Frenemy Request

I opened Facebook and saw I had a friend request from an old acquaintance. I let it sit there for a long time because I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me so much. Seeing his name brought me back to Eureka in the early 90’s. My house was a gathering place then, perhaps like a tiny Facebook of Eureka….

*  *  *

Friday afternoon. The phone rings. I should have known who it was before I answered; it was the same every week. Chris Black.

“Where’s everyone at?” 

I would answer, “well… I’M right here.…”  

Silence on the phone.  

I found it insulting. He wasn’t calling me. I was just a place holder. He wanted to know what his favorite group of friends were doing. I wasn't one of them. I just happened to have a house where they all hung out on weekends. The curse of trying to be a teenage real estate mogul.  

He was oblivious to my insulted tone. The subtlety lost, overshadowed, by what he wanted most, to feel connected to his group. He, like so many people I knew in those few years after high school, was trying to hang on to that feeling of belonging. It disgusted me. He disgusted me. He and everyone like him with their sad pathetic need to belong. The bandages we all learned to apply layer upon layer through those miserable years in public school, they were all falling away now and to some of us, it was a relief. For Chris, and most of his friends, it was the opposite. Each time he called I imagined his shaking hands feverishly applying salve to the newly exposed skin, trying to quiet the screaming acid like burn spreading over his body a little more every day since graduation.  

Never having been shown any examples or given any tools to create meaningful relationships of his own, it was natural that he clung to the happenstance ones from school. Natural, yes. But still pathetic.

Chris’ diminished social skills were the norm among his peers. Following the inevitable implosion of his group, he married the last girl standing and moved to a small town in Oregon. Children, more isolation. A job he hated. Depression. Alcoholism. All masked by an obsessive following of professional sports - every sad loner’s guaranteed tribe. I saw him at our high school reunion wearing basketball shorts and a numbered jersey. I watched his wife hit on his former best friend.

Although he and his wife had been sleeping in separate rooms for years, he couldn’t end the relationship, move out. This woman, this girl from high school, whom he now hated and yet barely knew, was the closest friend he had. 

Chris bought a gun. He held it to his head every night after jerking off to internet porn. 

Then one night in 2008 Chris joined Facebook. Within a few months he had reconnected with his entire high school gang.  

Facebook probably saved Chris’ life. Only I wish it hadn’t because now, seeing his friend request, feels like he’s still fucking calling me.

* * *

Mexican Dog

It’s mid May and all but a handful of the many Canadians that populate this Mexican beach town during the winter have fled north. Standing on the street in front of my one room cinder block bungalow. The only thing moving is the fine dusty sand blowing from between the broken cobblestones.  It’s perhaps 10 am and already sticky hot. I’ve decided to head down for a swim. My body feels beat to hell from a fucked-up back and three days on a lumpy bed and cheap booze. Surprisingly I haven’t been in the ocean yet.  

At the end of the block the jagged cobblestone paving gives way to a sloping dirt and gravel path to the beach. I walk past cut off plastic barrels smelling of rotting fish. The roadway is wet, not from rain, it hasn’t rained in months, but from the beach restaurants on either side. They are open air thatched roofs with sinks on metals legs that dump directly into the street, fish guts and soap bubbles pouring into 5 gallon buckets overflowing and running down the gravel road making deep grooves and disappearing into the sand.  

I walk past wooden fishing boats, their faded, chipping paint give them a quaint and timeless look in spite of the outboard motors on the back. There are two young men pulling out nets and unrolling them on the sand.

I see a large group of Mexican kids playing in the water to my right. I head left. I walk past the empty restaurants to an open area of beach. As I walk the heat of the sand is radiating up in my face. I’m going to need shade.  The only trees I see are behind a rusty cyclone fence. I look back behind me toward the restaurants - beach umbrellas over funky wooden tables, each surrounded by those cheap plastic stacking chairs.  I know the chairs will be sticky from a season of sugary drinks, salt air and sweaty bodies. I choose the heat and continue down the beach.  

Someone nearby is burning garbage, or tires, and it’s left a haze in the air. It blocks just enough sun to take half the color away, like I’m walking in a slightly faded photograph of a beach.  When I get out of earshot of the kids I drop my stuff and head toward the waves.  As my feet near the water I hear my Hawaiian friend George's voice, No madder what the problem Paul, jus geddin da water. E'rything will be okay. I’ve been waiting since Hawaii to put his advice to good use.

The water is just a few degrees cooler than the air.  It’s dirty and brown near the shore so I wade out till it’s up to my chest. Here it’s a dark, muddy green. There is a faint smell of gasoline and oil from the boats anchored farther out. The smell mixes nicely with the burnt tire haze.

I swim out till I can’t touch, almost to one of the empty boats. Three grey-brown pelicans sit on the bow. They look like they’ve just survived an oil spill, but I figure maybe that’s their natural color. Maybe they’re Mexican pelicans. They sit and watch me like vultures.

