paris at 16

jennifer the philosopher waitress had marilyn monroe's nose, a special order. she had an affinity for bars, hells angels and at one time black and blue body art. she provided the blue (eyes, mood). her then husband helped with the blackening from time to time. she was young then, she told me while we were packing up her stuff to move from one dingy cool apartment to the next. clothes, furniture, pots and pans in one corner; incense, coasters, kitchen towels in another. burly friends would move the stuff in the former corner; i'd be carrying out a bag full of the stuff from the latter.

"why'd you marry him?"

"i was dumb. and drunk."

"when did you realize it was all wrong?"

"after he put me in a coma in the hospital."

"good thing it wasn't too late."

"you want this fondue pot?"

"nah."

"he was a jerk. and i was-- how about these?"

"what are they?"

coasters with scenes of paris on them."

"lemme see. cool. yeah. you ever go?"

"not yet. someday maybe."

i hoped she would, figured it was 70/30 wouldn't. practicality - and lifelines - have their drawbacks.

she was maybe 30. already she'd lived twice as long and twice as hard as i. she liked to sashay but quick quick, had just quit smoking. i had just gotten back from msu soccer camp, sunburnt, all welter weight excitement. she had been in aa off and on in equal measure for years, could tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. i hoped to play as well as the pros, needed to memorize the periodic table for a test, had experimented with kissing.... nobody but my mother had ever hit me - so long ago i couldn't even remember what it felt like. across the room her marilyn monroe nose smelled candles, the nose that the doctors had given her after it was busted. i imagined her laying quiet under white sheets for days. the bleep bleep of the machines keeping pace with her heart. she was an elixer. and she wanted me to date a prep cook named dan. dan hart. he was really really nice. really nice. and he was in love. i was 16.

dan hart and i had different ideas about the definition of a good thing. dan hart had eyes. i told jokes to quench their heat. i turned my back when they turned to deep ocean. i walked outside in the fresh air, where i could breathe, so i wouldn't say something to embarrass. anyone.

but jenny.

"you need someone like-- who's that guy in sixteen candles?"

"jake?!" oh yes.

"no, not that guy. the one in pretty in pink."

"which one?"

"andrew mccarthy."

"really?!"

"yeah. sensitive. kinda sweet."

huh.

i ended up hanging out with sensitive, kinda sweet john. johnny. where we worked. curly blonding hair, bluing eyes. deaf in one ear. he nearly whispered. quietly lean and muscled like a wood-splitting hermit. dark intimacies barely hinted at by that white-white under tan smirk. he lived with his grandmother and sister. father in prison. he said he did't have any passionate hobbies. well, not many, anyway.

she pursed her lips.

one night at work hinting turned rock solid. in front of the cookstaff with their faces in their sleeves. i turned open palm fluid motion to him.

S M A C K

platter and plates still balanced in the opposite hand. my hand, my face, the space he located, all on fire. stinging hot.

his blue eyes flattened on a road. "what--?"

i heard myself say it out loud. "respect gets you farther." what stung more? i'm not sure but the heat. i still remember.

no hobbies. no mother. because of his father.

after that our eyes cooled. they turned away more often than they stayed.

i saw a woman who resembled his grandmother punching buttons on a cash register. almost 16 years after we met.

"do you have a grandson named john, johnny?"

"yes," body and face a giant smile.

she showed me photos of his step-kids.

"he got married to a divorcee a few years ago. he's happy," she said.

"picked up a few hobbies what with kids, i bet."

"oh he sure has." she laughed through smoker's cough.

jenny got married quite a while ago, too. to a biker named redd.

older, bolder, bald, gray beard, sweet, the waitstaff told me when i asked... they still see her from time to time.

"he treat her good?" i ask.

