GOTTA BE GAY

They changed the rules today.
Fancy that, it's now a law, you have to be gay!

No more het marriages, one woman, one man.
It's same sex or no sex, mixed marriages are banned.

Oh, exceptions are made, children are sacred, it's no longer our 'right'
to reproduce blindly, wantonly with little foresight

to how many humans this planet can feed.
Law says you now need a license to breed!

And a phalanx of friends to speak for the couple,
attest to their character, help them in trouble.

These friends must be gay with no babes of their own,
to hinder their support if the couple needs some.

What an idea! Has it been tried before?
We can always go back to famine and war

to check this flood of people and cars
like a plague of locusts making Earth look like Mars.

I don't know, it's not in my history books.
Hand in hand with my girlfriend, I get funny looks

from those who believe 'man shall have dominion'
over what but a half-dead planet, if you want my opinion.

Dominion means only one's home is one's castle.
But with so little left soon, it won't be a big hassle.

It'll probably feel strange for most hets to go gay.
They might feel like the gays did . . .yesterday.

Just when I was getting sick of being queer,
they've gone and made it mandatory, oh dear.

I could leave the country, it's not too late.
The entire rest of the world is still straight.

I wish it had been voluntary, more like a vacation.
Wouldn't it be nice to take a trip to Queer Nation?

It's just too bad they had to make it a law
instead of allowing the choice to all

letting religion handle morals and care for our souls
& let law handle freedom, peace, fairness for all.

We all need each other, of that you can be certain
or for life on earth, you might as well draw the curtain.

But how many do we need, what's the ratio: gay to straight?
Or must we forever curb our population through , , , , , hate?

How many children to each couple allowed?
I don't know, I'm floundering, don't have the answer,
just that our race is resembling a cancer.

All the years of evolution prove the sexes need to be mixed.
Anything else is just cunts and chicks, cocks and dicks.

So, that's it. That's the news for today.
You might not be happy. but you have to be gay.!

HUMANISM

The man flies in his thundering, metallic suit.
The bird chose hers of feathers.

The men construct the concrete cities;
the ants make theirs of dirt.

Assisted by two tons of gear and a host of Sherpas
the women stand atop Mt. Everest,
as migrating geese glide silently over their heads.

Steel clad humans race the streets,
while a beetle's iridescent carapace doubles as wings.

What is thought to be human so often mimics animals.

What is it to be a human, outstanding in your field
of being human?
Meditate on it; ceaselessly, ceaselessly,
Do not take your next step
without the desire
to know what it is.
Your world is waiting.

HUMANITY’S CALAMITY

It was the last gasps of the 2 billion animal individuals that die every day to feed us,
A holocaust not noted by voracious humanity.
It was the screams of children, beaten and abused by their caregivers.
It was the moans of those diseased from air polluted by our industriousness,
and water choked with chemicals, feces and urine of industrial farming.
It was the cries of children dying overseas for lack of food and medicine because of our
shameful embargoes and their own leaders who prefer to buy weapons before
milk.
It was the wails in the countries that kill their own people, torture their own people, then get bombed by us to teach them to be good to one another.
Even the relative minutiae depresses me:
sidewalks cannot accommodate wheelchairs,
and are littered with refuse,
and garbage cans and cars block pedestrian use
and
oh, we think we’re hot, hotter than this hell that begot and holds us.
Are we not the ones around which the sun revolves?
Galileo, Copernicus notwithstanding
Yet, too, are we not all medieval Catholics at heart, the lot of us
still willing to put a stake through the heart of the unknown enemy,
put a steak on the grill or
burn a witch at the stake
one mistake after another?
It was the war.
He was the pilot.
They were the bombed.
Pronouns hung in the balance.
When it came from afar, from the air, everything changed.
O, they hurt no more.
O, they hurt worse.
Someone was happy. Someone was sand.
Favors and flames were granted.
As earth turns and burns, tumbling inside God’s palm, learning to share.
6 billion and counting, but only 2 sexes here,
that have to come to, two
gether gather
to continue
as we only go forwards towards forever together.
As I, a she, did not want anyone over me
like an earth devoid of
sky to hold my mater in and shield me from the cold of space;
he was in turn, minus matter, free to float, call him ether
jealous of my mass, my solidity, fearful of that which I was.
I held him down he said, while he poured and thundered on me.
An evolution, in revolution from mater to ether, ether to matter,
for both or either to matter.

I, OXYMORON or THE ONLY TRUTH, I KNOW

Here is truth:
Truth cannot be told.
Why?
Be cause:
Truth is big, really, really big. How big?