Treading water I turn and look back at the shore. Beyond the cyclone fence, beyond the scraggly coconut palms, I see the looming concrete skeleton remnants of what was once a luxury resort hotel. Hundreds of stained honeycomb concrete boxes. Rusty rebar jutting out from collapsed walls and pillars.  I wonder if this is what Lebanon looks like right now, in the middle of a civil war. Is there a family trying to vacation right at this moment, the father stubbornly disregarding the warning of the government and taking his family on the trip to the coast they’ve been planning for over a year. The father swimming in the beautiful Mediterranean looking back on shore sees his young daughter waving at him from the balcony of their hotel room. As he watches a mortar shell explodes, leaving a smoldering black hole where his child stood moments before. Only then does the man in the water begin to question himself and his true reasons for taking this trip.

I take a deep breath and dive, swimming under water as hard as I can, away from the shore. Away from the pelicans. Away. Even out this far the water is still so thick I can barely see my hands in front of me. I imagine the cloud I’m swimming through to be tiny particles of fecal matter from the countless failed or non existent septic tanks along the shore. I kick hard for the surface and come up exhaling. In my first breath I taste gasoline. I reach up to wipe the water from my eyes and I feel the sting. I can’t tell if it’s salt or motor fuel. I see images of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the gulf. I feel like the entire coast of Mexico is a giant environmental disaster and what’s left of my hair has just become some kind of clean up rag, a Pemex quicker picker upper.

I swim back to shore. The heat from the sand is unbearable so I grab my bag and resume my search for shade. I find a row of collapsed beach umbrellas far enough from the nearest cafe that I think no one will bother me and open one up and make a spot underneath.  I sit back and try to write something, anything. I get stuck trying to contrast  the bare dirt and broken sidewalks here to coloring inside the lines in elementary school. I can’t seem to make it work. I reach for the bottle in my bag. It’s Jim Beam, not my favorite but literally the only bottle of bourbon in the only liquor store in town. I consider myself lucky. As I crack it open I see it comes with a pour spout inside the neck of the bottle. I can’t get it out with my fingers so I just drink. It takes a long time to get a mouthful so I hold the bottle up in the air for ridiculous lengths of time, sucking like an infant. It makes a bubbling sound like I remember my daughter’s sippy cup making, years ago. Each time I break the seal with my lips a bit dribbles out and runs down my cheek onto my bare chest and on my notebook.  I’m supposed to be an expert at this and I feel like an idiot teenager who stole his father’s whiskey and went drinking for the first time.  Hemingway I’m not.  I shake the drops off the notebook and read what I’ve written so far, always a mistake.  The words come at me in droning, repetitive, pronoun filled, short sentences. I am irritated. I stop reading. I drink more.

A flock of scavenger birds moves down the beach, I assume seagulls but as they get closer I realize they are all giant pelicans. Within a few seconds I’m surrounded by hundreds of angry noisy fucking pelicans.  They don’t stay long before a dog wanders down the beach and sends them all back in the air. The feral dogs are all over the streets of this town, and they all look related.  Like the Canadians.

The dog runs off when a man walks by. He’s carrying two umbrellas like mine. He is shirtless and barefoot and wearing loose brown pants. Almost the same color as his skin.  He doesn’t stop when he reaches me. He walks past quite a ways to a folded pop up canopy another man is erecting down near one of the paths to the street.  I see a pile of umbrellas there, ready to be given out to beach goers. Not given I realize, but rented. I’m squatting under one of their umbrellas. Shit. The man walks back by me down the beach and returns moments later carrying two more. He doesn’t say anything to me and he never attempts to make eye contact. I notice the wrinkles in his skin. I wonder how long he’s been doing this. Carrying umbrellas down the beach. I immediately feel like an idiot. Has there ever been some schmuck tourist visiting Northern California wondering how many fucked up bathrooms I’ve repaired? Not likely.

I turn back to my notebook and try again. When I look up there is a woman and her daughter walking up with trinkets to sell.  They are both darker skinned and skinnier than the locals.  The word indigenous forms on my tongue. I decide not to wave them off with a no gracias like I’d done with the endless stream of vendors on the street. The girl kneels down and rummages through her box of plastic trinkets. I guess her age at 6.  She is wearing a blue jean mini skirt and a neon pink tube top. My kind of girl. From her box of toys she picks up one at a time and calls each by name. I recognize the word pulpa when she holds the smiling octopus refrigerator magnet.  I had pulpas and runny eggs for breakfast. Neither the octopus nor I had been smiling much since. The whiskey was being a great help.  

Quanta questa? I had heard a pasty white lady say it earlier in a shop while holding up a hat. I assume it means how much?

The young girl answers me. I can’t understand her so I hold out some coins. She shakes her head, Oh no, she says and repeats her earlier words.  I shrug my shoulders and she points to a fifty peso note laying in my open bag. I say okay and she reaches in and grabs it, then picks a couple coins from my hand also.  I am sure I am being taken, since this is more than I’d paid for the bucket of watery Mexican beers the night before.  I say okay again and she hands the money to her mom. She says gracias and walks away with a big smile.  I am the only gringo sucker on the beach today.

