,” I snorted.

“His what?” Oliver asked scowling.

“His moobs. His man boobs.” I made a cupping motion to my chest.

“Oh my! My, my my! Land of Goshen!” Oliver laughed, hiding his face behind his hands.

“Yeah,” I continued, “Poor guy has these precious little A-cups now, what with all the laying around for the last 39 and a half years and all.”

“That’s just silly. We all get older. Things just settle.”

“I know. But his vanity is something to behold. It’s one of the only things he has ever really worked on. And I know 40 is hard, and he feels unaccomplished, but at least he’s sober. It’s been a year now for him, and I am so proud of him. But even after a year I just worry about him and that woman and now her ill-begotten friends and how tempting all of their drinking must be to Thad, especially right here perched on his big 4-O. I just wish he had never moved in with her…”

We were both silent for a minute, nursing our drinks.

“Then you’re not going to like this at all,” Oliver said with a dark chuckle.

“What?”

“No, no, you’re not going to like this at all…”

“What?” I said, a bit of fear in my voice.

“I went to rent a movie yesterday, I wanted a foreign film, something with sad smoking Parisians and all, and I was in that trashy Blockbuster over on 12^th, and who to my wondering eyes did appear besides the Nubian princess herself.”

“Oh, no,” I said, rising up in my seat as the look of supreme mischief on Oliver’s face flat terrified me.

“Oh, yes. So I walked up and said hello, and she didn’t remember me from Adam Ant from the other night, so I lied and told her we had met at the Art Walk, and she had no idea, feigning, ‘Oh, yeah! I was wasted that night! Of course I remember you!’ So I just chatted her up, and, oh, she just looked so pretty in fishnets and a white lace shirt with a lilac bra underneath…”

“Oh, gross. Stop it.” I sighed, terrified where this was going.

“And I had her laughing and next thing you know I’m pulling out my calling card…”

“You still have calling cards?”

“Well, yes. How else is a gentleman supposed to introduce himself in society? So I gave her my calling card and she said she would ring me up for coffee sometime.”

“You are kidding? Is this for real or one of your little fantasies?” I just flat calling him out on it, which I seldom did.

“I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” Oliver said petulantly.

“So this is real? You really did run into Bettina and gave her your card and you two are going to go out on a date!”

“Yes,” he sneered. “I mean, if she calls.”

I just railroaded right over him, “So you’re just going to make things worse for me? Just weasel your way right into all my world?” I was suddenly livid, not needing anymore of Oliver’s weird asexual lying closeted crap today.

“No…” he said smally.

“You know she has a boyfriend.”

“Yes,” he said looking hurt. “But don’t they fight all the time?

“Oliver, she has a boyfriend! A real, big, drunk idiot of a boyfriend. ” I almost yelled ‘And a straight!’ but did not. I couldn’t believe he even thought he had a shot with a player like Bettina; her gaydar should be able to ping him out of the water at 30 paces.

“Fine. Whatever. It’s just coffee.” He said dismissively, picking lint off his shirt. “And she might not even call…”

“Well, for my sake, let’s hope she doesn’t!” I huffed. “Good Lord, all I need is you over there at their house too, in the middle of everything...”

“Oh, no, Thad wouldn’t allow it, would he?”

“Nope, thank God,” I smiled, praying Bettina would just get drunk and loose Oliver’s stupid little card so that this whole quagmire would just go away. Jesus Christ, Thad was not going to like this.

We were silent again, as I fumed, just wanting to go home.

“You know the Pride Parade is this weekend up in Oklahoma City?” Oliver said, changing the subject.

“Are you going to take your new girlfriend Bettina to it?” I said in as shameful of a way as I could.

“Ha ha. Maybe” Oliver smirked. “Wouldn’t that make you and I related? Your boyfriend’s hag would be my wife? I think that would make us gays-in-law?”

I just grimaced, despising him. “I hate pride.”

“Why?” he gasped. “All those floats and happy, semi-nude people flopping around waving flags depicting refracted light?”

“Yeah, exactly for that reason. I don’t want to go to a hetero parade where everyone is half-dressed and flaunting themselves lasciviously.”

“Really Miss Priss? I seem to recall when you were a drinker-not that long ago- and there was some real lasciviousness on your part.”

“Yes, in the privacy of my own home…” I said with a cautionary finger up.

“Or a night club dance floor? Or a stranger’s after party in the hot tub? or in fountain on campus?”

“Fine, fine, whatever.” I said dismissively. “I’ve been up to Pride twice. Have you ever been?”

“A few times…” He said, eyes askew, as if that was a perfectly normal answer for a straight man wearing a neckerchief.

“Okay,” I continued, “the parade was okay. But, you know over in the park, where they have all the gay booths and stuff, where all the people go- with couples and old people and children everywhere? Well, right there in the middle of everything, have you seen the giant, forty foot tall blow-up lube tube bottle? The one that just wavers back and forth in the wind, glistening in the sunlight like some sort of Grecian shrine to Priapus?”

Oliver giggled, hands to his mouth, eyes darting. “Oh, yes, I’ve seen it. It’s impressively turgid.”

“Exactly, and supremely distasteful. I mean, it’s like a giant blow-up cartoon character you see on top of a car dealership, but it’s a giant lube tube. And its right in the middle of the park, so the children play around it, and the old people and straight people sit in its shadow to stay cool, and it’s just offensive and wrong. So the first time I was at Pride, I saw it and just thought ‘how distasteful,’ but when I went back a few years later and it was still there, I realized it was, like, a thing, a centerpiece of the event. And then and there I decided I had no desire to ever be associated with an event that uses something so overtly sexual like that as a symbol of pride. So I’ve never been back.”

“You know it’s not that way all over.”

“And you’ve been to a number of Pride parades?”

“Well, yes,” he said with a nod. “In Louisiana, the pride parades are not as backwater as the Oklahoma City one, not as sleezy. But think about it, everything about Mardi Gras is sleezy what with drunk women waving their big ol’ knockers around for beads and all.”

“Exactly! And I’ve never been to Mardi Gras for that reason! It’s distasteful! Except Mardi Gras doesn’t represent all Louisianans to the rest of the America, but the Pride parades does for the gays, or at least that’s how the media presents it to all the straights around here: that we’re degenerate sex mongrels in banana thongs or dresses and leather harnesses up on floats dancing to It’s Raining Men, around a giant, forty foot tall blow-up lube tube bottle.”

“Oh, you’re over-reacting. It’s not that way.” Oliver looked away.

“Yeah, well, it is to me.” I barked, “So to answer your question, no, I will not be going to Pride. But if you go, you just have a gay ol’ time for me.”

“Okay…” he said, taken aback by my gusto.

I huffed and looked down to my watch, “Okay, look I have to go.” I didn’t really, I just was sick of Oliver.

We rose and he looked a bit concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I lied. “I just have some research I want to get done. That stupid book isn’t going to write itself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Oliver said scooting toward me.

I took a wide step away from him and said, “Bye, ” and walked off quickly.

As I exited the lounge I caught a side glance at him: he had not moved and looked rather small.

I could care less.

49. Jenny Crack Whore and I Don’t Care

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:22:00 +0000

Digging in her purse, Mother produced a candy box, “Sugar Baby?”

“No, and put those away. This is not the Sunday Cowboy movie matinee of your faraway youth.”

“Fine,” she sniffed, popping open the box and digging in. “More candy for me, then.”

Mother and I had just gotten our seats at a Friday night performance of The Secret Garden in the University Theater. I loved going to the theater, and would go whenever I could find someone to go with, as long as it was not Thad. Last summer, after a disastrously long Henry IV, Part II that I had drug him to, he had vehemently announced that he would never be attending the theater with me again unless I bribed him with something quite large. I had not bothered, as even when he had gone previously he just huffed and puffed his way through them, making me miserable for forcing such on him. So Mother and I had become theater buddies, which suited her and made me feel like a good gay son.

But at times she could work my nerves just as much as Thad any day of the week.

“Have you talked to Becky?” She asked with a mouthful of Sugar Babies.

“No. Why?” I said adjusting my legs in the nice wide aisle seat.

“Oh, then she hasn’t told you?” Mother looked away conspiratorially, wiping at her nose with a tissue.

“No. What?”

“About whom she’s been talking to?”

“Oh, for God’s sake Mother, just tell me.” I whispered a bit too loudly. The bluehaired ladies in front of us craned around to stare boredly.

“Really, we’re in public” Mother whispered, straightening her blouse with an indiscreet roll of her eyes and a polite nod to the bluehaireds. After a second she whispered, “Ray. But don’t tell her I told you.”

“Becky finally got a hold of him? How long has it been since they've spoken?”

“He texted her in January, about that ol’ belt buckle of his, but before that she hadn’t talked to him on the phone since October, I think, and before that I don’t think she has seen him since last August.”

“Wow.” Poor Becky, I thought.

A nice looking Dallas couple approached our aisle, a large man and his pretty wife with tall hair. I rose and they moved by us to sit one seat away from Mother. I sat back down and checked my watch: it was almost show time. The theater was really starting to fill up.

Mother leaned back to me, her breath sticky sweet, “She wants Ray to meet Pablo.”

“But Ray doesn’t even speak Spanish, does he?” I said wryly.

Mother looked at me and I smiled and she flummoxed-up up her face and let out a little, “Oh, you!” and then chortled, “You know Pablo is starting to really speak pretty good English. He asked me for a cookie the other day. He said, ‘Granny, can I cookie?’ and I said, ‘Yes, you can have a cookie little Pablo.’ It was just so precious!” She cooed like an enormous dove.

The house lights went down and the audience fell silent. The curtain rose and poor little Mary walked out on stage and began to wonder around India, complaining. Mother sighed happily when a servant showed off a peacock fan and then Mother emitted a joyous gasp when two Indian woman spun in their saffron saris. It was nice to take Mom out, as Smith so seldom did. And it was comforting sitting next to her, what with her smell of fresh power and chocolates and childhood.

From behind us there was a ruckus. I turned to see an usher leading in what appeared to be teen prostitute in short-shorts and a dirty tank top. The usher had a flashlight and was holding a ticket, apparently looking for the woman’s seat. In the silence the woman’s cell phone went off –TWEET AH TWEET AH TWEET!-and she cried, “Dammit! Sorry!” and dug around her short shorts pocket to retrieve it and flip it off. As they walked down closer to us, the bottom fell out of my stomach as I realized he was heading her toward the empty seat between Mother and the nice Dallas couple.

I turned away and thought if I could just concentrated hard enough I could make the skank go away; make her just dissipate. That thought lasted until I heard the usher say, “Here it is. Right there.” I looked up and the heathen woman was smiling a picket fence smile right down at me. She was in her early 20’s, with blond patchy hair, possibly with mange, and her skin was pot-marked with dime-sized open sores.