Suppose this were true:
Humans are co-creators with God.
We know this isn't true, don't we? God created everything,
even us. Not us.
But, just suppose: Humans hold up half the sky,
half the heavens, half the sun and stars. We are half
the effort to keep the vacuum of space from sucking
us into blackness; or the incredible
lightness of air from crushing us, air weighing in at
14.7lbs./sq. in. etc.
How?
prayers, worship, faith, love, belief, work.
We're here to think it true,
although not through.
What would we do?
We would test it. Let me repeat that: WE WOULD TEST IT.
We would, of course! humans would test that
supposition with the necessary concomitant disastrous
result.
So.
If YOU were God, would YOU really trust
US?
With
THE TRUTH?
Or rather couch your instructions to us in elaborate
strategies to guarantee our quasi-compliance.
Ignorance might not be bliss,
but perchance necessity.

THE OTHER SIDE OF SNOW

Once upon a time, I wrote of snow. I will bore others elsewhere with that, but for now: a long spiel referencing, naturally, the ‘whiteness’, how it covers up our messes temporarily in transcendent, homogenous beauty. But. Once upon a time, the water lines in my trailer froze. I resourcefully melted snow to flush my toilet. We should all at least once in our lives melt that delirious whiteness. It was so full of dirt, mucousy, floating fibrils, scum rising to the top that to think I had on younger occasions put that in my mouth makes me want to gag at the thought. A later perspective has me appreciating our immune system!
The 60’s were full of people who thought they knew what they were saying and doing and they said, comically so they thought; “Don’t eat yellow snow!” But that is a red herring; a partial truth to mislead you into thinking white snow is edible! DO NOT be fooled by the whiteness! EAT NO SNOW!
Almost everything has at least 3 sides and I can tell a few of them, one above, the other elsewhere and here’s a third: sometimes I imagine a chorus of souls that watch and attend us earthlings awaiting their ride on this whirled palace. I have to say, really, that art makes of here what it is not, ignoring blood red of tooth and claw in favor of “love”, “beauty”, “courage”, “honesty” etc ad nausea. Sometimes I want to warn those attending souls that would be born: don’t do it, it’s a trap! I imagine some vague Star Trek-like show where the prisoners are forced to send for reinforcements/rescuers so that their captors would have more slaves or fodder. Or maybe a scary movie where the entire audience cued by common sense and foreboding music wants to shout at the naïf on screen, “Don’t open the door!” or “Don’t answer the phone!” You get it. Yet mute we sit watching the horror unfold because sometimes, just sometimes life is good. Maybe 2% of our awake time. But it’s enough. Today 98% of the people scowled or ignored me, but 1 pretty woman smiled. One handsome man held the door. Though all my friends will die, as has most of my family, today no one I know died. It’s a good day. Though 25,000 people will starve to death today, I will not. Etc ad finitum and we keep paddling our little boat called the “It Could Be Worse!” or in my case “The Other Side of Snow”.

MAD COW BLUES

Don't walk on the grass.
There is no sidewalk.
Don't walk on the grass.
There is no sidewalk.
Don't walk on the grass!
There is no sidewalk!
What a zoo, what a zoo, what a zoo.
Notazoo, notazoo, notazoo.
Istooazoo, istooazoo, isazu, isuzu, isuzu.
Walk with the cars, you are a car, walk with the cars, you are a car.
Nonsense, no sense, in no sense are you a car.
Isazo, isuzu transporting, trainspotting,
you are a car, transporting me.
The cars live, the cars live, the cows live up to their
knees in filth, you eat the cows you eat the filth,
feces mucked about, we muck about.
I am loosing my mind. I am a mad cow up to my knees
in filth.
Hear the roses?
See the breeze?
Feel the scent?
ground to ground, ground to ground, ground to ground up
burger is King! King I tell you!
Nothing makes sense,
nothing makes sense,
nothing makes sense.
Chaos ordering order in the backstitch of a tapestry.
Knot here, knot there, knot, knot, knotknotknot, here a knotknotknot
there a knot, everywhere a knotknotknot.
Will the tapestry PLEASE come to order!?
Cut down the trees to wipe our ass,
cut down the trees to wipe our ass,
cut down the trees to wipe our ass,
how fitting, how appropriate the the the
pine, tulip, oak, mahogony, sycamore sick of it
toilet seats and toilet tissue issue
from the grandeur. Well it fits, it fits our
butt, it's round
cut, clump, pulp, bleach, stretch, roll,
I wipe your ass with my heartwood, bend over
human, stay clean.