The wind must have shifted because now with the burning plastic I can smell cooking meat. Maybe it’s time to find some lunch. But first I gotta piss, so I cap the bottle, now half empty, and drop it and my notebook in my bag next to the smiling pulpa. As I stand up I can feel a twinge in my back. It starts small but within a few steps it’s a stabbing pain and I’m leaning to one side. I jab two knuckles into the charlie-horse starting just behind my kidneys and hobble the rest of the way to the water thinking if I can just float for a few minutes maybe I can get the muscles to relax.  By the time my feet touch water I can feel the familiar tingling running down my leg and the numbness creeping along the bottom of my foot. The stabbing pain now shooting from my spine and engulfing my entire ass cheek.  Not far into the water my feet miss a step, a low spot the undertow has carved out. I lurch forward, my free hand flying out in front uselessly. I fall into knee deep, brown, foamy water. A wave shoots the sand and salt water up my nose, burning my sinuses. It smells like sulfur. I cough and try to lift myself up but can’t before the next wave hits me in the side of my head making a loud CLAP against one ear. Fucking Christ! I yell as I roll onto my back. The receding wave pushes my shorts up, giving me a sand-filled wedgie. I’m laying in maybe six inches of dirty brown water.

Fuck it.  

I let my bladder go, pissing on myself, pissing on Mexico.  

My Favorite Radio

I once bought a radio from a junk shop in Carlotta, California. It was an old wooden round-top style with gold fabric on the front and one giant, round dial in the middle. It looked so American and full of history I didn’t care if it worked or not.  I imagined families sitting around the radio listening to President Roosevelt’s weekly radio address. Or listening to the news of the first war to end all wars. I imagined radio shows like War of the Worlds coming through the speaker and scaring the shit out of Carlottians. It seemed so romantic. I paid $5 for it and I felt like I got the deal of the century.

I was excited to bring it home. I had just rented a funky old Victorian house and was enjoying decorating it with thrift store finds like this.  The first thing I did was plug it in. On one frequency it made noises like an airplane engine. That was the only sound it ever made. I found some furniture polish and gave it a once over. When I got the dust off I noticed it had many tiny holes, like pin pricks. Almost too small to see. I imagined an old grandmother, hand sewing some undergarment in her rocking chair. She would be listening to her favorite radio soap opera and when her least favorite character would come on she would lean forward and stab at the radio with her sewing needle, whispering you little bitch, before leaning back to resume sewing. Giving just a slight glance over the top of her glasses making sure grandpa hadn’t heard.

I put the radio on top of a small table in the corner of the dining room. Friends would compliment me on it when they saw it. But being a single man in my 20’s I wasn’t much of a cleaner. The radio would always get really dusty.  I thought maybe it was the rounded top that caused the dust to collect around the base.  How was I to know?

Circumstances in my life changed and I needed to move to the City for a while. I didn’t want to lose the great deal I had on that house so I found someone to sublet for the summer, which turned into two, and eventually three. Before I left I moved much of my furniture, including the radio, into the basement.

Like they do, circumstances changed again and I left the City. What a relief it was to come home to my beautiful little Victorian.  When I went to haul the radio back up from the basement I noticed the significant pile of fine brown dust around the base of it. The pin holes, which I remembered as being perhaps dozens, where now thousands, hundreds of thousands even.  So many that when I touched the wooden side of the radio it gave way beneath my finger. I thought I’d bring the radio out into the light of the back yard and take a better look. I went to pull it off the shelf and felt the whole thing collapse. The weight of the speaker and the fuses forcing the front wall to fall in on itself.  Underneath the thin varnish every wooden part had turned to dust, a large plume of which covered me and filled the basement. What a shame, I thought, I liked that radio. I scooped it into a trash can.

As I was sweeping the last of the dust off the shelf I noticed the wall behind it had a few pin holes in it.  A few feet away there were more. I got on a chair and looked closely at the floor joists above my head. More holes than I could count. I followed the joists to the center of the basement, to the main beam holding up the house. It looked like teeny tiny Swiss cheese. The center post, I noticed now, had a heavy ring of light brown powder around it’s base. I touched it with my finger, gently, and heard a crinkle, like a small dry twig snapping. I backed out of the basement room and shut the door. I saw pin holes in the door and the trim. As I walked around the house I saw more, in the siding and in the windows.

I called my landlord that day, and told him I needed to move again.

Paul, you just got back.

I know, I told him, but circumstances have changed.

No Wings

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe someone could have a guardian angel; I just hadn’t really given it much thought until the day I met my own.

It was just a few minutes after sunrise on a chilly fall northern California morning. I was alone, standing next to an upside down car. One I had borrowed a few hours before from a girl who I knew would say yes to anything I asked of her.  I was in that moment just after an accident when time has not caught up with you yet.  The only sound was the soft rubbing noise from one out-of-round tire still turning slowly.