"oh, he's all heart," they extol.

chaps, do rags and all. that's good. i say. real good.

gotta put my paris coasters in my give-away corner tonight. maybe my niece could use em....

from here to $31.21

6-14-97

the date on the receipt for the shoes i got for christine and todd's wedding. studio roma brand. back before i broke the mythic $28,000 per annum income. they cost, according to the bill, $31.21, with "accessories" and tax, at 11:21am. they do this criss-cross thing at the instep, and the heel is a not too innocent, not too naughty 2-3/4 inches. sling back, mildly pointed toe. they show off the arch nicely. creme with slight sheen. the dress i borrowed from swa. deceptively simple. an elegant thing that hung and clung to the calf. a peach-or-beige bordering on apricot silk. silk on skin, same color, turning slight sensation of naked into Naked, especially in kissy breezes. the undergarments were a small concern - not too much to choose from and not willing to spend the dough or the time searching. so, digging into my own stash of possible solutions, i decided - less is more.

todd's dad approached me on the steps of the church.

"you are marvelous in that dress. really marvelous."

i doublechecked with my boyfriend. "hey, am i all loose or hussy in this getup?" he raised an eyebrow, "no," a wink of a smile, lips to my shoulder.

then to christine, who was beginning to glow under the summer sun and the scratchy princess taffeta. "oh, honey, you're beautiful. you're givin all the guys a thrill when you stand in the sun. let's get married..."

it was a sexy dress.

the shoes sit on my desk atop their box tonight. 7-24-05. no sign of festival dancing with royal oak's hari krishnas. no sign of railroad crossing and picture taking on the tracks. no sign of blisters. no sign of drunken stumbling. no sign of panty hose run and disrobing. no sign of christine's father's slurred advice:

"never go to bed angry."

"and get plenty of sex," i heard from somewhere behind him. christine's mom strolled over, speaking in authoratative tones to the bar staff. mr. snyder padded her ass. she never blinked, kept talking.

boyfriend's stomach ache saw us to the door early. the shoes on my desk show no sign of the slow walk to the car through fragrant orange. no sign of the slow tender ministrations offered in the dark. no sign of the following years, the perfectly too loud music through their cardboard box walls, the smells of quick dinners and dirty soccer clothes at the bottom of the closet. the giggles passing from doorway to bed. the tense silences from bed to doorway. no sign of the dozen or so weddings they tried out for but did not attend. no sign of the surgery to correct the broken tarsels etcetera. no sign of his leaving, of mine.

they sit, as if nothing in the world has ever happened. as if anything or everything can.

a lot can happen to $31.21.

what does it say

about a person if s/he dresses skimpiest when s/he's alone...

?

do most people

have two doctors appointments and two dinner dates on the same day?

why do i? how do we do what we do?

how do we accomplish it - and how does everything come so...uniquely...together (oh yes and apart) for each of us?

how d o e s it all stitch itself?

teller without penn.the action in precision

so i'm listening to penn, the quieter part of penn and teller.

and i'm typing a note in email. i type exACTly. you know, to emphaize the voice inflection when you REALLY mean what the hell it is you're saying.

ex act ly.

eghz a c t lee.

you know, like that.

and well, the spellcheck decided that i din't mean what i typed and h o w i typed it. so the spellcheck


decided


to
correct me.

yeah.


and well, i gave the machine a mental mutherfucker - you know, all thought and no breath. like that. and i retyped


e


x


A


C



T


l


y


and it stayed. this time.

so what i realize is that there is action in precision. e-x-a-c-t-l-y. it's so decisive. so er-er-er angular and yet so...straight at the same time.

anyway, penn was telling me a story (i'm still befuddled by the irony), helping me to discover the instruction, the audible melody, usually hidden so often and so softly in silence.

so i was discovering also the action in exactly. and listening from the kitchen, i was discovoring a teensy tinesy spider on the parchment paper right next to a dark chocolate covered coffee bean (sidetrack #1: through a series of unfortunate and necessary steps a few days ago i ended up at a / the neighborhood coffee joint. and i'm talkin to peter the proprietor while i got one gigantic thingie of water in one arm and a bag filled with a torpedo-sized thingie in the other (obviously a loaf of bread.) anyway, peter's like, so can i getcha anything? and i'm like...uh...can't say i'm really hungry or thirsty thereaaaah pete. so i bought an ounce of................yes, dark chocolate covered coffee beans.