As I live and breathe:
as I live, I breathe:
as I breathe I live, the lungs of our
world wipe our ass, the leaves giveth and the leaves
taketh away.
The leaves are living;
the leaves are leaving;
no, not yet, soon, soon.
It took awhile, it took time, it, it, it, took, took,
took, stole
time, time, time.
There is no time!
Why do you keep calling time, time?!
It's time out and we're frozen in place.
Issue, issue, issue,
words to make sense is a phallacy,
words do not sense make,
sense is sense,
get the sense out of words and feel your sense.
The ocean smiles and waves at me and I wave back,
happy to see, happy to see the sea.
I come to the edge, no
the cow does not to the beach go, oh, no. Moo.
up to your knees, down on your knees,
mad cow, bad cow, sad cow.
make no sense, make burgers
to the feed lot, not on top
on their knees,
strangled, tangled in chains
the filth up my nose,
the feces in my nose,
I cry to no one's pause in the all of it.
Sky beckons, fear reckons, the reckoning
my place assured, under your bun, well done,
medium rare, eat this is my body, drink this
is your blood.
now go home to your children and your children's
children playing up to their knees.
The seas have no worries, all is divined.
Sure the cows would rule the world if they got the
chance.
chickens likewise,
H. pylori bacterium likewise
fill-in-the-blank likewise.




We are on the food chain, maintaining our pace,
preserving our race,
running in place,
terminus,
speed bump,
exit left,
gnawing off our own leg to escape the trap.
Well, who cares. Maybe the mad mcCow cares. The mad
cow is on my mind, maybe in my mind, who knows,
who cares.
Popsicles anyone? Bicycles anyone? Air anyone?
I am happy, happy, happy in my madness.
I am singing, singing, singing in my cage
Death is the only way to end(end your)ure life.
I am just jealous,
that I can't have all I see,
resent your purchasing me
Sometimes you're the diner,
sometimes you're the dinner.
Fete' is fate.

THE LATE NIGHT RIDE OF THE PICNIC TABLE

Everything I see, hear, touch, read reminds me of an incident, lover, friend, relative, no longer in my life. Thus is everything an arrow tinged with sadness spent to my interior.
There was a picnic table at the beginning of my walk from a motel in Blanco, TX. to the deli that always brought up a particular memory. I have seen picnic tables before. I am now 2500 miles and 29 years from the one I saw at the side of a railroad track in a small, woodsy town where my lover and I had just rented a house nearby. We decided our backyard, but briefly subjected to our ministrations but looking all the better for them, would look even better with a picnic table! As feminist lesbians we were trying to carve out our niche within society. Newly graduated from college, and embarking on new career paths in a new location, the world could be our oyster! And did it not just hand us a picnic table!?
We set out in the dark of an evening, slightly exhilarated by our rambunctiousness, slightly guilty about what seemed like stealing even though we reckoned the table had to be abandoned. Why else sitting by the side of little used tracks?
The table was very . . .very . . . VERY . . . heavy. Its heaviness increased on the trip back to our little house with each step. But we lived only a block away and finally made it. Back we went for the benches that almost seemed not worth the effort at that point, but would complete our task. They were heavy too, though not nearly as much as the table, and we were sweating heavily in the cool evening.
Set in place, the next day revealed the table to be pure redwood! Of course it would have to be for an outdoor table; this explained its weight, and sturdiness. What a lovely addition to our new place!
Oddly, come the weekend, we were working in the yard and, glancing down the fences and yards that separated our place from the tracks, we saw a group of men gathered where the table had been, standing around scratching their heads. We glanced only briefly, guiltily at each other then dismissed the sight unspoken as having no relevance to us.
I can hardly see a picnic table to this day without thinking of that instance. Because: I saw another picnic table, by the side of a railroad track, solidly holding up the lunches and bodies of a nearby work crew. It’s some kind of tradition I guess, a lunch spot for the crews that work the tracks. I hate to figure that she and I contributed to the chains I see leading to concrete set to the side of the ground by these units and wrapped around and through the solid redwood but of course we did.
I’m really sorry, guys. Honest. We thought it just fell there for us to take advantage of.
As I finish writing this I pick up “In the Face of Death” and read, “Add to this the sense of being at the center of action, especially obvious in the case of Trotsky when, from his legendary railroad car, he built and commanded the Red Army, leading it to its final victory.” Well, of course we weren’t in Russia. But Peter Noll continues: “The sense of participating actively in history, the primitive joy of combat and victory leave no room for thoughts straying into the more distant future. For this more than any other reason, all revolutions tend to reach goals that are quite different from their original vision.”
I would have to agree. We thought ourselves revolutionary, two women revolting against our assigned gender roles. The revolution did stray. In this instance into common thievery.

