The Devil's Haircut

There are a few dependable escape routes for me when life gets rough. Several of them are self-destructive and involve strip clubs, Patron and a blonde wig. But there are a few safer bets: shopping, going out to eat, getting massages by small Asian men with strong hands and getting my hair done. Hair salons are therapeutic and people touch me and stuff.

After going through one of the more grueling weeks of my life, I decided to treat myself to a haircut. My regular stylist wasn't in so I settled for some woman named Daisy, because I liked the name. How could a Daisy muck up my hair?

Once I sat in her chair, I knew something was wrong pretty quickly. Daisy, a middle-aged Jersey woman (with a questionable haircut herself), started combing my hair in silence. She says, apropos of nothing:

"My friend just died of brain cancer."

Okay. Not your average conversation starter but I can swing.

"I'm sorry." I muttered.

"It's alright. I'm doing better. I was doin' pretty bad but I'm better now."

"Oh, good."

"Well, I was doing better. Then I started getting these headaches all the time. What do you want done today?"

"Um...just a trim. Please."

"Splitting headaches. At first, I thought they were just sympathetic. My friend just died of brain cancer."

"Yep. I remember."

Snip, snip, snip. Scissors, sharp. Handfuls of hair fall to the ground.

"Just found out I have a tumor on my pituitary gland."

"Where's your pituitary gland?" I ask.

She takes her finger and taps her forehead three times.

"Here."

Oh mother of god. This is a joke. There’s a camera somewhere, right?

"It's not as bad as it sounds. I'm being treated with medication."

Snip, snip. Sharp. My pretty hair, falling quickly.

"Just a trim!" I remind her.

"I just didn't want surgery. After my friend. The one with the brain cancer."

Tears begin to well. I convince myself that it's only hair. It will grow back. If you have to, Beth, you'll just shave your head and start from scratch. No big deal.

I flash back to my earlier years, when my mother would line her 5 children up at the barber's shop. I would scream in terror, she'd tell me years later. The only kid who had barbershop issues. I was also the only thumb sucker as well. (At least that neurosis would prove to be more helpful later on.)

When she finally finished, I gently, ever so gently, point out that one side is definitely longer than the other.

"Maybe one side of your hair just grows longer than the other," she posits.

Crazy logic. Crazy, crazy logic. Just agree, Beth.

"You're right. One side definitely grows longer than the other. My whole body is like that."

She trims the longer side, annoyed and silent.

I pay for my cut and walk out to my truck, where I promptly start sobbing. I think I'm going back to the strip clubs, where it’s safe and warm.

Nights at the Round Table

So I have my young crew of knights I hang out with here at the Jersey shore. They are lead by Sir Kurt, one of my favorite young guys ever (he's going to be 21 next month. Lock your windows.) I hang out with them because they have this virile life energy and I vampiracally like to suck them dry, simply by being in their presence.

No, not really. They're just fun and spirited and life hasn't beaten the shit out of them yet, so their reactions and opinions are essentially pure and silly.

A few nights ago, I performed our weekly ritual - drinking cheap beer, sitting around the table, giving them advice on women. It was a night like many other this past winter, at least at first. After a round of shots of some nasty unnamed liquor, we sat in silence for a moment.

Finally, Kurt spoke.

"Beth, can I ask you something kinda personal?"

I'm already laughing because we're sitting with 8 other people.

"Sure, Kurt, feel free."

He hemmed and hawed and finally spit out:

"Are you infertile?"

I almost spit my beer out.

"Am I what??"

"Are you infertile...like do you have problem making babies or something?"

"Uh, I know what infertile is, Kurt but thanks for the medical explanation. No. Why?"

"Well, we can't figure out why you're not married or why you don't have kids. Like, you're 41, you're really cute and you're cool and shit...so what went wrong?"

Hmmm...how do I answer? Do I even have an answer?

I tried:

"Well, there are all sorts of women out there, Kurt. Not all of them want kids. Not all of them even like kids, believe it or not. Some like monkeys more. And not all of them want to be married."

"Hmm..."

I'm not saying I don't want those kind of things. It's just different for me. I just don't...it's not my whole raison d'etre, you know?"