Against my will, but as decorum dictated, I smiled and rose as the girl shoved her way through. She caught on Mother’s chubby cankles, tripped somewhat and almost fell, but then caught herself with a “Well, God-damn!” and righted herself with a stumble to sit down between Mom and the big Dallas man, as Mother whispered apologizes to her profusely.

Trying to refocus on the play, all I could think was how I hated the poor. And what was one of them even doing here? The tickets weren’t much, but did cost real money. Had there been a raffle and one, and only one homeless person was given a golden ticket to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s masterpiece of creepy children’s Victoriana? Did the bread kitchen now offer summer stock tickets? Back at the Big House was she able to barter some cigarettes and toilet wine for a ticket?

I fumed for a few more minutes before calming down and getting back into the flow of the play. Mary ran from room to room looking for her parents, and Mother issued a tiny moan and pulled her tissue back out, holding it at the ready.

And then inexplicably, the girl next to Mother began to giggle. It was a weird low giggle like that of a toad or other dirt-dwelling swamp creature. And although almost imperceptive, you could hear it when the actors stopped to take a breath, so it was there, but not there.

Mother looked at me out of the corner of her eyes, and I saw fear there: her cheeks had reddened, her mouth was tense, and she had ceased eating her Sugar Babies.

I craned my head passed her to stare at the strumpet and watched her giggle to herself, wound up in her chair like a baby, head pressed to her knees. And it wasn’t even a funny part of the play: the cholera had just overtaken Mary’s parents.

And as I watched the girl began laughing and rocking back and forth like a crazy person, and I couldn’t look away. And then when I thought it couldn’t get more macabre, the tart stretched out one bone-thin, sore-covered leg and shook off her dainty flip-flop, to begin running her toes up and down the backside of the seat in front of her, up-and-down, and up-and-down, and up-and-down. The giggles began coming almost in unison with the up-and-down sound her toenails made against the seat velvet.

Mother turned to me in stark fear and mouthed, “Oh my…”

I mouthed back and signed, “Do you want exchange seats?”

She shook her head, ‘No,’ like a polite Baptist woman and turned back to the play pitifully.

For the next ten minutes I tried to pay attention to the plight of poor Mary, but just could not quit watching the sore dotted legs going up and down the chair back, up-and-down, going higher and higher, until the little piggy toes were almost resting on the old bluehaired neck in from of her. It was like something out of Poe: The Tale of the Tell-Tale Toes.

And then in a split second the old bluehaired in the chair ahead snapped around and wheezed, “Please stop that right now, young lady!”

With a gasp, the girl pulled her leg back and rewrapped herself up in an armadillo ball in her chair, completely ashamed.

Mother turned to me and we both smiled triumphant faces of conquest, like we both assumed the skank would now stop so we could enjoy the play.

But then, less than five minutes later, just as a train whistle blew on stage, the girl began laughing again, but this time louder, and rocking again, but this time more violently. Mother leaned close to me, away from the horrible woman, fear again on her face.

I was mortified, livid, and beginning to get seriously creeped out. I looked around for an usher, but there was none to be seen. I looked back at Mother and said, “Do you want to go?”

“No,” she mouthed with a sad frown.

And I felt just terrible for her. She had been looking forward to this event since I got us the tickets three weeks ago. She was even wearing a special blouse and her new favorite earrings. It was suppose to be the highlight of her week. And now it was being ruined.

But then the girl stopped rocking and was silent, and everyone around us froze, terrified of what she would do next.

A second later, as the play went quiet, the crazy skank let out a louder guffaw and before it had completed exited her throat, the big Dallas man leaned over to her and said, in his big Dallas man voice, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, if you’re drunk or whatever, but our son is in this play and you gotta go.”
Leaning over Mother, even though I was shaking myself, I said in my deepest professorial voice, “And I completely agree.”

The girls looked at us for a second before she waved her hands in the air and giggled, “Hey! I can laugh! It’s funny!” She looked about madly, folded her sore-covered arms together, and planted her shoeless, pot-marked feet firmly on the ground.

And went silent.

And after a minute everyone around let out a silent exhale, hoping it was all over, that we could just go back to trying to enjoy the play we paid to see, but so far had not.

The play continued, but the tension in the air was thick, and not just on stage: Now in England, Mr. Craven clearly did not like poor Mary.

And just as my pulse had begun to lessen and my breathing had come back down, the distant inane giggling began again, as if from a hollow or a low well, small and weak, but there. I looked back over Mother and the girl had curled herself back up in ball in her chair and was once again rocking back and forth, like something horrible from The Ring. She had to be on drugs of some kind, as this level of behavior wasn’t even anywhere near drunk, and I knew drunk.

And in a flash the Dallas man was up on his feet and screaming, “I told you to go!” And his big-haired, pretty Dallas wife was up, holding him back, “Oh, Rick. Not again! Now just leave her be…” and the skank girl stood and screamed something unintelligible that sounded like “Poopcorn!” and the bluehairs were turned completely around in their seats looking appalled, as was everyone else in the theater, and Mother cowered into me, and the ushers had appeared and were running over and even the actors on stage stopped to stare for a split second.
In this crystalline moment of terror you could tell everyone around us was convinced that that big bear of man was about to beat the shit out of that crazy little girl, and we were all going to enjoy it and root him on. And that conjoined crowd bloodlust of ours terrified us all more than anything.

I grabbed Mom’s hand and rose, bellowing, “Come on!” and pulled her up and out of the seat like I was an action hero, before she was drug into deadly fisticuffs. We ran up the aisle and out of the dark theater and into the bright lobby as quick an Mother’s little stout legs could carry her. As we left the theater, I looked back to see the ushers running up to the skanky crazy woman and the big bear of a man, and Mary on stage trying to maintain her ennui as she talked to a fake bird hanging from a string, outside the garden gate.

Once out of the building, Mother, huffing and puffing, exclaimed, “And, what was all of that?”

“Oh, that was just horrible! Horrible” I said, “That’s what it was! Let’s just get out of here…” And I led her away from the theater as fast as she could walk, we both thunderstruck and mortified, she holding on to me with a small, quivering hand.

As we neared the car, Mother stopped to take a breath and gasp, ‘That was a very bad woman. A very bad woman.”

“Yes, yes, she was.” I said. “A very, very bad woman indeed.”

50 . Estanque de Patos

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:21:00 +0000

“No! No! Stop that! Stop that!” Becky cried, running after Pablo as he chased two mottled mallards into the water.

“Patos! Patos!” he cried, running toward the shore, arms up, as duck fled in terror before him.

“Good God! Parada!” Beck cried, grabbing him by the arm just before he ran straight into the murky depths.

We had been at the Duck Pond for the last forty-five minutes and I was convinced more than ever that I did not ever want children. It was not that Pablo was bad, but he was a four year old boy: there was no reason to him. He ran, he screamed, he chased ducks like the best bird dog. He made monster faces at the other children he ran up to, he picked up some lady’s Shih Tzu and tried to make off with it. He peed off the dock until Becky saw him and started screaming, and then he just ran off and screamed some more, like a miniature Caliban. And Poor Becky looked frazzled, running this way and that, covered in sweat, but looking happier than I had ever seen her.

“Parada Pablo! Parada!” she screamed like a extra from West Side Story. “Venir! Ahora!”

To cool ourselves, we sat on a shaded park bench as Pablo stood on the bank of the pond throwing twigs at the passing Canadian Geese. I told Becky the whole story of Mom and the Secret Garden Crack Whore, and Becky laughed uproariously. Pablo ran up to us, tumbling over to crumple into Becky’s lap. He quietly whispered something into Becky’s face in his Spanglish, and her eyes went wide and she looked over to me in mock surprise.

“He wants to know if you like him?” she said with a big smile.

“Yes,” I said trying not to grit my teeth, “Of course I do. He’s a charming young man.”

She whispered something back to Pablo and he looked up at me with a big winning smile. He was a cute kid; I just didn’t have much use for children.

“Go look at with patos,” She said, “but No tirar. No tirar. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said and ran back to the water’s edge to sit and watch the passing ducks.

“He loves the Duck Pond,” Becky said.

“Oh, yeah, I can tell.” I was bored and hot and wanted a coke and some air conditioning. “He seems like a really good kid.” I lied.

“Oh, he is. He’s so good now. All I had to do was learn how to talk to him. And he is so smart. He’s already picking up English like you can’t believe. He’s just so smart.”

“Uh huh.” I watched Pablo stick a twig in his ear then pull it back in surprise, waving his arms to dispense the pain.

“Cuidado,” she hollered.

I made myself not chuckle, looking out over the water. The Duck Pond was just to the east of campus, in fact just spitting distance from Thad and Bettina’s Queen Acres. The park had originally been the first 9-hole golf course for the University, so it was laid out in wide swaths of hills and flat greens, with a large winding pond in the middle. It was closest Norman had to a Central Park; a bit of the wild right in the middle of town. Today was a sunny June day, about eighty degrees, and pleasant with the wind off of the pond. I had asked Thad to come, but he had said, “Sorry, busy,” which he had told me more often than not lately. I wondered if he was busy with Spandex Hair Mane.

“So the other night Mom said you talked to Ray,” I said, fanning myself.

“I told her not to tell you!” she huffed. “Yes.”

“You knew she would tell me. “

“I guess…well, that means Smith knows…” She sighed.

“And their cleaning lady…” I added.

“And the Greengrocer…”

“And the gas station attendant who fills up her car….” I chuckled.

“Can you believe there’s still a place in town that does that? It’s, like, so 50’s.” Becky wiped her brow.
“I know,” I added. “But if there’s any full-service place in town, you know Mom knows about it.”

We laughed and then went silent, watching Pablo crawl around the ground pretending to be a dog.

“So?” I said.

“So, what?” she said meekly.

“So you called him? What happened? I mean, hasn’t it been months? What did he say?”

Becky sighed and looked away. “I just….I don’t know. I didn’t mean to call him. I just did. And he happened to answer. He was real friendly. We hadn’t spoken in seven months, I mean we texted and all, but it was nice to hear his voice. He’s still works for the Cable company, still living with that no-good friend Dwayne of his, up in Edmond. He said he’s good, his family is good. He said he misses me.”

I audibly sighed, knowing where this was headed: Becky back to Ray and back to sadness.

“I know, I know,” she said with shame in her voice. “But I just keep hoping that things will work out and that we can get back together and be a family again, you know?”

I did know, as I had done the same with Thad for so many on and off years. But whereas I always knew Thad would put the bottle down as come around, I did not have the same confidence in The Looser Ray.

“Did you tell him about…” and I pointed a Pablo, who was now throwing rocks at the ducks.

“Parar!!” Becky bellowed, and Pablo jumped at least six inches off the ground and ran to hide behind a tree. “Yeah, yeah I did.”

“Did he sound-I mean, what’d he say?”

