He was full of American swagger, and like so many swagger-boys, he was not much of a lover. The night we met in the Café d’Azure, a tucked-away bar in Montparnasse, it was 1927 and he was just back from the green hills of Africa and full of his own success both as a great white hunter and celebrated author.
I was supposed to know that he was “somebody,” and when I didn’t, he took me for an ignorant bawd and pulled me to him for a kiss. His mouth was slack, and the kiss was too wet, too fast.
“Here,” I said, “here mon cher, this is how it is done.”
Our second kiss lasted for minutes, and it was slow, starting out soft, growing more urgent by degrees, with heart and heat until our mouths were fucking each other and the whole café was lovesick with envy and all of Paris undressed and rushed into each others’ arms.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Reading Lessons
It was May, and the windows of the Black Belt Literacy Action office were open to the wisteria-scented breeze. Fields of inch-high, pale green tobacco plants rolled away to the edge of the known world. The director, a young white man with serious eyes, opened a folder on his desk and alternately studied it and me. His assistant, an older black woman with nervous hands, brought me a glass of sweet tea and hovered nearby. The point of it all was this: Was I committed enough, capable enough to change Vergie Latham’s life?
They told me stories about Vergie Latham before they asked me if I would take him on as a client, in the same way that the lady at the
Humane Society had told me stories about Buster before asking if I’d
adopt the one-eared mutt. In both cases, I knew the stories had been
carefully selected to elicit a ‘yes.’ But that’s the kind of citizen I
am, I suppose. I can’t resist a sad story.
I sat in the director’s office, facing a poster with smiling faces that read, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Literacy.” Here and there around the walls were thumb-tacked bumper sticker-sized affirmations: Success is an attitude. And: Defeat may test you; it need not stop you. And: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Vergie Latham was 74 years old and the color of the Marengo County soil that he had sharecropped all his life. He lived in a cedar shake cabin with a root cellar a quarter mile off a two-lane blacktop road and another flat mile from a small general store where it was his misfortune to have traded for most of those years. That spring of 1975, he could neither read nor do arithmetic.
Every month, Vergie carried his social security check and his electrical bill to the store where the owner, Floyd Alway, opened the envelopes and read the totals to Vergie. The old man signed over his check with his mark, a slanted V, to Floyd, who paid him out of the till. Vergie then paid for the electricity bill out of that money, and Floyd mailed the bill off to Alabama Power in an envelope with his own.
Because Vergie did not read newspapers or the letters that periodically came from the government, which announced increases in his social security payments over the years, he could not know that Floyd Alway was paying him far less than the value of the check. At the time I met Vergie, he believed that the government was giving him the same amount -- $373 -- that he’d received every month for the previous nine years, and he was grateful for it.
Nor did he know that the sum Floyd charged for his electrical bill would have covered a family of four with air conditioning, rather than a two-room cabin with just two light bulbs and a well pump.
Vergie Latham’s only relationship with a book was with the Holy Bible, but that, too, had filtered down to him through the sands of human dishonesty. As he was growing up, his stern and sour-faced Aunt Felicia treated him to her version of scripture that emphasized hellfire and punishment over love and caring. She had made the young Vergie memorize passages that, in fact, appeared nowhere in the Bible. She, and a succession of preachers, had convinced Vergie that it was his solemn duty to wash and wax the floors of the Light of Rehoboth AME Zion Church every week, cut the grass, repair the roof and chop wood for the stove in winter because the Bible demanded it of him. He had been the congregation’s beast of burden for more than 60 years – labor he might have given freely anyway out of his native goodness.
It was agreed that I would drive to Vergie’s house every Tuesday afternoon to give him reading lessons, using the workbooks and texts provided by Literacy Action. I had an armful of other books, as well – a second grade speller, the poems of A.A. Milne, The Young Person’s Guide to Horses -- which eventually, I hoped, Vergie would be able to read as he progressed. Teaching illiterate adults to read was a delicate matter, the director had impressed upon me.
“We call them clients, not students. And don’t expect too much,” he’d said.
I arrived at Vergie’s cabin in my shiny city car with my shiny city attitude. I was going to liberate Vergie Latham from his prison of ignorance and victimhood. I believed that a man was not free who couldn’t read. If I had been a cartoon, I would have been Mighty Mouse and my theme music would have been: Here I come to save the day!
Vergie was waiting for me on his carefully swept plank front porch. He had set two straight-backed chairs and a battered card table under the eaves on the north side of the cabin where the sun would not be in our eyes.
