Sarahbeth Purcell - New Work

Chapter 2 "River Side"

2010-04-08T14:35:00.000-05:00

From the novel in progress "Lady of The Lake"

Rock Harbor is the first stop on the Cumberland’s sweep through Nashville, Tennessee, before boaters arrive at better known Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville, where all the tourists go to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, listen to honky tonk, and buy cowboy hats at the obligatory souvenir shops.

Unlike Riverfront, Rock Harbor is a small marina, with a grimy little restaurant on the docks that serves varying chain-type seafood and burger fare, steaks, and tipsy girly mixed drinks. It sits almost directly across from a rock quarry and a smattering of houses that serve as the end to the Charlotte Park neighborhood of Nashville.

Grace lives in one of these houses, a house she was heading back to, now that she had satisfied her curiosity, the black red bottle still clenched tightly in her fist as she ran.

Most of the homes she passed by in the neighborhood were built to house the soldiers of World War II when they came home looking for a blue collar job and a white picket fence. Very few pickets are left, if any. If there are fences around the homes, they are mostly chain link, with a few wooden privacy fences on the most updated homes that sit right on the river, the ones that are actually worth enough to keep in what nobody wants anyone else to have: A dog, a nice car, privacy.

But the vast majority of dwellings were once quite identical. Two bedrooms. One bath. Eagle at the top of the eave above the front door. Asbestos or aluminum siding or brick, sometimes a mix of two. A nice rectangular symbol of what America was all about at the time: Economy, equity, hopes and dreams of becoming someone better.

Nowadays, especially closer to the quarry, those same homes are a little worse for the wear. If the siding is original, it is faded, dirty, and saggy. If it was replaced with vinyl, or was brick to begin with, it stands out as a home of good intentions. Maybe there’s a paved driveway here and there. Maybe some solar panels and a deck attached to the back. But most of these little boxes have been used and abused, passed from one working class family to another, all packed to the half attics full of expectations and missteps, tainted allegiances and bad habits. The histories seep from the outside in and permeate the people who fill them, poisoning the future with the reality of now. There is a silent promise therein: If the exteriors were all cleaned up, repainted, remodeled, the people inside might be able to tidy up their actual lives a bit easier, too.

Lawn ornaments of all sort scatter throughout these the yards: Painted concrete bird baths, old cars on blocks, Christmas lights and wire deer no one bothered to take down, Beware of Dog signs, strollers and tricycles long ago rusted, old tires, beer cans, cigarette butts, a dog chained within an inch of its life to a stake with no water, no food, no shelter. It’s clear with one look that the dogs and the kids in this neighborhood clearly didn’t get a choice in the lottery that leads to their fates. They’re always either running loose or too closely kept. There are few subtleties in Grace’s neighborhood and fewer in the lives of the people who live there.

Homes are literally steps away from the Interstate, their inhabitants sitting out on the sagging front porches smoking, having a beer, talking to neighbors, screaming at the dog, the kids. Just sitting there, watching cars go by, and watching Grace run home. Some are maybe waiting for the integral change in their lives to fall from the sky, and they act as if they’re inside when it happens, just like the ice cream man driving right by unless he sees you, they might miss it.

When Grace passes these dilapidated rectangles of despair, the inhabitants stare at her with what she assumes is resentment. Maybe confusion. What business does she have running down their street? She’s an outsider. No one around here runs, unless they’re being chased by one of the mutts that got off his chain.

The neighborhood of Charlotte Park, in West Nashville, is a lot like blue collar neighborhoods all over the country. There are hit and miss properties. People who work constantly, and people who don’t work at all. Thirty year old cars and newly purchased cars, an American model made up to look like a Bentley even, parked in the front driveways, and on the sides of the streets. There are nice elderly couples and rude young families of eight.

So no matter what type of person you might be, if you don’t have the money to live in a place where there is a hip coffee house and a few vintage shops, maybe a bar or two down the sidewalk lined streets, or where there are usually two nice cars parked invisibly in a three car garage, you live somewhere like the torn edges of Charlotte Park: A decent, fairly safe, blue collar, predominately white neighborhood where the have-somes mix with the have-littles.

It’s a place Grace’s parents called home since she was young. And for a short time, it was a place she had escaped. Now, here she is, back where she started, bringing with her the knowledge that from here, in this neighborhood, it’s a lot harder for lightning to strike twice.

So Grace ran still. Trying to push thoughts of all sorts out with her cold, stinging exhales. Thoughts of failure and defeat. Of completing a lifelong circle of almost and never enough. Of being the victim of her own wild imagination. And the new thoughts. Am I going crazy? What are these pictures in my head? Grace moved as if she could outrun the insanity she was almost sure she was being consumed by, that had found her in the flawed genes of her mother and father. She was back where she started, both in life, and literally, from the beginning of her run. Home.

Reaching her father’s house, Grace walked in through the back door, the sounds of Wheel of Fortune blaring from the living room only steps away.

“Grace, is that you?” Her father’s raspy voice strained over the applause.

“Yes. It is.” She walked in to the TV room to wave hello, tripping over her father’s cane and only just making a recovery before almost falling into the coffee table.

Her dad turned his head for a second, squinted at her, and shook his head. “Still don’t like you running around here. This isn’t Manhattan, you know.”

Grace grabbed a few peanut M&M’s from the dish next to the couch, popped them in her mouth, and shrugged. “It’s not that dangerous. I can take care of myself.”

“From a car coming at you? Grace, even you can’t stop a moving car.” He turned his attention back to his show, rubbing his right knee intermittently.

Grace knew better than to interrupt, and grabbed a few more M&Ms before making her way into her bedroom. She shut the door and pulled the nail polish back out of her sleeve again, suddenly feeling like she was thirteen, hiding stolen cosmetics and getting scolded by her dad all over again.

Grace held the morbid colored paint up to the light, watching as the reds and almost opaque black showed through the glass bottle. It was that color that flashed again over her field of vision, the image of that nail, but this time Grace sensed more of what was attached. The finger, the hand. And she felt now like she had seen a ghost. In her room, with her. She shuddered, focused on an object – the lamp in front of her, and the visions once again receded. But suddenly, the color of the nail polish became more than a varnish to Grace, the liquid in the bottle now eerily resembling a vial of fresh human blood.

Chapter 1 "Crushed Crimson"

2010-03-24T14:24:00.000-05:00

From Novel In Progress, Lady Of The Lake

When Grace first gave in to her curiosity, the body was nearby, lying beside a chain link fence near the grottiest part of Rock Harbor boat dock. It was covered in a canopy of pine trees and litter, almost completely hidden from the street. Grace walked right by it, not knowing that this was the whole reason she was near the dock and the quarry. She was almost sleepwalking anyway, obsessed with a picture of a color she had seen only in her imagination.

It was on a nail, a chipped blackened red, that Grace had seen in a flash as she flipped an egg that morning. It came like a vision. Or a hallucination. All noise and action around her slid away from consciousness, and this color covered her eyes as if she had dived into a pool of it. The richness of the color of red stood out to Grace, and then as the picture seemed to pull away a bit, to refocus. It was then that Grace was able to see what the color was smeared onto, that she knew even in that cursory glance of daydreams couldn’t be a wadded up Marlboro Red package, or the label of a bottle of Budweiser, or any of the other discarded possibilities the side of a road tends to collect. It was definitely a fingernail, two thirds of the way covered in dark reddish black polish.

A pale finger, she saw in this vision, was attached to it. And to that finger a knuckle. And to that knuckle a hand. But in that first blink of color and intuition that came over her, Grace didn’t get too far past the fingernail before the image in her mind disappeared. It was quickly replaced once again by the smell of burning butter and the sizzle and pop from the frying pan, egg browned and now burnt.

As she was running later that day, the color came to her again, the image somehow smothering the light around her, and she could think of nothing else. Her body jerked, as if it were being invaded by the vision of this red. Grace felt as if this might be what having a seizure was like, this complete loss of control, falling to the pavement and covering her eyes as if the image was in front of her, and not inside of her. When Grace was able once again to stand, she could no longer ignore whatever these attacks on reality were. She followed the tiny ideas they left behind, like hints for treasure. She thought only: Go that way.

And so Grace turned from her planned route and instead ran along the side of the rock quarry that was caddy corner from the dock. She ran up the street toward Robertson Road, in her faded black leggings, two year old All Terrain New Balance shoes, a paint spattered sweatshirt, and an old cassette player in her hands. The headphones had fallen when she had stopped in her tracks and fallen, and were now dangling from her neck.

Grace had been running that late afternoon for the purpose of filling up some empty space of her day, and to escape the confines of the suffocating vinyl sided two bedroom post World War II square of a house she temporarily lived in, with her father. Before the hallucination hit again, she had been running with conviction. She ran like she used to, when she had brand new workout clothes, when she belonged to a gym, when it was a treadmill she put miles on. When she lived alone but full of purpose and ambition in an exclusive condo development downtown that had two pools, retail space, a concierge. Despite the difference in scenery, Grace was running for a similar reason: To work thoughts out, and then to try and forget where they might lead.