Just a few minutes earlier I had been congratulating myself on what good time I was making.  I was certain I wouldn’t be late for my breakfast date with Amber at the Park Street Grill in Alameda.  I hadn’t seen her for several weeks.  This was not my first - or last - attempt at rescuing a long distance relationship that was collapsing. My thought was that if I could show her I was still in her life in this little way, a casual breakfast before she started her day, that somehow everything would be okay again.  This magical idea to surprise her had occurred to me while at a party sometime after midnight, in Humboldt county, 6 hours of winding, frozen roads away.  But I knew that if I arrived there by 7:15 I could catch her and her best friend Jeanie at their Friday morning breakfast date before class.  On the drive I had been picturing the look on their faces,  “Hi ladies” I’d say, all casual like, as I sat down in the vinyl booth. Amber’s eyes would get big and round and she’d say, “Wait! I just talked to you last night and you were in Arcata!”

God, I am so cool.  

Maybe this would be a good time to mention that “class” here was really Alameda High School. Amber was seventeen. I was twenty-one. Yes, I was that cool.

It was cold that night, below freezing. I was on the old 2 lane section of 101 just north of Cloverdale.  I had been pushing the little 1976 Honda Civic about as hard as it would go.  On each curve I could feel the tires struggle to find the friction to stay on the road. I remember feeling thankful to see the first rays of sun come up, melting the ice, so I could push the car a little more. I still don’t understand why I pushed everything in my life then. It seemed so important to create the feeling that I was living on the edge. If no one is chasing you, drive like someone is. Pretty soon someone will be.  You get comfortable with that feeling and it's hard to see when you’ve pushed too far.  I had already pushed Amber away, and now I was trying to push my way back in her life.

That night I was driving an ex-girlfriend’s car with expired tags, and no insurance. I had no drivers license and warrants outstanding all over Northern California.  Oh, and it sure wasn’t coffee keeping me awake.  I was going to keep pushing until something stopped me.

I knew the bridge was coming. I also knew it was on a curve. I didn’t know the steel of the bridge would hold the temperature of the roadway below freezing just a bit too long, waiting for me like a giant cartoon banana peel.  As I rounded the corner I saw the erector set framework of the bridge looking like a model train accessory with its green I beams with giant rivets and bright white steel railing. I also saw right away the frosty glint on the road, like a thick layer of white mold.  I’ve always had bad luck with mold.  

In the fraction of a second I had before my front tires crossed the line of ice I considered the following: The brakes were not going to work well on the ice, the steering, pretty much useless also, but the curve of the roadway had me looking head-on at the railing and the dim shadows of the ravine beyond so I stomped on the brakes anyway and yanked the wheel to the right.  The car began to slide, perhaps a quarter turn before bouncing off the first green I beam. I felt the crunch of metal mixed with the soft boom of exploding tempered glass. I was in that strange, altered reality, slow motion state that you only notice in movies or car accidents. The car was now moving toward the opposite side of the bridge. I saw the river below through the white pickets of the rail and I wondered if I would land upside down when I crashed through and sailed off the edge.  I was lucky. The car hit another I beam and rolled up against it and then twisted and flipped.  I remember seeing the stereo come out of the dash, also in slow motion, and drift past my head.  The car was then completely upside down and the windshield was disintegrating as it scraped along the asphalt, sending hundreds of small pieces of safety glass flying around the inside like popcorn. With my hands gripping the steering wheel, I held my head up away from the flying glass and closed my eyes, waiting for the impact of the other rail. This time I was certain I was above the water.  It seemed like I could already feel the cold and wet river rushing through the broken windshield, filling my lungs and taking me away.  The car slid and slid and the impact never came. When the grinding sound stopped I opened my eyes. I was at the far end of the bridge. Upside down. Dead center on the double yellow line.

I stayed there, hanging from my seatbelt, trying to decide if anything hurt, until the thought of another car rounding the corner and sliding into me inspired me to move. My door was jammed shut so I rolled down the window. I clicked the release button on my seatbelt, dropped to the roof and crawled out. I stood there feeling the first orange rays of sun warm my face, picking pieces of windshield glass from my hair, there was a lot of it back then. Looking across the upside down car, back down the length of the bridge I could see the trail of broken glass, the car stereo, one converse high top, and further down, the front bumper stuck in the rail and a few missing steel pickets.  Everything was dead quiet and still.  Even though I could see my breath, the air felt thick and warm. I could feel every part of my body and my clothing touching it. I was wearing my clothes from the party earlier, a tight black turtleneck, black jeans and black boots.  My mother always told me to dress right for an accident. I felt like a superhero and more alive at that moment than any other before or perhaps even since.

I stood there for quite awhile feeling the adrenaline course through me. My dream-like state was eventually interrupted by a man shouting out his car window, “Hey, is anyone hurt?!” The car had a lumber company logo on the door and a single orange light on top. A security guard from the Mill. I shook my head no. He was talking on a cb radio (this was before cell phones). When he finished he leaned out his window again, “Highway Patrol are on their way!”  I nodded slowly and watched him drive away.

Well, this is it, I said out loud to no one.  I knew exactly what was going to happen next. The police were going to come. They would run my name, search the car, find what they could (it always amazed me what cops didn’t find in my cars) and probably arrest me. I had found the edge. I remember feeling calm, maybe even a little relieved, like somehow a police report would give my life the structure it was lacking. That feeling didn’t last long.