“Well, he didn’t really seem that happy about it. I mean, he kinda laughed and said I was stupid for doing it, because of all the expense. But then I told him I got a monthly check from the government, and then he said he kinda thought it was a good idea. He even suggested I get a whole herd of them, to pay all the bills. That what he said ‘a whole herd.’”

She laughed but I did not.

“It just was weird,” she continued. “I really thought he would want to come down and meet Pablo, but he didn’t say that.”

She went silent and we both watched Pablo continue to throw rocks at the ducks.

I knew Ray was a terrible person, but Becky did not. My impression was that Ray had even less use for children than I did, but I don’t think Becky ever realized that, being so baby-focused herself. So I never understood how she thought bringing in a four-year old Mexican would in any way entice Ray into coming back to her. But she did, or had least had, as now it seemed like maybe she was realizing the error in her judgment.

“So, are you going see him?” I asked to break the silence.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I bet he’s been seeing someone. That may be why he left me. He didn’t say, but I think he’s single again as he said he’d had a lot of time on his hands lately. And he wouldn’t mind seeing me…”

“Uh, huh.” It was all so rough, so common; I felt for her and all the crap I ever had to go through with Thad.

“So we talked about meeting up in Bricktown for dinner-and I didn’t tell Mom this part-but we talked about meeting up in Bricktown for dinner at Mickey Mantle’s Steak House, and we talked about it and all, but when I mentioned how excited Pablo would be to meet him, and Ray told me to leave Pablo at home, I mean with Mom, and just come up alone.”

“Yeah.” Jesus.

“But he didn’t say it nice, like he wanted alone time with me. He just said it like he didn’t want Pablo to come at all, like he didn’t even want to meet him.” She sniffed and then wiped her eyes. “And I just didn’t understand, I mean, I thought he would be so happy to meet him, you know, but he wasn’t. And he asked me if I had him permanently…and if I could give him back…”

“And what did you say?” I said as clinically as possible.

“Yes. I mean, I just want a man in my life. I don’t have Dad, I should at least get Ray…”

We were silent.

“Are you going to meet him?”
“Yeah. Mom’s going to watch Pablo next Saturday. But she doesn’t know that’s

where I’m going , so don’t tell her. I just don’t know how to talk to her about it, you know…” and Becky wiped her eyes a bit more and leaned her head to my shoulder.

My heart felt for her; the Sophie’s Choice of her new precious son or the lunk of a delinquent husband. .

Pablo ran over and put his hand in hers and looked up in her face and whispered something imploringly to her in Spanish. She pulled away from me to wipe her eyes and whispered something back to him back and they hugged tightly. When they released there were little tears in his brown eyes too.

“Well, this is just silly!” Becky said standing. “We’re supposed to be having fun, and look at me being so silly.” And then to Pablo, “Do you like patos? Do you want to see more patos?”

“Patos! Patos!” he sang, and they took each other’s hands and began to walk back down to the water, she humming loudly.

At that moment I hoped to God she made the right choice. I also realized the necessity of me writing to Dad, if not for me, than for Becky.

51. I’m Writing A Letter to Daddy

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:20:00 +0000

Thad never liked it when I worked alone in my Study. I don’t know if he thought I was arranging liaisons through Facebook or was carrying on a clandestine e-mail relationship with some faraway Cypriot pen-pal, but he would never leave me alone for long with he heard the click click click of my keyboard. And as much as I complained about his recent moving out, one of the perks was that I had gotten a hell of a lot more writing done lately with him gone.

But on this fine summer morning, as I sat in my Study and secretly tried to compose a letter to my father, I faltered every time my dear Thaddeus swung through.

“You doing okay?” Thad said, sticking his head in the curtained doorway of my Study.

“Yup, thanks,” I said curtly, not to offend, but to be left alone.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll be watching Ellen,” and he tripped off to the Den.

I looked back to my laptop, stymied.

Part of the problem was that I had yet to even tell Thad about finding the letter from my father two months ago in Mom’s safety deposit box , and certainly had not told him that I was contemplating actually writing back to Dad. I thought Thad would just laugh or call me stupid, just out of jealousy. And this was my thing; my personal decision to make. Thad didn’t need to know about it, specifically if I did write Dad and he never wrote back, that way Thad would never know that I failed. Plus, ever since the whole Spandex Hair Mane thing came up, I had trusted Thad even less than normal, so why even tell him now?

“So, what are you doing?”Thad said, swinging back into the Study, holding a glass. “I thought you looked like you need a drink.”

“Thanks,” I said, quickly minimizing the screen. So far all I had written was:

Hello Father. This is your son Michael. Hope this finds you well.

Thad handed me the glass of Diet Coke and came up behind me to massage my shoulders, which was also the best angle for him to see my monitor. “What you working on?”

“My book.” I lied.

“Oh,” he sighed. “The one about musicals?”

“Yeah, Whores in Musicals.” I did not like to lie, but in a relationship it was necessary to lie some times. “I found some new sources I was just reading…”

Thad sat down behind me in a lounge chair. “So you really think Becky is going to give up the little brown boy for The Looser Ray?”

I pivoted to face him. “I don’t know.” I had filled Thad in on the Duck Pond story. “I can’t imagine-she loves that little kid so much-but she really wants Ray back.”

“Poor thing,” Thad sighed. “I don’t even like kids and I would pick Pablo over The Looser Ray any day of the week. But she’s so crazy even I can hear the voices in her head.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” I realized Thad just wanting to make conversation so I would pay attention to him and not my computer, but I wanted to get back on tack. “So, hey, I was working…”

“I mean, do you think it just completely controls her?” he continued.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“The Big V? Her V-Jayjay?” He said, pointing to his crotch. “Do you think this is all because her fertility clock is ticking so loud it keeps her up at night?”

“Stop it,” I said with an eye roll.

“No, think about it. If it’s, like, ‘You need to get busy because we need a man!’” he said in a loud monster voice.

“Okay, stop it,” I said trying not to laugh, as that would just encourage him. One of Thad’s favorite impressions was of Becky’s Angry Talking Vagina, as he called it.

“I think you should take me to dinner with Ray,” Thad continued in the monster voice, moving his pelvis as if it were talking, “And just chuck that little nut brown kid to the curb! We got some babymaking of our own to do!”

“Stop it!” I laughed. “Look I am writing.”

In the monster voice he said, “’But can’t I stay and watch? Please?” pointing his pelvis at me.

I forced myself to quit smiling and said, “Look, I really need to finish this part up…..”

“Fine, fine, spoilt sport!” he huffed in his normal voice, rising with a dismissive shake of his hand. “I’ll go start lunch.”

As he sulked out I called, “Thanks…”

He just grunted.

I had no idea what I wanted to say to my father. I had not seen him in 27 years. He had never made an effort to contact me, besides the letter I now had, and I had certainly not made any motion to contact him. After decades of hating and resenting him, and years of therapy, now I was just rather numb on the whole thing. The peaceful realization I had come to was that I felt sorry for him, sorry that he had such a crappy life that he couldn’t even keep his family around, and felt sorry for whatever looser he had become. And I was okay with that.

Was this now the time to reopen that wound? But with Becky edging closer and closer to Ray, and the detrimental effects of that, maybe it was time for me to make the big brother move and try to bring Dad back into the fold. Would it help? Would it hurt?

From under my keyboard I pulled out the lilac letter with the slanted cursive writing and read it for about the thousandth time.

Trudy-

Was forwarded your letter. Glad you are well, as am I. Happy that Rebecca is engaged. It is fine if she wants to write me. Use this address:

1775 East Tropicana Avenue

Las Vegas, Nevada 89119

Give to Michael too, if he wants to write. Hope he is happy too.

-Charles

I guess it couldn’t hurt to just write him, could it? What if he never wrote back? Was a dick? Was in prison? Was a drug addict? Wanted money? Had a full family that he loved dearly? Had another son he liked better…

Hearing footsteps, I shoved the letter away.

Thad stuck his head back in the door. “Charlotte just told me a joke.”
“She did?” I smiled, against my will.

“Yup!” he said. ‘What kind of sex do S&M dogs like to have?”

“I don’t know…” I grinned.

“Rough!” he barked.

I laughed. God love Thad for breaking my mania, for being there for me when Dad was not, possible Spandex Hair Mane affair or not. “That’s funny…”

“That’s what I told her,” he said. “So do you want meatloaf or pasta for lunch?”

“Meatloaf, duh.”

“Then meatloaf it is,” he said, “And sorry to bother you, Dr. Professor.”

“No problem, Mr. Plebian.” I smiled.

“What’s a plebian?”

“Someone who does not know the definition of plebian,” I grinned.

“Whatever, dork.” And he walked off.

After a few minute of staring at the blank screen, I just began to write.

Hello Father.

This is your son Michael. Hope this finds you well. We have not spoken in quite a long time. I found this address rather on accident a few months ago, from the letter you sent Mother in 2004. I decided to write to possibly open up the lines of communication, after so many years. I am well, healthy, happy, have a…

And then I stopped. He didn’t know I was gay. Damn!. Do I just say it? Flop it out there? Or sugar coat it? Would it make him even more disappointed in me, if he’s a lumberjack or a NASCAR driver or something else über-masculine? But, really, what more did I have to lose? So I just went with the truth.

…partner named Thaddeus. We have been together on and off for twenty-three years now. I am 42, a professor of English Literature at the University, and own a house in Norman, near there. We have a cat. Life is very good. Becky just turned 40 and is also still in town, working at a travel agency. She was married and now has an foster care child she is raising. She is well, and has been speaking of you

lately. She misses you.

And I stopped. Do I just go ahead and write what I’m feeling, or hold back? I again just went with the truth. What the Hell.

I miss you. We would like for you to be in our lives again. You should write to me some time, if you want. If not, I understand, and I hope your life is good and full.

I added my address and read and reread what I had just written. It was honest and true, and that was good. And I just made a decision that this was it, and I was going to send it to him. I printed it up, signed it “Take Care, Michael”, folded it, and put it in a think white envelope of the best paper I owned. In my best cursive, I address the outside: Charles Stiles.

Looking it back over, I almost tore it in half, thinking how crazy it was what I was doing. But then I stopped: why not? What could it hurt? And maybe it would help Becky. Or would it just cause us both even more pain? Was this panacea or Pandora?

Hearing footsteps, I pushed the letters away and minimized the screen.

“Hey, I came up with a new drag name?” Thad said, coming into the room with a big smile. This was another of his favorite games.

“What?” I said with a grin.

“Marsha Dimes.”

“Fabulous,” I laughed. “What was the one last week?”

“Rita Tard.”

“Yup!” I laughed, “And if you’re a male stripper?”

“Chicken Coconuts,” he said doing a conspicuously lewd dance. “And if I was a female stripper it’s Tanya Fajitas.” Then doing a strip club announcer voice he said, “And here she is ladies and gentleman, dancing just one night here at the Big Panties Club, put your hands together for Miss Tanya Fajitas.’”