But after her run had been interrupted and she began to follow only this most thin grip of intuition, Grace ran past the chest of treasure those hints had tried to steer her toward, that girl lying lifelessly nearby. And Grace passed her, instead running far away, getting cold, cold, colder from that redness and that nail.

Instead, that vision of color lead Grace to follow her own reason, never the solution for something that has very little of its own. And so on that day after Valentine’s, she ended up at a beauty supply store off of Charlotte Avenue, about a half a mile from where the whole thing began.

An array of polish colors were on display at Sally Beauty Supply, the shocking pinks, metallic blues, dull nudes and scarlet reds. Her aim was to find the shade she could not get out of her head, neither completely black, nor completely red. A mixture. Grace was on a frantic search for the exact name.

She quickly found Brandywine, and Ruby Fire, in a brand of nail polish she had never heard of, painting them on each thumbnail and blowing quickly. They came close, but then Grace would notice the metallic hues that danced in the light, and her search continued. The nail in that dreamlike thought didn’t sparkle. It was almost matte. Full of pigment but devoid of playfulness. The color was hard. Cold. Dead. Much like the girl who wore it, that Grace still had no idea whatsoever about.

After scouring the racks for another fifteen minutes and coming up empty, Grace could still see the color perfectly, and realized that Sally Beauty definitely didn’t have it. It wasn’t a professional manicure that nail was wearing, Grace had decided. It was a homemade manicure. Unless it was from the beauty school down the street off Annex. And unless the beautician in training got a D. Maybe an F.

Grace wiped the still wet colors off of her thumbs on her black leggings, and edged past a grey haired man with a long mustache that curled at the ends, buying Clubman aftershave and ponytail holders. She didn’t look the cashier in the eye, but half-whispered, “Thank you” as the bell tied to the handle of the door rang twice as it closed behind her.

Kroger was the next stop, and it had only had Covergirl and Sally Hansen, mostly pinks and whites, French Manicure colors all of them. So before she hit Walgreens, Grace ended up in the cosmetic section of CVS pharmacy because it was on the same side of the road as Kroger. And there it was. She instantly knew the Revlon color Crushed Crimson was the one she had seen, the one she had been searching for, the minute her eyes met the color painted on the plastic sample nail in front of her.
She picked up the bottle, painted it on all the fingernails of her right hand, marveling at my perfect match under the bluish white buzz of fluorescent lights. It was just dark enough to seem black, until she moved her fingers to play with the overhead glare, back and forth, where she saw the red accents appear. This was the color. This was it. And it really was the same color, actually. Grace had a very good sense memory for things like this, it turns out. It also just happened to be the very same CVS the owner of those Crushed Crimson nails had bought it at.

Grace picked her cassette player and headphones off the ground and slipped the polish up through the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She poked her head up and craned it to the right, spotting the surveillance camera on the next aisle. Grace felt bad for stealing, but she hadn’t brought any money with her, and the urgency of this find was too great. She would risk a trip downtown to be booked for a petty theft for Crushed Crimson.

Grace ran across the parking lot, letting the bottle slip out of her sleeve and holding it tightly in her right hand. She clipped the cassette player on the elastic waistband of her pants, placing the headphones back around her neck, while watching the dark nails of her right hand, tightly clenched, moving forward and back in opposite motion of her legs.

She ran all the way back home, breathing in painfully cold air as the sun set. She realized with the darkness that she had gone on a wild goose chase for a simple color on a fingernail she saw in a dream that might actually be some sort of acid flashback or sudden onset of mental illness. But the fact that Grace now had proof that the color actually existed was what convinced her that it all couldn’t totally be imaginary. Something seemed very real about that image, that color, that fingernail. And although she had no explanation for the source, Grace satisfied her self doubt with the find somewhat. She settled on the idea that she had seen the color in a magazine, maybe on a mannequin’s hand, and that recent events of high stress must have mixed her up and convinced her that she must find this color. Maybe that was the end of it. So that night, as Grace made her way home, that girl lying nearby and her own Crushed Crimson nails would lie in wait.

"Treading Water"

2010-03-23T14:51:00.000-05:00

From the novel The Jam

“What about a trip to the Smithsonian after the satellite radio thingy? We could get them lost in there for days...”

Frances raised a heavily outlined and perfectly arched black eyebrow sarcastically, as I proposed day scheduling in Washington D.C. for High Crime’s upcoming promotional tour.

“Only if they’re open at two A.M. and have a lax policy on snorting lines off the exhibits.” Frances giggled her reply, as she readjusted her chin length jet black hair behind her ears.

We were sitting for the third hour straight, in my corner office at AWR, tempting fate with our extended reclining stances in the slate colored Herman Miller Embody chairs.

Frances tapped away on her phone, correcting dates and details on it and the one next to it, the official Blackberry, across from my own pocket lifeline laying in front of me on the massive antique mahogany desk I spotted while on Portobello Road and had shipped from England late last year.

I scooted this way and that on the wheels of the chair, like a child full of Pixie Stix and Mountain Dew, trying to focus on working out ways to keep the down time the band experienced when one of us wouldn’t be on the road with them to a minimum. I was fidgety, because, admittedly, I wasn’t totally engrossed in the effort. Taming High Crime had suddenly become an exercise in futility I no longer seemed to think was one hundred percent achievable.

The mini-tour planned was six weeks in length, with only a two day break home during Christmas, which to be fair, is an excruciating stretch, if the performer has family and a life outside their music career. But with High Crime, life is all sort of relative, and anyway, no one in the band complained when the itineraries were given to them the day before. Of course, that’s probably because they hadn’t read them, and only two of the members actually showed up to the mandatory meeting to discuss the whole thing. Tamara, supposedly sick, again, was on speakerphone as I read the dates aloud, and when I finally tracked down Doug hours later, he claimed he mixed up the times and hung up before dates could even be discussed. But this tour, and the World tour after it, was in their contracts. Set in stone. In the end, the whole band would be on the road for the next year and a half coming very soon.
A tour, especially when you are a successful band with more than ample backing from your record company, is about twenty-two and a half hours of waiting a day. When you are at the status High Crime is, you as a band member have very little to do with the everyday mundane details of those hours, save whether you choose to use all that time you are allotted to sleep, drink, do drugs, chase groupies or all of the aforementioned. You have more free time than an animal at the zoo. Because the stuff normal people do in a day is done for you. You are free. Most of the time. To do whatever you choose, wherever you happen to be. The freedom can be the most dangerous part of the job.

Travel plans are made for you. Every city, every state, every country. Entire continents, worked down to numbers: Dates and times. Whittled down to minutes, when necessary. Work visas and travel visas and all that passport stuff? Taken care of. Luggage is carried out of the plane or bus, and placed in your room, taken out of your room, and placed back on the bus or plane as needed. Music gear and sound equipment is removed from under your bus or plane a few minutes after arrival time and/or unloaded at the venue, set up, tuned and maintained as necessary, loaded back up and also placed back under bus or plane minutes after the concert ends. You, in fact, may sometimes only touch your guitar when a roadie brings it to you, and literally places it on you, onstage, and plugs you in, in front of the audience, half a second before the first song starts.

Sleeping accommodations are always arranged months ahead of time, in swank hotel suites the size of million dollar Manhattan apartments, with flat screens mounted in every room like fine art, and private pools and private butlers, and stocked with more groceries and toiletries than you ever have at home. You have complained in the past about certain details in the room you spend no time in, like the lighting being too harsh, or the stereo you almost never turn on sounding too treble-heavy, and so these details, along with countless others, will be tended to and corrected this time around, just in case you come across these features ever again and haphazardly decide to use them.

You will be provided, per your specific tour contract demands, with a king size Stearns and Foster Legendary Innerspring bed in each master bedroom, and a queen size of the same in the two other bedrooms you will never even enter, unless you’ve changed your mind and prefer visco-elastic foam mattresses, in which case you will get a The Grand Bed by Tempur-Pedic. Either way, the mattresses will be made up with brand new snow white Frette sheets, the Rigato Ara design, because you like stripes but won’t sleep on sheets with any color in them. They will be prewashed in cruelty free fragrance free delicate washing powder, unless you request the Tocca Lingerie wash, in the fragrance Stella, again. The sheets are all one hundred percent Egyptian cotton, these being three hundred thread count, which goes completely against your contract demands of sheets of at least one thousand thread count, but these fine Italian linens are mercerized sateen, which has to do with the way the fibers of cotton are plumped and smoothed to produce some of the softest, finest fabric in the world. Your manager has made this executive decision for you, and you will not be told the thread count, because you have not complained before about these sheets, and besides, if you really knew anything about fine linens you would know that thread count is only a very small part of what makes bed linens luxurious. But you don’t, because you’ve only seen the numbers and thinking everything with a higher number is better, you have demanded sheets that don’t exist in this brand, and if they do in a different brand, they would certainly not be as deliciously soft as these, so in this case, what you don’t know will certainly not hurt you.