Why Did You Come Back

Now that I know you will never ask me. Or you. Or you.

I've come back to die.

I've come back to watch everyone else die.

I've come back because we all have to die and I want to watch to make sure you're gone.

I've no idea.

Why not just ask me to stay?

Because I had to.

Because home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Because it's just a visit. . . . .

Because I loved. . . . . 

The devil made me do it.

I had run out of running.  

Why not ask why you never left. . . . .

Because four is sometimes equal to two plus two. . . .

Because I still don't have the good sense you never thought I had.

Why did I ever leave. . . .

To cultivate apathy. . . . 

Just to leave again and pick afresh the wound of our parting. . . . .

Because I could.

TALE OF THE SALT CELLARS

A long, long time ago, when I was about 10, my mother married a man we can call Brownie. I was one of the witnesses at their marriage at a J.P.’s. They bought a house on South 11th in the same area where my mother’s father had built so many houses though this was not one of them. It cost $7500! I’d be curious what it would sell for today except that it is razed, as are most of the decrepit edifices in which I spent my childhood.
Shortly after we moved in I noticed some strange medicine in the dining room. I asked mom about it and at first she said something about Brownie’s recurring bouts of malaria. I guess that would explain his lying, sweating in their bed quite a bit. But later she revealed it to be Antabuse. Perhaps today they would force it on one, via patches or subdural pumps but in those days it was voluntary and it didn’t take long for Brownie to stop taking it. As I look back and never noted before, mom was remarkably sober during this time. It may have been an effort to support Brownie in his efforts.
But I get ahead of myself. Before the drunken fights, before he fell off the antabuse wagon, before the missing cat, before the abuse, before the dog, before I almost died, twice, before the attempted molestation, before the police came, before my mother thought I wanted to kill her, before the men in the white coats came, before all the after, mom started setting a table and cooking for the 3 of us as I had never seen, as I could not remember our life with my father before their divorce.
It was summer and she brought out a couple of place set items with which I was not at all familiar: corn holders and saltcellars. A set for each of us. The corn holders were the ubiquitous plastic, yellow, pronged affairs still popular. But saltcellars have fallen from favor. This set was plastic also: a tiny recessed area for the salt, surrounded by an ornate, flowery lip and each with its tiny spoon, one color for each color of the rainbow. For whatever reason it is the latter that stick in my memory as symbolizing so much of the civility, the domesticity, the gentility, the femininity, the normalcy etc. that my mother wished to evidence, all of which would be eclipsed by the fights, the drinking, the abuse.
Perhaps in some distant universe far, far away, in some unknown future, my mother will stand beside a dining room table in a modest house, a table set with corn holders and salt cellars, a gentle husband, a responsive, intelligent, comely child or children and be happy. But not in this one. No, never, not ever, ever, ever, ever in this one.
Of all the memories of that place, and there are many, it’s the cellars that bring me always to tears

A Mother for 2 Zacharies

Preface: trying to fit life onto a page is like painting an elephant with a mascara brush.

Spoiler alert: I lie sometimes. OK, mainly a factor of forgetfulness, but still, I lie.
In my life I have been brushed by stars. I was recalling one such occasion today that was in the 80’s.

My lover and I signed up to be extras in Austin, TX. A lot of films are set there and we were called for one whose working title was unremarkable, but which was finally canned as “Two Mothers for Zachary”, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Valerie Bertonelli, and Colleen Flynn as principals.

We did a lot of waiting around, reading books until called in to a courtroom scene. As they ushered us extras in, Vanessa Redgrave in all her regal beauty was seated up front. I swear, space kind of warped around her, as though she was a human force field or something. But, more incredulous than anything, upon spying me, she walked directly away from her set place, came straight up to me, extended her hand and said, ”I’m so glad you’re here”. I’ve no idea of my response and how could I possibly remember given that my jaw, stomach and so many other parts dropped off line in the interaction. Why me? At the time I had no idea, and am still not totally sure though I may have a clue. Later I was to see her descending alone the back stairs of the courthouse, dressed in costume in a quiet topcoat. She briefly stumbled and for a second I saw her as she might have been had she not risen to become the star she had: just another average, anonymous Brit, working for the Empire, leading a life of quiet desperation as it is said. But she, obviously no ordinary Brit, had escaped and rose to stardom.