They look blankly. (Note to self: don't use French expressions with this gang.)

"Um...I guess I just haven't gotten around to it. I've been busy. Doing stuff."

More blank stares.

I went for the more humorous approach.

"Do you guys want to make some babies with me? Is that what this is about?"

This was met with red faces, uncomfortable laughs and fidgets. Finally, one of the youngest dudes says, dead seriously, "Sure, I'll give it a shot."

"Kidding, I was only kidding."

"Oh."

I left that night, wondering why I had to answer a question like that in the first place. I hear this kind of thing often. "How hasn't someone snatched you up?" Like I was some little daisy that simply had to be plucked.

I don't deny the desire to meet someone special and make a lovely home together and have tons of sex simply due to its ready availability. But I also don't want to feel like some freak of nature for not doing what everyone thinks a female at my age should do. I mean, I just learned how to skateboard last summer (by Kurt, of course). So where do I fit into the social female schemata?

I could have explained to them that most of the marriages I see seem flat and loveless; that most of my friends have settled on one level or another for the sake of an obligatory dream and now walk around listless and half-baked.

I could have told them I never cared enough to settle.

I could have told them that I've only recently felt "grown up" and am still working out the kinks.

I could have told them I was preoccupied by the complications called Life and didn't have the the time or luxury to look very hard.

I could have told them, simply, that no one has asked me.

It seems as if the world always has to brand you, one way or the other. And maybe I'm happily brandless. Or unhappily branded. Or unhappily unbranded.

Maybe I'm still in search of my Grail.

Maybe I found it.

Strange Things that Turn Me On

I’m in the backyard this morning, hanging sheets on the clothesline. It’s a perfectly crisp, mid-March day - the sky a stark blue and little racy strands of clouds. The air is so clean and sharp. It’s the champagne of all air. Suddenly, as I pin one end of my white sheet to the line, I feel surprisingly turned on – like aroused, sexually. Something about the external stimuli overtook me and I feel sensually overwhelmed.

It got me thinking of other random turn-ons that have little to do with writhing bare bodies and all. I remember being turned on once while making pesto. Yep, pesto – like for pasta. Standing at the counter in my kitchen, old 40’s music drifting from the radio. I began blending basil leaves with those little nuts - pignoli nuts, right? Oh, yes. And olive oil. All the while drinking this rich, dark beer. The scent was transcendent, the atmosphere perfect. Wham. Turned on like a light switch.

Chocolate and good red wine – a tried and true recipe for most, no? Same holds true with a lovely fire burning. Mix the three together and I’m as easy as Sunday morning.

Surfing - easily the more sexy sport. It certainly beats golf and bowling in the titillation department. Tennis surprisingly has its share of turn-on appeal in it – in its own methodical, hard-hitting way.

A hot bath could fit the bill - pretty sexy but in a more hypnotic way. Every time I take a bath, I bring a book or a magazine in with me but I never end up reading it. Once I sink into the water, I’m mesmerized. I glaze over, thinking of...pesto and fire.

Peppermint tea, cocoa butter, the smell of pine or eucalyptus, someone whispering something in my ear or playing with my hair, my old English teacher, black and white movies, priests, vampires, laughing really hard, putting makeup on men, a kitten purring next to your face, blankets (but a really good blanket, not just any old one), Sherlock Holmes, hickies, wasabi and raw fish, Michael Moriarty's acting style in the early years of Law and Order, the smell of a fetid bay, destruction, a horn section, the word “effervescent.”

And how about a little subservience? Like when you are told what to do but not in that standard S & M “get on your knees” way." (Though that certainly has its place.) Someone casually telling you, “Go get me a drink.” Like they feel comfortable enough to make a demand of you. I know it’s a fine line, but it’s nice to see some occasional possessiveness and grabbing and bossing. Taking what is yours, in a sense – that can be sexy in doses.

And then there’s sex. Sex turns me on sexually. The kind of sex you’re thinking about several days later, while a friend is telling you about some dental work she's having done and you keep saying “Uh huh, uh huh…” but you’re really thinking of that one moment when he grabbed your hair and stuck his tongue…and then she asks you a question that you’re forced to answer and you don’t really know how to answer because you haven’t really been listening so you say “Hmm...” because that seems like a neutral enough response to fit most situations.