The beds will be overflowing with Siberian Goose down Euro pillows, and standard pillows and even a little boudoir pillow, all of them tucked into Frette stark white cases of the same design as the sheets, and the Frette Ischia design duvet covers over fluffy down comforters never used by any other hotel residents. You will be provided with more than enough time to get in a good eight hours, although you won’t. Your hotel rooms are, of course, cleaned multiple times a day, or left alone, if you request it. Your bed is turned down before midnight and then stripped when you leave, even if it hasn’t been slept in. The creamy rose petals carefully scattered on the floor in front of the bed will be vacuumed up. Whether you even stay the night in a city or are only there for an hour, there will be a room provided with all of these details in each stop. Just in case.

Your private plane and your entourage of tour buses are also stocked as amply, also cleaned before you notice they’re dirty.

Meals, according to any and all dietary demands and restrictions are arranged and provided in every city, in between cities, and even when you have no idea if you’re near any city. If you are eating only Twizzlers and Red Bull this week, you will be provided for. If you’re like Tamara, and mostly don’t eat, you still request ridiculous foods that change as often as your mood. They always arrive exactly as requested, and you let them sit in the baskets and fridges and ice buckets, untouched. You ask for things like Brocomole, a broccoli version of Guacamole, and tailor made vegan raw food that has to be Fed Exed to every new location on dry ice. It will be left behind, untouched, where it will likely be thrown out.

Of course alcohol is available. At all hours. Any kind under the sun. When you are hung-over and swear it off, it will quickly be removed, and when you angrily ask a few hours later where your wine is, it will all be replaced just as quickly. And drugs? Record company execs won’t discuss getting their clients drugs. They might even give you a long talk at some point, usually after you’ve either overdosed or half destroyed your budding career, about how drugs are bad for you, blah blah blah. Oddly enough, you find that your A&R guys in just about every city love to talk to you about this. It makes them feel important to hook you up with their dealer, so on the off chance you aren’t offered free drugs by your band mates and fans, and most times you are, you can always talk to A&R if you’re hard up. Just say the four letter word: Drug. And, like raindrops, pills will fall from the sky around you.

All of this expected luxury (minus the drugs) will be billed directly to someone at the record company who deals with and promptly pays for these things, so you will never have to see a bill or sign a bill or even carry money if you don’t want to. And eventually, like everything else on tour, it all comes out of your earnings from album sales and ticket sales before you get a dime in residuals. And even though you are rich beyond your wildest imagination, you will claim repeatedly you’re being ripped off by the record company, ignoring the daily waste you are guilty of even when you’re not on tour, and having no knowledge, and more importantly, refusing to inquire about the actual cost of your constant and ever changing demands.

That word economy does not apply to you. Not in terms of travel, not in terms of your bank account suffering because of it, and certainly not ever in terms of trying to be thrifty. If anything is economy sized in your life, chances are, it’s a mistake. You want the smaller size. But ten of them.

You have your record company people and public relations people and your personal assistants and costume designers and road managers and stage managers and guitar techs and drum techs and set designers and all the road crew that sets up and tears down your stage in every city, seconds after you play the last note. And aside from that, along with your on-again, off-again spiritual guides and Pilates instructors and motivational psychologists and chiropractors, there is a “runner” in each city. These people are either provided by the venue or by the record company if the venue claims that they don’t have the means, (which is B.S. because they’re usually unpaid interns anyway), and this person’s whole purpose on the planet is to cater to the band members’ whims for the entire length of their stay. Your attitude and demands make them question not only their future in the music business, but their future in general. You make anyone who works for you want to buy straight razors in bulk.

You are taken to interviews, or the journalists come to you. If you’re known for being prickly or difficult, (and you are), you will have a PR person accompany you so you don’t say or do anything indicative of your real personality. You will, undoubtedly at some point do just this, and show yourself to a reporter, who will then quote you word for word in print. The PR person will beg against it, will have your lawyers threaten to sue the magazine for billions, but it’s all on tape, and it will go to print, but will first spread to the Internet Blogosphere the second the trigger happy music journalist leaves the room, maybe even while he’s in the room, texting Gawker and Perez Hilton and TMZ about their great fortune.

You will read the terrible quote or incident, or have it read to you, because you always read all your press and your reviews, even though you vehemently deny it. You will throw a fit over what you were quoted saying, or doing, and claim that you are grossly misunderstood and taken out of context and have your newly replaced PR person send out a press release even stating that you no longer want to do any press, and that you hereby refuse to talk to anyone, about anything.

Of course, you will do more press anyway, because talking about yourself and what you do is too tempting and you want to sell more albums so you can support that habit. You have every daily paper that might have a review of your show or album, and every relevant magazine, delivered to you, wherever you are, and every day you have people who will print out and even read the latest blogs to you, as you pretend not to care whether you were mentioned or not. When you are talked about, you act disgusted with how they judge you. When you’re not mentioned, you mock the insignificance of whoever they are dishing about.

You are told where you need to go, when you need to go there, and when you need to leave. You mostly don’t listen. You are reminded when you have five more minutes until you will be late. You are woken up at precisely the right time, so you won’t miss your plane, even though the only thing you will be responsible for is your own body making it on, after someone delivers you to your gate, and even your seat, if necessary. Your flight is rescheduled when you do miss your plane, which you do too often. You are provided with every single need or want a human can imagine, from food to shelter to entertainment, all in exchange for about an hour and a half, when you are expected to do your job: Play music. That’s all.

You are asked to please try to get onstage at least two hours within the time that’s promised. Try to play about ten to fourteen songs, and try to stay upright, try to play in tune, try not to get so drunk you forget lyrics, try not to insult audience members, try not to get in a fight with a fellow band member, try to be somewhat of a professional at what you get paid ungodly amounts of money to do, just for one hour or so out of your life. Please? The rest is already taken care of.

Everything else is done for you. That is your sole responsibility.

You are catered to and spoiled and you’re worshipped and adored and every word you utter or note you play is treated as Gospel. You live in a bubble where even when bad things happen, when someone says or does something you don’t like, in print or in person, there are always people around you who turn these slights into positives, who soothe you until you feel better, even when that takes all night while you lie drunk and sobbing on the heated marble bathroom floor of your suite, threatening to quit or kill yourself, or both. When you pretend nothing happened the next morning, they do too. That’s their job. You can get away with things other mere humans would go to jail for. You can say and do things that would otherwise make you a certified narcissistic ego maniacal nightmare. You have the most unbelievable job in the entire world, and you get paid, in a month or so, more than most people will ever make in their lifetimes.

It’s easy. But easy can be boring. Easy can be surprisingly difficult. Because every city ends up being kind of the same. Every tour is pretty much the same. The only thing that changes is the color of the music journalist’s shirt, and you don’t notice things like that anyway. And maybe the name of the new bus driver you won’t really care about unless he hits a bump while your eyeliner is being applied, in which case you’ll want him fired on the spot. Or the brand of five dollar bottled tap water you demand two cases, chilled, but not too cold, onstage, before you’ll play one note. That might change. And the name of the new album you’re on this whole tour to sell, but whose title most of the time you can’t be bothered to remember unless someone reminds you. And the lyrics to the new songs change, but that’s why you have a teleprompter in your monitors and backups on paper in a notebook at your feet. Why should you have to remember the words to songs you wrote anyway?

Monotony is part of the job. It’s part of life. You’re not supposed to tell the fans that yes, you have been told how great you are, how talented you are, that you’re their favorite person in the whole world, a million times before. You’re not supposed to tell the music journalists that you know they’re frustrated musicians, and that you also know they’ll give you a favorable interview and leave out the parts about how you really act if they want to stay in your good graces in case you decide to tap them to ghost write your autobiography.

You’re supposed to act like this time, every time, with every album, in every city, it’s different. Meanwhile, someone else is loading up your gear, and someone else is making sure your wine is Spanish, and someone else is requesting dressing on the side of your salad that you will definitely not eat. Someone else is living the life part of your life for you while you are sitting backstage somewhere feeling sorry for yourself because you’re bored. Because you don’t really have to do much of anything, except incessantly talk about yourself, and then play for an hour or two, songs mostly all about you, and how you feel or what you like or don’t like. And you feel like Rapunzel, trapped in the castle. Like maybe this whole thing you wanted so badly is not what you thought it would be after all.