The ATV entered the road from between two large shrubs. I hadn’t heard the engine until I saw it and the man riding. He had longish silver hair pushed back like a mane. The whole time I watched him his hair never seemed to move. He shut off the engine, stepped off of his machine, stood for a moment looking at me and then at the car. He was a tall man with a weathered and handsome face and he was wearing a grey one-piece jumpsuit. I didn’t say a word. He opened his mouth as if he was about to speak and then paused, took a pipe out of his breast pocket, put it in his mouth, put one foot up on the tire of his ATV, leaned one elbow on his knee, then finally spoke with the pipe still in his teeth. “Looks like we need to get your car out of the road.”

I didn’t say anything. My own heartbeat was so loud in my ears I felt I shouldn’t try to shout over it. After another moment of contemplation he said, “I’m going to go get my rig.” He looked at me but didn’t wait for a response before calmly climbing back on his ATV and disappearing into the brush.  

I walked back down the bridge, collecting my things off the road. I got to where the front bumper was stuck in the rail.  Down below on the rocks I could see the white pickets that had been knocked loose. Stepping back I guessed the distance between the green I beams at around twelve feet, easily enough room for the Honda to slip through. I pulled the bumper from the rail and carried it back to the car.

I was surprised that I was still alone on the road. I crawled back in the car and grabbed my other converse and my bag.  I was thinking I might start walking, leave the car there blocking the road but as I was standing back up the man with the silver hair returned. He was driving the largest pickup I’d ever seen. Sort of a Monster Truck Meets Telephone Repair Man. It was the same color gray as his outfit and had a phone company logo on the door.  Without even talking to me he looped a braided cable over the wheels on the far side of the car and started up his winch on the front bumper. The car creaked and groaned and rather quickly rolled back onto its wheels. He disconnected the cable and together, he and I pushed the car over to the side of the road.


While this was happening, a few cars had begun to back up on either side of the accident.  I picked up the last of the broken parts from the asphalt and they drove by.

The silver haired man nodded to me and said, “Trooper’s probably going to be here soon. Some place I can drop you?” How did he know I needed to get out of there?

“The bus station in Cloverdale?”

“Jump in”

On the drive into town I asked him what he was doing out here at sunrise.  “I’m installing an underground fiber optic cable,” he said. “One continuous beam of light from New York to Tokyo.”  It makes more sense now, many years later.

I didn’t make my breakfast date but I also didn’t die trapped upside down in a car in the river.  Nor did I get arrested.  Sometimes I do wonder if all this is the reason I’m still with AT&T.  I don’t think I ever saw my guardian angel again, but I do know that was not the last time he’d save my ass.

The Truckload

How long are you supposed to wait after a break up before you start trolling again?  Everyone has a different answer, and they are all wrong. For me, given my tendency to hibernate with netflix, pills, and Jack Daniels, The way I see it, if I’m breathing, I’m ready.

It was a Friday, it was raining and I was bored.  I was at home doing really important things like making a fake profile on Ok Cupid so I could cyber-stalk my exes. Tell me you've never done that?  Like I said, I was ready.
 

I first needed to create a fake email and then wait for my fake membership confirmation.  I didn’t want my fake person to not have a personality so I spent some time on her. I made ‘Jill’ out to seem like a nice girl. Very curvy. A bit younger than me.  Much more hair.  I gave her some hobbies. Some outdoorsy crap. You know, someone I would want my sister to date. Is that incestuous? Maybe just weird. When she was ready I put her up there, logged on, and looked around. Nope, not a single ex. Ok. I guess I didn’t care much. That was a good waste of an hour.

I asked for curvy and I got this chick,
 WTF? Okq

  
I remember thinking, well, I’m back on this dating site, maybe I should try looking for someone I don’t already know!   So Jill and I did. There is a search option for radius. This time no East Bay, no San Francisco. I’m not driving all over the damn state to go on a date anymore.  Do I sound cynical?  Maybe I was, but since I’d wrecked the Porsche and I’d recently run out of eccentric uncles with fancy convertibles to loan me, I figured I’d look closer to home. Besides, I knew I wasn’t going to find anyone anyway.

The thing I liked about the radius search was the idea that there is a circle full of available women out there and I am at its center.  This is the sort of subliminal ego boosting shit that actually works on me.  So I put in 100 yards. I’m lazy, and wouldn’t it be nice to walk to a date?  I could totally play up the eco-groovy thing. You know, socks with sandals. It would be like Arcata all over again.

I was so surprised in the very first search to find a pretty girl.  In fact her profile picture, a close up of her face, was just a bit too attractive. Like maybe she was hiding a really large girl just out of sight of the lens. 
 Hmmm, this best be investigated. Click. Wohaa! she is cute! And what is she holding in that picture... a shovel? Her profile had me laughing out-loud. It was littered with profanity.  And damn she looks fucking hot in glasses, as in ‘Tina Fey gorgeous.’ This doesn’t happen. This can’t be right. I knew I needed to contact her right away.  OH NO!! I can’t send her a message from Jill!  I mean, what if she isn’t into 5’6” curvy women with long haired poodles?   What if she is?  There was only one solution. I needed to make ANOTHER profile.  OH FUCKING CHRIST!  So I did, after making another fake email, password.... yada yada yada.