He was wearing a perfectly starched and ironed white shirt with a blue tie, neatly pressed grey work pants and exquisitely shined leather work boots. His grey hair was cut short and combed. Everything in his bearing and dress spoke to the importance of this occasion, which was nothing less than his first day of school.
When he took my hand in greeting, the current flowed to me from him, not the other way around as I had expected. My cartoon self melted.
“You sound like the radio,” was the first thing Vergie said to me.
I laughed. “What station do I sound like?”
He said, “The evening news on the station that comes out of the university. You sound like… Ni-Na Toten-berg.”
We began, as the program dictated, with alphabet letters, then short strings of letters. Over the next month, we moved on to repetitions of words linked with the articles – a, an and the.
It was July, airless and feverish, and we had moved the table to Vergie’s porch where he ran an extension cord to a fan, but we still dripped on the pages. He brought his Bible to the table and opened it to a place marked by a faded red ribbon. The portion was from the Book of Matthew.
“You will be able to read this for yourself by next year this time,” I reassured him.
“Can we go faster?” he said.
Some evenings I would read aloud to Vergie from the beginnings of stories to lure him deeper into the pages where new words lurked. On other evenings, we would print in the workbooks, filling pages with common words that he would have need of in his everyday life.
“How about tobacco and corn and hogs?” he might ask me. Then we would practice reading those words using sentences I invented, such as “Vergie Latham had two hogs and a lot of tobacco on his farm. The corn was tall.”
By the end of July, Vergie was able to read 200 common words. He asked me to help him learn arithmetic, so we added the numbers and simple addition and subtraction to our menu. I stayed at the small table across from him later and later. I didn’t leave until the fireflies blinked and the whippoorwills called.
By late August, Vergie was able to sound out the words in the headlines of the Selma Times-Journal. He lingered over the names of important people and places that he’d heard on NPR evening news. One week, I brought a map of North America to our lesson. I spread it out on the table and together, we explored the continent like Lewis and Clark finding the boundary waters for the first time. Vergie bent over the table, tracing the Mississippi with reverent fingers. I slowly pronounced every word he touched and he repeated after me. The next week when I returned, he recited all the states and pointed to each one, without error.
******
The Tuesday after Labor Day, the director of the Black Belt Literacy Action office paid a visit to test Vergie’s progress. I stepped off the porch and walked the perimeter of the yard for a while to give them privacy. It was a routine procedure in the course of every client’s process. Tutors were given one year to complete the course. Vergie was nervous at first, but then his self-consciousness left and he found his rhythm. I could hear the steady hum as he assailed the reading test in an unbroken stream of perfect fluidity. I sat under a catalpa tree where caterpillars had turned the leaves into lace gloves and felt purely happy.
Vergie’s social security check arrived that day. He opened it in front of the director and me at his formica-topped table made from a section of kitchen counter. When he had read the check he quietly folded it and slid it into a pocket.
“Vergie,” I said, “about Floyd. What do you want to do?”
“I guess… nothin’. Ain’t nothin’ to do.”
The director cleared his throat. “Well, we could help you bring charges against Mr. Alway. You are entitled to a refund of money he shorted you. It could amount to quite a lot.”
Vergie looked around his cabin a while then rubbed his eyes.
“That sound like… that could wear me out.”
We sat in silence then with only the sound of the fan indoors and the raw rasp of cicadas outdoors.
“I could of learnt to read a while back, I reckon. But I didn’t. I was a stubborn fool. Floyd, he did what any man would do when he see a fool comin. I got no task with that man.”
I stayed a while longer that day, and before I left Vergie and I agreed on the subject of geography to be our course of study the coming week,
Vergie graduated from Literacy Action in January, five months ahead of schedule.
I do not know for sure where his new skill took him. I’d like to think he struck out for the territories, travelling light, his white shirt gleaming in the moonlight and a map of America in his grasp.
They told me stories about Vergie Latham before they asked me if I would take him on as a client, in the same way that the lady at the
Humane Society had told me stories about Buster before asking if I’d
adopt the one-eared mutt. In both cases, I knew the stories had been
carefully selected to elicit a ‘yes.’ But that’s the kind of citizen I
am, I suppose. I can’t resist a sad story.
I sat in the director’s office, facing a poster with smiling faces that read, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Literacy.” Here and there around the walls were thumb-tacked bumper sticker-sized affirmations: Success is an attitude. And: Defeat may test you; it need not stop you. And: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Vergie Latham was 74 years old and the color of the Marengo County soil that he had sharecropped all his life. He lived in a cedar shake cabin with a root cellar a quarter mile off a two-lane blacktop road and another flat mile from a small general store where it was his misfortune to have traded for most of those years. That spring of 1975, he could neither read nor do arithmetic.