But in comparison to the monotony of a real job, maybe, say, an office job? Where every day you have to wake yourself up, where you make your own coffee, you drive yourself to work, you get the boss their mail, you type the same orders and answer the same phones day after day after day, you take the heat when something isn’t just right, where you have to stop by the grocery store after working ten hours straight without a lunch break and decide what to prepare and then eat for dinner, you have to put gas in the car, you have to pay the electric bill and you have to somehow figure out how to get enough sleep and try to fit in some semblance of a social life, and you have to do all of this with enough joie de vivre to keep doing it day after day after day? In comparison to that life? The other one, full of all that free time, all that waste and pampering, void of ever touching a gas pump with your hands or standing in the freezer section, dizzied and overcome with choices for frozen pizza? It ends up being what everyone dreams of. Until they’re doing it. And then, they’re dreaming of something else. Probably something normal. Like making their own coffee. Although, truth be told, they never really learned how to do that.

As I became more jaded over the course of a few hours than I had been in nearly ten years prior, we scoured online maps and Lonely Planet guides for quirky museums and exciting but tasteful restaurants, knowing with more certainty that the band wouldn’t actually go on any outings of our making.

They had their own agendas, which turned out to be extremely detrimental to the mandatory part of the tour: the playing live music onstage part. So we continued our quest, while I rubbed my feather in the pocket of my jacket between my middle and forefinger. I was nervous about seeing my dad in two days. I was worried I wouldn’t recognize him. I was nauseous thinking about giving him a hug when he arrived. But what else should I do? Shake his hand? Or worse, pat him on the back as he had done to me when he left me with his sister, never to return? I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t touch him at all. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t say anything, either. Maybe I should just stand there, staring at him, silent, and wait for him to explain exactly what he was thinking these last twenty years.

I moved my attention back to the feather. To my birds. Their routine. Five years. They get five years, in the wild, fighting every day just to survive. Literally having to wait for things to die and then begin to rot before they can eat, because their beaks are genetically too weak to rip into the flesh of something big and strong and healthy. Urinating on themselves to stay cool, and to clean the disease they must feed in off their bodies, shitting on themselves to save themselves from dying. Navigating through trash and traffic, pollution and trigger happy rednecks with nothing better to do than kill anything alive they happen to come across. Trying to live in the world humans have created, day after day, reviled and misunderstood. Even for just five years. What kind of a deal is that? What kind of life?

I found myself through the last thirty some-odd years, at times, feeling sorry for my situation, feeling like I was robbed of a childhood, that I was mistreated and wronged. And in human terms, surely I was. But in the general scheme of things, in Mother Nature’s eyes, I’m spoiled and ungrateful. There’s that Mother again. Isn’t she something? Constantly proving to humans that they can work to understand the most complex problems in the universe, and still, we’ve got nothing on her. I suppose my birds have even less time on their hands than the least fortunate of humans, and so, perhaps, they have less time to wonder what it might be like to take something, anything, for granted. They have less time for doing anything but waiting for the next thing to die, so that they might live another day.

“Nyla? Hello? Did you hear me? Which one?”

Frances was asking me which brand of Merlot Tamara had insisted upon this time around. I almost never forgot things like that. As a manager, it is my job to remember which wine Tamara wants backstage before the show, and which one she wants on the bus after the show. Also what temperature Chad’s coffee should be, which Indian takeout to send to the studio that they haven’t yet complained made them all sick, which breath mints made Tamara sneeze, which flowers gave Doug migraines and how many ice cubes went in Reed’s disgusting Mountain Dew and Vodka cocktail. It changes.

I’m expected to keep up. And I always did before. I rubbed my feather, and thought hard. Frances pressed.

“Nyla. Space Case. Stop fidgeting. I need a name.”

“I don’t care.”

“What?”

“I said I don’t care.”

Frances stared at me. “That’s not your answer.”

I nodded. “Yes it is. Just write down Merlot. Decent Merlot.”

Frances hesitated. “Um…Very funny.”

I didn’t laugh. I just rubbed my feather and tried to imagine telling Tamara she would have to pee all over herself when she complained that the tour bus was a few degrees too warm. I thought of all the ridiculous things they all made into issues that just didn’t matter in the general scheme of things. Frances rolled her eyes.

“I’m gonna call Tamara’s assistant because I don’t want to hear about this in a month at two A.M…”

I touched Frances’ wrist as she started to reach for her phone. She hated being touched. “She’ll never know the difference, Frances. She just thinks it matters. Just let the venue decide. She’s going to change her mind by the time she gets out on the road anyway.”

Frances shrugged and began tapping into her phone, muttering under her breath, “Okay, Deepak. When the shit hits the fan, I’m forwarding the calls to you.”

And I didn’t care. Finally. I calmly reminded myself that my job as a manager for these spoiled kids was just that: a job. And maybe Tamara would freak out and throw a fit. And maybe she wouldn’t. But I let it go, and thought of larger things, like where my life was going from here, and then more pressing questions, like, what was I going to have for dinner? And I had to admit, I didn’t have an answer for either one.

But it was definitely better than having someone else map it all out for me.

"Blackbird"

2010-03-21T16:00:00.000-05:00

(Chapter taken from Unpublished Novel The Jam)

The American Black Vulture is a scavenger bird, found mostly in the Southeastern United States and South America, but, as we continue to trash the planet, and the climate changes drastically as a result, the birds have tended to move farther and farther north accordingly.

Black Vultures, as birds of prey, do not have a very good sense of smell. One would think this would be an obvious statement, given their diet, something like a rabbit, rotting for days before they even get to it. Their gastronomic judgment could be put into question as well, but their actual sense of smell is fairly absent to begin with. Whether it is rotting, or, in rare cases, still alive, this particular species of vulture does not typically find their prey by scent, opting instead to simply look for it, many times circling areas for days, scouring the open fields and sides of streets from high up in the sky, and sometimes perching from somewhere closer, to get a better look.

When Black Vultures are looking at something, say, a possible meal, they don’t view it as we do, with both eyes at once. They crane their head to one side or the other, sometimes both, storing the information from the collective as the image. So unlike what you might have heard, vultures don’t really stare something down, both eyes fixed and unrelenting, as one might imagine a terrifying bird of prey might. With the way that they’ve evolved, involving the placement of all of their features, they simply can’t.

Monocular vision, as it is called, might seem ridiculous, and silly, and inferior to humans, but vultures, like other monocular birds, can see three hundred and sixty degrees, while most of us have very little ability to see out of the sides of our eyes at all. We are like carriage horses most of the time, blinders constantly keeping us from seeing much more than what is directly in front of us.

In America, especially in the South, not so much here in Nashville anymore, but definitely in some counties outside of the city, some people call vultures “buzzards”, but they also sometimes call barbed wire “bob wire”, and polenta “grits”. They call maybe all birds they deem annoying buzzards, in fact; even beautiful, mysterious birds like Ravens, birds that are not bald on top, that do not have a five foot wing span, that do not constantly serve as Nature’s Little Vacuum Cleaner of Death. That’s probably the least of insults in the way that vultures are misunderstood, though.

The Black Vulture is not a terribly able hunter, really, by nature. Far from it. The only living prey it can manage is a newborn, helpless animal, many times very literally just emerging from the birth canal, and in that case, really, when you think about it, it does seem the least unkind sort of kill, if there were such a thing. No real struggle, or certainly not a struggle that can possibly compare with that of being born. Just surfacing into an overwhelming world, confused and still in shock, and then, seconds later, leaving again. In a morbid sense, it sounds a lot less horrible than the way a lot of us end up exiting.

Black Vultures, in the end, would much prefer to feed quietly on something that has already given up the ghost. It’s less complicated on many levels. So they end up finding easier prey like road kill with those curious eyes of theirs, and rely on that final phase of life in nature as their primary means of nourishment because it’s easiest, really. And anyway, they aren’t strong enough themselves to rip in the flesh of most healthy living prey. Their talons and beaks are actually quite weak.

And even when the opportunity of feasting on carrion strikes, it might just be because they have happened upon the meal of a far stronger bird of prey, maybe even a fellow species of New World Vulture, maybe a Turkey Vulture even, which do have a far keener sense of smell for decomposing flesh. Once they arrive, the Black Vulture will often wait for the gruesome and more difficult parts to be done, the ripping and butchering part, and then push their fellow birds of prey out of the way, to pick at what is left. In this way, they are not unlike less aggressive versions of Hyenas, really, with wings. But they don’t laugh. They hardly make noise at all. When pressed, Black Vultures hiss and growl. Like big, angry cats.

About six weeks ago, the birds made their first appearance at my house. High Crime had already finished recording their new album, and were rehearsing for the record release preview of last night and the short tour to follow. The details for the promotional junket and tour were pretty much set up by then. Details changed daily, but the rough sketch of the band’s plans were set up enough so I had finally begun to allow myself to come home from the studio and the office before midnight.

It was a Sunday morning, and these huge birds just…arrived, maybe from Alabama, maybe all the way from San Carlos. I don’t know. I was pouring myself a cup of tea and nearly dropped the pot when I spotted what I had previously thought was a large black cat, peeking through the window, from the corner of my eye.