“Because she’s classy like that…” I laughed.

“Yes, because she’s classy like that…” he snorted, clapping his hands.

We both laughed until we had to catch our breath.

‘You know you can’t stay out of here when I’m writing.” I said, “You totally have ADD...”

“Attention deficit disorder?”

“Yes, when you have a deficit of attention you cause disorder.” I laughed.

“Ha ha!” he said. “Fine, I’ll let you be. But the meatloaf will be done in about thirty minutes.”

“Great! I look forward to it.”

As he walked off, I reached into my desk drawer and got a stamp and went and put the letter out in the mailbox.

Later as we sat to eat Thad’s magnificent meatloaf, I heard the mailman snap the mailbox lid open and shut: the letter was gone.

Now it was up to Dad.

42. The Inherent Hierarchy of Automobiles

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:10:00 +0000

“And what was that?” Thad snapped, pointing out the window of the truck.

“What?” I said, making a left hand turn to head toward Tuesday Morning. He was in a mood.

“You just cut that car off.” His voice was shrill, a sound I hated.

“No, I didn’t. It was a four way stop and I got to go.”

“No, no,” he countered. “You got there after that car. She should have gone first.”

“No, we got there at the same time” I said exasperated, not in the mood to deal with his crankiness, but due to his now almost holy status per the whole Gaga thing, had to just smile and continue nicely. “She was in a minivan and we’re in a truck. There is an inherent hierarchy of automobiles, and trucks always beat minivans, so I got to go.”

“What?” he said incredulously.

“A truck always trumps a minivan at a four-way stop if they arrive at the same time. It’s just logical. It’s a minivan, full of kids, usually with a harried mom driving. She’s not taking any risks, she’s going to wait. So a truck beats that and gets to go first.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” he scoffed. “The person who was there first should go first.”

“Yes, but if both cars get there at the same time and everyone just waits on the other person to go first, especially a minivan, no one will go, and it will take forever. So truck trumps minivan and gets to go first.”

“Okay, that’s stupid, but whatever.”

“No, it’s perfectly logical.”

We were silent as we drove on. With no real impetus or particular reason Thad had spent all of lunch today moodily sulking. On the second time I asked him what was wrong, he had sighed, “Just sad about my birthday.” And that was before he got the phone call from his Mother this afternoon.

I could tell his 40^th was weighing heavy on him. One: he seldom spoke of it, and two: when he did, he was terse. He had already told me he wanted “No party-no surprise! No nothing! Got it? It’s just another day, but with presents. I just want it to be over.” I was not going to disavow him, but wanted to make sure he was not disappointed. When I had told him this he had said, “Oh, don’t worry. I will be disappointed no matter what.” He was sullen that way. So there was already a general pallor draped over the entire impending event that every day was slouching closer towards us.

And then this afternoon, once I was back at school, he called my office to say he had just received a frantic phone call from his mother about his grandmother. Ma’am had been found by a neighbor man late last night, wondering down the street in her nightgown. She knew she lived somewhere but could not remember exactly where. The neighbor, who had known her for years, walked her home and delivering her to a terrified Esteban. He had called Patty, Thad’s Mom, this afternoon and told her what happened, and then Patty had called Thad, frantic. From what Thad said, it sounded like Patty had drug poor Esteban over the coals for letting Ma’am out of his sight.

I had asked Thad when Ma’am first started showing signs of Alzheimer’s, but he refused to talk about it. Instead he instructed me that as soon as I got out of class today we needed to start his birthday shopping-a solid month in advance- so he could make sure I got him just the perfect gifts. And I agreed, knowing he was deeply bothered, and now not just about his birthday.

“So what trumps a truck?” Thad asked as we came within view of the strip mall that contained Tuesday Morning, one of his favorite stores.

“A bigger truck. A bigger truck always wins.” We pulled up to a stop light to idle.

“What about a school bus?”

“Oh, a school bus always wins, of course,” I answered. “It’s got kids on it. That’s just logical.”

“But the minivan has kids…”

“Yes, but the school bus has a professional driver, unlike the minivan driver. The school bus driver knows what they’re doing. That’s their job: they drive. So they go first. The same goes for emergency vehicles, service vehicles, and any car larger or more expensive than yours always wins, as long it’s not a minivan. Minivans are like the proverbial Job of the car world: they always lose.”

“So a corvette would beat this truck?”

“Absolutely. And why? Anyone with a corvette has a lot of money and something to prove, and is probably a little-dicked lawyer, so you just let them go. Otherwise they’ll probably just smash into you and then sue you over it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, not at all, really.”

Tuesday Morning seemed to brighten his day, and mine as well. It was like the fabulous attic to my home, full of tony well-priced treasures. We walked among the silver picture frames and fingered the decorative figurines before stopping to gawk at discounted Waterford.

“Oh, this is nice.” Thad said, picking up a vase and handing it to me, “Feel how heavy.”

As I took it, “Good lord! It must weigh ten pounds!”

He took it back, a glisten in his eyes. “Yeah. Too bad I can’t have one in my new house.”

“Why?”

He turned dramatically to me and lowered his voice, “You know that terrible flowery vase Mother gave me last Christmas that I just hated?”

“The Italian footed Capodimonte?”

“Yeah. Bettina-the-Black-Witch broke it.”

“You’re kidding?” I gasped, clutching the pearls. “How?”

“I don’t know. She had people over one night last week. I had it on the mantle. She wasn’t even sure if it was Bayne or her, something about roughhousing. But when I got up, it was in pieces all over the floor. She said she would pay me for it, but she hasn’t.”

“Does she drink a lot?” I said before I could meter myself. He had been rather tightlipped about Bettina lately, so I had to take any inroad I could to glean information on their doings. But I had to be sly or he would shut down.

“No,” he snapped, turning away and walking off. He had shut down.

Damn my aggression! I still didn’t think he was drinking, but wondered how much she was, as it couldn’t be easy on him to watch her booze it up. And she had told me she woud watch him-Huh! They were just going on two months of living together, and it had been a rocky road so far.

“Was it a party? Did she say?” I said following Thad, trying to reengage him.

“I don’t know…” he said walking over to look at champagne flutes.

“But you were there, right? So did she have a lot of people over?” I laughed to sound nonchalant, but know it sounded totally fake.

“I don’t know. I was asleep. I have to wear ear plugs to bed now. And don’t interrogate me.”

“I’m not.” I lied and then we were silent for a second until I said, “Sorry about the vase.”

“Yeah, me too. Mom will kill me when she finds out. It was old.”

And then I gasped, “What about Ma’am’s porcelain opera figurines?”

“I know, right?” he said, “Yes, thank God! I moved them into my bedroom and put them in on that table in front of the window. Bettina and her friends are not allowed in there.”

“Well, good.”

“Oh, look at this…” he said moving us down the aisle to inspect interesting tins of exotic spices.

We then wondered over to Turkish rugs and he suddenly piped-up, “Oh, I’m going on the Friday Art Walk with Bettina.”

“What?” I said hurt. “I thought we could go to that?” Norman began having monthly 2^nd Friday Art Walks of the local down town galleries and stores last year, and Thad and I went to them on and off. It was a nice chance to see people and be seen and a good excuse to see local art, some of which was actually worth seeing.

“Well, I’m telling you now I have to go with Bettina. She just begged and begged. Bayne’s band Eyeball is playing at that coffeehouse next to the Diner during it, and I have to go sit with Bettina, and watch her watch him.”

“I wanted to go on the Art Walk,” I whined. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“Go with someone else. You have my blessing.” He pretended to wave a magic wand over me.

“Yes, but that’s three days from now.” I waved me hands as if to cancel his stupid magic spell. “You know all of my friends are old and stodgy and won’t want to go on such short notice. So am I just supposed to sit at home while you go gallivant around town?”

“I’m sorry your friends suck.” He said in a baby doll voice. “Then go by yourself.”

“I can’t go by myself. I’d be scared,” I pouted.

“Oh, quit being a coward you big hairy girl, and just go.”

“Coward? Really? Have you ever had to stand in front of 150 people and lecture before?” I said in my most professorial tone.

“Yes.” He said smugly.

“Uh, huh,” I grunted. “Standing in front of a roomful of people and saying, ‘Hi my name is Thad C., and I’m an alcoholic’ doesn’t count.”

And as I said it, his eyes narrowed and I knew I had gone too far; cut too close to his gin-soaked reality.

He took a step back and I braced myself to be punched in the arm, or worse, but instead he just laughed, “That’s really funny.” Then he looked away. “You’ll pay for it. But that’s really funny.” And then he staunchly walked off.

After standing alone and frowning at lace valances for a while, I cooled off. We didn’t have set plans Friday, in fact I had kind of forgotten about the Art Walk altogether until he mentioned it. He shouldn’t have made fun of me about not having anyone else to go with, though. I was just jealous when he was social without me. And without him, I was usually left at home alone as he was my main source of entertainment now.

We ran into each other on the aisle of decorative candles. We grunted as we passed, both still brooding.

“Hey,” he said quietly, turning to me.

“Yes?” I said expectantly, eyes wide, lips parted.

“Mom asked me today to go up and check on Ma’am this weekend. And since I’m going to be busy Friday night, would you like to go visit with me on Saturday? You’ve said you wanted to see her again.”

“Yes," I smiled."I would really like that.” I liked it when he tried. I let the Art Walk grievance fade from my mind, although I was already plotting on how I could go on my own so I could stalk him there.

“Cool,” he smiled, and then pointing up exclaimed, “Oh look! Ornamental birdhouses!”

Back in the car we both seemed happier. He had pointed out a few items he would not be ‘displeased’ with for his birthday, and I was thrilled with the prospect of accompanying him to Ma’am’s, as I had only met her that once last Christmas. Really any interaction he allowed me to have with his family made me feel special; a part of his secret world.

“What if two identical trucks pulled up at a four way stop at the same,” he asked.

“That never happens.”

“Well, sometimes it must be.” He waved his hands in the air.

“Then red goes first, then black, and then the other more passive colors.”

“So a red truck would go before this truck?” he asked, motioning to my silver truck.

“Yes.”

“What if they are the same color and the same make?”

“The younger driver goes first.”

“That is just ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. Younger drivers are more cavalier than older drivers, as younger drivers are father away from death. There are written and unwritten rules in society, and this is just one of them. Without rules, civilization would be chaos.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I don’t think so.”

I just let it go, knowing he needed to win one today.

43. Party Line

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:09:00 +0000

The pert blonde Sorority girl sighed and tried to well up, but I wasn’t buying it. My office was hot and I wanted her gone so I could finish grading and then go home and lay in my hammock.

“It’s just that I meant to finish the paper and have it in on time,” she continued in her ne’er-do-well Texas cadence, “but the day before my Mom called and told me I had to come home-back down to Dallas- because my brother was, like, in a car wreck, so I just went down, but he’s fine…” She stopped and looked at me expecting some kind of emotional response.