i thought i'd hate them and could give them all away. a little suprise for the next coupla people i'd meet. and all for a buck. ! >;D

anyway, i didn't hate them.

obviously. i was in the kitchen discovering wild kingdom on my countertop after handdipping a bunch of beans i found in my freezer... 'member?
end of sidetrack#1)

so i'm seeing the little mutha and i'm thinking, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeere oh where did you just step huh?

and i'm thinking

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan...!

cuz i really wanna just throw out all the chocolate for having little buggy feet (paws? claws? ?) all over it.

but then.

i remembered how there's so much poison/cure boon/bane love/hate lovely/ugly seemingly irrational matings of pro and con going on. with the seed, the future and past, fruit/sin desire/dowfall keep your friends close but your enemies closer. you get me? the mirror. the opposite pole. the ying/yang, the ... you get it...

and i realize the funny thing here is not just that i look like i love lucy's lucille ball when she was in the chocolate factory at the assembly line (cuz you gotta know, i was only mad at that little spiderfuck because i wanted to shovel all those little develish choco-pellets lathered in luscious daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark choooooooooooooooooooocolate), is that i realized that in an instant in my head the tricky mysterious creepy possibly poisonous dirty disgusting tinyspidey was changed into a frolicksome bouncy ... pet.

because i wanted the chocolate more than i was willing to be disgusted.

dingdoingplingplonghy spider or no, i was going to live in spectacular denial.

(beginning of sidetrack #2) and i realized that the same antics i pull and reason that my friends should forgive me anyway for are the same things thant send me stammering and pouting when they do their own versions.

and that i do all kinds of stuff that i 'forget' are part of my personality. justifications. make em. immaturity. got it. power maneuverings. do em. cold wars. been known to practice em. as a matter of fact, i'm living the vestiges of a 'you!you!you! yelling match right now. of course, i reason, i'm not the only one at fault and there's only so much you can do. but it's hard to listen when someone wants to beat you up and not discuss his/her own failure to communicate. and while i yell across the ravine i feel my insides shake and fold into themselves for protection. and now i wait, uncomfortable, for the discussion to rise out of the rubble.

the epiphany isn't so rare. we just, i think, miss them all the time. (end of sidetrack #2)

i also discovered in the middle of the situation i was having with the mini monster in my ketchen and my gluttonous appetite for the beans he loped and peed and laid all kinds of eggs all over, that i got bumped from meeting a friend tonight.

in the middle of her harrangued kinda stressed explanation of why she was blowing me off, i realized


b i n g

i'm gettin dumped.

and for a second i don't know what she said. i was hearing blah blah blah blah and my mind was set-stuck like the fist face you see when someone really really has her/his mind made up and you are truly really deeply pissing him/her off by continuing to be alive considering yr present state of being so wrong.

and well, i paid attention to the stress in her voice and realized she wasn't trying to get rid of me so much as apologize while getting rid of me.

and hey, things come up.

as a matter of fact, i had absolutely no leg to stand on b/c YESterday i did the SAME damn thing to a friend of mine.


so.


i put my stones down.


and i said, hey, grace, s'okay. find a nice gift and jus gimme a call when you find the time before i split. she could hear my smile and her harrycarry story slowed and she said okay and the words were wearing a dress. a red dress. i could see her again, her big beautiful brown hair growing browner, and her kewpie doll eyes glistening with health and her marilyn monroe/sandra dee smile.

ok stace. great. i'm really really sorry.

and i realized right then that not only is it way cooler to live ratcheted down to first or second gear when i don't undertand or am taking offence to a situation, but it also feels nicer. it smooths itself out around the edges naturally.

slowing down is good in times of indecision.
that's what i learned.

i also learned that i just might still pull an i love lucy mouthful. and i just might OFFER you one too.

synchronicity

it all fits.


somehow.