Maybe I am naïve, but I never imagined a two foot tall buzzard, or vulture, or whatever the proper genus name really is, would just land on the window sill outside my kitchen one morning, and promptly decide to live there. They arrived in a group of three, like people say both good and bad things tend to do. One was on the window sill, one was clinging to the staircase rail next to my porch, and the third was in the Bradford Pear tree that hung over a large portion of the screened in porch. From the moment I saw them, I knew that they could all see in the windows, and they were all watching me, all of the time, it seemed, their little heads craned dramatically in my direction, one eye, or the other, focusing on my own nervous glare. I would be lying if I said they didn’t creep me out at first.

I realize the close parallels that people, the press, literature, movies, television shows and especially struggling musicians make between vultures and people who do what I do: Music business managers and executives, people who are on the business side of the arts. I know people think I must be vicious and opportunistic and ruthless, evil with beady yellow eyes that glow in the dark and teeth that drip with the blood of young, innocent, virginal songwriters who just wanted to write folk songs and make the world a peaceful place.

But to be fair, there is the supposed prey of the supposed predators like me too: Those songwriters. The tortured, lonely narcissists.

Either cliché is as unfair, and probably in a small way as true as the other. In truth, it is a symbiotic relationship, the one between the artist and the people who sell their art, just as is the artist and their misery. They feed off one another, to be sure. But more often than not, from my vantage point, it seems more fair to say that vultures of all sorts, real or human-labeled, swoop in on beings that are already dead or, at least, injured in ways no living thing really recovers completely from. Sometimes they even end the suffering, and maybe protect the world from the bevy of disease these tortured things are capable of passing on, and then get a bad rap for being willing to do such a menial and loathsome task no one else wants to know the dirty details of.

So the parallels between what I do and what vultures do are not lost on me. My job, when it comes down to it, is to keep an artist, a sweater full of holes, from completely unraveling before someone can admire it, maybe even try it on. The sweater’s flaws, the thin parts, the snags and stains that always lead to their undoing, were knitted into the design by their makers, those who are, in truth, far more sinister than any vulture.

So when these vultures came to live in the corners of my windows and branches of the trees, and once I read a little about their true nature, I felt an affinity with them immediately. We, the misunderstood. We who are so much more complex and fragile than anyone would ever imagine us to be. I identified with them completely. It was a sign. It had to be. But of what?

Often, when a Black Vulture is approached, or feels threatened, it will vomit, like a tiny ballerina in training, maybe five minutes before her first recital. I read this online, outside on my porch, a few hours after they had arrived, once I had positively IDed them. Apparently, there are two schools of thought on why these birds do it: Either to make their physical weight immediately lighter in order to quickly take off in flight, or, because, well, the vomit is apparently so off putting, potential predators will be distracted or literally disgusted by it and flee. I think they might also be fairly nervous beings. I know I would be nervous if something were coming at me with the sole intent of consuming me. I have become ill in far less dire situations than that.

When I turned three, my mother tried to take me to nursery school, which at the time was a lot closer to daycare than it probably is today. We didn’t learn phonics or similes or anything that prepared us for Kindergarten. We made finger paint out of pudding and I didn’t get to take a portrait home because I ate all my paint before they had passed the paper out.

In the past, before that big first day of school, I had never once had a problem with motion sickness. I always kind of liked swings and merry go rounds and car rides. Adventure. But as soon as we pulled away from the parking lot of our apartments, I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach that quickly moved to my throat. I tried swallowing, which had suddenly become the most difficult task I had ever attempted. Before I could say anything, before I could ask for help, I opened my mouth, or rather, my mouth robotically opened without my approval, and vomit violently escaped from my throat. And it splattered all over my clean and hardly used Sunday school dress, bright white smocked with little pink hearts across it. Orange tinted stains now lingered in the tiny crevices of fabric folded over in the design, disguising the hearts, the liquid still dripping from my chin.

As I began to cry, my mother turned around and, seeing what had happened, shrieked as she pulled over on the side of the highway, slamming the car into park in anger. She came around to the right side of the backseat and opened the door, at first trying to wipe up the mess on my dress with a newspaper, and then resorting to using her bright yellow cardigan she had around her waist. When that failed, Mom gave me a death stare and yanked me out of the car by my elbow. I stood on the side of the highway next to a crushed beer can, sobbing, as she ripped the dress up over my head, popping the two buttons closing the neckline.

“Look at what you did, Nyla. Just look! ”

She shoved the stained fabric near my nose and I sobbed harder. She rolled her eyes, threw the dress in the front seat and walked away from me, and around to her side of the car, jumping in and slamming the door behind her.

I just stood there, on the side of the road. I waited, trying to swallow the gulps of air and snot, trying to be brave. I was thinking I was going to be left behind, standing on the side of Highway 70 in my underwear and navy Dr Scholl’s sandals. My dad had surprised me with them the night before, telling me he was so proud of his big girl going to school. I remember staring down at them, taking refuge only in the fact that they had not been affected. I had not ruined my special present from Daddy. I tried to focus on this happy fact so I could stop the relentless sobbing. I knew I had to stop crying before I could attempt to get in the car, or my mother would not let us leave, and I silently hated myself for not yet knowing how to get back home on foot. I thought of walking for days in my underwear and new sandals, desperately searching for that big wooden sign with the tree on it in front of our apartment building, the old Volvo parked across from our front door.

My mother finally turned around and yelled through the open back door out to me.

“Well, come on! You have now completely ruined your first day of school. You’re just going to have to come back home and stay with me. Like a baby.”

I wiped some of the stickiness that was still on my mouth off, and then tried to wipe away some of the salty water running down my cheeks, with the palm of my hand. But the tears kept falling, and my chest wouldn’t stop heaving in heavy sobs. So I took a big breath in, holding back any emotion and climbed into the back seat, shutting the door behind me as quietly as I could. As my mother drove back home, I remember thinking how lucky it was that I vomited while I was on my way to school, because if I had waited until I was at school, the teachers would have probably been mad, maybe even more mad than my mom, and they wouldn’t like me either. And maybe I would have to finish the day out in my underwear and sandals. And everyone there would have thought I was a baby, too.

I don’t know if I was trying to disgust my mother into retreating home, or if the thought of the unknown that was ahead of me that first day of school made me so uncomfortable that my body just reacted, but I think it was the latter. And I think the vultures and I have that nervousness of new things in common, along with the messy effects.

I spent the rest of that Sunday morning with my visitors, watching these three massive birds from my big wooden screened-in porch on the side of my fully restored brick Bungalow off Belmont Boulevard. I was happy just sitting there, observing. Spending a beautiful morning outside at the home I had, many times, dreamed of.

I used to walk by the house I now live in when I was still a Belmont University student. I fell in love with its antiquidated charm as I commuted on foot from my aunt’s house next to the apartments on the corner of the Interstate and 21st Avenue. I cut through yards without fences to get to classes on the nearby campus, and I always made time to stop to look at this house, dreaming one day I would have a car, one that started every day, parked in the old stained concrete driveway, or next to the dilapidated two car garage behind it. I thought of sitting on the big old sagging front porch, rocking in maybe a cedar porch swing, of sweeping off the cracked slate steps. I imagined the heating bills in the thousands, with all those drafty looking parts of such a big home, and then I imagined I wouldn’t worry so much about them if I could afford to have this space. A place of my own. The most beautiful place I could imagine. When I actually had enough money to purchase any house I wanted, it was only a few years ago when fate delivered the amazing opportunity.

Ironically enough, my former boss’ mother at the record label lived in this house, had bought it when the Belmont neighborhood in Nashville was still kind of sketchy in places and old homes like these were almost all in dire need of serious repairs. When I first spotted it, the dingy cream-colored paint was peeling off of most of the bricks, and the shutters that were still attached to the house were hanging haphazardly, a grey that wood turns when it is unprotected from elements. The windows looked to be all original, and must have been terribly inefficient. The dormers and roof were so tattered, I just knew there must have been multiple buckets strategically placed upstairs in the attic areas to catch leaks. But I loved the shabby old place. The idea of it. I saw what this house could be in my mind, I guess, just like the band I was by then manager of. I’ve learned along the way, in life and work, that envisioning something first from every angle is almost as essential as working toward that vision. Because if you don’t have a mental picture of it, with the finer details already anticipated, if you ever do reach the goal, you’ll have no idea what to do next.

At the time, my boss was transferring to the New York office of AWR, (and I, the new Vice President and manager of a newly successful High Crime, was taking his place at the Nashville office), and so he was moving his mother to a condo in Florida. Somewhere in the Keys. He probably bought an island there or something equally extravagant. He was an investor in a lot more than the record company, and no matter what the financial climate, he never seemed to be affected negatively.
Before we had that meeting and I knew for certain how small the world can seem when we intensely hope for things that might seem unlikely or impossible, I had watched the house change dramatically. Moving vans were parked out front for days and then were replaced by construction crews for months gutting everything. They brought out moss colored shag carpet, strips of wallpaper covered in big tacky gold roses and fleur des lis, wood paneling, black sinks and matching shiny black toilets with brightly patterned cushioned toilet seats. Just from the contents thrown in the massive dumpsters on the side of the house, I could tell the inside of the place must have been far more unsightly than the outside.