“Oh good,” I said.

“Yay, right,” she continued. “But we didn’t find out till late that he had just broken his arm and would be okay. Yay, so then Mom told me to stay the night since she doesn’t like me driving after dark on the highway by myself, so by the time I got back the next day and all I didn’t have time to finish the paper, so I just kinda skipped class.”

“Jessica, why didn’t you do it that night and turn it in Friday?”

“Well, I had another test to study for that day, you know, a Biology test, and it was really hard. But I finally did your paper yesterday and I have it here to turn in now.”

“I said I would not take any late papers after Friday and it’s a week later and now you want to turn it in?”

“Yeah, but Dr. Stiles, I have it here, and it’s really good and all and I’m really sorry. I really enjoyed the books and Shakespeare and all and stuff and learned a lot. I mean if you could take it that would be great.” She held up a red plastic notebook and looked at me earnestly.

I rubbed my bald head. “But if I take yours this late, then I will have to take everyone else’s….” I trailed off. I hated this part of the job: If I took it, I would break my word and my moral code, but if I didn’t I was a jerk that could ruin her GPA and her chance to get into a good graduate school.

My desk phone rang and I grabbed for it, holding a stern finger up to her to wait. “Dr. Stiles,” I barked.

“And a toot-toot-a-lout to you too! This is the indubitable Dr. Branch,” Oliver sang. “You rang?”

“Hold please,” I said gruffly, rolling my eyes and deciding just to cave. Frowning, I held my hand out to her with a look that said, ‘Give it here.’

She smiled broadly and handed me the red plastic notebook. “Thank you so much,” She whispered loudly and twangily.

I pursed a tight smiled and pointed to the door, for her to leave.

“Thank you, oh my God, thank you,” she whispered as she left, bowing slightly, arms out, hair windswept.

As my office door shut, I turned back to the phone, “Hey.”

“So what’s up?” Oliver asked.

“Crap with students” I sighed.

“Ah, little rapscallions that they are. I’m at the Reference Desk. Dead dull here, finals and all. Everyone studying.”

“Hey, I was going to see if you had any desire to go on the Art Walk with me tomorrow night? Should be fun, fun.”

“With you and Thad?” Oliver asked carefully.

“No, just me. Thad’s got other plans.” Oliver had learned his lesson not to participate with Thad around, as Thad was invariably terrible to him, and by terrible I meant rotten, like teenage lunchroom rotten.

“So I’m plan B?” Oliver scoffed.

“No, no…” I lied.

“Hey wait, hold on,” Oliver said putting the phone down. I heard him talking to a student, “No, that’s a book, and with that call number it will be up on the 3^rd floor….Yes, a book. It’s a square thing made of paper full of knowledge with pages that don’t plug in….Yes, it’ll be up on the third floor like I said.” He came back to the phone and sighed dramatically, “Children.”

“So do you want to go?”

“Sorry, can’t,” he said. “I’ve got coffee with that Swedish girl I met at Borders. Too bad it’s not Swedish twins! Now that would be vo-dee-o-dodo!”

“That’s too bad,” I snickered, not able to imagine anything gayer coming out of his mouth than a Laverne and Shirley sex reference.

“But we should do coffee soon.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, stymied.

“Oh Lord,” he exclaimed. “Looks like I got a whole horde of exchange students heading right towards me and they look hungry, so I’ll call you back. Ciao.”

“Bye.”

Cradling the phone I looked down at Jessica’s red plastic notebook and wondered if I was a sucker or a saint. I wanted to go the Art Walk to prove to Thad that if he had other plans, I could have other plan too. But with Oliver busy my options were distinctly limited. I put the receiver to me ear and mentally debated, then just went ahead and called Becky. After a few rings she answered.

I heard her say, “un minuto…” and then “Hello?”

“Hey Beck.”

“Hey. Ola. What’s up?”

We caught-up briefly. She had now had Pablo for just over a month, and they were getting along better every day, especially as her Spanish was improving. He had ceased crying all the time, specifically as they now watched a lot of Dora the Explorer and Telemundo together. Becky had gone back to work part time and Mom was helping out babysitting during the day, so life for them was beginning to stabilize, and Becky seemed happier for it, which was surprising and great.

“Hey,” I began, jumping to the grist of my call. “Would you two like to go on the downtown Art Walk with me tomorrow night?” This was my first time to ask the two of them to do something.

“That’s really nice of you.” Becky said, sounding truly honored. “I bet Pablo would really like that.” And then to him she said, “De! De!” And then back to me, “What time?”

“I don’t know. About seven?”

“Oh, that’s really past his bedtime. I am trying to keep him on a set schedule, you know. I feed him about six and put him down about seven.”

“That makes sense.”

“Yeah. But maybe we could all go to the Duck Pond together sometime? He loves the ducks.” And then to him she said, “Patos! Patos!”and then quacked and he quacked back and rattled off something long and complicated in Spanish. She responded with “Si! Patos agua amor.” And then back to me, “He loves the ducks.”

“Don’t we all?” I sighed. “Okay, look, I’m in my office grading, so I should go…” but then she cut me off.

“You know Father’s Day is coming up, right?”
“Yeah.” I said tentatively. “So? Are you baking a cake for Smith?”

“Hell no!” she whispered, then back to her normal tone. “It just seems like…it would just be nice, with Father’s Day…I would just like Pablo to meet Dad sometime, you know?”

I was silent.

“Did you decide to contact him?”

“No.”

I thought about the letter sitting in the back of my file cabinet at home. I had had it for two months and still had not told Thad about it. Having it just made me feel better; like I had a part of Dad, I was part of his secret world.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, sounding uncomfortable. “You just hadn’t mentioned it, and I didn’t know what you decided…” and she trailed off.

“Yup.” I said pivoting my chair to look out the big window at all of the passing students and wondered how many of them knew their real fathers.

“But we should totally go to the Duck Pond and play soon,” she continued, back in her lively tone. “Pablo would love that.” In the back ground I heard him say “Duck Pond” in English and Becky say, “Yes! Si! Duck Pond!” And then back to me, “Look, gotta go. I’ll call this weekend. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I sat there, totally bummed out, regretting even calling Becky: Now I had to go to the stupid Duck Pond with her and that little crying Mexican, and I missed Dad. Great.

To avoid the emotional rut I went back to grading, longing for my office hours to be over. The papers for my Shakespeare Comedies class were both better and far worse than I had ever seen before.

About thirty minutes later my phone rang again, “A toot-toot-a-lout to you too!” Oliver sang.

“What’s up?”

“I just called the Swiss Miss Gretchles about our date tomorrow and she totally cancelled on me.” I could hear him making his terrible little boy pouty face on the other end of the phone and I cringed.

“Yeah, so?”

“So you and I got a date for tomorrow night! Just two dudes out for a night on the town. Too bad you don’t drink anymore. Remember how fun those times were?

“Yeah,” I said, not remembering many, as when I did drink, boy could I drink. “That’s great. So you want me to pick you up about seven?”

“Sure.” He beamed, “It’s just too bad about Gretchles. I mean, she’s so hot, like spicy, Vietnamese buffet three devil heads zesty, oh!”

“Yeah, gosh.” I made myself not laugh.

Here’s the thing about Oliver: he lied. He lied a lot. He lied to himself and thus he lied to others. I had no idea if this ‘Gretchels’ was even a real person as I had never met her, nor met anyone who had met her. I had learned that you could believe very little of what Oliver said about women or his sex life, but he was on the up-and-up about most everything else. And I just felt so sorry for him and his deep, deep closeted life, that I just accepted it. So this level of fictitious conversation between us was completely normal for our world.

“Like sassy, jalapenos burns my bottom red, red hot!” and he squealed and did a Charo “Cuchi-cuchi.”

“Yeah, okay, I’m grading…”

“And I’m still out at the Reference Desk, so see ya tomorrow night.”

“Bye.”

As I hung up I heard him say to someone, “No, the bathroom is that way. Good God! How you kids even feed yourselves amazes me!”

44. Art Walk

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:08:00 +0000

“Yoo hoo! Stephanie! Yoo hoo!” Oliver cried, his tiny frame jumping up and down as he waved madly at someone across the busy street.

“Would you stop it?” I hissed, “People are starting to stare.”

“What?” He spun around to pout at me. “So! I swear to God it's Stephanie Banner over there and I haven’t seen her in eons.” And then he turned back around and began bleating again at the random crowd of girls across the street, “YOOOO-HOOOO! Stephanie Darling! ‘Tis I! Oliver!”

I turned and walked off, trying to look like I did not know him.

The Art Walk was not going as well as I had planned. First, Oliver had apparently decided to dress as an extra from Newsies: He was in knickers, buckle shoes, an argyle sweater vest over a poufy poet shirt and tartan tam tiled just so, of course. Why? I have no idea, and he did not offer any explanation besides an opened handed, “Likey?” when I first walked into his house to pick him up. Second, he was tipsy on wine, taking advantage of my permanent sobriety to act as his designated driver, which was pissing me off. And third, he would not shut the Hell up. I don’t know if it was the wine or his darling outfit, of if he just hadn’t been let out of the home recently, but he was on fire, a big gay, gay, gay fire.

“YOOOOOD-HOOOOD! Stephie Baby!” Oliver crooned.

An elderly couple walked by and looked at me pityingly, like I had an R-word child who had just pooped himself.

“Oh!” Oliver laughed shrilly, waving his hands over his face, “That’s not Stephanie at all! How silly of me!” And then back to me, “So which gallery do you want to hit next?”

“This one.” And I pulled him into the closest empty-looking gallery, just to get him off the street.

It was a dank place with ridiculous Technicolor fish paintings hung about, as if it were an entire store of art for your cabana. At least it wasn’t crowded.

The Art Walks were cute little affairs, begun by the burgeoning city art community last year to drum up business. There were about 15 little places to visit among the historic old Main Street downtown buildings. There were two good galleries, four okay galleries, five or six places with crafty art, one or two smoky/skinny jeans/funny facial hair hipster hangouts, and a scattering of coffee and or gift/antique shops. At present we were in one of the okay galleries.

All-in-all the Art Walks made for a nice evening wondering around, seeing and being seen by the art sect. Or at least it had always been with Thad. But with Oliver it was a different story altogether. Oliver and I used to do things like this all the time, but since Thad and I encoupled four years ago, I hadn’t gone out in public with Oliver in a while. And I guess I had forgotten how terrible he could be when he was ‘on.’ But since we had arrived an hour ago, he had wanted to talk to absolutely everyone he saw, consume at least one free plastic glass of wine in each gallery, and laugh uproariously at any little thing. And as we had already been to 4 galleries, he had as many glasses of wine, as well as 2 canapés, a handful of mushroom caps, and some sort of prescription pills I watched him take from his pocket and chew up like Flintstone chewables. Whatever the case, he was being loud and ferocious, and way too publically gay for my subdued tastes.