Now what do I say about me? How do I write an entire online dating profile to be read by one person?  And is that going to seem a bit stalker-ish?  Yeah just a bit. 
But I needed her to know we have sooo much in common.

It took a bottle of wine and few hours to decide on the exact wording and which pictures to include. I briefly considered telling her about my tropical escapist fantasies.  That didn’t go over so well before.  I decided to keep it subtle.

This picture is filled with 
subliminal messages

By midnight I was ready for final launch and to initiate contact.  I’ve always known how important a first impression can be. I wanted to seem worldly but not creepy, so I made certain to mention my prison time, my love for foreign countries without extradition treaties, and in my first message to her I included the line, I made this entire profile just for YOU.  

Her response came in just past 2 am. A good sign in my book. It was a rather unexpected, You’re going to have to prove that.

Shit. I was totally lying about... some parts of that. Now what? I grabbed a sharpie and quickly whipped out a suitable prison tattoo, snapped a pic, and sent it to her. This has got to work. 

I felt this one showed strength without overshadowing my softer side

The next day I got a message from her that she was drinking a 40 oz Miller High Life AT WORK to combat her hangover. See with me it's always the little things. I was pretty sure I’d found my dream girl.  


We exchanged emails for a day or two. Her communication style and self-deprecating sense of humor put me at ease right away. I tried to impress her with a few jokes, bad idea. She returned suit with only one:

What does a lesbian bring to a second date?  Like most things I don’t understand, I just ignored that one.

A bit reluctantly, I sent her a link to my blog.  She sent me a link to hers. “A whole truckload of Amanda,” she said. And so true.  I loved her stuff. It was very personal and I found it interesting getting to know so much about her online before ever setting eyes on her.  There was a ton of material. Stories about her kids vomiting on her in public, one about the worst gas station bathroom on the planet. But I quickly started to notice a trend. A lot of stories about bodily functions. After she told me to read a series called MILF with Herpes Been Hookin’  I got a little worried. I started scrolling back through my emails to see if I had ever given her my phone number or address.

Our schedules were challenging so we finally agreed to meet late one night after we both finished other events. It was after 11 and the only thing open that late on a weeknight was a douchebag bar in downtown Santa Rosa. I got there just a few minutes before her. It was pretty crowded and loud. I had just enough time to get a couple champagne cocktails and grab the last open table in the corner.  

I caught sight of her coming in the front door.  Our eyes met and locked as she made her way over to me. It was as if all the sounds of the bar went quiet for one moment. Then she tripped over the leg of a chair and stumbled. I saw her reach for the back of the chair to steady herself, but instead hit the man sitting there because as if being pulled by the string of a puppeteer, the drink in his hand shot straight out onto the chest of the blond girl across from him. She immediately raised both arms in some kind of protest gesture which knocked the martini glass from the hand of the guy sitting next to her.  That glass hit the floor and made some noise. There was a series of what the fuck?’s  from the various people involved and then the bar did get really quiet as everyone looked at Amanda.  She was clean and dry and standing there a bit awkwardly trying to hand the blond girl a napkin. There was a scattered round of applause and then people quickly went back to their drinks. I said to Amanda, but loud enough for the dripping, angry people to hear, Hey, maybe we can grab the bartender and get these guys another round, as I pulled her around the corner toward the other end of the bar. Once out of sight I leaned in close and said, Let's go!, pointing to the side door.

We barely made it out the door before we both started laughing. Quite an entrance! was all I could get out. She informed me that she had in fact learned to walk in heels at the Barbizon School of Modeling.  Later we joked about which of us was going to get to write about this. I guess I won. Or maybe she’s just waiting to tell her side of the story. Shit.

We both had early mornings so we didn’t stay out late but we agreed to meet again that coming Saturday evening.  The pre-date nervous energy propelled me to sit and write out most of this story. I was almost finished when I heard a car pull up out front. 5:30, right on time. I grabbed my coat and walked out. On the front porch I stopped.

Oh shit, what the hell is she driving?  Is that a U-Haul?

 

Falling Backwards: Lily

You know that thought?  I’m sure you’ve had it, the one that goes: 

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Now that my 19 year marriage has failed - crashed and burned, gone down in flames, exploded on impact, wiping out an entire village and leaving me walking though the smoldering wreckage like a shell shocked zombie - I think I should start looking up all my old girlfriends.” 

Yeah, that thought.  That brilliant thought. 

My advice?   Leave the old flame burning. Warm your hands by it.  Enjoy the fantasy.  Just don’t ever try to go back.

Lily

“Come up to Indian country Paul, there is powerful magic up here. I promise you will be healed.”

By the time Lily sent that message we had been talking - flirting really- online for several months. Being certain I would never actually see her in person, I had been surprisingly honest with the pain I was going through around my divorce. A divorce so recent I had yet to tell many of my closest friends.  Her feedback tended to be pretty lowbrow. It usually came after she’d finished her bar shift, 3 am or so California time, obviously sloshed. I would wake in the morning in Hawaii to her drunken ramblings, and take comfort in them. I got exactly what I needed from it - a pleasant memory of an old crush, and a sympathetic ear.