Every month, Vergie carried his social security check and his electrical bill to the store where the owner, Floyd Alway, opened the envelopes and read the totals to Vergie. The old man signed over his check with his mark, a slanted V, to Floyd, who paid him out of the till. Vergie then paid for the electricity bill out of that money, and Floyd mailed the bill off to Alabama Power in an envelope with his own.
Because Vergie did not read newspapers or the letters that periodically came from the government, which announced increases in his social security payments over the years, he could not know that Floyd Alway was paying him far less than the value of the check. At the time I met Vergie, he believed that the government was giving him the same amount -- $373 -- that he’d received every month for the previous nine years, and he was grateful for it.
Nor did he know that the sum Floyd charged for his electrical bill would have covered a family of four with air conditioning, rather than a two-room cabin with just two light bulbs and a well pump.
Vergie Latham’s only relationship with a book was with the Holy Bible, but that, too, had filtered down to him through the sands of human dishonesty. As he was growing up, his stern and sour-faced Aunt Felicia treated him to her version of scripture that emphasized hellfire and punishment over love and caring. She had made the young Vergie memorize passages that, in fact, appeared nowhere in the Bible. She, and a succession of preachers, had convinced Vergie that it was his solemn duty to wash and wax the floors of the Light of Rehoboth AME Zion Church every week, cut the grass, repair the roof and chop wood for the stove in winter because the Bible demanded it of him. He had been the congregation’s beast of burden for more than 60 years – labor he might have given freely anyway out of his native goodness.
It was agreed that I would drive to Vergie’s house every Tuesday afternoon to give him reading lessons, using the workbooks and texts provided by Literacy Action. I had an armful of other books, as well – a second grade speller, the poems of A.A. Milne, The Young Person’s Guide to Horses -- which eventually, I hoped, Vergie would be able to read as he progressed. Teaching illiterate adults to read was a delicate matter, the director had impressed upon me.
“We call them clients, not students. And don’t expect too much,” he’d said.
I arrived at Vergie’s cabin in my shiny city car with my shiny city attitude. I was going to liberate Vergie Latham from his prison of ignorance and victimhood. I believed that a man was not free who couldn’t read. If I had been a cartoon, I would have been Mighty Mouse and my theme music would have been: Here I come to save the day!
Vergie was waiting for me on his carefully swept plank front porch. He had set two straight-backed chairs and a battered card table under the eaves on the north side of the cabin where the sun would not be in our eyes.
He was wearing a perfectly starched and ironed white shirt with a blue tie, neatly pressed grey work pants and exquisitely shined leather work boots. His grey hair was cut short and combed. Everything in his bearing and dress spoke to the importance of this occasion, which was nothing less than his first day of school.
When he took my hand in greeting, the current flowed to me from him, not the other way around as I had expected. My cartoon self melted.
“You sound like the radio,” was the first thing Vergie said to me.
I laughed. “What station do I sound like?”
He said, “The evening news on the station that comes out of the university. You sound like… Ni-Na Toten-berg.”
We began, as the program dictated, with alphabet letters, then short strings of letters. Over the next month, we moved on to repetitions of words linked with the articles – a, an and the.
It was July, airless and feverish, and we had moved the table to Vergie’s porch where he ran an extension cord to a fan, but we still dripped on the pages. He brought his Bible to the table and opened it to a place marked by a faded red ribbon. The portion was from the Book of Matthew.
“You will be able to read this for yourself by next year this time,” I reassured him.
“Can we go faster?” he said.
Some evenings I would read aloud to Vergie from the beginnings of stories to lure him deeper into the pages where new words lurked. On other evenings, we would print in the workbooks, filling pages with common words that he would have need of in his everyday life.
“How about tobacco and corn and hogs?” he might ask me. Then we would practice reading those words using sentences I invented, such as “Vergie Latham had two hogs and a lot of tobacco on his farm. The corn was tall.”
By the end of July, Vergie was able to read 200 common words. He asked me to help him learn arithmetic, so we added the numbers and simple addition and subtraction to our menu. I stayed at the small table across from him later and later. I didn’t leave until the fireflies blinked and the whippoorwills called.
By late August, Vergie was able to sound out the words in the headlines of the Selma Times-Journal. He lingered over the names of important people and places that he’d heard on NPR evening news. One week, I brought a map of North America to our lesson. I spread it out on the table and together, we explored the continent like Lewis and Clark finding the boundary waters for the first time. Vergie bent over the table, tracing the Mississippi with reverent fingers. I slowly pronounced every word he touched and he repeated after me. The next week when I returned, he recited all the states and pointed to each one, without error.