I’d never been involved in a film production before and could not identify the story it was trying to tell, nor the characters so I was not sure at the time who she was to be. I learned later she was playing the mother of the lesbian whose child she was trying to take. Valerie Bertonelli played her lesbian daughter. The incongruity of a proper English actress playing an earthy, American Southerner, while a married rocker played a lesbian struck me. It seemed, once noticing that, that I recognized how Hollywood routinely put gays in straight scenes, foreigners as Americans, and vice-versa. Strange.

We didn’t have too many calls for that movie and were shortly done, but a couple of related incidents come to mind about it. And the first is actually a non-incident. Because, years later, YEARS! I realized that for whatever strange reason, my girlfriend and I did NOT invite them to the local women’s bar! How could we NOT have thought of that!? But we didn’t. My ‘lover’ (our relationship was strained at best) was definitely the cleverer of the two of us, and she never even mentioned such a thing. Without a doubt we would have had to disguise the two of them. Heck, this was a film, how hard could that be? We could have danced like crazy! They would have had a glimpse of real lesbian life, which had to be good for the film! And to say it would have been good for us is putting it mildly! What fun!

But it was not ever to be. At the end of the day, we went home and they went presumably back to their hotel room. Lonely, I would have imagined. Most of all I would have wanted to be important to Vanessa! I could save her from her loneliness!

Oh well. But one more incident occurred of note. Both my ‘lover’ and I were Massage Therapists and at some point, Colleen Flynn mentioned that she would like a massage so Kim and I piped up. Thankfully, I got the honor and that night I went to her hotel room with my table and gave her a professional massage. While conversation is discouraged during massage still we talked of some things. And before leaving, I mentioned to her as I mention to almost anyone who asks, that I had always intended to become a writer, but that didn’t seem to be happening. She prompted me to look into the book, The Artist’s Way, and the next day brought me a copy!. What a sweetie! (I bet you thought I was going to relate an entirely different and perhaps slightly seedy experience, didn’t you? Had my ‘lover’ been the masseuse, seedy would have been a given.) I tried to use the book faithfully a bit later in my Austin experience sans the ‘lover’ with whom I was having so much trouble. (OK, just to give you a clue, I finally left for good the morning I awoke, wondering in what I thought was full sanity, if I could bury her in the backyard. Oh, yeah, time to leave.) But, to this date have not really utilized its tenets. Of, course I’m not dead yet and I still have the copy awaiting my attention, secreting the few tidbits I’ve hidden in it. I’m glad it worked for so many people, as reviews prove. But for me, not so much. Probably just my temperament.

Why did VR shake my hand? Strangest thing: again, years later, I saw a picture of her made up for a movie role, the name of which escapes me. But her hair was dyed platinum blonde, and swept back. When I showed on set that day, I looked similar! Not as lovely, of course, but with short, platinum hair! What a strange coincidence! I have to thank my ‘lover’ for that bit of cleverness. She always had the most ‘out there’ ideas. That I go platinum and she shave half her head was par for the course. So, I think Vanessa was just responding to the strange resemblance of her previous role and me and perhaps thought I had done it deliberately. Well, in retrospect, that’s embarrassing for I had not.

I have been touched by stars in other times and places. Some well-known stars, some more like black holes. Some led to enlightenment, some burned me to a crisp.

I’M ONLY THE NAIL, HOW WOULD I KNOW

Space is reclaiming the matter of my mind;
poor mind in touch with the fact
that it is losing itself.
Dementia reshapes my thoughts, while
silence holds back the noise of me, twin powers and I their prey.
Though wanting to die in peace, I find myself
dying in pieces
my powers whittled away by
time’s keen, if filthy blade.
In another corner, there is a race to see whether my heart will stop beating me
or my mind thinking me
first,
both clanging into an unsustainable
future in which the only part I can play
is watching my own decay.
If you knew
that was the only show playing,
would you watch?
Then I wonder,
When I die, how can I be received
by that in which I’ve not believed?
Comes an answer:
“Neither knowledge nor ignorance is an
impediment to salvation.
There is much knowledge, the mind is
ignorant of.”
I’ve said it before:
As nail is to hammer
poet is to poem
driven to splinter bored existence
while binding something other, something better
to hold us all together
Maybe
it’s a master plan.
Perhaps
a carpenter sent me.