Lily was one of those people that caught on to things a little faster then the rest of us. She skipped a few grades and entered high school at 12. I look back on that now and just think, poor kid. She was a little pixie. I remember she dressed as Cindy Lauper one year for Halloween and then just kind of stayed that way for the next few years.  In the 80’s, in our little cow town, colored hair and crazy makeup really stood out. I met her working backstage at a school play. Yes, I needed more drama in my life, even back then. She was 13, I was 16 and I was madly in love. But outside of the play I never had the guts to talk to her. 

We didn’t date until several years later. I had just moved back to Eureka from SF and was living in a studio apartment above a used bookstore in Old Town. In the City I had been seeing a girl named Pamela. She had just told me she was in love with another man. Some guy from South America she had met at her job parking cars.  It wasn't a great time for me. I saw Lily walking by on the sidewalk below and ran down to her. We both decided to change our plans for the rest of the week. That's how it always worked with us. We never really dated. We somehow would find each other at just the right moment when one or the other was in need of some healing from a broken heart. We would fall off the earth together for a night or a week, then not see each other again for a month or a year. We had a name for it. We called it stopping time.

Back then we were partial to amphetamines, before we knew they burned holes in your brain, before we knew cigarettes gave us cancer, before TV had color. Our habits were not the same but I can say that now only with the benefit of hindsight. I mean, my parents would have surely called us both addicts. I remember one day laying next to her, our bodies still entwined, I asked her softly “Why aren’t we together?” Her answer was just above a whisper, “I would disappoint you. I’m only this good when I’m with you.” I didn’t argue. I was naive enough then to believe an 18-year-old meth addict knew herself that well.

Now with the safety of 1500 miles of water between us I asked her to open up, to fill me in on the last 20 plus years. She had been reluctant to spill, I had a feeling she was hiding something big. Eventually the story came out. About 3 years back she had been living in Santa Rosa of all places. (my town) She was married and off speed for the first time since High School. Her husband, her “once in a lifetime soul-mate” as she called him, started up using again. So she too decided to fall back into the pit. She did a rail, got woozy and passed out. There was a roommate home at the time to call 911. When the paramedics arrived she was blue, not breathing and had no pulse. They got her heart started again, got her breathing and took her to the ER. She was in the hospital for a few weeks. She had had a stroke. When her sister came down from Humboldt to pick her up she was told the brain damage from lack of oxygen was likely permanent, but Lily's speech and most of the muscle control of her face could eventually return.

After her stroke she tried to get as far away as she could. Hoopa is a tiny town on the Klamath river in northern California. It’s an Indian reservation. There is a gas station, a grocery store, a post office, a fire department, and a bar that has been shut down many times over the years due to an alarming number of deaths by axe. 

“Come on up" she said, "I’ll give you a tour of all the local watering holes. We can stop time and spend the day laying by the river and eat and drink away our hangovers.” I was back on the mainland when I got that invitation to drive there, 8 hours or more into the wilderness.  The picture she had painted of her life was not a pretty one. The brain damage, the 2 decade speed habit and the chain smoking that went with it. I knew this was one of those memories better left alone. In other words, there was nothing that could have stopped me.

* * *

“Hold your hand out flat, like this, she won’t bite.” Lily was showing me how to feed her horse an apple. I wasn’t really listening. I couldn’t stop staring at her. Maybe it was the magic of my old memory clouding my vision, maybe she was actually a 40 something wrinkled toothless hag and I was blind, but this girl I was looking at was beautiful. She looked exactly like I remembered her. Young, happy, healthy, SEXY. There was no sign of the stroke. No sign of the drug use. I was beyond amazed. The only blemish I could see on her otherwise perfect skin was a fresh mosquito bite on her neck.

"Wanna see the house?" she asked

"Of course I do1" 

As we walked back up the gravel road I continued to stare at her. Her tiny curvy body. Her perfect ass. I had no hesitation about where I wanted this weekend to go. My head was flooded with memories of our teenage escapades.

As soon as we got inside I noticed the old style I remembered, antique suitcases holding up one end of a coffee table, Victorian chaise lounge draped with leopard print fabric, torn lace curtains. She didn't offer me a tour so I just poked around a bit, a quick peek in the kitchen, dirty dishes in the sink and on the counter; down a short hall, a hanging dark velvet fabric for a bedroom door. Paint flaking off dark maroon colored walls, more ratty vintage lace curtains. Clothes on the floor. A smell that was part musty old moth-eaten blanket and part cat.

I walked back to the living room and sat down, set my overnight bag on the floor. She sat across from me in the only other chair in the room, the suitcase coffee table was between us. Then she hit me with the first bomb.

"I'm still a drug addict, you want to do a line?"

I'm quick to hide shock, I always have been. "No, thanks, can't go there anymore."

"You don’t mind if I do?"