******
The Tuesday after Labor Day, the director of the Black Belt Literacy Action office paid a visit to test Vergie’s progress. I stepped off the porch and walked the perimeter of the yard for a while to give them privacy. It was a routine procedure in the course of every client’s process. Tutors were given one year to complete the course. Vergie was nervous at first, but then his self-consciousness left and he found his rhythm. I could hear the steady hum as he assailed the reading test in an unbroken stream of perfect fluidity. I sat under a catalpa tree where caterpillars had turned the leaves into lace gloves and felt purely happy.
Vergie’s social security check arrived that day. He opened it in front of the director and me at his formica-topped table made from a section of kitchen counter. When he had read the check he quietly folded it and slid it into a pocket.
“Vergie,” I said, “about Floyd. What do you want to do?”
“I guess… nothin’. Ain’t nothin’ to do.”
The director cleared his throat. “Well, we could help you bring charges against Mr. Alway. You are entitled to a refund of money he shorted you. It could amount to quite a lot.”
Vergie looked around his cabin a while then rubbed his eyes.
“That sound like… that could wear me out.”
We sat in silence then with only the sound of the fan indoors and the raw rasp of cicadas outdoors.
“I could of learnt to read a while back, I reckon. But I didn’t. I was a stubborn fool. Floyd, he did what any man would do when he see a fool comin. I got no task with that man.”
I stayed a while longer that day, and before I left Vergie and I agreed on the subject of geography to be our course of study the coming week,
Vergie graduated from Literacy Action in January, five months ahead of schedule.
I do not know for sure where his new skill took him. I’d like to think he struck out for the territories, travelling light, his white shirt gleaming in the moonlight and a map of America in his grasp.
Monday, June 27, 2011
At the Meraj
1. Mrs. Ada Williams is keeping her grandbaby while her daughter goes to work, she tells me, but she is anxious to go home to Louisiana, soon. She is a small pecan-colored woman with mannish white hair and a slow gait, and every afternoon, ostensibly while the grandbaby is asleep, she walks past my yard to the 7-11 on Norman Bridge Road.
I watch her progress until she disappears into the heat shimmer. The purpose of these trips is to buy one six-pack of Natural Light beer, which is all she can carry -- first in one hand and then the other.
Mrs. Ada Williams has been sleeping on the sofa in her daughter’s apartment since the baby’s birth three months ago because her daughter works days and entertains her boyfriend at night.
I have thought about offering her a ride on these sweltering days, but I wonder what the effect would be on that grandbaby if the lonely woman were able to transport a full case of beer.
2. George’s clothes are stained the color of peanut brittle and the tops of his boots are spattered with whitish, raised spots that could be dried caulk. He drives a ’92 Ford Ranger loaded with second-hand tools, ladders and a shade umbrella that once belonged to a country club patio bar.
I’ve seen him once or twice at the 7-11 buying beef jerky sticks and red soda pop with damp dollar bills from his deep overalls pocket.
But the other day, I heard him speak for the first time, asking the kind Indian lady behind the counter if she wanted the store painted or the windows washed. His voice was full of reedy music and his vowels came from across an ocean or two. As I moved in closer to parse his speech, I caught a freshness like spice, or wind, on his skin.
3. The first time I traded at the 7-11, Rashid swiped my VISA card to pay for the gas I'd pumped and the can of icy Red Bull I was going to gulp as soon as I got back to my car.
“Your name is Gita?” he asked with pleasant surprise. “Are you from India?”
No, I told him apologetically, from Canada, but I did know that mine is one of the most common girl’s names in his home country.
Since that exchange, he and the rest of his family have greeted me with trust and smiles, a sharp contrast to the suspicion they offer everyone else.
The other day, Rashid hired George to put bright yellow lettering on the store’s façade, spelling the name ‘MERAJ,’ and we stood out on the curb smoking together, as if we were old friends or as if I were a visiting, lighter-skinned family member.
I watch her progress until she disappears into the heat shimmer. The purpose of these trips is to buy one six-pack of Natural Light beer, which is all she can carry -- first in one hand and then the other.
Mrs. Ada Williams has been sleeping on the sofa in her daughter’s apartment since the baby’s birth three months ago because her daughter works days and entertains her boyfriend at night.
I have thought about offering her a ride on these sweltering days, but I wonder what the effect would be on that grandbaby if the lonely woman were able to transport a full case of beer.
2. George’s clothes are stained the color of peanut brittle and the tops of his boots are spattered with whitish, raised spots that could be dried caulk. He drives a ’92 Ford Ranger loaded with second-hand tools, ladders and a shade umbrella that once belonged to a country club patio bar.