“Oh, I lOOOOOVE this one,” Oliver said, running over to another stupid fish painting.

I snorted and walked off in the exact opposite direction.

As I frowned at a particularly ridiculous dolphin painting, I wondered how soon it would be before we ran into Thad. He was to be at the coffee shop Eyeball was playing at tonight, and it was our next stop. I had told Thad earlier about my plans with Oliver and all Thad had said was, “Fine. Just don’t let him near me,” since they just hated each other. But I did want to run into him, just to show him how much fun I could have without him. And maybe catch him drinking. Was there anything wrong with that? A little bit of spying? No, I didn’t think so either.

“Michael Stiles?” A voice beside me said.

I turned to see The Two Bobs-Bob and Robert-a couple than I had met through friends-of-friends a few years ago, when they were brought to few of my thematic cocktail parties. They were a few years older, Bob a landscaper and Robert a dentist, both clean-cut and all smiles, and both alcoholics.

“Hey guys!” I said and we all twittered and hugged, as the gays are apt to do.

“Where you been?” Robert asked, “We haven’t seen you around at any parties.”

“Well, yeah. I’ve been around…” I knew where this was leading, as I had not run into them in a long time, and I was uncomfortable with the trajectory.

“Are you still with Thad?” Bob asked, with a head lilt.

“Yes, oh yes. It’s going really well.”

“Really?” they both said in rather surprised unison.

“Yes,” I snapped, and here it was, what I didn’t want to admit, but had to: “Well, we quit drinking.”

“No!” Robert gasped, hands on hips.

“You’re kidding!” Bob said, and then a guffaw, “No wonder we haven’t seen you out at the bars!”

“Yeah, it’s been really good for us.” I smiled. “It helped us put things in perspective.”

“How long’s it been?” Robert asked.

“A year and a half.” I did not add that my last drink was September 26, 2009, or that Thad’s was June 26, 2010.

“No!” Robert gasped again.

“I know,” I said shaking my head. “It’s been really good though.”

“You two were such partiers,” Robert said, “I mean, you threw such great parties. We just thought you had dropped us from your guest list, since we hadn’t heard from you in such a while, didn’t we Hon?”

“Yeah. We thought we had pissed you off.” Bob said. “I mean, last time we saw you was at that amazing Midsummer Night’s Dream Garden Party you two hosted in, gosh…”

“Summer 2009,” Robert said.

“Yes, 2009!” Bob agreed, “Has it been that long? I mean we knew you were still in town and all, but we had no idea you were…”

“Sober,” I smiled. That had been a great party, one of our best. Immediately I felt stupid for having to give up a perfectly good vice-and a vast social life-because of Thad’s inability to control himself. But I knew it was for the best, the best for us, and Thad was worth it. But it had dramatically altered my life and in situations like this, where I had to explain myself to two of my previous parting buddies, both here holding little plastic glasses of wine, it made me wince.

“Well, good for you,” Bob said with great enthusiasm, like he had just heard my Mom had beaten cancer.

“Yup. Sober.” I smiled.

“I mean, and you don’t have to answer this,” Robert said in a quiet voice, “But, was it hard? Did you get…any help? You know…”

“He knows,” Bob said, putting his hand on Robert’s shoulder, who shook it off.

“No, no,” I smiled, “No AA. It wasn’t hard, just weird, to give up all of that socializing, all of the bars and parties and people. But we just stopped. And it was the best thing we could have done. We love each other and want to be together, but the drinking just wasn’t working. We would just drink and fight and that was no fun. So we just stopped, it wasn’t hard, just a change, for me. And we’ve never been better.” I did not mention that Thad had just moved out, as that was a completely different paranoid discussion.

“Well good for you!” Robert said taking a big drink of his wine.

Bob coughed and frowned at him and Robert shrugged and said, “What?” as he took another swelligant drink.

“And who do we have here?” Oliver said, pirouetted into the scene.

“Oh, hey,” I grimaced, “This is my friend Oliver Branch; we worth together at the University. Oliver, this is Bob and Robert.”

“Well, hello!” Oliver said with a grand bow and then all of the men shook hands and made genteel introductions.

“I don’t know about all of this,” Oliver said in his high camp tone, motioning around at the paintings, “But it all just seems, I don’t know, for the fish? You know, fish!” And then he laughed his petite, baby doll laugh uproariously.

The Two Bobs looked at each other and blanched, but then laughed along politely.

Mortified, I butted in, “Well, it was lovely to see you guys. Thad is around here somewhere, and I should find him, so we should go. Great to see you….”

“Oh, yes, it was…” Bob said and we made goodbye hugs with salutations.

“And you keep at it,” Robert said in a very Vacation Bible School sort of way, “We believe in you.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling vaguely insulted.

As they walked off Oliver leaned in to say, “Well, they seemed nice…for the gays…”

I just rolled my eyes.

45. Bayne’s Eyeball

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:07:00 +0000

“Do we have to stay here?”

“What?” I screamed over the death metal sodomizing my ears.

“DO WE!” Oliver repeated, “HAVE TO! STAY HERE!”

I looked around frantically. We had just walked in off the street to the coffee shop Thad was supposed to be at, but I couldn’t find him. The steamy hot place was packed with thrashing kids as Bayne’s 4-piece band Eyeball blared an oh-so-charming punk version of Rainbow Connection from the back stage. The tintinnabulation of the music ricocheted off the walls in a deafening lightening arch, making it feel like your ears were individually dying. Bayne, who looked like a zombiefied Jim Morrison, danced and waved the microphone before the mesmerized crowd like a banshee out for vengeance.

Oliver tugged on my arm and I watched him mouth “Please, God!” but I was unable to hear him over the moaning and the groaning of the ungodly song’s chorus: “…The lovers! The dreamers! And me!”

I shook my head, ‘No,' and looked around frantically. I wanted to find Thad, just to say ‘hi,’ see how he was, and rub Oliver in his face. The teenage Goth crowd before us was breaking into a seismic mosh pit, which we were in the distinct danger of being drawn into. People began flailing and screaming; one girl genuflected madly before being pulled to the floor by the crush. Out of the crowd at the front, Bettina jumped onstage and began tantrically beating a tambourine against her crotch like she was trying to kill something.

The crowd grew and swelled with each screamed note of the song. As the music hit a fevered pitch and Bayne started throwing mutilated Muppet parts out into the audience, I turned to make sure we could still see the door, and just as I did the most beautiful man I had ever seen walked in and everything in my world stopped. He was my age, tall and thin, with sandy ringlet curls and a strong jaw. With a heart-shaped face and pale blue eyes, he drew the last draw off of cigarettes before tossing it out the door behind him, the smoke escaping his sumptuous, red, red lips. There was nothing in the world so red as those lips. Suffer me to kiss those lips.

And then I realized it was Thad, my Thad! And I giggled; how silly to not have first recognized him, but how real to know how I felt about him: My God did I love him.

He saw me and waved and I blushed and looked away, a schoolgirl crush across my cheeks. When I looked back up he was still waving, but this time to follow him back outside.

Grabbing Oliver, he with his hands covering his ears in sheer tortured terror, I drug us through the pogoing crowd and back out to the Main Street sidewalk

Thad waited there, smiling “Loud, huh?” he yelled, as we scuttled away from the door and the noise.

“Good God!” I said, grabbing to hug him, so happy to see him. I had no idea how I had missed him.

Thad hugged back and whispered, “You okay?”

I pulled back to look into his eyes, “Yeah, I just didn’t recognize you in there and it was weird. I’m glad it’s you.”

“Okay,” he laughed.

“That was just terrible!” Oliver screamed, bumbling up to us, as was his way. “Can they even legally call that music? And if they do, they should be sued! We should sue them. Sue them right now. I know lawyers, I do. ”

“Hello,” Thad said with a sigh and a snide roll of his eyes.

Oliver continued without acknowledging him, “I mean, where do they even get off? I’ve heard the death rattle of feral cats run over by trucks screech in more dulcet tones.”

Trying to cover for Oliver’s snub, I jumped in, “Hey, so how’s your night going?”

Thad frowned at Oliver like he was a bug. I cleared my throat and he looked up to me and smiled, “It’s okay. Bettina is just being Bettina….”

He proceeded to tell us a long story about Bettina not being ready on time, Bettina having to change three times, Bettina drinking too much wine at the house, Bettina falling down on stage, and so on, but what I listened to was him: He didn’t sound or look drunk. He had been smoking, fine, I was learning to live with that, even though I envied him for it, but he seemed sober.

I told him about our adventures so far and Oliver added things here and there, but mainly just tugged at his ears in an infected sort of way. It was just so weird to run into Thad when he was out with someone else; it was like we were and weren’t together which was a feeling I did not like.

In the midst of another story about Bettina, Thad kinda slurred a word, so I refocused my attention to follow his cadence to make sure there was not a slip into drunkenness. I could not discern one, but the problem was that Thad always talked like a drunken gay puppet, so to tell if he was actually drunk or not, especially in the height of my paranoia, was a challenge. But by the time we had finished catching up, I had decided he was not, and felt much better. My spy mission was accomplished: he was a good and true boyfriend.

From inside, the music suddenly came to a crashing halt and people poured outside to smoke. We three moved farther down the sidewalk away from them.

“So where are you going after this?” Thad asked.

“Oh, probably just back to the car. Maybe go get ice cream afterward.”

“Oh, I just adore ice cream!” Oliver said with his hands above his head.

“Children do.” Thad smiled.

“Now, now,” Oliver smiled falsely.

Bettina and Bayne pushed thought the crowd of smokers and by us, holding each other up, doing a Jim Beam shuffle.

“Hey!” Thad snapped at her.

“We’ll...we’ll….be back,” Bettina slurred, looking over to him. And then glassy-eyed to me, “Hey Mitchell!” She was so loaded. “We’ll be back. Don’t worry…”

Bane looked around and laughed to no one in particular, “We don’t fucking care…”

And they stumbled off, like Oklahoma’s own Sid and Nancy.

Thad looked over at me with sadness in his eyes, and I smiled a kind smile back at him.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. She’s drunk a lot now; ever since they got back together… he’s not a good influence…”

“She is so hot!” Oliver yelled, doing a little sex dance. “Hot mamma jamma!”

“Shut-up, Ollie,” Thad snapped, then to me. “Let me go make sure she’s not going to try and drive. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll see you then…” I said sadly: and with that my previous dreamy infatuation with Thad was again broken as Bettina had won him yet again.

“ Bye!” And Thad sprinted off down the street, where they had stopped and Bayne appeared to be peeing on a park bench in plain view, there on Main Street, USA.

“You ready to go?” I asked, looking down at Oliver.

He was frowning, “He doesn’t like me at all, does he? He didn’t even say ‘goodbye.’”

“You didn’t greet him when you walked up.” I said matter-of-factly.