Oh yes, sheets blowing in the wind.

The world is our oyster, friends.

My Sleeping Tom

Last night was a night like many others at the Jersey shore – playing on the computer in my bedroom, drinking wine and wondering why you don’t like me. When suddenly, a sharp knock is heard! My brother, shouts “Beth! Beth!” I finish my last sip of wine (and it was really good bottle of Pinot Grigio, so I take a moment to savor it) and meander to the door. My brother points frantically into my room and says “There’s someone at your window.” And then darts out the front door to chase after the “perp.”

I quickly follow and pretty soon my brother and I are in hot pursuit. It gets very dark here at night and even with streetlights, it’s tough to chase down the assailant. As I tear down the street, I blindly follow the sounds of his crashes and bangs in the neighboring yards. Since he had a 30-second or so head start on us, we don’t stand much a chance. Plus, I guess I got a little lazy. Chasing perps is a lot of work. (I'm kinda happy I got to use the word “perp” again).

As my brother and I walk back to the house, out of breath, I ask him what the hell happened. He said he opened the side door to take out some trash and saw a man, perched on an overturned trashcan, staring in my bedroom window. The guy flew once my brother saw him.

The police came by with dogs and everything. I felt like a real star. It was like Law and Order in my own backyard! They tried to track his scent from the trashcan but lost him after a block or two.

So I had a peeping tom – wow, it so 70s! Is it capitalized? Peeping Tom? I mean, who has Peeping Toms anymore? One has stalkers nowadays. They’re all the rage.

How did I not sense someone staring at me? I mean, how long has this been going on? He could have been staring at me doing nothing for months! Last night, I was particularly uneventful. He saw me get progressively drunk and stare blankly into a screen. Thrills and wonders abound.

Wow. To think I may have bored a Peeping Tom. Perhaps he started dozing off on the trashcan before my brother startled him awake. Maybe I grossed him out a little. I do remember picking my nose once or twice.

Now had he caught me earlier in the day, he might have been privy to a private bedroom performance, which are quite titillating, I believe.

Today I sang a lovely, heartfelt rendition of Barry Manillow’s “Two Ships” – tears and rowing motion and all. That was followed by a rousing duet sung by Barry Gibb and Barbra Streisand – I sang both parts, of course. Interpretive dance followed. So while it might not have been that “peeping tom worthy”, there was some action in my bedroom today! Things do happen here! He just came at the wrong time. (Double entendre unintended.)

I jest about this when I realize there is a level of seriousness to it. By the time you read these words, I may be bite-sized body nuggets in someone’s freezer – a virtual human TV dinner. And of course, I can't help but note the irony of leaving the big, dangerous city to the "safety" of a quiet, seashore town.

I also must confess some sadness as well, because I locked the front door of this house for the first time in decades last night. Creep.

Unfortunately, my only real concern is that this incident might inhibit my natural tendencies to do absolutely nothing in the privacy of my bedroom, which I truly resent. There’s always some jerk infringing on your natural expression.

The little trashcan is still overturned outside my window. I’m keeping it out there today, like some badge of honor or something. Maybe it’s an invitation as well. Do it again, asshole. I’ll bore you to tears next time. I’ll stare blankly into the computer for hours and this time, I won’t even turn it on. My Sleeping Tom will nod off, flaccid dick in hand, wondering why he “came” here in the first place. That's when I'll make my move.

Belle of the Rock Bottom Ball

(special thanks to Ruby for her contributions)


Somebody has to get away from the Jersey coast and right quick before somebody ends up in a poorly lit rehab with a bunch of old fishermen and ex-Wendy's employees.

I'm caged in this old house. Caged, I tell you.

Picture this:

You're 41, an attractive single female, living at the Jersey shore in winter. You were born here, so it's like returning to a tub of dirty bathwater - lukewarm, comfortable but essentially gross.

You decide to go out because you never do anymore. You stay at home and watch more Law and Order than possibly healthy. You drag your sorry ass out of bed, run a brush through your hair and put on some lipstick, which has to be around here...somewhere.