I’ve seen him once or twice at the 7-11 buying beef jerky sticks and red soda pop with damp dollar bills from his deep overalls pocket.
But the other day, I heard him speak for the first time, asking the kind Indian lady behind the counter if she wanted the store painted or the windows washed. His voice was full of reedy music and his vowels came from across an ocean or two. As I moved in closer to parse his speech, I caught a freshness like spice, or wind, on his skin.
3. The first time I traded at the 7-11, Rashid swiped my VISA card to pay for the gas I'd pumped and the can of icy Red Bull I was going to gulp as soon as I got back to my car.
“Your name is Gita?” he asked with pleasant surprise. “Are you from India?”
No, I told him apologetically, from Canada, but I did know that mine is one of the most common girl’s names in his home country.
Since that exchange, he and the rest of his family have greeted me with trust and smiles, a sharp contrast to the suspicion they offer everyone else.
The other day, Rashid hired George to put bright yellow lettering on the store’s façade, spelling the name ‘MERAJ,’ and we stood out on the curb smoking together, as if we were old friends or as if I were a visiting, lighter-skinned family member.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Leaving My Girl for a While
Marti’s apartment is in the same Peachtree Street building as Elton John’s. It has become such a landmark that now she doesn’t have to give Atlanta airport cab drivers a street number. She just names the building and they take her there. Although well grounded in reality in some ways, my girl is just insecure enough to crave that kind of cachet.
She has invited me over for lunch, which is being provided by Proof of the Pudding catering. The last time Marti cooked, George Bush-the-Father was president.
“Leave your shoes at the door, Hon,” she says. Instantly I know from the Miles Davis on her stereo that this meal will be more liquid than solid, at least on Marti’s part.
Miles slurs a blue note. Marti slurs a word. Misery likes company.
“It’s early for toddies, no?” I lob, as lightly as I can.
“Sun; yardarm; somewhere,” she tosses back.
If this is about what I think it’s about, I want none of it. I came into this world with but a few nursemaid chromosomes. Over the years, I’ve exhausted most of them, and now I have only enough left to care for a plant -- and a succulent at that. Definitely not enough to tend Marti through another heartbreak.
There’s a golden rule of friendship for women in their middle years and, if I can recall correctly, it goes: Listen generously, talk honestly, lend money for rent but not new shoes and take away her car keys after three drinks. Nowhere is it written that you must become an accessory to her bad relationship choices.
This latest married man who lives at a great distance has leeched her energy in that very particular way such men do. He has become more fascinating to her than flesh-and-blood lovers who live in her own sphere. He eats up her store of attention to persons right in front of her (such as me). He keeps her in a constant state of waiting.
I weigh and measure my own expenditures of time and love toward Marti: Large and manifold.
But now, next to him, this stranger, this intruder if I may say it, I am as interesting to her as long division.
Marti sets out two plates on her honed granite breakfast bar and, in her absent mindedness, two knives apiece. I go for the forks while she dishes out the catered hot black bean quesadillas with salad of arugula and romaine, toasted pine nuts and strawberries.
Miles is slurring more notes and I wonder why, in his later years, he remained an icon.
“He wasn’t even trying anymore,” I murmur, but Marti doesn’t hear. She’s half a continent away, wondering what the married man is doing right now, making small involuntary tapping gestures toward her cell phone as if, by morse code, she can will a text message into existence.
My appetite is gone, both for food and for Marti’s soap operas. It has taken me much time to arrive here and understand that there will always be “a situation” and we will always end up seated in a situation room. Sometimes it will be decorated as a restaurant, sometimes a bar, sometimes her darkened bedroom in which she sobs and I comfort. Change the wallpaper. Lower the lights. Bring in the clowns. It will still be life with Marti.
I push back from the sleek granite counter and find my purse and shoes. I whisper “Later, Darling,” and let myself out.
The elevator door opens and I slip in, ignoring the other occupant while catching a glance at myself in the mirrored ceiling. I look resolved.
The elevator music is “Tiny Dancer,” by Elton John. It occurs to me that the building management has arranged this on purpose, to remind visitors of their most famous tenant.
“Kind of an old song, eh?” says the short man in the large sunglasses behind me. “Bit tired of that one, to tell ya the truth.”
I smile, resisting the urge to turn around.
“Yeah,” I say, “but not to worry. It’ll stay a classic. The world is full of fragile women."
She has invited me over for lunch, which is being provided by Proof of the Pudding catering. The last time Marti cooked, George Bush-the-Father was president.