ILES PARK

She almost died. Her crisis came about because she was incredibly stupid, even for age 13, but she didn’t realize that until she was 65 proving how little intelligence she had accrued in the interim.
First memory: It was around 1958. The previous day had seen torrential Midwest rain which had only stopped shattering the sky this morning. She got on her bike and rode to her cousins to see if anyone was up for a ride or wanted to hit some baseballs around. Her youngest cousin was game and off they went to Iles Park, their usual haunt.
But this was no usual day. As they crossed the tracks at Ash and rounded the curve, they could see the park was under water! This had never happened in their lifetime!
As it put a serious crimp in ball practice, she and Phil put their gear and bikes down and started wading tentatively into the park, each step sinking them a little lower into the water. She hadn’t ever realized how much lower the Park was than the area bounding it. So while none of the surrounding streets were flooded, she yet sank deeper and deeper as she walked towards the center of the park with the maximum rising just over her hips. What fun! A well known, to her, second home, suddenly transformed by nature’s work into a quasi-swimming pool! A natural one! Not like the concrete and chlorine ones she was used to and enjoyed regularly. This was different and thrilling in an odd way and soon she sank down and began to splash around in the deepest area. Did Phil? She didn’t think so, looking back. At the time, she might have thought him ‘afraid’, and so was ‘showing off’ by submitting herself to the water. Or perhaps a boy’s propensity to pee often anywhere they wished, told him something I couldn’t hear. Nah, he was just smarter.
She swam and splashed and rolled over to float briefly on her back, soaking her hair thoroughly. She contemplated swimming through the tennis courts, but the water wasn’t as deep there, the concrete rising slightly from the grassy surrounding park and she would only have scraped her knuckles.
The day passed as days did with children, hopping from one swing to another bench, to ride around the block, to a teeter-totter, to whatever and then to home.
Second memory: She lay on her grandmother’s davenport in agony. She had been ill yesterday, feverish, her throat on fire.
But today, however possible, was even worse. Her entire mouth was a nightmare of fever blisters infected and oozing pus just like her inflamed throat. Her nose throbbed red and tender with acrid mucous. She ached in every part and felt chilled to the bone despite the raging fever. Her grandmother tried to feed her tea and toast. Though she had not been able to get anything past her swollen fiery throat for days she still was not hungry. When her grandmother insisted and placed the tiniest bit of toast dipped in the tea at her lips, she tried, but could not get it past her swollen throat.
At that moment, she knew with more clarity than she perhaps had ever had in her young life so far that she wanted to die. Nothing else. It was not a sad thought. She turned her face from her grandmother’s hand while that thought settled into every corner of her being.
But she lived. The doctor came later that afternoon, pronounced the illness strep, gave the antibiotics and left.
Perhaps it was this, her current illness at age 65 that made her remember that other, younger, much more dire one. And in a flash, she realized that swimming in Iles Park, then afloat with years of dog feces and their accompanying worm egg sacs, the vomit of drunks, the semen of midnight rendezvous sloughed off in prophylactics or spread on the ground to name just a few of the hazards not offered in a concrete, chlorinated pool must have led to the strep. What had she been thinking? Or rather, how could she not have thought of that? She didn’t know. Too much trust in nature’s mini-miracle? A glistening lake on a hot day, free of charge? Showing off for her cousin? Had her grandmother warned her about not going into flooded areas? She had no recollection of that, but a faint guilt lingered over the memory, because her grandmother still thought she might have a stray brain cell or 2. And here was dead set proof of their absence. And it had been her grandmother who saved her life by calling in the doctor. For a grandmother on meager Social Security, who could squeeze a penny till it shrieked it was quite a financial sacrifice. Her grandmother had been 65 at the time. Same as her now.
In her slim, weak defense, there was never much ‘splainin’ in her house. Kids were just sposta already know. Teaching was in short supply. Yeah, she should’ve known better. She shouldn’t have been willing to show off for a younger, albeit in hindsight much wiser cousin. But it wouldn’t be her last time for showing off, with concomitant ruinous results. Nor should she have allowed herself to be blinded by the wonder. It may have been the first time, but it wouldn’t be the last time wonder and nature and a sparkling surface laid a shiny, luring mantle over a sickening presence. And tried to kill her.