You go to a local dive bar for Happy Hour, which bleeds into Happy Hours. You strike up a conversation with someone who possesses a demonic feel, though you're not quite sure why. Perhaps it's his beady eyes, his hot breath or the way he keeps saying "I think I'm the devil." You decide to part ways with this diabolical drunk before he drags you to the fiery pits of hell.

But the night is not done for you, is it? You go to your friend's little brother's apartment, where a party is in full swing. Little brother is 20 as are most of his friends. It's good for a laugh and gives you a chance to gaze at the virile bodies flitting about, testosterone coursing from their sinewy veins.

Beer pong becomes part of the equation for "fun" this evening. Do I have to remind you that you are 41-years old and playing beer pong with beer that you had to buy because you're one of the few people here over 21? Oh, the unflinching beauty of it all.

(If there's a cop reading this, this is a fictionalized story told in the second person. You can't prove anything.)

You excel at beer pong and wonder why. Maybe you're just on your game tonight, baby. Your opponent keeps lifting his shirt, attempting to distract you with his ridiculous abs, as if he knows why you're really there. This only improves your game. In between winning shots, you make out with him. Go home, heathen girl!

Someone invites you to take a hit from "The Gravitator" which is an oversized pot-smoking device designed to generate the biggest hit of weed you may ever inhale in your life, leaving you coughing spasmodically for 10 minutes.

At first, you appreciate the newfound high, until you realize that this buzz is developing a life of its own. The floor starts to slant and realign itself, repeatedly. You ask it to stop...loudly. It doesn't respond.

The little boys and girls begin to look at you queerly. You tell them they need to stop glowing or you're going to leave. They laugh nervously. You sit down because, well...you have to. A pretty girl comes up to you and asks you if you need something. Water, water.

You're in trouble now, aren't you? You can't drive home. It's midnight and there is no one here to tend to you, since they are in their own special, ego-centered, 20-something land. Praying seems like the best option.


Please, God, I'm so sorry. Please just let me go home.

God laughs and shakes the walls. You cup your ears and say "Shhhh!!! Shhhh!!!" The boys and girls look over at you again, in disbelief that in any way, shape or form, you are their elder.

You make a staggered dash for a bedroom down the hallway and lie down on an unmade bed. You feel queezy.

Please don't let me get sick here. That bathroom hasn't been cleaned in months. I'll take better care of myself! I don't know why I did this to myself. I'm bored, sexually frustrated. I'll be a good girl!

Your heart pounds hard, breathing becomes shallow, stomach churns. You hear the boys and girls in the other room. If you didn't know better, they sound like they're chanting! You fear you may be sacrificed, so it's best not fall asleep. Hours pass, as demons play gleefully around your head.

At 2 am, the poor kid whose bed your sleeping in opens up the door, wrapped in a blanket, ready to sleep. He doesn't know what to do with you and stands in the doorway awkwardly. Get out, devil. He leaves quietly.

Your mind flipflops from the poster of Bob Marley (who is staring at you menacingly) to a recent conversation with a friend who has noticed this strange phase of yours.

He thinks you're trying to recapture your past. No, you tell him, I never had my past. Time went backwards on me, breach. A childhood saddled with adult responsibility, 20's mired in disconnectedness and insecurity, 30's saddled with dysfunctional, one-sided relationships. For once in my life, this is my time, even with all its glaring imperfections.

Trying to recapture your past? You're trying to capture your present, for once.

It's 4 am. You pry yourself from bed, grab your coat and tell Bob Marley goodbye (who seems to be in better spirits). You walk into the living room, wake the kid on the couch and tell him he can have his bed back. The remaining 20-somethings sit at a bottle-strewn table, staring at you, silently. You begin laughing at their nervous gaze. You laugh until you feel like you might get sick...so you stop laughing.

You could feel embarrassed but you don't. You simply look up at the smoke-covered ceiling and give a quick thanks for the beautiful and bizarre hybrid that you're becoming, that maybe only you can appreciate. And that's alright, isn't it? If only you can appreciate her? I think it's alright.

You look at the kids before walking out into cold.

You say:

This is what freedom looks like, boys and girls. It's not always pretty.