“Leave your shoes at the door, Hon,” she says. Instantly I know from the Miles Davis on her stereo that this meal will be more liquid than solid, at least on Marti’s part.
Miles slurs a blue note. Marti slurs a word. Misery likes company.
“It’s early for toddies, no?” I lob, as lightly as I can.
“Sun; yardarm; somewhere,” she tosses back.
If this is about what I think it’s about, I want none of it. I came into this world with but a few nursemaid chromosomes. Over the years, I’ve exhausted most of them, and now I have only enough left to care for a plant -- and a succulent at that. Definitely not enough to tend Marti through another heartbreak.
There’s a golden rule of friendship for women in their middle years and, if I can recall correctly, it goes: Listen generously, talk honestly, lend money for rent but not new shoes and take away her car keys after three drinks. Nowhere is it written that you must become an accessory to her bad relationship choices.
This latest married man who lives at a great distance has leeched her energy in that very particular way such men do. He has become more fascinating to her than flesh-and-blood lovers who live in her own sphere. He eats up her store of attention to persons right in front of her (such as me). He keeps her in a constant state of waiting.
I weigh and measure my own expenditures of time and love toward Marti: Large and manifold.
But now, next to him, this stranger, this intruder if I may say it, I am as interesting to her as long division.
Marti sets out two plates on her honed granite breakfast bar and, in her absent mindedness, two knives apiece. I go for the forks while she dishes out the catered hot black bean quesadillas with salad of arugula and romaine, toasted pine nuts and strawberries.
Miles is slurring more notes and I wonder why, in his later years, he remained an icon.
“He wasn’t even trying anymore,” I murmur, but Marti doesn’t hear. She’s half a continent away, wondering what the married man is doing right now, making small involuntary tapping gestures toward her cell phone as if, by morse code, she can will a text message into existence.
My appetite is gone, both for food and for Marti’s soap operas. It has taken me much time to arrive here and understand that there will always be “a situation” and we will always end up seated in a situation room. Sometimes it will be decorated as a restaurant, sometimes a bar, sometimes her darkened bedroom in which she sobs and I comfort. Change the wallpaper. Lower the lights. Bring in the clowns. It will still be life with Marti.
I push back from the sleek granite counter and find my purse and shoes. I whisper “Later, Darling,” and let myself out.
The elevator door opens and I slip in, ignoring the other occupant while catching a glance at myself in the mirrored ceiling. I look resolved.
The elevator music is “Tiny Dancer,” by Elton John. It occurs to me that the building management has arranged this on purpose, to remind visitors of their most famous tenant.
“Kind of an old song, eh?” says the short man in the large sunglasses behind me. “Bit tired of that one, to tell ya the truth.”
I smile, resisting the urge to turn around.
“Yeah,” I say, “but not to worry. It’ll stay a classic. The world is full of fragile women."
Sunday, May 15, 2011
In Their Proper Order
Today the wind has shifted, and it blows away from my cabin. So today I will burn trash in the barrel set down on the beach. I secured it with sturdy cinder blocks to make sure it doesn't tip over and dump the tourists' leavings back onto the sand.
As caretaker of this lonely spit of land, home to migrating godwits and curlews, scallops, horseshoe crabs and feral tabby cats, I study wind direction like a gambler studies faces. I know the odds of every temporal shift because I must. But I wear my authority over this place mildly: I hate those who use their small ration of power like a bludgeon. Haven't we seen enough of that at toll booths, airports and all the other paved places across this nation?
Here, where there is only sand and narrow macadam tracks, I tred softly.
I gather up the refuse and inconsiderateness of others and dispose of it cautiously. I mend fences and replace the signs reminding visitors not to trample the dunes or disturb sea oats. Only the beach mice are allowed that trespass.
The Atlantic is not a "gray mirror" when it is calm, as some poets have written. Mirrors are selfless and exist to reflect us back to ourselves.
The sea is the deep, selfish habitat of millions of purposeful creatures who want to eat, prevail and dominate. I might be only the caretaker of a minute portion of its lip, but I answer to the larger mouth.
I set a fire inside the barrel and stand windward while the poisonous detritus burns down. Later, when the metal has cooled, I'll load it onto a cart and drive it to the paved town a mile distant for disposal. The barrel's sides, as always, will be coated with melted plastic waste that once was shards of sippy cups, thong sandals, cheap bright sunglasses and babies' training pants (the shit burned away).