FIRED

I returned from a trip to Europe in ‘69 still full of myself as “world traveler” but had to move back in with my mother and her au currant in San Francisco. He was a longshoreman, alternately drunk and abusive though I think we only had one full-scale row while I was there. Perhaps I'll share more about that another time.
I probably had some money left but it couldn’t have been much. I remember selling my blood or plasma for $5 and being astounded at how long it lasted given the dire straits I was in. I reapplied at my old job, Del Monte Corp., but they weren’t interested in me. Can’t say I blame them, we had had a whopper of a going away party for me, drunken embarrassment all around. But I got hired as a clerk in an import/export office very close to moms.
My boss was a German who was evidently afraid to be seen eating. He used to duck his head down below the level of his desk, take a bite of his lunch, not that I ever actually saw this process, then bob back up chewing. He was just slightly older than I so I couldn’t write it off to senility; just a tad erratic had you asked me.
Two things come to mind about that for me. One was, as I learned a little German in Europe, emphasis was placed on the two different verbs for “to eat,” frissen and essen. Animals friss, humans ess. The difference was stressed to me, as it was more than slightly uncouth to reverse them. The second is that when I grew older, I had a long, drawn out, quite psychotic episode during which time (and still some today) much of life became symbolic and synchronistic. Behaviors, words, signs were linked together sometimes seemingly inappropriately to the rational mind but real none-the-less for one in what I will term correctly or not a psychotic fugue. I don’t want to use psychotic as a negative here, although much of it certainly was, but more in the sense that I was in the realm of ‘Psyche’, of a pre-logical passion state where the threads of meaning or even cause and effect were not always as I’d heretofore been led to expect.
One of the many thousands of out-of-the-ordinary things that I noted in this time was how much subtle activity there is around the process of eating. Seeing this in my fugue state was like deconstruction be it of book, speech or in this case activity. Nothing in our life is really as simple as it seems and sitting down to a meal finds primal urges and memories leering into the foreground whether we notice them in ordinary time or not. I guess I would call my fugue state a sort of extraordinary state, a slow-mo stream of extraordinary revelations around each ordinary act.
One of the things I noticed was how often, how uncannily often someone would look my way just as I was about to stuff something in my mouth. Just as I opened my mouth wide, their eyes would meet mine; me, jaw stretched, mouth gaping, like a predator in the act, a picture caught forever in the other’s eyes. Check the image out in the mirror; it’s rarely your best view. It happened so often I began to become self-conscious about the act of eating. I never went so far as my old boss, but I did modify my behavior as I viewed myself viewed by other’s eyes as an actor might view herself as perpetually on-camera.
If you could take a video camera and somehow record absolutely every action at a dinner party, you would find how many surreptitious glances go toward whoever is in the pre- or mid-bite mode. We want to see another’s gaping mouth almost as much as if they’d flashed a vulva or anus at us. Certainly we have a great curiosity about the mentioned orifices, but have more opportunities to study the oral.
In truth, though, a video is out of the question. It’s only the miraculous eyes and mind of us and especially of the paranoid psychotic in a fugue state who is fast enough to record all this. In addition, it was beyond chance how many times a glance at the eater would be simultaneous with the food suddenly dropping from the eater’s hand or fork. I would gladly use the word ‘caused’ here, but I know you won’t believe it. It’s true though. Akin to the evil eye, some kind of energy exits us when we look in another’s direction and it can alter events, a kind of psycho kinesis. We think of energy as only entering the eye, but it exits also, perhaps in the same way a full bottle, as liquid enters must displace. Blake: “the eye changing, changes all.”
Fortunately or unfortunately mishaps did not always occur nor could they be consciously rendered, not that I tried. The upshot is that such occurrences caused me to become way more aware of my eating process, focusing on my food so it didn’t prematurely leave my fork if someone glanced my way.
Science will someday figure that energy out. In the meantime we have scads of anecdotal evidence of the ‘evil eye’ if we’d bother investigating rather than negate or dismiss what we’d prefer not to believe, uncover, discover, thereby taking responsibility for our actions. God save me from being responsible for myself.
It’s a twin kinda thing. On the one hand, one looks like a total predator chomping, or getting prepared to chomp on something. On the other hand, there’s a paradoxical vulnerability about being caught with your mouth wide open. If another’s eyes can cause you to lose focus on your fork, maybe you could choke or bite your own tongue, so you need to protect yourself if you’re going to continue eating in public.
Else, go behind your desk.
Of course I’m not saying my boss was a psycho, though he may have been. But at some level, I’m assuming he was sensitive enough to subtle energies from others that he felt the need to hide his dinner. And isn’t that what any other animal on earth does? They all always hide it or lose it to the rest. We have changed our behavior in this regard, how long ago I’ve no idea, but dining together is still a sole human activity and often fraught with psychic peril. Hyenas, lions and vultures et al eat as a troop, but we would hardly consider it fine dining. How many times have you inwardly criticized someone at mealtime for eating too much, too hastily, too ill mannerly for instance? Or maybe, heaven forbid, thought, “I hope he chokes on it!” I can also give this stressful activity the blame for anorexia also. But that’s another and very long story. Take my psychotic word for it. The dinner table is NOT a placid place at all.
I have roamed far afield. I remember no details of how or why, only that . . . he came out from behind his desk long enough to fire me.