And then, in time, I noticed workers bringing in gorgeous period specific fixtures, putting them together on the rebuilt and re-tiled front porch. They were all brand new, and probably cost ninety times what an original turn of the century fixture did, but they didn’t operate on The Clapper like the previous globe ceiling fans and track lighting probably did. Masons repaired all the loose bricks. Pavers came and jack hammered the driveway, replaced the concrete with brand new aggregate. And finally, painters arrived and over every inch of that brick they covered the house that was to be mine with the most delicious color of celery and peas, if they had been thrown in a Cuisinart together. The trim was a creamy white, a big, thick real wood trim, with that cream color framing the house like a piece of art, around the windows and the eaves. Cedar shake shingles were nailed up around the dormers. The home took on an almost mythical quality now, even more beautiful than I ever imagined it could look, like a Craftsman castle in a fairy tale I had once imagined.

By the time they started remodeling the place, I was driving instead of walking by, in a two year old 4Runner I had bought with my first commission from the band. So instead of walking by, I would park across the street for far too long to marvel at what my old drafty dream had become. No for sale sign. I thought the owners were just finally getting around to make it livable.

But within weeks of seeing the last painter’s truck leave the driveway, I was at a meeting with High Crime, or the two members who decided to show up, and my former boss, who was now more of a colleague. The band’s first album was already out and selling like crazy. Things were positive. Light. But my old boss was busy complaining under his breath about having to deal with real estate agents to sell his just remodeled house nearby. I heard the street, and I nearly fell out of my chair. I knew it was this house. My house.

In the end, I relieved him of dealing with any agents at all by making a cash offer on the spot. A few papers signed and a check very high in the six figures gone from my ample savings and I was now living in the home I dreamed of for so many years before.

I had decided the porch swing I had once imagined would probably not be very appealing to the eye on the front, so it has its pride of place instead in the screened in porch on the left backside of the house, where I can sit and look out onto my big backyard. The house came with an additional lot behind it, untouched. All woods. A tiny forest of my very own. There are trees in my yard that are over a hundred years old. I live on a beautiful, serene, fairly private property that, until very recently, I have almost never spent any time in. All of that beauty and foliage obviously made me wonder why the birds didn’t take refuge in all the woods. Why were they so intent on being so close to me, out in the open, perched only feet from a human?

I drank my tea and clicked around websites about raptors and predators and then found pages with very specific and brief facts about Black Vultures. I wrote interesting little details about them in one of my steno notebooks, jotted notes like, “terrible sense of smell” and, “often nest on ground” as I watched them and thought for a very long time about their nature, about their tendency to ride the coattails of more deft predators with far superior capabilities than these vultures had. It made me wonder what had lead them here, to me, and what type of prey could possibly lay right under my nose, that they found so worth the risk.

"The Idea"

2010-03-21T13:02:00.000-05:00

From Unpublished Novel Pushing Off

I knock at the storm door three times, standing on the front stoop of a quaint cottage with bamboo wind chimes hanging from every eave. There is a sign on the door that says “No Soliciting”. There’s another below it, written in scrawled Sharpie that says “No Smoking.” A thin old man with very thick black plastic glasses and a full head of shiny white hair opens the front door, leans in toward the window, and squints.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Willa. My mother told me you called yesterday and wanted your house cleaned.”

The old man squints again and unlocks the storm door. He opens it and puts out his hand, closer to my neck than my arm, and I reach up to shake it.

“I’m Gerald.” He lowers his hand a bit and gestures for me to come in.

The cottage is crowded. Stacked to the brim with books. Some are nearly reaching the ceiling. There are posters with sayings all over them, strange color wheels on the wall, and an all around scent that faintly resembles weed…or maybe sage. Everything is dark. I can’t imagine how I would be able to move anything to actually clean it.

“So you like to clean house, hmm?” The old man walks back over to his easy chair near the television and feels the arm of the chair before he sits down.

“Well, I suppose.”

“I’ll take that as a no. I am mostly blind, but I can tell if the place is clean or not, just so you know. And I am aware that it’s not.”

“Okay. What would you like for me to clean?”

“Everything.”

I kind of laugh nervously. I feel like turning around and going directly home. I would be here for years.

“How about if you just start out by making me a pot of coffee? I haven’t had a good cup of coffee in my own house in years. I can’t seem to measure it out right without spilling it everywhere. So I don’t really make it.”

“Sure.” I maneuver around books and a big green ripped up ottoman and go into the kitchen that appears as if it hasn’t been used since the seventies. The coffee pot is one of those Mr. Coffee ones that was probably really expensive when it first came out. It’s goldish colored with daisies on it. There is a canister on the countertop that says “Coffee” in big brown letters so I open it up, imagining it is as expired as this kitchen is. I measure out a heavy handed attempt to make as good a cup of coffee as I can muster. Gerald watches TV. Or, rather, he listens to the TV.

When I bring in the cup, he has his eyes closed. The television is at a very low volume. I nudge him a little.

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was listening. When one sense doesn’t work so well, others work much better sometimes. Put the coffee on the table next to me, please. Handle facing me. And have a seat.”

The couch across from the recliner chair has plastic on it, as well as books and papers. I feel awkward as I sit down and wait for my next job. Gerald reaches for the coffee and as he drinks it, he is silent.

“Is it okay?”

“It’s awful. Worst stuff I’ve ever had.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault. The worst coffee in my own house is better than any coffee at one of those overpriced cafes they have. I don’t have to learn a new language to drink it.”

I kind of giggle and peer over to the television. He’s watching The Price is Right. But I know it’s a rerun, because Bob Barker is on it hosting. Gerald finishes his coffee and sighs.

“Are you pretty?”

I sit erect, a bit more uncomfortable. “I’m sorry?”

“Do you consider yourself a pretty woman, Willa?”

“Um…I guess I’m okay.”

“Then yes. That’s a yes, right?” Gerald gestures an open hand in my general direction.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He pinches his thumb and forefinger together, like an Italian chef might. “Then why do you walk around like Quasi Moto?”

“What do you mean?” I sit up straighter.

“I can’t see very well, but I can see your shadow and your posture is atrocious. What is it? A boy?” Gerald settles back in his chair.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do.” He grins, knowingly.

“Um, do you want me to clean something?” I begin to stand, wanting to do anything but talk about my disastrous personal life.

“Now don’t take offense. I can put you to work and you’ll be up to your ears in dust or you can sit here with me and keep me company. Either way I’ll pay you whatever you charge.”

“Okay.” I sit back down.

“I figured since you don’t seem to like cleaning, I thought maybe you might want to make some easy money. If you can put up with me. Will you grab that book over there and read some to me? I will be a captive audience. No more intrusive questions. I promise.” Gerald gestures toward a nearby stack of hardbound books and papers. On top is an old red tattered book that says, “Powerful Metaphysical Thinking” on the spine.

I open it to the earmarked page and begin reciting the words aloud.

“When you no longer fight basic human urges, the urges no longer take over your subconscious…” Gerald seems comforted as I continue. The words seem to come off the page and weave themselves into a blanket of thoughts that warm him. I catch a few here and there. The book is full of ideas that border on new age. Something about being able to change physically by thinking less mentally.

Appear. Become. Surround. Total. Fearless. Stop. Feeling. You. Can’t. Stop. Anything. Stop. Trying.

I read five chapters before Gerald raises his hand for me to stop.

“$25,000 Pyramid is coming on. The one with Dick Clark. The good one. You can stop reading. There is cash in the vase on the coffee table. Take out fifty bucks. If you want to come back next week, I’ll see you at the same time.”

Gerald goes back into his closed eye trance, listening to Mary Hart giving clues: hand. blister.

“Callus!” Gerald guesses every clue correctly as I slip out quietly without disturbing the vase. In only three hours, I would have made fifty bucks to make coffee and read a little to a mostly blind old man. Not bad, but I would feel guilty for taking the money. I just can’t.

I. Can’t. Stop. Feeling.

"Invalid"

2010-03-20T12:55:00.000-05:00

It’s elevenish in the morning and I find that I can’t muster the energy to pick up the old cat food tin. I can’t sweep up yesterday’s crumbs from the sleeve of saltines I forced myself to eat to keep nagging doubts at bay. I can hardly keep my head from floating away from my body, back to that spot it’s been for nearly a year now. The comfortable, unknowable in between of pain and numbness. They coexist when you have a pain no one else can feel, and so you suffer in silence, or mostly you just fall silent.