When night falls, I watch the planets and stars emerge in their proper order -- predetermined billions of years ago when the universe was new and Earth was clean. Each comes into view as it emerges from the glare of the sun. Venus, then the constellation Pisces, are the first visible from my cabin porch. When Jupiter comes over the horizon, the first moths emerge, as well. Cycles upon cycles repeat themselves here above water. Below sea, small nocturnal currents begin as well. I can't see them, and they do not need me -- or any of us -- to know their business.
But I have seen the sea's bioluminescence while swimming at night. If the deep has any message for me, it exists in the nocturnal phosphorous glow. It's saying, "What exists below is connected to what exists above. Never doubt it."
As caretaker of this lonely spit of land, home to migrating godwits and curlews, scallops, horseshoe crabs and feral tabby cats, I study wind direction like a gambler studies faces. I know the odds of every temporal shift because I must. But I wear my authority over this place mildly: I hate those who use their small ration of power like a bludgeon. Haven't we seen enough of that at toll booths, airports and all the other paved places across this nation?
Here, where there is only sand and narrow macadam tracks, I tred softly.
I gather up the refuse and inconsiderateness of others and dispose of it cautiously. I mend fences and replace the signs reminding visitors not to trample the dunes or disturb sea oats. Only the beach mice are allowed that trespass.
The Atlantic is not a "gray mirror" when it is calm, as some poets have written. Mirrors are selfless and exist to reflect us back to ourselves.
The sea is the deep, selfish habitat of millions of purposeful creatures who want to eat, prevail and dominate. I might be only the caretaker of a minute portion of its lip, but I answer to the larger mouth.
I set a fire inside the barrel and stand windward while the poisonous detritus burns down. Later, when the metal has cooled, I'll load it onto a cart and drive it to the paved town a mile distant for disposal. The barrel's sides, as always, will be coated with melted plastic waste that once was shards of sippy cups, thong sandals, cheap bright sunglasses and babies' training pants (the shit burned away).
When night falls, I watch the planets and stars emerge in their proper order -- predetermined billions of years ago when the universe was new and Earth was clean. Each comes into view as it emerges from the glare of the sun. Venus, then the constellation Pisces, are the first visible from my cabin porch. When Jupiter comes over the horizon, the first moths emerge, as well. Cycles upon cycles repeat themselves here above water. Below sea, small nocturnal currents begin as well. I can't see them, and they do not need me -- or any of us -- to know their business.
But I have seen the sea's bioluminescence while swimming at night. If the deep has any message for me, it exists in the nocturnal phosphorous glow. It's saying, "What exists below is connected to what exists above. Never doubt it."
Friday, April 22, 2011
Phone Sex With the Telemarketer
He called just before 9 p.m. with apology in his voice. Must have been some kind of cut-off time after which women on his list (widowed, elderly, presumed to go to bed early) might be offended. And in his line of work, offended was counterproductive.
So, as I say, he started with an I’m-sorry-ma’am in a country-boy drawl and a segue into his spiel: Our state troopers need equipment like Kevlar vests, and a contribution now would help them in these hard times of budget cutbacks.
Something about his voice opened a door in my head that led down a flight of stairs to a cot with a soft blanket and the smell of woodsy cologne. He talked on, listing the dangers out there on the road for our brave highway patrolmen, but I was busy arranging myself on the cot, reaching up to the snap on his jeans.
“Go on,” I said, with a quick slide of his zipper.
“Well, that’s about it,” he said. “What would you feel comfortable pledging?”
“Please tell me more about the equipment,” I said.
My left hand reached inside his pants while my right one busied itself inside my panties.
He talked for another minute, his monologue masking the escalating sound of my breathing. I needed time – at least a few minutes more than his telemarketing script would allow.
“Tell me, young man,” I said, “do you work on commission?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Sonny, I will give you $50 for every minute you stay on the line and keep talking. You can talk about cars, troopers, the weather in Wyoming, whatever you like. If you pretend to be lying next to me on a cot in a tornado shelter, rubbing my nipples, I’ll give you $100. If you tell me things you’d do to grateful old lady, I’ll pledge $200 a minute. You just keep going ‘til I tell you to stop.”
I’ll give him credit; he never missed a beat. That boy was a salesman to the core. Five minutes of dirty cowboy talk later, I was reciting the 16 Discover Card digits.
He read the numbers back to me with a quiver in his voice.
“Oh, honey, I am sorry if I offended you in any way,” I said.
“Oh, no, ma’am, I ain’t shocked or nothin. It’s just that, well… it’s the first time I ever got a hard on from a granny, is all.”
I hung up then, feeling a nice afterglow, and I poured myself two fingers of Laphroaig over cracked ice.