MAYBE A MAUPIN, THE TAPE LIBRARIAN AND ME

Although I whine and gripe about life and my life in particular, there are those moments, those 2% of waking hours for which to be grateful, stunned, thankful, joyous, if confused.
So it was that once upon a time I lived in San Francisco and some weirdness attended me. Small surprise, one reckons, given the city, I hear you say. Something about living on an earthquake zone creates certain gasses in the area as were produced in sibylline caves also. But I digress.
I worked for a large corporation in their computer department. Hard to believe in this day and age boys and girls, but we stored our data on magnetic tape wound around a 4-inch hub out to about a 10.5-inch diameter. This almost ½ mile or so of tape could hold about 50MB’s in today’s parlance.
The job processes of this large corporation required a large tape library and the library required a librarian to provide the correct tapes, file them away after use, clean, repair etc. I cannot remember the librarian’s name though I can visually recall her and hear again her breathy voice. It was a name both exotic and flowery, nothing as pedestrian as Beth or Chris. Although I think this name was an adopted one, a nom de scène in waiting, let’s call her Illiana.
We conversed at work, but briefly and often superficially all of us busy with our tasks. Yet she seemed way more intelligent and ambitious than her modest job title. And one day she asked me if I’d like to come over and see her place. Maybe a party, maybe not, the memory dims. I accepted and she gave me her address indicating it was over by Coit Tower.
I will explain more and better but let me interrupt just now and tell you that a lot of what I’ve just written and will say on this subject is a lie.
To continue: Even though Coit was the landmark, that fact may have made her location harder rather than easier to find, as the streets around the famous attraction were a veritable warren. I was lost easily, quickly and for a good while before I stumbled upon her doorway, lit gaily in the foggy, darkening San Francisco night. It’s hard to describe the feeling of being lost in your adopted city that you think you know. Twisting and turning, becoming more confused by the moment, I felt I’d entered an unknown twilight zone.
Her place was small and artsy with a few others there for a quiet, cozy evening snack and chat. Although I was charmed by her invitation and small glimpse into her life, I couldn’t stay long as my commute home made for a quick turn-around on a work night. While she may have been 15 blocks from our office, I was more like 15 miles. The company also confused me as I knew none of them, and we seem to have few common points upon which to connect.
That’s the end of that lie and so I’ll tell you something else. The above was 1969 or so. In 1974 while I was still living in SF, a local newspaper, The Pacific Sun started to run a thoroughly engaging serial by Armistead Maupin, not exactly a household name, but soon to become one, especially in SF. The SF Chronicle later picked up the serial and later still PBS aired a mini-series based on, as it was known, ‘Tales of the City’.
I looked forward to the Pacific Sun every week, and followed along as well as I could when the Chronicle picked it up. Then years later, when I watched the PBS rendition, what was there about the Maupin warren-like neighborhood that snuck into my memory bank yet tethered itself to nothing as far as I could tell? And the characters, did they not seem familiar to me? Well, of course, all good writers can insinuate their characters as part of their readers’ lives, nothing strange about that. But, that one lady, a main character, the one with the flowery name , , ,something about her . . .
And here is where I must reveal the lies I am telling. For all the above is an absolute mish-mash memory, of my visit to Illiana’s warren hovel with Armistead Maupin’s Tales confluenced inextricably in my mind. And much odder still, as I look back upon it, for all I know, it could have been AM himself at that small party that night! Illiana had nothing if not connections, involvements, schemes and fantastical dreams. We are all familiar by now with the reputed alter egos of librarians, and though usually they are the bookish ones, believe me, this tape librarian had one powerful alter-persona! Was I to have been a possible new recruit, new blood for some as yet to unwind Tale! Did they think an unmarried, lesbian, Midwestern hick might provide new spice? Did Illiana have sexual designs on me? I think she might have! I was absolutely blind to any sexual machinations at that time and for most of my life and would never have suspected anything other than a quiet get-together. No doubt drugs were also involved, San Francisco, the 60’s, remember? But as I didn’t use, much, my interlocutors would have summed me up as a hopeless naïf by that time and when I said I had to go home to get up and go to work the next day, knew I was of no worth. Nor did Illiana ever mention the evening or invite me back.
So. In sum, I have no idea what really happened, but believe I was interviewed as a possible entrant into a future Tale! That’s my tale and I’m sticking to it.