"Course not, knock yourself out.” I was thinking about her story, the blue-and-dead-for-12-minutes-stroke part. My face must have given me away.

"Surprised?" she said, watching me.

"Well, I guess after the whole DYING thing, I figured you had quit."

"Fuck no! First place I went the day I got out was to my guy. By the way, I only shoot it now. Do needles bother you?"

I shook my head, no. I was beginning to withdraw in a strange way. I was losing track of where my hands and feet were. The next few moments are ones that will live in my mind for the rest of my life. While she had been talking she had been fixing up a needle, very skillfully and quickly.

"My arms are all tore up, I can’t use them anymore," she said to me, tapping the little air bubbles out of the needle. I had noticed the low cut, light green, long sleeved shirt but hadn't given it much thought other than how great her tits looked in it.

As she said that she stood up and took two quick steps to a small vintage mirror hanging on the wall near the front door. Without a moments hesitation she plunged the needle directly into her neck, pushed the entire contents into her artery, pulled it out, put one finger over the hole, turned and sat back down, staring at me.

The mosquito bite.

 
I tried to think of something to say. "So that must take like what, 3 seconds to hit you?" I asked.

"Oh, faster than that, even before I pull it out, its already hit my brain.” She sat there a minute smiling at me. "Gotta give me a sec, my eyes are all googly for a few minutes."

"Take your time," I said, still not able to move. Or feel if my hands and feet were still attached. I realized I wasn't breathing at some point.

Within a couple minutes she was back up. "Okay! lets go out! I'll give you that tour of all the dive bars on the mountain! But you'll have to drive!"

I hesitated, but only for a moment.  I had come all that way to see her. I decided to let inertia take me. And it did, all over Trinity County that night. Strange little roadside bars in the middle of nowhere. She knew all the bartenders and most of the patrons. After closing one, well after 2 am, we stumbled onto a rave. Yes, really. A warehouse in the middle of some place that I could not find again in a million years. We danced with a bunch of touchy-feely twenty somethings. Someone offered us some ecstasy.  At some point I began to notice the distance she was keeping between us. She was very careful to not touch me when we were in sight of anyone.

After we left the rave she wanted to go find her connection. We drove for awhile up a mountain on a bumpy gravel road. “Right here,” she said as we came up on a dingy single wide trailer, trash in piles around the outside.  I pulled up next to a red Ford Fiesta missing both rear wheels. My headlights lit up a washing machine on the front porch. There were no lights on in the trailer. No other cars we could see. Lily didn’t get out of the car.

“Fuck. She’s not home”

I said, “Hey, c’mon. Its been a fun night. Let’s go home.” She looked at me and didn’t say anything. “What are you worried about?” I asked in the best reassuring tone I could muster for that hour of the night.

She gave me the strangest look and then just said softly,”Okay.”

When we got back to her place it was after 5 am. Inside her house I went to the kitchen in search of a clean glass for some water. I remember thinking how good her bed, that moth eaten, cat smelling bed, was going to feel. When I turned around she was looking out the window. Something wasn’t right. I looked around and now saw the odd clues I had missed before. There were two dirty wine glasses on the table. A mens black leather jacket hanging on the side of the kitchen chair.

My face dropped.  "You have a boyfriend don't you?"

She smiled, embarrassed. "Yes, its only been a few days and I was afraid if I told you you wouldn't have come up."

I nodded slowly, well this puts a new twist on things.

"He's Indian" she said. "He was here after we left.” She picked up a note off the kitchen table and read it out loud. "When you are done hanging out with your friend, text me. I'm up on the trail.” She explained to me that the Indians have a network of trails, up in the hills connecting all the houses, that avoid the county roads. "He’s probably watching us right now."

"Uh-huh,” I felt that odd feeling of losing touch with my arms and legs coming back. I drank the entire glass of water. “Does he know you're still on speed?”

"Yes, but he wants me to quit. Maybe you can sleep on the couch?" She was nervous.

"Ahhh, ya know, I think I better head back over the hill." I grabbed my bag from behind the chaise lounge.

"I'm so sorry Paul, if you had come up a week ago like I begged you to.... I really like this guy and he is good for me, I really want it to work"

"Lily, I'm happy for you, you deserve to be happy after everything that you've been through. But you should have told me."

"You wouldn't have come."

She was right. "Maybe not. But you should have told me anyway.

"I’m sorry” she paused for a moment, looking around, handed me my jacket. "You better go now actually, I don't think he expected me to bring you back here." As she said this she looked toward the kitchen window.

It was an awkward, hurried goodbye. I walked to my truck in the dark feeling the eyes of the mountain on me.

The clouds were starting to glow with the first hint of sunrise as I drove away.  At the top of the mountain, above the tree line I saw the first orange rays glistening off the frozen tortured grass. I came over Berry summit and started the long drive down to the coast.  I got a text from Lily when I got back into range. "I wish we could have stopped time again." When I got into Eureka I pulled off at Ramone’s Bakery for some coffee. I walked around the corner on 2nd street, past the used bookstore and sat on the stoop of my old apartment building. I was empty of all feelings. My fantasy was gone, And God Damn I missed it.