The fridge doesn’t hum anymore today, it buzzes. Like a fly, reminding me that it keeps working, day and night, so why can’t I? And the birds show up still, every morning, singing because they can’t scream, and the dog tied up next door can only bark until he’s hoarse and then it’s time to face the other side of the fence and lie down in defeat.

These things, the appliances unused mostly, the animals with their uncanny natural instincts, the mail that piles up day after day, always there minus Sunday and Easter and other holidays I will not celebrate like President’s Day. They all show me up, because I cannot manage to meet them halfway. I was made a human, woman, mammal. I was created somehow to perform a function: wife, mother, secretary, nurse, teacher, doctor, astronaut, my God, whatever they say I am meant to do. To live and prove my worth therein. To move and breathe and create something on this earth worthwhile whether it breathes air and creates more disposable diapers in the landfill or emits emotion and matches the décor and fits perfectly above people’s couches. Surely I can do one of these things?

This is woman’s function. Not to be. To do.

And I suppose I could be considered mostly dead now, because I am doing none of the above. Is it really a state of mind, or an actual state at all, just BEING, if you’re simply breathing in and out, moving from the couch where I lie wishing I could will myself to care about a television show, to the bed where I pray for more than twelve hours of sleep at a time, to the bathroom where the only reminder that I am in fact a female is the blood that fills the toilet three days late?

I feel purposeless, because I was told of all the things I once could do, all the things that were possible, because she did it and she did it and look at her, she can do both, and my goodness, your sister and your best friend do all of it at once and they only get sloppy and drunk a few times a year to cut loose from the existence they have cut out in front of them, while you – you poor thing.

And what do you do with your time? And the pause is worse than pregnant. It’s a partial birth abortion because it embarrasses the person on the other end of the line, my lack of stick-to-it-iveness. So they move on to a yellow colored thought, a suggestion to volunteer, to join a group, to get a hobby. To fake it until I make it. But make what? I am cracked up and if I did give birth via womb or canvas surely the result would be an abomination.

You haven’t any children, and no real body of work to claim as something to be remembered by, your friends have all given up on you, when they tried in vain to convince you to just snap out of it and fast!

And then you got sick. Well, you know, that’s all in your head, too. You willed the shift in your body. It’s all in the mind and you just don’t want it enough. You’re not a yes person. And no people always end up at the root word of no, which, whether you studied Latin or Spanish or that French you half know and will never use, is, you poor thing, well, it’s NOTHING.

And there are worse things than death. You, you poor unusable female human mammal with your potential all dried up on all fronts, you know the exact shade of that, don’t you? You have done every equation half assed, and that is the one problem you were given that you solved, and early on, too.

What is the total sum of a person if they have no hobby, no passion, no work, no spawn, no project to stress over until their hearts explode from the inside out at sixty or so? Just bumpy skin and brittle bones and puffy thighs and an obligatory call once a year or so from family and well meaning acquaintances. A few get well cards and deflated Mylar lying about. Dirty dishes in a dingy sink. A few people bothered by guilt and more angry about feeling guilty than concerned at the source of their guilt: This sickly little seedling, the runt of the litter, the egg that fell out of the nest because mama bird had enough eggs to make her quota already.

When you are ill for a long while, and unable, and it’s even a nice day, and still you cannot do much of anything but lie or sit, and it’s been a long time since you even had a thought that was new or exciting and made anyone around you wonder about life and the way it really works, the equation of YOU, your function, is no longer something that many people bother to work out. It is skipped over for the easier answers, the yes or no, the a, b, or c. They’ll settle for an A minus, even a B plus, as long as they can skip over you, that annoying problem that’s too long, too involved, too cantankerous and self pitying and complex to lose sleep over. And so you stay on the page, written out but unanswered.

And you lie about. And you sit. And you wait. And little hopes escape, like shallow breaths in your fitful sleep. The potential you once had, oh, you wasted woman. Mammal. Human.

What is it that you said you do?

Conversation Over Wine...

2010-03-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

W: “Well, what if it were like, Johnny Depp? Surely it wouldn’t be an issue.”
P: “Johnny Depp.”
W: “Yeah. Johnny Depp. What?”
P: “Are you kidding me?”
W: “Well, I mean, it wouldn’t really be Johnny Depp, because he wouldn’t…Um, he’s, got, um…”
J: “He wouldn’t sleep with Pia?”
W: “That’s not what I was saying…”
P: “No, it’s fine. I mean, I know that. Skeet Ulrich wouldn’t want me at this point. I’m a mom. My vagina has expressed things larger than the most obscene sex toy imaginable.”
J: “I don’t know about that, P.”
W: “Who is Skeet Ulrich? “
J: “Poor man’s Johnny Depp. You’re not young enough to pretend not to know that one, sweetie. “
W: “Right.”
P: “Doesn’t matter. That’s not important.”
W: “Yes it is. We’re talking about Johnny Depp.”
P: “I know. THE litmus test of any woman’s heterosexual nature. I got it.”
J: “You think he’s just a feast for breeder’s eyes, huh?”
W: “No, he is sexy to anyone with a pulse. That’s why he’s the example here. There’s no taste involved in Johnny Depp. He’s not an acquired taste. Everyone knows he’s the perfect specimen.”
P: “I know, I know.”
W: “You know. And you still wouldn’t have sex with Johnny Depp?”
J: “This conversation is depressing me. ”
P: “I guess not.”
J: “Liar!”
W: “Even if you were single? No children? No responsibilities?”
J: “And you looked like Megan Fox?”
P: “No, I guess not.”
W: “You’re insane.”
P: “It’s not that if Johnny Depp walked in here right now and asked me to go have some dinner with him, and I was single and looked like…well, Megan Fox, minus the tattoos, that I wouldn’t go.”
W: “Well, yeah. That’s what I mean.”
P: “I just wouldn’t take one look at him and, like, I dunno, strip naked and start humping furniture.”
J: “Ugh. I threw up. Really, Pia. You’re really just so impolite sometimes.”
W: “Oh, Jaime, don ‘t act so high and mighty. Really. I’ve pulled you off too many pieces of furniture in the past…”
P: “This conversation is not making me feel any more attractive, and it’s certainly not making me want to have sex with my husband any more than before…”
W: “Well, it doesn’t really matter if you want to.”
P: “What? Of course it does. I’m not some mail order bride from Russia. I have a choice in the matter.”
W: “Pia, sex is like food.”
J: “Oh yes, I like that analogy.”
P: “Don’t be disgusting, James.”
J: “I’m not being disgusting. Food is delicious and so is sex.”
W: “That’s not the extent of it. Just listen to me, P. It’s not always going to be Steak Tartare and Baked Alaskan.”
J: “Where are you getting your menu choices? 1972? My God, I can taste the Polynesian Casserole right now. Ew.”
W: “Whatever. Whatever your favorite dish might be. That’s what I mean. Sex isn’t always the best thing you’ve ever eaten. It’s not. Sometimes it’s steamed vegetables and rice without any salt.”
J: “I’ll just drink my dinner, then, thank you. Bottoms up.”
W: “You know what I’m saying, Pia, right?”
P: “Yes, I understand. I get it. ‘Lie back, close your eyes and think of England.’”
W: “I don’t mean anything of the sort. I just mean, it shouldn’t feel like torture to sometimes give in to the biological need of sex with your husband. Everyone has the human need to do it, and sometimes it will be better than others. Just like eating.”
P: “Then I must be the Karen Carpenter of sexual necessity because I just have zero desire whatsoever to do it at all. Any time. Even with Johnny Depp. I’m sure he’s a wonderful guy and a formidable bed companion, but I just don’t see a handsome man like that and just immediately think of how I can convince him to put his penis in my mouth.”
J: “You don’t?”
W: “Pia, that’s not what I mean!”
P: “Isn’t it, though? I mean, I’m a freak. I’m a freak of nature because I just don’t care about sex. With anyone. And I can’t blame it on the kids because I’ve never really cared about it, even before the kids. And my husband is eventually going to grow tired of my sexual anorexia and sleep with the first slut in the office who tells him his tie brings out the green in his eyes…”
J: “I thought his eyes were blue?”
W: “Pia, I wouldn’t go that far.”
P: “I would. I know it’s a part of the deal. It’s a deal breaker. You are bound by duty, by your vows of marriage to do certain things and allowing your husband to pump it in you a few times a month is one of the top rules. I’m practically begging Russ to commit adultery. In fact, I’m sure a judge would allow it and rule in a divorce against me, because I have the sex drive of a ninety year old widow.”
J: “I think you’re being unfair to the widow, love.”

"Darren Was Gay"

2010-03-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

From the unpublished novel Whatever

Led Zeppelin is playing, but the song doesn't ring a bell, probably because they all basically sound the same, especially when you're stoned. Drake moves his hand over, very slowly, to the stereo system, and he notices how many veins and tendons are in his hand, and he watches them move as he flexes his hand, and he begins thinking about how amazing the brain is, and then, he turns the music off.