I like house-sitting for old Mrs. Jablonski when she’s off visiting her sister in the hospital. I like her cats, her fluffy pillows and the chance to watch HBO. She always leaves me one credit card to use in case of emergencies; I, in turn, appreciate the chance to do a little something for our boys in blue.
So, as I say, he started with an I’m-sorry-ma’am in a country-boy drawl and a segue into his spiel: Our state troopers need equipment like Kevlar vests, and a contribution now would help them in these hard times of budget cutbacks.
Something about his voice opened a door in my head that led down a flight of stairs to a cot with a soft blanket and the smell of woodsy cologne. He talked on, listing the dangers out there on the road for our brave highway patrolmen, but I was busy arranging myself on the cot, reaching up to the snap on his jeans.
“Go on,” I said, with a quick slide of his zipper.
“Well, that’s about it,” he said. “What would you feel comfortable pledging?”
“Please tell me more about the equipment,” I said.
My left hand reached inside his pants while my right one busied itself inside my panties.
He talked for another minute, his monologue masking the escalating sound of my breathing. I needed time – at least a few minutes more than his telemarketing script would allow.
“Tell me, young man,” I said, “do you work on commission?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Sonny, I will give you $50 for every minute you stay on the line and keep talking. You can talk about cars, troopers, the weather in Wyoming, whatever you like. If you pretend to be lying next to me on a cot in a tornado shelter, rubbing my nipples, I’ll give you $100. If you tell me things you’d do to grateful old lady, I’ll pledge $200 a minute. You just keep going ‘til I tell you to stop.”
I’ll give him credit; he never missed a beat. That boy was a salesman to the core. Five minutes of dirty cowboy talk later, I was reciting the 16 Discover Card digits.
He read the numbers back to me with a quiver in his voice.
“Oh, honey, I am sorry if I offended you in any way,” I said.
“Oh, no, ma’am, I ain’t shocked or nothin. It’s just that, well… it’s the first time I ever got a hard on from a granny, is all.”
I hung up then, feeling a nice afterglow, and I poured myself two fingers of Laphroaig over cracked ice.
I like house-sitting for old Mrs. Jablonski when she’s off visiting her sister in the hospital. I like her cats, her fluffy pillows and the chance to watch HBO. She always leaves me one credit card to use in case of emergencies; I, in turn, appreciate the chance to do a little something for our boys in blue.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The Lockpicker's Woman
I.
Summer looms with its ferocious heat that feels more like weight than temperature, and you become listless. You say you want to leave ahead of the season, want to go to the north Atlantic coast or Appalachians -- anywhere cooler. You watch me clandestinely to see if I am upset by your impending absence.
This is part of the game we play, and my role is to show indifference because that fuels your interest. The first heat wave arrives suddenly one afternoon, and you tell me you're leaving. But I find a scorpion nest in your travel valise, so I know that you have not even begun to air it out and pack.
II.
You, my lover, think you have peeled back all my layers and know all there is to know about my desires. You have tried money, sex, protective gestures, intellect and humor to pry me open and bind me to you.
But the core of me lies beyond the reach of clumsy lock picks.
Under my yearbook photo was written the words, "More to her than meets the eye."
All these years later, can't you see I'm still the woman standing outside the frame of a photograph, revealing just my shadow?
Come, admit that I am only perfect for you as long as I don't open, because it is the seeking -- not the finding -- that you really love.
*Inspired by a powerful line from Ken Burns' Civil War series, telling how "picklock biographers" never discovered what truly lay in the heart of Ulysses S. Grant.
Summer looms with its ferocious heat that feels more like weight than temperature, and you become listless. You say you want to leave ahead of the season, want to go to the north Atlantic coast or Appalachians -- anywhere cooler. You watch me clandestinely to see if I am upset by your impending absence.
This is part of the game we play, and my role is to show indifference because that fuels your interest. The first heat wave arrives suddenly one afternoon, and you tell me you're leaving. But I find a scorpion nest in your travel valise, so I know that you have not even begun to air it out and pack.
II.
You, my lover, think you have peeled back all my layers and know all there is to know about my desires. You have tried money, sex, protective gestures, intellect and humor to pry me open and bind me to you.
But the core of me lies beyond the reach of clumsy lock picks.
Under my yearbook photo was written the words, "More to her than meets the eye."
All these years later, can't you see I'm still the woman standing outside the frame of a photograph, revealing just my shadow?
Come, admit that I am only perfect for you as long as I don't open, because it is the seeking -- not the finding -- that you really love.
*Inspired by a powerful line from Ken Burns' Civil War series, telling how "picklock biographers" never discovered what truly lay in the heart of Ulysses S. Grant.
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