Seagull Flies

I will lie down in autumn
Let birds be flying
Swept in a hollow by the wind
I’ll wait for dying
I will lie inert unseen
My hair same-colored with grass and leaves
Gather me for the autumn fires
with the withered sheaves
I will sleep face down in the burnt meadow
Not hearing the sound of water over stones
Trail over me cloud and shadow
Let snow hide the whiteness of my bones
- May Swenson, In Autumn


I walked out of the dunes at 6 a.m. in the dead of winter. My neighbor, being the eternal watchdog of our street, was there to greet me.

“What are you doing out there?”

I couldn’t speak. I was too moved by the events that had just transpired. He saw me struggling for words.

“Community service, I’m guessing?”

I nodded. Community service sounded about right. I was returning a seagull back into the wild. A baby seagull that was thrust upon me the night before, wrapped in an old sweatshirt.

Several days ago while walking on the beach, I came across an injured baby seagull. His wing was broken. I don’t know why I thought it was a “him” but I guessed. He flopped around frantically, in the deep, truck-made grooves in the sand.

I have a real problem when animals are in distress. It turns me inside out, floods me with grief and empathy. As a little girl, I dreamt of being a vet but had to give up that dream, due to this profound oversensitivity.

As I nervously tried to gauge the extent of the bird’s injuries, a fisherman at the shoreline turned around and watched me. He really annoyed me. People can be so rude. He just stared at me for the sake of staring. Like a dolt. He didn’t want to help the bird or me. He was just a fat-assed spectator and I was his sport. Finally, I looked at him and hissed, “Take a picture!”

I left the beach. The idiot, the injured bird, feeling flooded, watched, helpless. I went to the police station and told them about the injured bird. These guys are nice, though cops tend to make me nervous as a matter of course. The one cop always reminds me of Father Karras from The Exorcist, which elicits a good feeling in me, for some unknown reason. I left the station, thinking I did as much as I could do for the baby gull.

Later that evening, I took one last bike ride to check the waves, sure that at this point, the cops or whomever had “taken care” of the gull. But the bird’s fate landed at my feet once again. I almost tripped over him as I entered the beach. He was in worse shape. Not moving, but alive.

I stumbled backward, off the beach and raced home to tell my brother, who is a little more adept at animal rescue and not as sensitive. He jumped in his truck and left for the beach to check him out. I thought, damn, kill the poor thing if you have to…just don’t let him suffer anymore. And with that, I let the gull go once again and proceeded to cook my dinner.

Several minutes passed and I heard the front door slam. I rushed to the living room to get an update, chopped onions in one hand. My brother promptly handed me a sweatshirt. He mumbled a few words about “keep it covered, find a sizeable box and it doesn’t look good.”

Injured baby gull in my hands, old, panicky feelings start to arise. Still, I’m happy to have my hands on it, finally.

As I rocked him back and forth, I thought of the gulls that perch on the roof next door. I shout to them from time to time “Come here! I want to hold you!” Because I do. I want to hold their fat, beautiful, living bodies. Just to feel their weight. I didn’t want my little dream of holding a gull to be like this.

I pulled the sweatshirt back a little. He was such a big, baby bird. And quite healthy it seemed, up until today. Chubby and wild. His beak was so grand, so large. I touched the top of his head gently. We were both in shock.

I went on my computer looking for advice, while he lay in my lap. I tried to feed him but he wouldn’t take the food. I tried to put him into a box but that scared him and he started flopping about. So I left him on the couch, wrapped loosely in the sweatshirt and an old towel. I left him alone, finally realizing that my mere presence might be taxing him.

Later that night, I woke to go to the bathroom. I walked through the living room and saw the bird motionless. He was sleeping. And tomorrow, I will take him to get help. There was something in the air though, the weight of the lie I was telling myself. The stillness, the flatness, the dryness of death. I crawled back into bed and lulled myself to sleep with thoughts of his safety and the help I’d get for him the next day.

When the cold winter sun barely rose, I went to the living room. He was dead and we weren’t going anywhere, except to bury him, which I wanted to do quickly. I placed him in the back seat of my truck and drove up to the beach, where I had seen him less than 24 hours before, alive.