It's a Saturday night, and Drake's pissed because he's sitting at home, stoned, with nothing to do but watch Saturday Night Live and laugh his ass off at really banal jokes and white guys rapping about cupcakes.

It was nicer when he was smoking a bowl outside his window on the roof. The stars were bright, and as he inhaled deeper, they got brighter and fuzzier, and then the moon seemed almost too beautiful to stare at too long. Drake is thinking how the only time he thinks anything is beautiful is when he's high, and how much he wishes he could feel like this all the time, because it's so nice to like everything and to be happy, even when things are, in reality, really shitty.

The lights are off, except the bluish glow from the TV, and Drake's dad is out of town, and he could be smoking crack and shooting up heroin right in front of his mom and she wouldn't care, so everything seems relatively cool for the moment.

Drake lays on the hardwood floor, staring up to the ceiling, at the vintage poster of Carre Otis, in some Guess ad from the late eighties, pouting with those full lips of hers, and he thinks about how his dad is married to his mom, who is still really very beautiful, even though she hasn't modeled in years, and how despite that fact, his dad is probably boning a high priced prostitute right now in a posh hotel room in Manhattan.

As he is thinking this, Drake hears a bang, like something hitting a wall somewhere, and usually he wouldn't go and see what it is, but he's stoned, and it seems like an escape from further introspective thinking that he hates anyway.

So he gets up, very slowly, and wanders down the stairs, and has a look around. When he hears music that seems to be coming from outside, Drake looks out the bay window at the kitchen sink and notices that the guest house has a light on. He wanders out of the tall French doors that lead from the kitchen to the patio, and walks in the darkness toward the side door of the little house.

The music gets louder as Drake gets closer, and he can hear someone laughing as he reaches the side door and opens it very quietly. The den smells like cigarettes and wine, which could only be his mother, because his dad smokes cigars and drinks whiskey sours. There are empty wine bottles and full ashtrays everywhere, and one of those pay per view porno's is on the TV, and just as Drake considers sitting down to watch these two blondes go at it on TV, the slightly ajar bedroom door catches his eye. The music is coming from there, and he can hear people moving, so he tiptoes over to check out what's going on.

Some guy, probably his age, maybe nineteen at most, is fucking Drake's mom, and she's moaning and screaming, and he's pulling her hair and pushing her against the headboard harder each time, and some God awful Prince music is blasting, and then he sees another guy come out from the bathroom nude, laughing.

So Drake runs in, stoned and confused, throwing anything he can find at the guy standing by the bathroom, and he hits the guy with a crystal floor lamp, and the guy falls to the floor as the blood starts gushing from his forehead.

The guy on the bed with his mom has stood up by now, and he looks really scared, and Drake's mom is screaming things that Drake can't understand because he's stoned and the music is still blasting, and he's picked up a huge ceramic elephant, and the guy is screaming, "No, Please", but Drake hits him with it anyway.

Drake's mom is standing nude on the bed, with bite marks and bruises on her, and her lipstick is smeared everywhere, including the bed, and she's crying with her face in her hands, and Drake walks back to the house.

An old Gunsmoke rerun is on one of the cable channels, and Drake isn't watching, but he's staring at the television nonetheless. He's starting to come down, and he doesn't even have enough weed left to get high, because he buys in very small quantities now that he has a record at Juvie, and Drake's thinking again.

He's thinking about how, for a moment, when he first saw those guys with his mom, he thought maybe they were raping her, because it all looked so brutal, and he isn't relieved to know that they weren't. It's twisted to wish that they were raping her, and he still doesn't feel bad about knocking them both out. His mother, lying there, was something that reminded him too much of all the times his dad got caught with some bimbo from the office, because Drake and his mom had wanted to surprise his dad on a business trip somewhere.

Drake has seen his dad with women countless times now, first when he was six, then eight, then about every year after that, depending on where his dad decided to go for business meetings or "vacations". His dad was terrible at hiding things. His mom was apparently much more clever about it. Drake wonders when his mom will stumble in the house, if at all, and when those bloody and battered guys will leave, and why he didn't even stay to make sure that they weren't dead, but he kind of hopes that they are. He knows that his mom will act like nothing has happened, because whenever she caught Drake's father with another woman at the beach house, she walked right back out the door and bought expensive things when she got home. That's actually how Drake acquired his green Land Rover. His mom bought a new Mercedes at the same time. That was a considerable affair.

The happy numb feeling wore off a few hours ago, because traumatic events really screw up a good high, and Drake is still tired. The sun is going to rise soon, and an old Bewitched episode is coming on, and Drake loves Bewitched, mostly because he really wants to have Elizabeth Montgomery's character as his mother, because she would fix everything, even if that guy who played Darren was gay. And even if she is dead now, Drake thinks she's hot, (or was hot), and therein lies the flaw in his plan: It would suck to be attracted to your mom. Drake's mom is still very beautiful, with her striking jade eyes, like his, her mocha skin, slightly darker than his, and her shiny raven hair, that's a few shades darker than Drake's. But she's not a blonde, Waspish - looking sweetheart like Samantha on Bewitched. She's exotic. Drake is glad of that, because his friends all want to fuck his mom, and he's glad he doesn't.

As Drake is slowly fading out on the couch, he twitches his nose and wishes for some more weed.

Or Carre Otis circa 1990.

Father Time

2008-04-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

He was born in a very small town, a crossroads really, to a family of six including him. Like me.

My town was bigger than his, has grown bigger even still over time.

He had a lot of big dreams in that little place. His father gave him wise advice. And he lost his father at far too early an age. Like me.

What he wanted to do was not something he could articulate to many. It's difficult to describe why you're not following a traditional path to mostly tradition people. It's nearly impossible to make people understand the urgency of a passion.

Art of any sort is not a good career choice. There is no safety, no sure thing, lots of disappointment and invariably a bit of unavoidable tragedy. But when you are taken hostage by an art, like music or writing or painting, there is very little choice in the matter. You do it because you have to. You do it because it keeps you alive inside. And it only ever makes sense to you.

He and I both understood this. He and I both were taken hostage at an early age. Sometimes I think he felt guilty. He thought maybe it was his fault that I had also been taken hostage. A curse and a gift. We both tried to focus on the gift parts. The curses came of their own volition.

He moved from that small town, made a lot of his dreams come true, found a person he wanted to spend a long time with, and had children of his own.

His passion had to compete with reality. Family. Duty. Making a living.

It was difficult to balance. It was mostly imbalanced one way or the other.

He fought his inner demons and sometimes he won. Most times they won.

In the end, the passion served him well but the demons stole too much of his spirit. They convinced him to take detours. To give in to the old stereotypical miserable, tortured artist. They took away his self esteem. His personality. His family's trust.

Of course, his family would always love him, too much, but with equal hate they tried to battle those damn demons they couldn't even see. The demons were never their opponents. They were ghosts of too many thoughts and not enough stillness within him. And ghosts are only scary to those who can see them. I could only make out their outlines. I tried hard to find a way to kill the inevitable. I used all the weapons I was given. My words. My passion. Reason. Love. And even, under advice from those who swore they knew better, that silence. The last communication was just that. None. I never thought the advice might haunt me for so long. I never thought silence, a refusal to react, was going to cause so much pain. But in the end, what do you say to someone who is possessed by spirits no one but he could even see? I said nothing. I was hoping he would win again.

But those demons are stronger than any reasoning could ever be.

"There are no monsters under your bed." He said this to me, when I was a child, because he knew it would comfort me, to bring reality into fantasy. I said it back to him, years later, before the silence. But all he saw were monsters. Everywhere. And maybe they were real, after all. I still look under my bed, and sometimes I see them too. Those demons can travel through time, and they remember what you're afraid of most. We both thought we feared nothing.

The best trick the demons perform is proving you wrong.

He did still have that passion, and still had so much love. But as the demons closed in on him, everything seemed to twist and turn. Nothing made sense to him anymore. People's faces and intentions were distorted. The demons whispered often, "Run."

And, "Is this all there is?"

And before I could truly let him know how very much I related to him, before anyone could put a mirror up to show him how much he had lost because of those invisible monsters, those demons he battled marched in and stole the last hope. His last breath.

And still, the demons float around, inhabiting bodies all around me. They take all sorts of forms. They follow me around like shadows. So sometimes I hide in darkness, so that at least I can't see my shadows for a while. And in the darkness comes all that hurt again. Either way, you're bound to hurt.

And still I miss his physical presence.

Nobody knows what kind of trade off art can be. No one knows how much to wager on reality and how much to save for big dreams.

Least of all me.

Death is not the worst of things. And memories are not always good.

But still he lives on in ways, and now I see his monsters for what they are.

The fear of not knowing.

But we will never know.

And so the solution neither he nor I can seem to follow for very long is to take it all as it comes. That's not easy when flexibility frightens you most.

But I bend. Every day I bend more.

And I remember his battles. And I root for him still.