‘Well, he’s been rude to me in the past. Last time I don’t think he greeted me at all, so this time I decided I didn’t have to greet him…”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Oliver…” I said just as I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the Gaybor standing right behind me and I gasped like Doris Day seeing Rock Hudson for the first time.

“Michael?” he said deeply.

“Hey! Gay-a-a-…Hey! ” I said, having no idea what his real name was, but pretty sure it wasn’t ‘Gaybor’ which is what I almost called him. “How are you?”

“Good, good.” He smiled, just as handsome as ever, in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. “I thought that was you. Enjoying the night?”

“Yes, yes, the Art Walks are always fun.” Oliver sidled up to us and was looking at me expecting an introduction, but I positioned myself between us: he was annoying and I couldn’t remember the Gaybor’s name, so no introduction for him. “I have always enjoyed them. Did you see any art you liked?”

“There were these really great fish paintings in this one place down the way…”

Oliver guffawed, and I made a side-shushing motion with my hand, while still not publically acknowledging him. “Oh, yeah I saw those, those were great.” I was not sure what I was doing, but I was enjoying it, enjoying the attention. Let Thad chase Bettina and her daemons; I had a handsome guy chatting me up.

We went on to discuss the end of classes and joke about grading finals, “Totally subjective! I know! I’m surprised it’s legal!” I said. Then, as Oliver’s presence was becoming obvious, I decided I had to cut it short, so I said to the Gaybor, “Well, nice seeing you. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, we should do coffee sometime.” He said with a winning smile.

“Oh, yeah. That would be great.” I said knowing I should not, not, not do this: I was not allowed to hang out with single gay guys I found attractive, it just wasn’t fair to Thad, as if he did it to me, I would blow. But this was a work thing. We did work together, sort of. So maybe it wasn’t all bad. Maybe this was allowable? As his chasing of Bettina was allowed.

“Great! Great!” he said with a Ralph Lauren smile.

And before I knew it we were exchanging business cards and then phone numbers punched into our cell phones and he said he would call me in a few weeks after he got back from a conference in New York City and I told him I was going to a conference in Puerto Rico soon, and then we talked about that, and how we would have to do coffee between those two, and how it would be great to get to know each other better, and other things that made me feel that special tingle, you know THAT special tingle-and it felt wrong, wrong, wrong.

We said out final goodbyes and shook hands. As he walked away I looked down to his card, ‘Steve Banks, Associate Professor of Architecture’ and murmured, “Steve!”

“And who was that?” Oliver asked, getting as up in my face as much as his petite frame would allow.

“No one,” I lied.

“Then why are you blushing? And why didn’t you introduce me?”

It was then I thought: was Thad still there? I looked back down the street and there he was, standing as if mesmerized, watching me, I assume having seen the whole thing. Bettina and Bayne sat on the peed-on park bench next to him, slumped over, maybe passed-out, maybe dead. But all I saw was the lost, hurt look on Thad’s face and it made my insides hurt.

I waved to him and he waved back, and just as I did it, I realized that I was waving to him with the hand holding my cell phone and the Gaybor’s business card.

Shame.

Turning, I grabbed Oliver, and we trotted off down the street, away from Thad, trying to outrun my guilt.

It did not work.

46. Sad

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:06:00 +0000

Thad hated the highway, hated driving on it on all accounts: he said it just worked his nerves too much. So he always requested side roads or even old country roads preferably. And in Oklahoma you could still use the old roads to get from town to town, avoiding all the speeding interstate hubbub, they just took a bit longer, which didn’t bother him a bit. I never knew what germinated this highway fear in him, and he never said, but today he was driving us back from Ma’am’s on the highway, fast, white-fisted, and silent.

The day started fine, but the visit had been purely debilitating. I had picked Thad up this morning and as we drove up to Ma’am’s on the back roads, we exchanged stories about the rest of our evenings. Bettina and Bayne had fought on Main Street before his second band set, but then made-up, but then fought again back at their house and Bayne had passed out in the tall grass on the side of the house and Bettina in a lawn chair on the porch. They had made up this morning, so all was well in their grain alcohol world.

Thad had asked once about the Gaybor and I passed it off as, “Oh, he’s a professor I know from campus…Wants to go to coffee to talk shop…” which was sort of a lie. I had placed his business card under a vase on the mantle as I knew Thad would not look there, having an avoidance to dusting. We said no more on the issue, but I could tell Thad wished that he could ask more. I still felt shame for what I was thinking, and maybe even planning.

Ma’am’s big gothic house was even more forlorn than the last time we saw it in December. The lawn was unkempt, the trees straggly, and the flowers flat dead. Esteban’s old red truck was again parked outside. He let us in, to find the inside in just as much disrepair, with the house dusty, cluttered, and full of gloom. Thad had snapped, “This is filthy!” and Esteban shrugged, “I am very sorry. I have been very busy with Ma’am.”

Esteban led us through the jungle trumpe l’oeil dining room, out to the back patio. It was a viney, overgrown cobblestoned affair, with empty terra cotta pots surrounding a dry fountain: a cracked statue of a small boy wrestling a dolphin rose up out of the middle. He was missing his left arm. Ma’am lay in a large white deck chair, wrapped in a thick blanket even though it was a comfortable 65 degree May day.

“Who’s that?” She asked as we neared, slightly raising her head.

“It’s Thad and Michael,” Thad said, going to crouch next to her.

She sat up and he hugged her but she did not hug him back. She did not look like the woman I had met at Christmas. She was gaunt and her polish was gone: Her hair was not done, she had no make-up on, and she wore only simple pants and blouse with mismatched house shoes. The look in her eyes was one of fear. It was clear she had no idea who we were.

“Pardon?” she said, pulling back from Thad.

“It’s Thad, Ma’am! Thad!” He had fear in his voice, which just broke my heart.

She looked at him in confusion, then a wide smile broke across her face. “Oh, kumquat! How are you? It’s so nice to see you.”

“Ma’am! Oh, Ma’am!” He cried, hugging her, “You scared me!”

“Oh, I’m just getting so forgetful there old days, but I could never forget you.”

“No, no, you couldn’t…” he said, turning away to wipe his eyes. I looked away. Thad did not like people to see him cry.

She turned and swung her feet off of the lounge chair and seemed suddenly more like her old self. “And who is this?”

“Well, that’s Michael. You met him at Christmas.”

“I did?” She tilted her head, with no flicker in her eyes at all: she knew him but had no idea who I was. At least she knew him.

“You know, my friend Michael? We lived together for, like, four years. He came and had Christmas dinner with us...”

With a look of quiet shame she said, “Yes, yes. How nice,” and looked away. She was faking it, but I was not going to let that embarrass her, so I stepped up.

“Yes, Ma’am, it’s so nice to see you again.”

“Yes, thank you.” She said. “Thank you. So nice to meet you.”

We sat on the patio for the next hour and Esteban served us punch and cookies. Thad and Ma’am talked, and I added things here and there. She was clearly not as together as he wanted, or needed her to be. He spoke of his Mother and Father and she knew them, and had historic recall, but she had almost no short-term memory. She laughed and talked about a Christmas story from 1972 but was incapable of explaining what she had been doing the last few days, including the night she was found wondering the streets by the neighbor. Thad refused to give in on the issue, and badgered her until she finally had to snap, “Honey, I don’t know how I got out there. I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

Thad rose suddenly, “We have to go.” He walked to the side of the patio to wipe his eyes again.

I thanked Ma’am for the visit and she asked, “What is your name again, son?”

“Michael.”

“Oh, I like that name. He was an arch-angel, you know.”

“I do,” I smiled. “But I can’t fly.”

“Oh, you silly,” she cooed. “I wish I could. Then I could see which houses had pools and which did not.”

Thad stomped over from across the broken patio and bent to hug her tightly, whispering something in her ear.

“I will.” She said quietly. “I always will.”

And Esteban showed us out.

When we got to the car Esteban said, “She has good days and bad days, but her memory is very bad now. Very bad. I will take care of her. I love her, like you do, Mr. Thad.”

“Mucho Gracias,” Thad said.

As we sped down the interstate, Thad had said no more, and I knew not to.

Looking out the window, I wondered if I should write my father before it was too late.

37. The Return of the Garden Rapist

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:54:00 +0000

Later that Saturday evening as Thad and I got ready to go eat, there was an aggressive knock at the front door.

Looking to him inquisitively, I went and opened it and then and there almost shrieked: As I live and breathe it was the Garden Rapist, standing there on the front porch looking just crazy as a loon with her giant gleaming gardening fork, luridly abnormal ponytails, and distressingly snug mom jeans.

“Remember me!” she said, her Latoya Jackson eyes spinning around in their sockets as if on individual gyroscopes.

“Oh! Yes. Hello.” I glance down to make sure the screen door was locked. It was: that would surely protect me from her attack.

“I was just driving by,” she began, “And I thought I would stop by and see if you wanted to do another flower exchange, you know? I got a whole bucket of my irises out in my truck, and I brought my fork.” She brandished it and laughed like a deranged imbecile. “So what do you say, Michael?”

“No!” I just blurted out, having learned my lesson with her last time. But then afraid she might stab me, softened it with, “But thank you. We’re about to go to dinner, so now is not a good time.”

She narrowed her eyes, “Then when would be a good time? I can come back. The flowers I brought are real pretty. Just come on out and look at them. Come on out. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“No…no thank you.” I shook my head. “We are really busy right now, just really busy lately.”

“But, I mean, I can come back right? You did say I could. I gave you all of those pretty irises before. I thought we had a deal.” She had not moved her body since I opened the door; she had been motionless except for waves of that big fork to punctuate her sentences. And now she was just speaking flat crazy.

I took a step back and deepened my voice slightly, “You know, I don’t think I ever said that. I was fine with the one exchange we did last summer.”

“But you did say it, Michael. You did.” Her eyes flared up like wild fires.

I was truly afraid of this small woman, as you could tell there was something unholy creeping deep inside her.

“I’m really sorry but I have to go,” I said with a forced smile. “Thanks for stopping by, and you take care now.”

As I started to shut the door she did not move one bit. Our eyes locked and her look was a murderous one, like she wanted to cut me and cut my flesh and lap up all of my blood till it was gone.

The door lock clicked. Through the stained glass window on the door, her shadow was clearly visible to me, still unmoving.

I stayed perfect still, waiting- praying- for her to leave.

“Who was that?” Thad said walking through the room.

I jumped so high I almost fell over, and turned to hiss, “Shhhh….”

When I looked back the shadow was gone. I had not heard her leave. I took a step toward the living room window and pulled back the lace curtains: no one was out there, not even her car. How could she have gotten off the porch and driven away so quickly? Maybe she just slipped around the corner of the house? Was she hiding on the other side of the window, just out of view?

“What the Hell are you doing?” Thad snapped from behind me, and I again almost jumped out of my skin.

“Quit doing that!” I said in a loud whisper, running my hands over my bald head.