I buried him in the dunes. You’re not supposed to go on the dunes. But today was different. I allowed myself access to bury the bird. As my cold hands made a shallow grave, I dreamt of crawling in there with him. We could disintegrate together, the natural dissolution of our physical beings. Our bones would eventually meet but we’d be gone.

The bird was going to die, no matter what. Maybe I made it worse – taxed and stressed him. Maybe I should have left him alone to die on the beach, his home, not my living room, my home. I rocked it thinking it was me, that rocking would feel good if I broke my wing. But the bird isn’t me. It’s a wild creature and maybe he didn’t want to be fucking rocked like a baby.

I’d like to be rocked like a baby, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I’d like to be rocked by a wild creature carefully tending to my broken wing. Maybe I’d get better or maybe I’d just let go, like the baby gull did, tired of the stress and the pain. And that wild creature could fly me to dunes and bury me lovingly. The watchdog neighbor would ask him what he was doing up there. The wild creature would squawk at him loudly and fly away.

Death, at its essence, has very little fanfare. It’s supremely natural. The bird died and I continue to coast through space and time and another uninspired winter on this planet, flopping about, moving closer and closer to a simple, quiet core. It’s such a thin line isn't it my chubby little gull?

My Bryan Adams Story

Something got me thinking of Bryan Adams whilst in the kitchen this morning. I think because I accidentally cut myself with a knife and it felt so right, I don’t know.

I harkened back to many, many summers ago when I saw him perform with a number of other bands at the late, great JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

I was very close to the stage, sipping from a flask of Southern Comfort and looking up at this performer, realizing he could easily fall into the category of “less than attractive” rock stars (move over Joe Jackson and Todd Rundgren). Anyway, Philly is a tough town with rowdy crowds and someone took the liberty to toss a bottle at Mr. Adams, while he was crooning about the summer of ‘69.

No sooner had that bottle grazed his shoulder – I mean within a millisecond – and the little guy tosses his mike and flies off the stage, his arms out like a bird and a horribly menacing, twisted look on his face (kinda similar to the expression he had before the bottle hit). He landed on the guy and started wailing away on the poor, drunk sap like there was no tomorrow. I thought “Damn, who knew it? Bryan Adams is a little bad ass. Musically irrelevant but a bad ass nonetheless. Interesting…hey, I’m gonna puke.” And I did.

I stumbled away from that experience with this important lesson learned: Be careful when you toss bottles at people because someone might just “Bryan Adams” you by surprise.

Help!

It's an emergency.


I was chopping up broccoli and the knife slipped.


I cut my finger and it’s bleeding bad.


I’m all alone.


I never felt so alone.

My Hopes for the New Year

I'm keeping it small this year. Real small. I'll pass on world peace. I'll say no to saving the environment. What I'd really like to see is:

The end of the "Got Milk" ads.

They make me sick. They have from the beginning.

First off, why is there a need to promote milk in the first place? I mean, it's like bread. You don't have to push the stuff. It just is. The weird people who continue to drink another mammal's milk way past nursing will continue to drink it.

Second off, it's just gross. I don't care if it's Catherine Zeta Jones or Spike Lee; soupy, white crap hanging above people's lips is just plain gross. Are we supposed to "connect" to that image in some personally historical way? Like I'm supposed to say "Oh yeah...that's what milk does. Gets stuck under my nose. That's funny. Milk." No, I don't say that. I say that's gross. It's gross when it happens for real and it's gross in an ad.

And lastly but surely not least, how the f$#k long can this ad campaign last? I mean, come on...stop beating a dead cow, already. What, has it been 20 years or something? We get the point! Milk under your nose! We get it!

God bless America.

And yay for world peace.

Laughing at the Frozen Rain

This house is an old house – drafty all the time. It’s November and my bedroom is cold. I have a heater in it and I straddle it for an extra blast of heat. It burns the insides of my legs sometimes. It’s getting colder here and so am I.

Danny drove to the island to see me last night. He is a sweet man – easy-going, honest, simple. I’ve known him since my teens. We dated briefly; for a week, I think. He broke up with me in front of the girl’s bathroom in high school. I cut school, went to the woods and smoked a joint and cried and then laughed. And then laughed some more.

We ran into each other not so long ago and he wanted to get together. He looks different now. He still has beautiful blue eyes. And two kids and a new divorce. He’s an electrician with a failing business. And he’s moving back in with his mother. All the makings of a match made in heaven.

I’ve heard it said that the older you get, the more your personality sets in stone - less pliable. The little pains of life fuse with the big pains and you didn’t take the time to dislodge them, cry or scream them out. So they compiled and calcified and they now occupy a dead space where kindness used to live. Oh how poetic.

I want to be flexible. I want to, I want to. But I’m not.

Danny slept in my bed last night and I wanted to kill him. He’s a big guy and he seemed to grow as the cold night progressed. His arms became virtual bear traps. And while he didn’t snore, he breathed louder than I thought humanly possible. Almost dragon-like. He also smelled like baby powder twice removed – like some weird, adulterated version of baby powder. I told him earlier that night, “Hey, you sure smell like baby powder – like a lot.” He said it was his deodorant. Deodorant indeed. This bothered me.

Toxic Baby Powder Bear Trap man literally had me in a chokehold at 5 this morning. His arms were too heavy to lift up. I thought I might suffocate…him.

And on top of feeling like a smashed pea, I felt a little confused. I’m supposed to like this warm “other person” sensation in my bed, right? It shouldn’t feel like a burden – I mean, literally, like an immense physical burden, right? I wanted to roll over and whisper softly into his ear “Hey, can you get the hell out of here?”

When Danny woke up this morning, I had been up for an hour sitting at my desk, bleary-eyed. Looking well-rested, he stretched and asked, “Do you know what you need?”

I toyed with several responses in my tired little head:

“A silencer?”

“For you to get the hell out of my bed and stop baby powdering your scent all over the joint!”

“To be never asked again, ‘Do you know what I need?’”

“To stop dating, cause y’all annoy my ass.”

I went with the simple but classicly acerbic, “Oh, pray tell.”

An electric blanket, he says.

“The blankets that you kicked off the bed usually keep me warm enough.”

He laughed and stretched and got out of bed and kissed my cheek.

------------------

Over breakfast, I asked him if I seemed like a bitch to which he replied, “Yeah, you’re a bitch a little.”

Well, then why do you want to date me, I asked.

“I don’t know. Um, I don’t know.”

I told him how I appreciated his well-thought out answer.

“See – that kind of thing. Makes you sound like a bitch a little.”

“Hmm…I always thought that was just biting sarcasm.”

I took a bite of my Scrapple (a very strange meat product that I’d rather not talk about.)

He suggested I lighten up a little and stop acting like I know everything.

“Me, me? I know less each day! I seem like a know-it-all?”

“Yeah, a little. Well, you do know a lot. So it makes me feel like a hick, like some Jersey blue-collar guy – which I am, I know. You know about wine and music and film, which I like to call movies. I drink beer and lay wire. So yeah, I kinda feel stupid around you.”

He looked down into his coffee and I suddenly felt like a piece of…Scrapple.

“I’m…sorry if I made you feel that way. I would never want to make someone feel that way.”

“It just seems I get on your nerves a lot.”

“Danny, everything gets on my nerves anymore and I don’t know why.”

“But maybe you just don’t like me the way I like you. Or you wouldn’t be so touchy.”

The truth of his statement hung silently over our heads.

I remembered caring more when I was younger – I cared about what I said and how I was perceived because I so wanted to be…wanted. But that concern has quietly unraveled over the years. It’s been replaced by a deep and contented sense of not caring. It feels good speaking my mind at all costs. Sure, you disenfranchise just about everyone but you breathe a big sigh of relief.


There’s this little Fury who lives inside of me now. Perhaps she’s always been there. Her rusty restraints have finally fallen off and she tears around my room, spitting fire and clawing my face. I can’t stop her. I don’t even want to try. I’m hoping she’ll exhaust herself and melt away and left will be a pliable, sweet person.

Until then, she and I will sleep happily together. She touches me. Her lips are icy and her tongue is like a hot poker. She is the best lover and hater I know. She doesn’t steal my cover - she is my cover. She pulls my hair hard and whispers nasty words in my ears. I am forced to relent. She and I watch reruns of Xena, the Warrior Princess together and plan our great escape. There will be tons of carnage and fire, we hope.