“Why are you whispering?”

“It was her,” I said.

“Her, who?”

“The Garden Rapist.” I mouthed.

His eyes widened and he whispered, “Oh! Is she gone?”

“I don’t know…I don’t know.”

We both looked out the window wide-eyed.

After we searched the porch and backyard and found nothing, Thad tried to convince me she had been a ghost, and that I actually had been dead the whole time since the beginning of the movie. I did not think that was funny, but he sure did.

Thirty minutes later, as we sat down to dinner at the Chinese restaurant, I pulled out my list.

“What’s that?” he asked, suspiciously.

“It’s the list for Gaga.”

“Jesus Christ,” he sighed. Can I at least get some food first?”

“Well, yes of course.” I said, crossing ‘EAT DINNER’ off of the top of the chronological list.

I waited in somewhat silence until he was about half-way through his plate of noodles and sushi before I pulled my list back out. He hated my list-keeping, but it was necessary for me.

“So I booked us a hotel room downtown, right near where the concert is going on. I’ll take care of the hotel since you got the ticket.”

“Good,” he smiled.

“The concert is at 8 PM, so why not leave here at 1PM? That would put us getting to Tulsa at 3 PM, we can settle into our room, have dinner somewhere, walk around downtown, and then be at the concert just before eight, okay?”

I looked at him and he said nothing, not even looking up at me.

The problem we had was that I required multiple levels of planning to stay calm, especially when leaving town, yet planning had the exact opposite effect on Thad: it just tripled his nerves. He would rather just sprint out of town with not a plan in the world, and be perfectly fine with that; whereas that would literally just kill me flat dead on the spot. But where he could not plan to save his life, I was perfectly capable of spontaneity, as long as it was planned well in advance. Suffice to say, we did not travel well together.

“Is that okay?” I repeated louder.

He rolled his eyes and banged his fork down. “Michael, I want to go to this concert with you, but I don’t want you to make it into this big ‘thing,’ like you do with everything. I don’t want things to be so analyzed and planned that we can’t have fun. We’re just going to Tulsa for the night, for the concert. It’ll be okay. Please let it be okay.”

“It will,” I lied. I was so tied in knots waiting for my lab results that I could hardly focus. Putting all of my attention on Gaga had really helped, and I had actually calmed some. There was no way that I was going to lessen that organizational hold on this concert, at least not until I got clean bill of health. Surely I would get the results back before the concert. But I had ceased sharing these feelings with him, as he told me I was being ridiculous.

We were silent for a minute as we ate.

Then I just could not hold it in any longer, “Well, what do you want to do the day after the concert up in Tulsa?”

He stopped eating and frowned. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“Well,” I began as animated as I could to try and engage him, “I thought the

next day we could go to brunch at the Philbrook Museum, and sit there and overlook the gardens and eat. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yeah,” he softened, “It would be. That sounds great.”

And with that we both melded into talking about the trip and how fabulous it was going to be, and how exciting the concert would be and what souvenirs we wanted to buy, and how excited we were to see Gaga, and for that meal I actually quit thinking about my impending test results and the fact that I might actually be dying of, oh, I don’t know, Bell’s Palsy.

Back at the house after dinner, as I fumbling with the key at the door, Thad whispered, “Look…”

I turned to see a car slowly driving by the house. The driver was in the shadows at first, but then I made out a woman…in Jackie O glasses… and a head scarf…the Garden Rapist, and she was staring right at us!

“Get in! get it!” he screamed.

And we ran inside like terrified school children to frantically lock all of the doors, shaken to the core.

“She’s evil, you know,” Thad whispered.

“I know. I know.” I said, peering out of the front window, shaking.

She again was nowhere to be seen.

38. The Case of the Missing Terra Cotta Chicken Planter Full of Clover

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie Goes to Home Depot) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:53:00 +0000

The next morning I woke gloriously next to Thad, feeling like the beginning of a coffee commercial. I had missed having him there, missed listening to him breath, missed smelling his smell, even though it had only been a week.

I got up and started breakfast. It was lovely April morning, sunny but not too hot.

After my oatmeal I went to get the Sunday Paper, which I still read in bed like a proper American. As I walked back up the big porch steps, I noticed something askew: some of the porch furniture had been moved, but nothing appeared missing. I scanned the porch up one side and down the other, standing rigid, eyes darting.

Living in a college neighborhood I immediately assumed it was some of the drunk students that lived up and down the street, as about once a year during some random big party things would go missing from my porch, or I would find car tracks rolled through my flower gardens. As I surveyed, something seemed strange, gone; but I could not put my finger on it.

And then like in one of those horror movie scenes where it’s a tight close up of the hero but then the camera pulls back at like a thousand miles an hour, I realized my terra cotta chicken planter full of clover was gone! It had sat out on the far porch pier, like a lighthouse on a promontory. But now the spot lay bare, empty. I scanned around to make sure it just hadn’t been knocked off or just moved, but alas, no.

In my bathrobe, my eyes tightened. It appeared the only thing missing.

Those drunken bastard kids!

Stomping back into the darkened bedroom to dress, Thad mumbled a “Morning.”

“Yeah…” I said, fumbling in the dark.

“What’s up?” he said, rearranging the pillows. He slept a lot. I mean a lot, even for a fairytale princess.

“We’ve been burgled,” I said.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Pinched, pilfered, popped, robbed. Someone has stolen my terra cotta chicken planter full of clover! And I loved that chicken!”

“From the porch?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. It was probably the Garden Rapist, mad you wouldn’t let her have any more irises.” He yawned, rolling over. “Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

And standing there in the dark, the stark horrible ponytailed reality came screaming to me and I knew he was right; it made perfect sense! And I knew what I must do.

Within five minutes I was on the phone with the police.

“And what was taken, sir?” the receptionist said with audible boredom in her voice.

“A terra cotta chicken planter full of clover.”

“A what?” She repeated.

“A terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. I’ve had it for fifteen years. It was very sentimental. It was quite big, about the size of a 1980’s microwave, and probably weighed a good 30 pounds. It was worth about $75 or more. It was swiped from my front porch. I mean, I just don’t want to live in a neighborhood where we can’t have nice things out on our porches…”

“So it’s a potted plant? You had a potted plant stolen?”

“Yes, but a very large, old potted plant.”

“So an old potted plant. And it looked like a chicken?” she repeated.

“Yes. A terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. And I think I know who took it.”

“Oh, good,” she said dryly. “I’ll send a squad car out there in a minute to get your report.”

I went back into the darken bedroom.

From under the covers Thad mumbled, “Please God tell me I didn’t I just hear you talking to the police.”

“Well, yes,” I said justly, head out and up like a knight of yore. “You are totally right. That heathen woman took it!”

“Oh good,” he rolled over.

“It’s totally the Garden Rapist. She took it, mad that I wouldn’t let her have any more flowers.”

Thad folded the covers down to show his face, “So you called the police over a missing planter?”

“Yes! I will not be intimidated by her and her stupid gardening fork. I mean, how dare her come back over here and sneak up on the porch in the middle of the night and take the nicest pot out there. That is trespassing! We even saw her scoping out the house late last night.”

“It was 8 PM.”

“Well, that’s late for us now.”

“True,” He sighed. “Are the police on their way?”

“Yes, and I will need to find an appropriately civic-minded outfit to greet them in.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” he sighed, covering his head as I flipped the overhead bedroom light on.

As I dressed, I felt proud for having the courage to call the police, for putting this act of thievery on record in case it happened again, or she came back and threatened us. But I also, secretly, wondered if I was acting rashly because of my nerves. I was tense about leaving tomorrow for Gaga and doubly still crazy anxious about getting my stupid lab results back. Maybe I shouldn’t have called the police, and just let it go…it was just a potted plant…and an old one I had gotten for free at that…but it was too late to think like that now: the police were on their way.

The cop was large and bald with a long Polish name and a big gun. We stood in the living room, me now in a respectable civic-minded collared shirt and khaki shorts ensem.

“So all they took was the chicken pot?” he asked.

“Yes, the terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. And I think I know who did it,” I said in my deep, heterosexual voice.

“Who?” he asked, looking up from his notepad.

“Well, we call her…” I stopped. “Well, I guess that’s not important. But it’s this crazy woman who came by a while back and wanted to do an iris exchange-those are flowers.”

“Yes,” he said, “I am aware what irises are.”

“Okay, sorry,” I smiled, wondering if he had little sugar in his britches. “She seemed kinda nuts. But then she came back last evening as we were on our way out and she wanted to do another flower exchange. And I told her no, and she looked very mad when she left. And then we saw her driving by after we got back from dinner, so I think she did it to get even with me.”

“And what is this woman’s name?” the policeman asked.

“Angelique, but I don’t know her last name.” I smiled weakly, suddenly realizing the flaw in my great story: I knew next to nothing about her.

“Oh,” he said with a frown. “Do you know anything else about her?”

“Not really…” I said, looking down, suddenly very embarrassed.

Thad walked back into the room and asked, “Who you talking about? The Garden Rapist?”

The Policemen looked at me and I blushed and said, “Yes, she never told us her last name did she?”

“No,” Thad said, “but remember she said she works at the dairy over on Porter. You could probably find her there.”

The Policeman looked back to me and I felt a rush of stupidity: I had called them to report a missing old porch plant and I was fingering a culprit I had no solid information on.

“I guess that’s not very helpful,” I said with a weak smile.

“No. No, it’s not, ” the policeman said shutting his notebook.

“Well, you could go by the dairy.” Thad said, “I mean how many garden-crazy, pig-tailed, wall-eyed women named Angelique do you think they got working there?” He smiled like he had been a very helpful witness on CSI New York and walked out of the room.

“I’ll see what I can do with this information.” The policeman said running a hand over giant square jaw. “If this woman that you think stole your pot comes back, I would not engage her. I recommend putting your name on the bottom of all of your outdoor items, and bringing in anything that’s sentimental or valuable to you. Outdoor decorations often walk off, especially in a college town. Is there anything else?”

“No, and thank you for your time.”

“No problem, and have a nice day.”

We shook hands. He had very big hands.

“Thanks!” Thad called over the TV from the Den. I distinctively head the Lw & Order “Dum Dum.”

As I watched the policeman drive off, Thad came back into the room.

“Does he think he can get it back?
“Probably not,” I said. “I didn’t even think about the fact that we don’t even know her last name.”

“Manson?” he smiled.

“Probably! So now I’m out one terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. And I really liked it. I had had it since you and I lived together over on Park Street in 1995.” I sat down. “It’s just weird to know she stalked out the house and then came up on the porch while we were asleep and took it. I mean it’s creepy. Just flat creepy.”

“Well, don’t let it bother you. It’s over now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is. I can replace it.”

And with that I started to digest the crime and make myself let go of my anger and fear over the act of thievery. But as I did the specter of my impending test results again reemerged its vile, poxy head.